Quick Action

She looked up hastily, the quick colour dyeing her pale cheeks, her long, black lashes glimmering with tears.

"Do you mind talking it over with me?" he asked.

"N-no."

"May I come in?"

"P-please."

He seated himself cross-legged on the threshold.

"There's only one thing to do," he said, "and that is to go ahead. We must go ahead. Of course the hazard is against us. Let us face the chance that Bangs was only a clever romancer. Well, we've already discounted that. Then let us face the discrepancy in our two maps. It's bad, I'll admit. It almost knocks the last atom of confidence out of me. It has floored you. But you must not take the count. You must get up."

He paused, looking around him with troubled eyes; then somehow the sight of her pathetic figure – the soft, helpless youth of her – suddenly seemed to prop up his back-bone.

"Miss Sandys, I am going to stand by you anyway! I suppose, like myself, you have invested your last dollar in this business?"

"Y-yes."

He glanced at the pick, shovel and spade in the corner of her tent, then at her hands.

"Who," he asked politely, "was going to wield these?"

She let her eyes rest on the massive implements of honest toil, then looked confusedly at him.

"I was."

"Did you ever try to dig with any of these things?"

"N-no. But if I had to do it I knew I could."

He said, pleasantly: "You have all kinds of courage. Did you bring a shot-gun?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how to load and fire it?"

"The clerk in the shop instructed me."

"You are the pluckiest girl I ever laid eyes on… You camped here all alone last night, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"How about it?" he asked, smilingly. "Were you afraid?"

She coloured, cast a swift glance at him, saw that his attitude was perfectly respectful and sympathetic, and said:

"Yes, I was horribly afraid."

"Did anything annoy you?"

"S-something bellowed out there in the swamp – " She shuddered unaffectedly at the recollection.

"A bull-alligator," he remarked.

"What?"

"Yes," he nodded, "it is terrifying, but they let you alone. I once heard one bellow on the Tomoka when I was a boy."

After a while she said with tremulous lips:

"There seem to be snakes here, too."

"Didn't you expect any?"

"Mr. Munsell said there were not any."

"Did he?"

"Not," she explained resolutely, "that the presence of snakes would have deterred me. They frighten me terribly, but – I would have come just the same."

"You are sheer pluck," he said.

"I don't know… I am very poor… There seemed to be a chance… I took it – " Tears sprang to her eyes again, and she brushed them away impatiently.

"Yes," she said, "the only way is to go on, as you say, Mr. White. Everything in the world that I have is invested here."

"It is the same with me," he admitted dejectedly.

They looked at each other curiously for a moment.

"Isn't it strange?" she murmured.

"Strange as 'The Journal of Valdez.'… I have an idea. I wonder what you might think of it."

She waited; he reflected for another moment, then, smiling:

"This is a perfectly rotten place for you," he said. "You could not do manual labour here in this swamp under a nearly vertical sun and keep your health for twenty-four hours. I've been in Trinidad. I know a little about the tropics and semi-tropics. Suppose you and I form a company?"

"What?"

"Call it the Valdez Company, or the Association of the Maltese Cross," he continued cheerfully. "You will do the cooking, washing, housekeeping for two tents, and the mending. I will do the digging and the dynamiting. And we'll go ahead doggedly, and face this thing and see it through to the last ditch. What do you think of it? Your claim as plotted out is no more, no less, valuable than mine. Both claims may be worthless. The chances are that they are absolutely valueless. But there is a chance, too, that we might win out. Shall we try it together?"

She did not answer.

"And," he continued, "if the Maltese cross happens to be included within my claim, I share equally with you. If it chances to lie within your claim, perhaps I might ask a third – "

"Mr. White!"

"Yes?"

"You will take two thirds!"

"What?"

"Two thirds," she repeated firmly, "because your heavier labour entitles you to that proportion!"

"My dear Miss Sandys, you are unworldly and inexperienced in your generosity – "

"So are you! The idea of your modestly venturing to ask a third! And offering me a half if the Maltese cross lie inside your own territory! That is not the way to do business, Mr. White!"

She had become so earnest in her admonition, so charmingly emphatic, that he smiled in spite of himself.

