Payne stopped at the animal's tracks.
"That steer came in from the west. It couldn't have come very far through this jam, so probably that cattle prairie isn't very far out that way. We could go out there. I suppose some of Garman's men would see us if we did. I don't like to have him know where we're bound for."
Higgins was silent.
"Well?"
The engineer's reply was to crash into the thicket, breaking the way; and Payne followed without more words.
At noon they dropped on a bed of vines which fairly smothered the brush, and ate sparingly of the venison they had brought; cautiously they dipped water from a deep root hole and barely wet their lips.
"Have we made four miles?" asked Higgins.
"Just about—less than a mile an hour. Better start again before we begin to stiffen."
They went on, resigned to a continuance of the morning struggle, unable to see far enough ahead to distinguish the country beyond. One moment they were in the grasp of the jungle, the next they had broken through and stood panting and wide-eyed on the edge of a realized paradise of dreams. It was a tiny lake bordered by a small, grass-grown prairie dotted with small clean clumps of palmetto, pine and cypress. The water of the lakelet was clear blue, and the grass round it waved softly. The palmettos grew in small circles and with the pines and cypress seemed like islands in a gentle sea; and each island held in its center a spring of cold clear water seeping up through a limestone bottom. Long, swaying streamers of Spanish moss hung from the pines; up in the cypress were the mysterious air plants with the scarlet orchids naming in their hearts. And beyond the prairie was a grove of custard apple swathed in the gentle, blooming moon vine.
"It was black!" said Payne firmly, when they had drunk carefully from the lake.