Down by the Suwanee River

Front matter

BY AUBREY HOPWOOD LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. Ltd. CONTENTS Chap. Chap Page I. The Birth of Orangeville ... I II. In the Moonlight . . . . Ie III. First Impressions ..... 25 IV. Jim Scott, Cowboy .... 41 V. In the English Colony .... 57 VI. The Winter of our Discontent . . 71 VII. "Chipmonk" ..... 82 VIII. The Great Gymkhana .... 94 IX. "Uncle Billy" . . . . . 110 X. 'Frisco Bluff ..... 121 XI. The Cowboy's Ride .... 130 XII. Diamond Cut Diamond .... 143 XIII. At the Flood ..... 154 XIV. The Mayor of Orangeville ... 165 XV. Down South . . . . • 177 XVI. In Wild Cat Hammock .... 188 XVII. Marks shows his Hand .... 201 V CONTENTS VI „ Pack Chap. XVIII. Lucky at Cards . 2,3 XIX. Paying a Mortgage . . • • XX. A Crisis ....•• 237 XXI. Euchred !...••■ 24S XXII. Sunset 26° XXIII. Twilight ..-••■ 27! XXIV. Night ..••■•

Chapter I The Birth Of Orangeville

In the prehistoric days, before the great boom visited Florida to benefit the unscrupulous few at the expense of the credulous many, when the land was yet given over to the alligator and the mosquito, there existed in the southern portion of the State a clearing in the pine woods known as Porterstown. The origin of the name is buried with its sponsor in obscurity and it is to be presumed that he made no further bid for fame, his solitary achievement being doubtless sufficient to content his simple soul. It was little enough to boast of. The so-called town consisted in those days of a whisky saloon, a general merchant's store, a saw-mill, a dozen dilapidated shanties and a hotel. A disrepu table barn-like structure was the latter, with faded green shutters on perilous hinges and a shamefully leaky shingle roof.

Its proprietor had but little inducement to study the comfort of possible patrons, for with the occasional exception of a belated " drummer " on his rounds, or a drunken cowboy carried home from the saloon on speculation, nobody ever stayed there. A Immediately behind the building a large shed, dignified by the imposing title of livery stable, gave doubt ful shelter to a couple of horses and a vicious mule. Their services were rarely required, for the horses had been lame from time immemorial, and the mule was scarcely safe to ride ; nor could it be driven, because there was not enterprise enough in Porterstown to repair the solitary buckboard which it had kicked to pieces in an exuberance of spirits born of long idleness. The place had its redeeming feature in the fact that it stood on the main line of the Citrus Belt Railroad and boasted a flag station.

Intending passengers had but to take up a commanding position on the track and wave a white flag in front of the approaching train. If the engine-driver saw them, and was not in a hurry — an unusual combination of circumstances — he generally pulled up. And if not, they came again next day. Now there are certain peculiar characteristics com mon to those who have in their hands the manage ment of railways all the world over. And one of them is the humorous privilege of unexpectedly altering, every month or so, their advertised hours of arrival and departure. The ruling spirits of the Citrus Belt Railway were but human, and they delighted in the exercise of their prerogative. So they ordained one evening that a goods train from their southern terminus should meet and pass a passenger train from their northern one at an unwonted hour on a siding in the immediate vicinity of Porterstown.

The details of the arrangement would appear to have been left in a great measure to the discretion of the respective engine-drivers ; and the responsible authority would, in a civilised country, have laid himself open to a prosecution for man slaughter. For it chanced that the goods train was delayed upon its journey and the driver of the other grew tired of waiting. At the end of an hour he remarked to his mate that he " reckoned they'd got to chance it." Whereupon he crowded on full steam and dashed out for the next station. He never reached it, for his experiment resulted in the meeting of the two trains on a single line, and the consequence was a very pretty collision. When they caught sight of one another the drivers of the locomotives reversed their respective engines, whistled " down brakes " and jumped clear.

He of the goods train escaped with two broken ribs and a considerable shock to the system. The other alighted head foremost on a pine stump and broke his neck ; which probably served him right. At the moment of the collision there were but six passengers on the south-bound train. One of them, startled by the shrill whistling of the engine, sprang to his feet, hurried to the end of the car and threw open the door. He had not time to see much, but his promptitude saved his life and laid the foundation of his fortune. He was a man who boasted that he never gave away a chance. The terrific jar which followed threw him off his feet, and at the same moment, with a deafening crash of broken glass and splintering wood-work, the car settled over on its side. For some moments the silence remained unbroken save for the hiss of escaping steam from the overturned engines.

