The time dragged by slowly. Guy tried to write letters, but found he could not settle to anything. The fact was that he was desperately anxious.
He knew Deacon's callous, revengeful nature, and was perfectly certain that he would carry out his threat if the money to bribe him was not forthcoming. It was all true what his cousin had said. A jury of cattle owners, "crackers," as they are called in Florida, would certainly find him guilty on his cousin's evidence, and even if he escaped hanging his fate would be the awful one of twenty years' penitentiary.
For a moment he weakened and thought of paying the price. But to do so meant selling his place. He could not otherwise raise the money. Sell the place on which he had spent four years of steady, hard work! No, by Jove; anything rather than that. And even if he did so, what guarantee had he that this would be the full extent of his cousin's demands?
Absolutely none. No, he laid himself open to be blackmailed for the rest of his life. He hardened his heart, and resolved that, come what would, he would stick it out and let the beggar do his worst.
Presently he got up and went out of his tiny living room onto the veranda. The house was only a little bit of a two-roomed shack with a penthouse veranda in front. He had built it when he first came, and had been intending for some time past to put up a bigger place. Now that dream was over.
Sick at heart, Guy flung himself into a long cane chair, and presently, worn out by worry, fell asleep.
He was wakened by the pad pad of a trotting horse, and looking up sharply saw in the faint light of a late-risen moon a figure mounted on one horse and leading another passing rapidly along the sandy track outside his boundary fence.
The something familiar about the figure of the man struck him like a blow.
"By thunder, it's Deacon! What mischief is the skunk up to?" he muttered. And on the impulse of the moment he sprang from the veranda, and, slipping round the dark end of the house, made for the stable.
In a minute he had saddle and bridle on Dandy, and, leading the animal out through the bars at the far end of the grove, was riding cautiously on his cousin's track.