She flushed, noticing this, and said: "Altruism is a luxury in business matters; selfishness of the justifiable sort a necessity. Who will look out for your interests if you do not?"

"You seem to be doing it."

Her colour deepened: "I am only suggesting that you do not make a foolish bargain with me."

"Which proves," he said, "that you are not much better at business than am I. Otherwise you'd have taken me up."

"I'm a very good business woman," she insisted, warmly, "but I'm too much of the other kind of woman to be unfair!"

"Commercially," he said, "we both are sadly behind the times. To-day the world is eliminating its appendix; to-morrow it will be operated on for another obsolete and annoying appendage. I mean its conscience," he added, so seriously that for a moment her own gravity remained unaltered. Then, like a faint ray of sunlight, across her face the smile glimmered. It was a winning smile, fresh and unspoiled as the lips it touched.

"You will take half – won't you?" she asked.

"Yes, I will. Is it a bargain?"

"If you care to make it so, Mr. White."

He said he did, and they shook hands very formally. Then he went out and pitched his tent beside hers, set it in order, lugged up the remainder of his equipment, buried the jars of spring water, and, entering his tent, changed to flannel shirt, sun-helmet, and khaki.

XXIX

A little later he called to her: she emerged from her tent, and together they sat down on the edge of the Causeway, with the two maps spread over their knees.

That both maps very accurately represented the topography of the immediate vicinity there could be no doubt; the only discrepancy seemed to lie in the situation of the Maltese cross. On White's map the cross fell well within his half of Lot 210; in Jean Sandys' map it was situated between her half of 210 and 220.

Plot it out as they might, using Mr. Munsell's diagram, the result was always the same; and after a while they gave up the useless attempt to reconcile the differences in the two maps.

From where they were sitting together on the Causeway's edge, they were facing due west. At their feet rippled the clear, deep waters of the swamp, lapping against the base of the Causeway like transparent little waves in a northern lake. A slight current disclosed the channel where it flowed out of the north western edges of the swamp, which was set with tall cypress trees, their flaring bases like silvery pyramids deep set in the shining ooze.

East of them the Coakachee flowed through thickets of saw-grass and green brier, between a forest of oak, pine, and cedar, bordered on the western side by palm and palmetto – all exactly as drawn in the map of Pedro Valdez.

The afternoon was cloudless and warm; an exquisite scent of blossoms came from the forest when a light breeze rippled the water. Somewhere in those green and tangled depths jasmine hung its fairy gold from arching branches, and wild oranges were in bloom. At intervals, when the breeze set from the east, the heavenly fragrance of magnolia grew more pronounced.

After a little searching he discovered the huge tree, far towering above oak and pine and palm, set with lustrous clusters, ivory and palest gold, exhaling incense.

"Wonderful," she said under her breath, when he pointed it out to her. "This enchanted land is one endless miracle to me."

"You have never before been in the South?"

"I have been nowhere."

"Oh. I thought perhaps when you were a child – "

"We were too poor. My mother taught piano."

"I see," he said gravely.

"I had no childhood," she said. "After the public school, it was the book section in department stores… They let me go last week. That is how I came to be in the Heikem galleries."

He clasped his hands around one knee and looked out across the semi-tropical landscape.

Orange-coloured butterflies with wings like lighted lanterns fluttered along the edges of the flowering shrubs; a lovely purplish-black one with four large, white polka dots on his wings flitted persistently about them.

Over the sun-baked Causeway blue-tailed lizards raced and chased each other, frisking up tree trunks, flashing across branches: a snowy heron rose like some winged thing from Heaven, and floated away into the silvery light. And like living jewels the gorgeous wood-ducks glided in and out where the water sparkled among the cypress trees.

"Think," he said, "of those men in armour toiling through these swamps under a vertical sun! Think of them, starved, haggard, fever racked, staggering toward their El Dorado! – their steel mail scorching their bodies, the briers and poison-grass festering their flesh; moccasin, rattler, and copperhead menacing them with death at every step; the poisoned arrows of the Indians whizzing from every glade!"

