CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MEDICINE MAN.
Sunrise found the boys well on their way to Indiantown. By nine o'clock they were entering the jungle where Charley had been fired at on his previous trip. Before entering it, however, the lads stopped and cut two long slender poles with which to kill the moccasins basking on the road.
This time no rifle bullets halted their progress, but the snakes were there, and, by the time they had passed out of the jungle they had slaughtered over fifty of the loathsome creatures.
"Whew!" exclaimed Walter, as they broke out of the darkness of the jungle, "that's the most awful place I was ever in. It fairly reeks with rottenness and fever."
"Yes," Charley assented. "I dread putting the machine into it, but it's got to be done. I am going to set fire to it before the machine gets there; that may help some. Once we get through it, we are over the worst. There's Indiantown, about two miles from here. Now, I figure that the motive for the attacks on us lies somewhere between the machine and Indiantown, for the strange white men never go beyond the trading-post, but, for the life of me, I can see nothing in this country that would supply the motive, can you?"
"No," Walter admitted. "The land seems fertile enough, but there is plenty of good cheap land along the coast, right close to the railroad, so no one would want to come way out here for land. There is not enough timber here to offer any temptation, and we know that Florida contains no iron, coal, or precious minerals. I can see no motive for any striving out here. I guess we are just dreaming when we talk of a powerful motive out here."
"It's no dream," said Charley decidedly, "unless that fire was a dream, those convicts a dream, that dynamite a dream, the assault on McCarty a dream, those rifle-bullets a dream, and the whole one disagreeable nightmare."
"Well, let's forget it all," urged Walter. "Remember, this is a pleasure trip, and we want to make the most of it."
This conversation brought the two lads to the first Indian dwelling, but they found it empty, as was the next and the next. Near the middle of the little settlement, however, they came upon the whole tribe, gathered around a large wigwam. Unlike the other buildings, this one was not only thatched on top, but was also inclosed on sides and ends with bark and palmetto leaves. In one end was a small opening, just large enough for a man to enter by lying flat on the ground and wriggling through.