All-Story Weekly, Vol. 112, No. 1 — page 50: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

40 ‘Shut up and let me think,” was the advice of the prince. There was occasion for thought. The arm of the law was long. True, it was not long enough to reach into all the corners of this part of the world. Tucked away, here and there, in islands and hammocks, in lonely pine flats and unmapped keys, were men enough who enjoyed liberty that the law would have denied them. But the prince had no stomach for a lifetime spent like that. Still, the thought gave him a gleam of hope. ‘‘How many men can you get together to see this thing through?” the prince asked Carlo. ‘‘ How much time to get them?”’ ‘A day—two days at the most.”” ‘“ They’re sort of scattered,” said Carlo. ‘““They’ve been lookin’ for the gal, too. Maybe four or five.” ‘We've got to get a gang, and a dug- out or two,” said the prince, out of the travail of his thought. ‘I know Indians. I know these Seminoles better ’n any other white man in Florida. Say I don't,” he flared with sudden wrath, turning on the chauffeur, ‘and I’ll cut your heart out of you.” ; “J didn’t say anything,” said the chauf- feur. ‘“What’s the point?” asked Carlo pla- catingly. “ The point is this,” said the prince, re- verting to concentrated thought. “ The girl’s still weak. She can’t walk far. She. and the red swine have got away from here in a canoe. They’re going to try to make their getaway across the ’Glades to Mi- ami.” ‘“There’s no water in the ’Glades,” said Carlo. “They'll do what I say,” said Shuiski. ‘‘ Water or no water, that’s what they'll try. I’ve seen Indians do it before when they were cornered. They’ll be beating it for. the ’Glades this very night.” Which goes to show that even bad men may have their moments of illumination at times. Still undismayed, however heavy his heart felt at times, Lieutenant Anthony ALL-STORY WEEKLY. Lathrop kept up his search. Tampa Bay came to know his flying-boat, Fort Myers and the mouth of the Caloosahatchee, southern Okeechobee. Over the Everglades north and south, along the rim of the Big Cypress, over the Big Cypress itself—with its mileage of green meadows and quaking bog, forested rivers and grass-green lakes; over dark cypress-brakes where the bird- rookeries “sent up their feathered inhabi- tants to greet this super-bird; skimming the lonely camps of cow-hunters and trap- pers to see who was there, but mostly who was not. And during much of this time his thought reverted to that other flight—the time that Muriel Sangree and he had sped and reeled through space as if they them- selves were mated birds. The thought wasn’t so much a reversion as it was a continual presence. It was the underlying sea of his consciousness — his thought of this girl, like the sea of sweet water that underlay this land that had hidden her in its breast. _ There are some queer stories about the things heard and seen in the air. Few of them have been told as yet because, for one thing, the world is not ready for such tales yet, and, for another thing, because the young men who fly are, as a rule, not given to talking very much. Ghost-stories for the most part—things seen that could not be; things heard where there could be no sound other than the roar of wind and motor. But at dusk of the day following the one that had been like a Sabbath to Mu- riel Sarigree, when Lathrop was winging for a safe harbor like a belated wild goose, he heard a whisper that caused him to cir- cle far around. He almost completed the circle and held to his original course, the whisper was so strange: “This 1s Muriel! I am here! here!” The night had thickened over the ’Glades, but there was ‘still a semitrans- parent afterglow here at his elevation. He looked about him. Over there to the west lay the cypress country. To the east and everywhere lay the Everglades. Somewhat to the north was a black patch near a bit Il am COmiIclooOo SS C©