Then, from the wreck which had once been a gorgeously .upholstered Pullman passenger car, there arose a thin column of blue smoke. The smouldering fragments of the lighted stove were preparing to put in their deadly work. Meanwhile, around the corpse of the man who had succeeded in bringing about the accident, a small group had gathered. It consisted of a conductor, a brakeman, two firemen and the engine-driver with the broken ribs. Not one of them had escaped un scathed, and they were not pretty to look upon. For blasphemous profanity they did ample justice to the exigencies of the situation. The last to join them was a tall man with an ugly wound on his forehead from which the blood still streamed copiously. His hands and face were badly scorched and he limped uncertainly in his walk. The brakeman was the first to notice his approach and hailed him.

" Hello ! Come from the passenger car ? " The man nodded an affirmative, passing his hand meditatively over his bruised forehead. " How many of you on board ? " " There was six.' The emphasis was terribly full of meaning. A silence fell upon the little group, broken only by the groans of the injured engine-driver and the gentle sighing of the wind among the pine trees. Behind a distant cypress swamp the light faded and slowly died away in a gorgeous sunset of crimson and gold. The man with the damaged head spoke again. " No chance of getting her out of here to-night," he said musingly. The remark scarcely called for an answer, but the conductor pointed with a grunt to the shattered bulk of the locomotives and the torn and twisted metals. The action was conclusive. " How far do you make it to the nearest township ?

" " It's most two miles from Porterstown." " Is that so ? Guess I'll walk in. Good-night." And the group replied in chorus, " Good-night." The man turned and walked pensively some twenty yards down the line with the air of one who revolves in his mind a weighty problem. He had just escaped with his life from a perilous situation and it was characteristic of him that the experience had failed to unseat his life-long habit of cautious calculation. He paused and called to the conductor. "You'll find another man up yonder under the dead pine-tree. I pulled him out when the car took fire." " Is he alive ? " " No. Never knew what hurt him ! " He limped slowly away, and the others stood watching him until a curve in the track hid him from their view. Then they moved in the direction which he had indicated, to a spot where a motionless figure lay prone upon the short wire-grass under the skeleton arms of the dead pine tree.

A turkey-buzzard circled slowly round on heavy wing and took up a watchful position amongst the topmost branches. But the man pursued his solitary way along the sandy track ; stepping mechanically upon the wooden cross-ties. From time to time he paused to wipe the blood from his forehead, carrying his hat in his hand that the cool evening breeze might play upon his face. It was ghastly pale, for the loss of blood had made him faint, but a look of sinister cunning lighted it the moment he found himself alone. Two weary miles he tramped in solitude, his limbs stiffening rapidly as he walked. Shaken and bruised as he was, the journey seemed interminable, and nothing but his indomitable courage carried him through. When the flickering lights of the little town suddenly confronted him he sat down by the wayside with a groan and wondered whether he was going to faint.

Five minutes later, when his head had ceased to swim and the mist had cleared away from his eyes, he crawled into the vestibule of the Porterstown Hotel. There he called for a bottle of the best brandy ; and the proprietor, who served it in person, took mental note of him as he drank an undiluted half-tumbler of the fiery compound. " You look pretty badly scared," he said. The man laughed as he refilled his glass. The potent spirit had revived him. " I am that ! " he answered. " I've left a railroad collision and six dead men two miles up the track. It's a new kind of experience and it sort of gives a man a thirst." He told his expected story curtly, without unneces sary detail, and the facts were dramatic enough of themselves. He had scarcely had time to collect him self, and it was not in his nature to be taken at a disadvantage.

So he pleaded fatigue and ordered a bedroom ; whither he shortly retired, taking his brandy bottle with him. Then he locked the door, and laying a thick leather pocket-book and a pistol under his pillow, turned into bed. Perhaps it was the novelty of his surroundings that disturbed his rest, or the pain of his wounded head that precluded sleep, but all night long he tossed restlessly from side to side, and the sun had scarcely risen next morning before he was dressed and astir. But in those few hours he had lived through a crisis in his life, and when he stepped into the solitary street at daybreak he was a different man. He spent a very busy day, and before nightfall had made the acquaintance of every man in the town. He had made himself also acquainted with the average takings of the whisky saloon and the weekly business of the general merchant's store, jotted down a variety of notes in his pocket-book, and earned the goodwill of his new friends by unstinted generosity in the matter of liquid refreshment.

That evening he contracted with the hotel proprietor for a month's board and lodging at reduced rates. Two days later he presented himself at the Florida Office of the United States Land Department at Gainesville, and made sundry pertinent enquiries of the clerk in charge. Then he took up ten forty-acre lots of uncleared land at the States price of a dollar and a quarter per acre. He paid five hundred dollars in notes across the counter, and returned to Porterstown a landed proprietor. He had bought up the town. Great was the consumption of rye-whisky in the local saloon that night when he made known the result of his negotiations. " Call for anything you like, boys," he said to the little group which gathered round him. " They're my drinks ! Silas G Marks is my name, and I'm going to show you the biggest kind of a boom right here in Porterstown before the year's out."