"Blood and gold," she nodded, "and the deathless bravery of avarice! That was Spain. And it inflamed the sunset of Spanish glory."

He mused for a while: "To think of De Soto being here —here on this very spot! – here on this ancient Causeway, amid these forests! – towering in his armour! His plated mail must have made a burning hell for his body!"

She looked down at the cool, blue water at her feet. He, too, gazed at it, curiously. For a few feet the depths were visible, then a translucent gloom, glimmering with emerald lights, obscured further penetration of his vision. Deep down in that water was what they sought – if it truly existed at all.

After a few moments' silence he rose, drew the hunting-knife at his belt, severed a tall, swamp-maple sapling, trimmed it, and, returning to the water's edge, deliberately sounded the channel. He could not touch bottom there, or even at the base of the Causeway.

"Miss Sandys," he said, "there is plenty of room for such a structure as the Maltese cross is supposed to mark."

"I wonder," she murmured.

"Oh, there's room enough," he repeated, with an uneasy laugh. "Suppose we begin operations!"

"When?"

"Now!"

She looked up at him, flushed and smiling:

"It is going to take weeks and weeks, isn't it?"

"I thought so before I came down here. But – I don't see why we shouldn't blow a hole through this Causeway in a few minutes."

"What!"

She rose to her feet, slightly excited, not understanding.

"I could set off enough dynamite right here," he said, stamping his heel into the white dust, " – enough dynamite to open up that channel into the Coakachee. Why don't I do it?"

Pink with excitement she said breathlessly: "Did you bring dynamite?"

"Didn't you?"

"I – I never even thought of it. F-fire crackers frighten me. I thought it would be all I could do to fire off my shot-gun." And she bit her lip with vexation.

"Why," he said, "it would take a gang of men a week to cut through this Causeway, besides building a coffer-dam." He looked at her curiously. "How did you expect to begin operations all alone?"

"I – I expected to dig."

He looked at her delicate little hands:

"You meant to dig your way through with pick and shovel?"

"Yes – if it took a year."

"And how did you expect to construct your coffer-dam?"

"I didn't know about a coffer-dam," she admitted, blushing. After a moment she lifted her pretty, distressed eyes to his: "I – I had no knowledge – only courage," she said… "And I needed money."

A responsive flush of sympathy and pity passed over him; she was so plucky, so adorably helpless. Even now he knew she was unconscious of the peril into which her confidence and folly had led her – a peril averted only by the mere accident of his own arrival.

He said lightly: "Shall we try to solve this thing now? Shall we take a chance, set our charges, and blow a hole in this Causeway big enough to drain that water off in an hour?"

"Could you do that?" she exclaimed, delighted.

"I think so."

"Then tell me what to do to help you."

He turned toward her, hesitated, controlling the impulsive reply.

"To help me," he said, smilingly, "please keep away from the dynamite."

"Oh, I will," she nodded seriously. "What else am I to do?"

"Would you mind preparing dinner?"

She looked up at him a little shyly: "No… And I am very glad that I am not to dine alone."

"So am I," he said. "And I am very glad that it is with you I am to dine."

"You never even looked at me in the galleries," she said.

"Then – how could I know you were reading Valdez if I never looked at you?"

"Oh, you may have looked at the book I was reading."

"I did," he said, " – and at the hands that held it."

"Never dreaming that they meant to wield a pick-axe," she laughed, "and encompass your discomfiture. But after all they did neither the one nor the other; did they?"

He looked at the smooth little hands cupped in the shallow pockets of her white flannel Norfolk. They fascinated him.

"To think," he said, half to himself, " – to think of those hands wielding a pick-axe!"

She smiled, head slightly on one side, and bent, contemplating her right hand.

"You know," she said, "I certainly would have done it."

"You would have been crippled in an hour."

Her head went up, but she was still smiling as she said: "I'd have gone through with it – somehow."

"Yes," he said slowly. "I believe you would."

"Not," she added, blushing, "that I mean to vaunt myself or my courage – "

"No: I understand. You are not that kind… It's rather extraordinary how well I – I think I know you already."

"Perhaps you do know me – already."

"I really believe I do."

