"It's a stric'ly cash deal. Get me?"
"I shall have with me a certified check for ten thousand dollars. Also a pair of automatics."
He laughed: "Huh!" he said, "I could loco your cabbage-palm soup if I was that kind! I'm on the level, Perfessor. If I wasn't I could get you in about a hundred styles while you was blinkin' at what you was a-thinkin' about. But I ain't no gun-man. You hadn't oughta pull that stuff on me. I've give you your chanst; take it or leave it."
I pondered profoundly for another ten minutes. And at last my decision was irrevocably reached.
"It's a bargain," I said firmly. "What is your name?"
"Sam Mink. Write it Samuel onto that there certyfied check—if you can spare the extra seconds from your valooble time."
II
On Monday, the first day of March, 1915, about 10:30 a.m., we came in sight of something which, until I had met Mink, I never had dreamed existed in southern Florida—a high range of hills.
It had been an eventless journey from New York to Miami, from Miami to Fort Coquina; but from there through an absolutely pathless wilderness as far as I could make out, the journey had been exasperating.