"Where in the name of alligators you been wadin', boys?" "Devil's Playground." The trader winked. "All right, boys, I ain't askin' no questions. If you say Devil's Playground, all right." He winked again. "I ain't no snooper. Come in." "How far to the nearest telegraph office?" repeated Payne. "Why, that's twenty miles, up to Citrus Grove, where the railroad ends. You can make it easy to-morrow." "Good walking?" "Just like this all the way." "Higgins, you stay here and rest." And Higgins growled in response: "Come on!" In the middle of the afternoon of the next day the operator at Citrus Grove spent five minutes in waking Payne. He had been paid five dollars to perform the feat when a reply should arrive to the long telegraph Roger had sent to his lawyer, when at dawn he and Higgins had stumbled into the station. The reply was quite satisfactory: "Deal closed with Southern Cypress Company. Thirty dollars an acre. Company reliable, progressive. Glad to have live development man take hold. Their title clear. Will see to transfer at once. Wait at Citrus Grove for surveyor who leaves at once. Garman unknown to them. Will look him up." Payne turned over on his side and went to sleep, the yellow bit of paper clenched tightly in his fist. XVII A week later Payne stood alone on the little Flower Prairie searching the flooded lands to the eastward and wondering why Higgins did not come. The week had been a successful one. A surveyor and a representative of the Cypress Company had arrived promptly, had smiled skeptically at first when told of the trip through the Devil's Playground, and when convinced had looked upon Payne and Higgins with the admiration of experts for masters. Higgins had remained at Citrus Grove to organize ox-team transport for the material and labor which had been ordered, and Payne had started southward at once. A sure, plodding ox team had carried him in a wide circuit through the flooded lands east of Devil's Playground to Deer Hammock. Signs on the hammock told that it had been visited several times during their absence. Payne found tracks of a size which he judged must be Garman's. The thousand acres which Payne had purchased from the Cypress Company was found to run northward far enough to include the fairyland of Flower Prairie. The eastern line was where the elderberry jungle and Everglade water met and on the west the line was well out on the sand prairie. "That's where you may have some trouble, Mr. Payne," said the surveyor. "Florida is a free-range state, and the cattle men have run cattle here so long they feel like kings." "Is Garman in with them too?" "Nobody knows much about Garman," was the reply, the same reply that Roger had received often during the week. "But they'll run cattle in on you from there if you don't fence. And if you do fence--well, there have been some ugly fence wars down here." "I'll fence at once," said Payne. "It's the only businesslike thing to do."