The Plunderer | Page 3

folk largely go off to Chicago to make their way in the world.
Into this farm-ringed islet of tranquillity, where faith in one's fellowman, and hoarded money, are in abundance, about the time that Roger Payne was beginning to know that his place was not in the city, the afternoon train from the east deposited a large, dignified personage of robust, well-nourished, ministerial manner and apparel, who bore comfortably upon his well-padded shoulders the name, Isaiah Granger.
Isaiah Granger! The name alone would have been an open sesame to the important circle which made possible the prosperity of Major Tumble's bank and the First M. E. Church. But Mr. Granger had other things to recommend him. He came, quoth the Jordan Record--whose editor's notes Major Trimble held--to make his home in that most beautiful of towns, Jordan City. He was an old friend of Major Tumble's. Mr. Granger was "well fixed"--Major Trimble gave his word for that.
Hence Mr. Granger was met at the station by Major Trimble, driven in the Major's ponderous car to his home and there introduced to Mrs. Trimble--strange that being so old a friend of the Major's he should not have met Mrs. Trimble before--and then in the seclusion of the Major's library he had shucked his coat, as it were, and said:
"Well, what's the prospects for a killing? Got any of 'em lined up?"
"First," retorted Major Trimble, stroking his knife-edged nose, "let me see your credentials from Senator Fairclothe."
The visitor smiled and passed over the requested credentials. Major Trimble inspected them as an astute banker should.
"All right," he said, and waited.
Mr. Granger passed over a bank draft.
"All right," repeated the banker, "and ten percent on all sales made here or through connections from here."
"Ten per cent," agreed Granger, "and no responsibility to be attached to you."
"I'll take care of that," snapped Trimble, "Now, Granger, I think you ought to do some real business here."
And Granger did.
Long before Roger Payne had sold his share in his business, Isaiah Granger was leading the choir in the First M. E. Church and Mrs. Granger, a lady of girth and charm, was President of the Jordan Beautiful Society. Their position in Jordan was solid and assured. Long before Roger finally escaped from the large city, Isaiah Granger, and therefore Jordan, had been most significantly honored.
Granger had been appointed by United States Senator Lafayette Fairclothe, in a letter written on Senate stationery, as district manager for that great organization, The Prairie Highlands Association, Senator Fairclothe, President, Washington, D. C.--which, under the encouragement of the Government, was bestowing a boon on a land-hungry nation of developing the fabulously rich prairie lands of the Western Everglades, Florida. Long before the afternoon when Roger swung boyishly off the train at Jordan, Isaiah Granger's fellow townsmen, led by Major Trimble, had become insistent in their demands that he give them first chance at that land right there in Jordan--a demand which Granger had admitted to be entirely just.
It was Major Trimble, as an old family friend, who hinted to Roger about the snap that Brother Granger was letting his fellow citizens in on in Florida land. It was Senator Fairclothe's direct, sincere replies to Roger's letters of inquiry that convinced him. There is magic in the words "United States Senator." But after all, it was the spirit of adventure, the love of outdoors, the instinct of the pioneer, which prompted him to buy a 1000-acre block of "prairie highland," at the headwaters of the Chokohatchee River. It was necessary to buy at once, for Trimble was after that tract for himself. Having made the purchase Payne sent a wire to the Far West asking one Higgins, engineer, if he were open for a job. And then Roger Payne turned his eager eyes toward sunny Southern Florida.

III
A flaring ray of purple sun came flashing over the sea to Gumbo Key, a warning of the brazen subtropical dawn that was to come. It pierced a vista in the jungle of coco palms on the narrow key, colored purple the white side of the Paradise Gardens Colony excursion boat Swastika, which lay at the tiny wharf on the key's western shore, and splashed without warning into an open porthole well aft.
Roger Payne awoke with a start. It was his first experience with the shock of a Southern Florida dawn. Dawns of many sorts he had seen--the ghastly ashy, clanging dawns of cities, the gray, creeping dawns of Northern winter, the bluish dawns of the Western mountains--but a dawn which came flaring up from the sea like a clap of thunder was a novelty.
He lay for a moment, stretching his buoyant body on the shelflike berth, his soles firmly against one wall, his head touching another, and wondered how a man could sleep in that bunk who was over six