Kinnersly was whiter than the other. The whole position was clear to him.
In a few words it stood thus: He, Kinnersly, was sub-manager of the Big Lone Pine Phosphate Mine, which lay about a mile from the edge of the swamp known as the Big Cypress. This swamp was twenty-five miles long, but not more than two to three wide.
On the other side of the swamp was Lakeville, the county town. It was distant from the mine seven miles, as the crow flies, and more than twenty by road.
Every Friday afternoon Sam French, the manager of the mine, went to Lakeville in his buggy, accompanied by one negro, to fetch the pay-money for the seventy hands employed in quarrying the phosphate. Sam was well known and popular.
But now—well, there was no one in South Florida who had not heard of the atrocities of Jean Ducane. The man was a mulatto, half French, half negro, who had come to Florida from New Orleans. He had once been employed in the Lone Pine Mine. Trouble began with his getting drunk and insulting Sam, who had promptly knocked him down, and next morning fired him.
Then Ducane had disappeared. A week later Sam French was shot at from the scrub. The mine-hands, who were fond of their manager, made the place too hot to hold the would-be murderer, and the next heard of Ducane was down at Key West.
Escaping from Key West, the mulatto worked his way up the coast to Tampa, where he burgled a bank. But even then he was not caught, and the climax came when he returned to the neighborhood of Lakeville and deliberately fired two houses in the suburbs, causing the death of a woman and two children. The whole neighborhood rose in arms. Ducane was caught, and four negroes with him, and jailed with difficulty by the sheriff in the face of a mob yelling to lynch him.
And now this human wild beast was at large again, and both the young fellows knew that the first thing he would do would be to hold up the manager of the Lone Pine Mine and rob and murder him.
"You see, it's not only revenge," said Kinnersly. "The money would mean everything to him and his gang. All in silver, too!"
"And Sam knows nothing!" cried Godfrey. He pulled out his watch. "What time'll he be passing Black Bayou?"