And his hearers smiled, for the liquor was potent and their host to all appearance a man of affluence. And they speedily discovered he was a man of action as well ; for, having taken the decisive step, he did not allow the grass to grow beneath his feet. He began by giving an extensive order to the proprietor of the local saw-mill, and the latter, with whom business had been very slack, executed it with a will. A two-story frame building was speedily erected and painted, after the im mortal usage of Florida domiciles, a pleasant cream colour with a red roof and bright green shutters. Above its portal there appeared a gorgeous sign-board, bearing in portentous characters the following legend : Silas G. Marks, Real Estate Agent. The country side flocked in to see the wondrous sight and to cement the newcomer's acquaintance.

And the operation entailed much drink at his expense, so that the whisper went round that this must be a millionaire. In a fortnight his popularity was assured. Then he took into his employ a small negro boy at a wage of two dollars a week ; and for many ensuing days the pair tramped the pine woods together, measuring out an immense number of yards and feet by means of a chain decorated at intervals with little red tags. Here and there they paused to drive a wooden peg into the ground. And the boy marvelled, for he did not guess that he was laying the foundations of a city, but he wasted his wages in sugar-cane and cheap articles of gaudy apparel such as the negro soul loves. Silas Marks spent many hours each evening burning the midnight oil in a kerosene lamp, on a plain deal table, engaged on the construction of a map of his lately acquired property.

He evolved a model south ern town whose broad avenues, running due north and south, were intersected at right angles by streets of subtlest nomenclature. It contained two churches, four hotels, an opera house, and an ice-factory. It was about this time that the Northern newspapers began to hint to the world at large, by means of subtle advertisement and racy article, the advantages to be derived from the purchase of town lots in the thriving city of Orangeville. For Marks had decided to discard the plebeian name of Porterstown, and in the far south a collection of buildings takes brevet rank as a city from the moment it exists on paper, albeit the pine trees are growing still in its main street. As if by magic the place began to boom. A doctor with a consumptive wife was the first arrival, and he set up a local practice and a chemist's shop.

He called it a drug store. Next there arrived a livery stable man, in whose train shortly followed a blacksmith and a waggon builder. And Marks, who was beginning to see his way, entered busily into correspondence with sundry Philadelphia acquaintances, offering very special in ducements to those who should decide to set up in business in the southern health resort. The bait took, and the general merchant noted with chagrin the opening of a rival establishment. Obviously it was his only policy to enlarge his premises and increase his stock, in order to keep abreast of the times. And Orangeville learned its first lesson in the advantages of competition. In a small community it is wonderful how quickly a little vitality in trade makes itself felt. The local carpenter and the employes of the saw-mill naturally indemnified themselves for their unwonted exertions by liberal patronage of the whisky saloon.

Its owner engaged a new bar-tender and set up a pool table. The proprietor of the hotel, finding his rooms in demand, awoke to the scantiness of the accommoda tion at his disposal, and added a new wing and two coats of paint to his establishment. Shrewd speculators saw their chance and wrote up the orange-growing industry in glowing terms. And Silas Marks, with his finger on the pulse of public sentiment, entered upon his books every available orange grove within a radius of twenty miles. The original investors in his town lots were far too shrewd to admit that the place scarcely came up to their expectations. Disappointed themselves, they took their cue from their self-constituted leader and attracted their friends with specious promises of success. Then they sold them eligible; building sites at advanced prices.

And on every transaction a comfortable commission found its way into the capacious pockets of the real estate agent. His energy was indomitable and his suavity unsurpassed. Fortune had placed within his grasp the chance of a life-time and he intended to squeeze it to the utter most dollar. An enthusiastic young Englishman, on sport intent, travelling northwards from a successful fishing excur sion amongst the monster tarpon on the Mexican Gulf Coast fell a very easy prey to his blandish ments. He had a literary turn and went home to write a series of articles in a leading English news paper on the future of the coming country. They were very interesting and very couleur de rose, and have since been the innocent means of misleading an incredible number of his credulous fellow-countrymen. For the author was young and wondrous enthusiastic, and he looked, after the manner of his kind, only on one side of the picture.