"It's very likely. I am just what I seem to be. There is no mystery about me. I am what I appear to be."

"You are also very direct."

"Yes. It's my nature to be direct. I am not a bit politic or diplomatic or circuitous."

"So I noticed," he said smilingly, "when you discussed finance with me. You were not a bit politic."

She smiled, too, a little embarrassed: "How could I be anything but frank in return for your very unworldly generosity?" she said. "Because what you offered was unworldly. Anyway, I should have been direct with you; I knew what I wanted; I knew what you wanted. All I had to do was to make up my mind. And I did so."

"Did you make up your mind about me, also?"

"Yes, about you, also."

They both smiled.

She was so straight and slender and pretty in her white flannels and white outing hat – her attitude so confident, so charmingly determined, that she seemed to him even younger than she really was – a delightful, illogical, fresh and fearless school-girl, translated by some flash of magic from her school hither, and set down unruffled and unstartled upon her light, white-shod feet.

Even now it amazed him to realise that she really understood nothing of the lonely perils lately confronting her in this desolate place.

For if there were nothing actually to fear from the wild beasts of the region, that which the beasts themselves feared might have confronted her at any moment. He shuddered as he thought of it.

And what would she have done if suddenly clutched by fever? What would she have done if a white-mouthed moccasin had struck her ankle – or if it had been the diamond-set Death himself?

"You don't mind my speaking plainly, do you?" he said bluntly.

"Why, no, of course not." She looked at him inquiringly.

"Don't stray far away from me, will you?"

"What?"

"Don't wander away by yourself, out of sight, while we are engaged in this business."

She looked serious and perplexed for a moment, then turned a delicate pink and began to laugh in a pretty, embarrassed way.

"Are you afraid I'll get into mischief? Do you know it is very kind of you to feel that way?.. And rather unexpected – in a man who – sat for three days across the aisle from me – and never even looked in my direction. Tell me, what am I to be afraid of in this place?"

"There are snakes about," he said with emphasis.

"Oh, yes; I've seen some swimming."

"There are four poisonous species among them," he continued. "That's one of the reasons for your keeping near me."

She nodded, a trifle awed.

"So you will, won't you?"

"Yes," she said, taking his words so literally that, when they turned to walk toward the tents, she came up close beside him, naïvely as a child, and laid one hand on his sleeve as they started back across the Causeway.

"Suppose either one of us is bitten?" she asked after a silence.

"I have lancets, tourniquets, and anti-venom in my tent."

Her smooth hand tightened a little on his arm. She had not realised that the danger was more than a vague possibility.

"You have spring water, of course," he said.

"No… I boiled a little from the swamp before I drank it."

He turned to her sternly and drew her arm through his with an unconscious movement of protection.

"Are you sure that water was properly boiled —thoroughly boiled?" he demanded.

"It bubbled."

"Listen to me! Hereafter when you are thirsty you will use my spring water. Is that understood?"

"Yes… And thank you."

"You don't want to get break-bone fever, do you?"

"No-o!" she said hastily. "I will do everything you wish."

"I'll hang your hammock for you," he said. "Always look in your shoes for scorpions and spiders before you put them on. Never step over a fallen log before you first look on the other side. Rattlers lie there. Never go near a swamp without looking for moccasins.

"Don't let the direct sunlight fall on your bare head; don't eat fruit for a week; don't ever go to sleep unless you have a blanket on. You won't do any of these things, will you?" he inquired anxiously, almost tenderly.

"I promise. And I never dreamed that there was anything to apprehend except alligators!" she said, tightening her arm around his own.

"Alligators won't bother you – unless you run across a big one in the woods. Then keep clear of him."

"I will!" she said earnestly.

"And don't sit about on old logs or lean against trees."

"Why? Lizards?"

"Oh, they're not harmful. But wood-ticks might give you a miserable week or two."

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," she murmured, "I am so glad you came here!" And quite innocently she pressed his arm. She did it because she was grateful. She had a very direct way with her.

XXX

When they came to their tents he went into hers, slung her hammock properly, shook a scorpion out of her slippers, and set his heel on it; drove a non-poisonous but noisy puff-adder from under her foot-rug, the creature hissing like a boiling kettle and distending its grey and black neck.

