"After a while it got through my thick head what had happened. Blease and I took in on the gallop back toward the ditches, but we were too late. They'd jumped it already, a whole army of 'em, and real hard hombres. Shoot?" He held out his perforated sun helmet. "I pushed that up on the stick for an experiment, and the guy that drilled it was two hundred yards away."
"It was my fault," said Payne. "Garman was too smart for me. I played right into his hand by going down there. He knew that's what I'd do, and he had this gang waiting and shot them over here as soon as he saw me coming."
"That isn't all," continued Higgins. "As soon as the boys saw Steamboat Bill run against his bad luck they left the job and ran for the brush like rabbits. Blease says they won't come back; they always make tracks when white men start shooting."
"You mean there's only two of us here now?"
"Three. Old Blease has put on the war paint."
"Three isn't enough."
"Not by a dozen, it isn't. Did you learn what they're trying to do to you?"
"They're trying to beat me out of the land by fixing up a false title. Now they've got possession, and their scheme is to carry me from court to court till I'm busted and tired out."
As he spoke he realized fully what this meant. Garman's wealth and influence and the pomp and honor of Senator Fairclothe's position would be arrayed against him. He had seen and heard enough to appreciate that the vast territory of Southern Florida was in the hands of a set of powerful, fearless plunderers, with Garman the arch plunderer of them all. And it was organized, protected plundering.
A county sheriff was a petty pawn in the great game. A county judge would be only slightly larger, and so on, up through state legislatures, the governor, congressman, state supreme court judges, and even up and into the sacred precincts of the United States Senate in the person of Senator Fairclothe. How vast was the power of Garman's plunder organization might be estimated by the degree of ignorance in which the land-buying public throughout the country was kept concerning the true situation in the district. Full-page advertisements in Sunday newspapers created a golden dream in the public mind concerning the Western Everglades; not one single news item crept into print revealing the truth. Roger realized that for such a power to crush him in a court test would require merely that the machine created for such purpose be set in motion. He realized also that the vicious nature of the desperados whom Garman had placed upon his drained land and the desperate measures which would be necessary to regain possession of his own.