"'Gator Road'?" repeated Linda. "There aren't any roads in the swamp, are there?"
"They're water channels," Hal explained. "Short for alligator-roads."
Linda shuddered.
"I saw an alligator last night," she told them. "I hope we don't meet any more."
"You poor girl!" exclaimed Jackson. "It seems to me you've had most every dreadful experience anybody could have in the last twenty-four hours!"
"But they're over now," laughed Linda, wondering what the boys would say if she told them the real account of the kidnapping.
Even now Jackson Carter was looking at her strangely. She seemed like such a nice girl—but what sort of family could she have come from, that would allow her to roam around the country unchaperoned and alone? He himself was of an old-fashioned Southern family, who regarded such independence in young women as mere boldness. Yet Linda Carlton seemed anything but ill-bred, or bold.
"Aren't your family worried about you, Miss Carlton?" he inquired. "So far away—in an airplane?"
"They must be by now," she replied with a pang of distress. "I had promised to wire them every day—and it's been three nights now since I could. My aunt probably is afraid I have been killed."
"Your aunt?"