Terrified but outwardly calm, she stood beside him, now clutching his arm very closely; and at last her tent was in order, the last spider and lizard hustled out, the oil cook-stove burning, the tinned goods ready, the aluminum batterie-de-cuisine ranged at her elbow.

"I wonder," he said, hesitating, "whether I dare leave you long enough to go and dig some holes with a crow-bar."

"Why, of course!" she said. "You can't have me tagging at your heels every minute, you know."

He laughed: "It's I who do the tagging."

"It isn't disagreeable," she said shyly.

"I don't mean to dog every step you take," he continued, "but now, when you are out of my sight, I – I can't help feeling a trifle anxious."

"But you mustn't feel responsible for me. I came down here on my own initiative. I certainly deserve whatever happens to me. Don't I?"

"What comfort would that be to me if anything unpleasant did happen to you?"

"Why," she asked frankly, "should you feel as responsible for my welfare as that? After all, I am only a stranger, you know."

He said: "Do you really feel like a stranger? Do you really feel that I am one?"

She considered the proposition for a few moments.

"No," she said, "I don't. And perhaps it is natural for us to take a friendly interest in each other."

"It comes perfectly natural to me to take a v-very v-vivid interest in you," he said. "What with snakes and scorpions and wood-ticks and unboiled water and the actinic rays of the sun, I can't very well help worrying about you. After all," he added lucidly, "you're a girl, you know."

She admitted the accusation with a smile so sweet that there could be no doubt of her sex.

"However," she said, "you should entertain no apprehensions concerning me. I have none concerning you. I think you know your business."

"Of course," he said, going into his tent and returning loaded with crow-bar, pick-axe, dynamite, battery, and wires.

She laid aside the aluminum cooking-utensils with which she had been fussing and rose from her knees as he passed her with a pleasant nod of au revoir.

"You'll be careful with that dynamite, won't you?" she said anxiously. "You know it goes off at all sorts of unexpected moments."

"I think I understand how to handle it," he reassured her.

"Are you quite certain?"

"Oh, yes. But perhaps you'd better not come any nearer – "

"Mr. White!"

"What!"

"It is dangerous! I don't like to have you go away alone with that dynamite. You make me very anxious."

"You needn't be. If – in the very remote event of anything going wrong – now don't forget what I say! – but in case of an accident to me, you'll be all right if you start back to Verbena at once – instantly – and take the right-hand road – "

"Mr. White!"

"Yes?"

"I was not thinking of myself! I was concerned about you!"

"Me? —personally?"

"Of course! You say you have me on your mind. Do you think I am devoid of human feeling?"

"Were you – really – thinking about me?" he repeated slowly. "That was very nice of you… I didn't quite understand… I'll be careful with the dynamite."

"Perhaps I'd better go with you," she suggested irresolutely.

"Why?"

"I could hold a green umbrella over you while you are digging holes. You yourself say that the sun is dangerous."

"My sun-helmet makes it all right," he said, deeply touched.

"You won't take it off, will you?"

"No."

"And you'll look all around you for snakes before you take the next step, won't you?" she insisted.

He promised, thrilled by her frank solicitude.

A little way up the path he paused, looked around, and saw her standing there looking after him.

"You're sure you'll be all right?" he called back to her.

"Yes. Are you sure you will be?"

"Oh, yes!"

They made two quick gestures of adieu, and he resumed the path. Presently he turned again. She was still standing there looking after him. They made two gestures of farewell and he resumed the path. After a while he looked back. She – but what's the use!

When he came to the spot marked for destruction, he laid down his paraphernalia, seized the crow-bar, and began to dig, scarcely conscious of what he was about because he had become so deeply absorbed in other things – in an-other thing – a human one with red hair and otherwise divinely endowed.

The swift onset of this heavenly emotion was making him giddy – or perhaps it was unaccustomed manual labor under a semi-tropical sun.

Anyway he went about his work blindly but vigorously, seeing nothing of the surrounding landscape or of the immediate ground into which he rammed his crow-bar, so constantly did the charming vision of her piquant features shut out all else.