"Yes, a very long way," he answered; and then added: "This Bridekirk would have been arrested for stealing my cattle if he had lived a week or two longer. Me and a neighbor was out looking up our cattle round here, not long ago, and we saw there were a good many fresh burns in the woods, and as we knew that cattle would go to such places to nibble the fresh grass that starts up after a fire, we set out for a big burnt patch. While we were in the woods, towards sunset, we saw two men on horseback driving an old bell-steer and four or five young cattle, all of which we easily recognized in the distance as part of my herd. We followed the men cautiously, keeping so far in the woods that they could not see us, when they mounted a little hill, and the last rays of the setting sun striking upon them, we saw that it was Bridekirk and a neighbor who were stealing my stock. We hid in the swamp until nine o'clock at night, and then rode to Bridekirk's clearing. There was a stream in a hollow below his house, but his cattle-pen was on the rising ground a little way off. We tied our horses in the woods, and crawled up to the cow-pen. There we found all the cattle the thieves had stolen excepting the bell-steer. There was a fire down in the hollow by the stream, and we could see Bridekirk and the other fellow skinning my bell-steer, which they had just killed. Said I to my friend, Now we have 'em!' and I took aim at Bridekirk with my gun. My friend was a LAW man, so he said, No, don't shoot; there is some law left, and we have EVIDENCE now. Let's go and indict them. Then if the sheriff won't arrest them, we can find plenty of chances to pull the trigger on them. I go in for law first, and LYNCHING afterwards.' Well, it was a hard thing to lose such a chance when we were boiling over, but I put my gun on my shoulder, and my friend let the bars of the pen down, and we drove the other cattle out as quietly as possible into the woods.
"Next day, Bridekirk's neighbor, who had helped kill the beef, left for parts unknown. Why? because, when he found the bars let down, and the cattle gone, and measured our tracks, he knew WHO had been watching him, and he thought it safest to skedaddle. Bridekirk then kept close in his cabin. He knew who was on his trail THIS TIME. We got the men indicted, and the sheriff had the order of arrest; but he held it for a week, and probably sent word to Bridekirk to keep out of the way. So law, as usual in these parts, fizzled, and it became necessary to try something surer.
"Now I was told that one morning last week, before daybreak, Bridekirk and his hired man heard a noise in the yard that sounded as though some animal was worrying the hens. He suspected it was somebody trying to draw him out into the yard, so he would not go, but tried to get his man to see what was up. The man was afraid, too, for he had his suspicions. At last the noise outside stopped, and the sun began to rise. As nobody seemed to be about, Bridekirk stuck his head out of the door, and, not seeing anything, slowly stepped outside. Now there were two men hidden behind a fence, with their guns pointed at the door. As soon as that cow-thief got fairly out of his house, we—THESE FELLOWS, I MEAN—pulled trigger and shot him dead. The authorities held a sort of inquest on the case, but all that is known of the matter is that he came to his death by shots from unknown parties."
Little did this cold-blooded man suspect, while relating his story to me, that his own end would be like Bridekirk's, and that he would soon fall under an assassin's hand. I became thoroughly disgusted with my companion, who kept close to my side hour after hour as we trudged through the wilderness. One of his arms was held stiffly to his side, and seemed to be almost useless. He had attempted a piece of imposition on a man who lived near the creek we were approaching, and had received the contents of the settler's shot-gun in his side. Most of the charge had lodged in the shoulder and arm, and the cripple now inveighed against this man, and advised us to keep clear of him when we rowed down the creek. "I have nothing against Mr. B.," he said; "but he is no GENTLEMAN, and you better not camp near him."
Before sunset we entered a heavily grassed country, where deer were abundant. They sprung from their beds in the tall grass, and bounded away as we advanced. At twilight the oxen finished their long pull on the banks of a little watercourse known as West Bay Creek, so called because it flows into the West Bay of St. Andrew's Sound. Here we camped for the night.
The two hired men left us to visit a friend who lived several miles distant; but the doctor remained with his oxen in our camp all night. When the tent was pitched he was permitted to enjoy its shelter alone, for Saddles and I took to our boats, leaving the murderer to his own uneasy dreams. I settled his bill before retiring, so he decamped at an early hour the next morning, having first found out where I had hidden my cordage, and purloining therefrom my longest and best rope. This was a loss to me, for it was used to secure the boats when they were being hauled from place to place; but I would gladly have parted with any of my belongings to be free from the presence of my unwelcome guest; and how resigned his neighbors must have felt when, a few weeks later, they read in their newspapers that "W. D. Holly was shot last week in his house, in Washington County, Florida, by some unknown parties"!
We made a hasty Sunday breakfast of cornstarch, and pulled down the creek, anxious to put some distance between ourselves and the doctor. Four miles down the stream, where it debouched into West Bay, we found the homes of two settlers. The one living on the right bank was the man who had given Mr. Holly his stiff arm, the other had built himself a rude but comfortable cabin on the opposite shore. Though there was one delicate-looking woman only in this cabin, without any protector, she hospitably asked us to make our camp at her landing, adding, that when her husband returned from the woods she might be able to give us some meat.
Soon a dog came out of the dense forest, followed by a man who bore upon his shoulders the hind-quarters of a deer which he had killed. He bade us welcome, while he remarked that there were no Sundays in these parts, where one day was just like another; and then presenting us with half his venison, regretted that he had not been aware of our arrival, as he could have killed another deer, his dog having started fifteen during a short ramble in the woods. In the thickets of "ti- ti," which are almost as dense as cane-brakes, the deer, panthers, and bears take refuge; and in this great wilderness of St. Andrew's Bay expert hunters can find venison almost any day.
On Monday morning we rowed through West Bay, across the southern end of North Bay, and skirted the north coast of the East Bay of St. Andrew's, with its picturesque groves of cabbage-palms, for a few miles, when we turned southward into the inlet through which the tidal waters of the Gulf pass in and out of the sound.
We were now close to the sea, with a few narrow sandy islands only intervening between us and the Gulf of Mexico, and upon these ocean barriers we found breezy camping-grounds. Our course was by the open sea for six or eight miles, when we reached a narrow beach thoroughfare, called Crooked Island Bay, through which we rowed, with Crooked Island on our right hand, until we arrived at the head of the bay, where we expected to find an outlet to the sea. Being overtaken by darkness, we staked our boats on the quiet sheet of water, and at sunrise pushed on to find the opening through the beach. Not a sign of human life had been seen since we had left the western end of the East Bay of St. Andrew's Sound, and we now discovered that no outlet to the sea existed, and that Crooked Island was not an island, but a long strip of beach land which was joined to the main coast by a narrow neck of sandy territory, and that the interior watercourse ended in a creek.