At Verbena Station he disembarked with his luggage, which consisted of a complete tropical camping outfit, tinned food, shot-gun, rifle, rods, spade, shovel, pick, crow. In his hand he carried an innocent looking satchel, gingerly. It contained dynamite in sticks, and the means to explode it safely.
To a hackman he said: "I'm not going to any hotel. What I want is a wagon, a team of mules, and a driver to take me and my outfit to Coakachee Creek on the Spanish Causeway. Can you fix it for me?"
The hackman said he could. And in half an hour he drove up in his mule wagon to the deserted station, where White sat all alone amid his mountainous paraphernalia.
When the wagon had been loaded, and they had[274] been driving through the woods for nearly half an hour in silence, the driver's curiosity got the better of him, and he ventured to enquire of White why everybody was going to the Spanish Causeway.
Which question startled the young man very disagreeably until he learned that "everybody" merely meant himself and one other person taken thither by the same driver the day before.
Further, he learned that this person was a woman from the North, completely equipped for camping as was he. Which made him more uneasy than ever, for he of course identified her with Mr. Munsell's client, whose land, including half of Lot 210, adjoined his own. Who she might be and why she had come down here to Seminole County he could not imagine, because Munsell had intimated that she knew what she was buying.
No doubt she meant to play a similar game to Munsell's, and had come down to take a look at her villainous property before advertising possibilities of perpetual sunshine.
Yet, why had she brought a camping outfit? Ordinary land swindlers remained comfortably aloof from the worthless property they advertised. What was she intending to do there?
Instead of a swindler was she, perhaps, the[275] swindlee? Had she bought the property in good faith? Didn't she know it was under water? Had she come down here with her pitiful camping equipment prepared to rough it and set out orange trees? Poor thing!
"Was she all alone?" he inquired of his cracker driver.