“Yes,” agreed Tom. “They may have seen them—then, they will either turn and run across the Gulf, or somewhere else, or they will unload the treasure in Shark River and hide it in the Everglades.”
“Once it’s hidden there, any effort to find it would be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack!” declared Mr. Neale.
“Then let’s hurry!” cried Nicky, and from that instant all was activity on the stranded Senorita.
CHAPTER XXV
IN THE EVERGLADES
In order to see how Nicky’s plan was, the picture that he had in his mind must be understood. This was Nicky’s mind picture:
The hi-jackers, after capturing Sam’s sloop, had sent her, with two men aboard, to make contact with their Little Card Sound headquarters. Nelse was there and from what he had heard and pieced together, Nicky supposed that the two men on the Treasure Belle would find Nelse, and have him go, or send Seminole Indians, across the inland waterways, to take to the hi-jackers some liquor cases in which to conceal the treasure bars.
When they captured the Libertad, the hi-jackers had left three men floundering in the water; for all they knew or cared, these men might have been wounded. The Libertad’s own boat had been sunk by bullet holes during the fight, which was why the boys had been left without a boat when Senor Ortiga and Mr. Coleson had fled the Senorita in the tender.
Under such conditions the hi-jackers had started North in El Libertad, the night previous to that on which the cutter arrived.
They would hardly go to the shores of the Southern States bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Nicky decided, because they would be afraid of having the gold discovered: it was in bars and had been loaded into the Libertad without any provision for its concealment and transportation later on.
The hi-jackers would probably go, Nicky argued, into the inner channel of the archipelago and then lay up in the Shark River, that small stream having its source at the edge of the Everglades. It was the most Southerly place they could get close to the Everglades, and the Seminoles, bringing the cases to put the treasure in would come up the inland way through part of Big Cypress Swamp, along the rim of the Everglades, and meet them. That was the only way Nicky could see for the hi-jackers to do, because they had no small boat and could not go any closer to the shallow water of the Florida swamp than the draught of El Libertad would permit.