For he knew absolutely nothing of the orange-growing industry except by hearsay. He never dreamed of summer droughts and winter frosts ; of the dreary years of waiting while the young THE BIRTH OF ORANGE VILLE 13 trees slowly grow ; of scale, of rust, of foot-rot, die back, and the like ; of the swindling misrepresenta tions of land agents ; of the dishonesty of commission merchants ; of unpaid mortgages and bogus title deeds ; of the deadly germs of malarial fever, and the subsequent hideous demoralisation which only the initiated can ever understand. So he played into Marks's hands and sounded Florida's praises across the Atlantic, where over-burdened fathers of families hailed with delight another outlet for impecunious younger sons. And glowing accounts of the country's resources appeared in our daily papers, side by side with ad vertisements of wonderful bargains in orange groves ; while people who should have known better circulated absurd stories of settlers who, starting with the pro verbial shilling, had amassed phenomenal fortunes by methods more or less improbable.

For many months it was difficult to meet with a self-respecting English man who had not a son, brother, cousin or nephew about to embark in the culture of the Florida orange. The craze is over now. The sons, brothers, cousins and nephews have returned long since to the bosoms of their respective families ; and they have not brought back the fortunes which it was confidently expected they would amass. They have not brought back anything ; unless it be a chastened reverence for English business methods, a predilection for rye whisky, or the germs of a malarial fever. But the thriving City of Orangeville stands to-day a monument to the genius of the man who did not scruple to make use of the opportunity which fortune unexpectedly placed within his grasp.

Chapter II In The Moonlight

" Oh, Kitty, how heavenly this is ! I never imagined anything half so lovely. It's just like a scene out of a play, only it's more perfect, because it's real. I've tried to picture it all to myself a hundred times, but it's better than anything I even hoped for." The speaker lay at full length in a cushioned hammock, feasting her eyes on the scene of her en thusiasm ; Florida at its best, seen in the meretricious witchery of a moonlight night in early autumn. A slender girl of seventeen, with the innocent face of a child and the graceful outline of budding womanhood, she made a very charming picture ; the loosened masses of her brown hair framing the perfect oval of her girlish face, and the red lips parted in a sort of breathless smile which just revealed the gleaming line of her white teeth.

Her sister turned in her long chair and allowed her eyes to follow those of the enthusiast, trying to revive the old thrill which she too had felt when the first illusive novelty had held her in its subtle spell. And as she gazed, a little sigh escaped her, and there was something almost pathetic in the hopeless gesture which she could not restrain. She realised that the glamour of the old days had gone beyond recall. It was indeed a perfect night. Framed in by the foreground of the deep verandah with its wealth of honeysuckle and straggling wisteria, the moonlight shone upon a semi-tropical scene of indescribable beauty. A garden where roses, hibiscus, gardenias and parti-coloured oleanders ran riot in a mass of colour, sloped downwards with winding paths and trim Bermuda grass lawns to the shores of a lake half hidden by a fringe of surrounding willow oak and stunted cypress.

In the shadow the glossy foliage of the orange trees shone almost black by contrast, their branches flecked here and there with the golden gleam of the rapidly ripening fruit. The faint scent of magnolia hung upon the breath of the cool evening breeze with that subtle tropical fragrance which men who have breathed it never quite forget; and the myriad soothing sounds of Florida night life stole pleasantly upon the ear. The subdued tinkle of a far-away cow-bell somewhere in the pine woods, the hoarse croak of a mighty bull-frog mellowed by the distance, the splash of a leaping fish as it left a phos phorescent circle of widening ripples on the water's otherwise unruffled surface, the gentle sigh of rustling leaves and the hum of insect life made up a delicate harmony to which the only discord was the sound of men's voices as they talked in the lighted room behind.

Kitty Luxmoore shuddered as she felt it. One of the voices was her husband's ; and her nerves, highly strung, resented the jarring note. She rose quickly from her chair and bent over her younger sister. " May," she said, " would you like to go on the water? The boat is fastened by the pier, and they will never miss us if we slip out quietly." The girl rose from the hammock and threw a light shawl over her shoulders. " Oh, I should love it," she said. But she peered curiously into her sister's face, vaguely conscious of an intangible strangeness in her voice and manner. Noiselessly they passed out of the shadows into the moonlit garden, stealing over the short grass between the flowering shrubs in breathless silence. A winding path led downwards to the water's edge where a wooden pier had been erected on cypress posts.

To its ex tremity a little boat was chained, and Kitty Luxmoore drew it skilfully alongside. "Jump in, dear," she said. " I'll take the oars." The girl stepped lightly down and nestled in amongst the cushions in the stern ; while her sister deftly freed the little craft, and with half a dozen short strokes shot rapidly out into a streak of rippling moonlit water. For some moments neither spoke. Kitty drew a deep sigh of content. " I love the water and the moonlight," she said. B " And oh, it's good to have you with me again, it seems centuries since I saw you last. Now tell me all about everything ! What have you been doing since I married, and have things changed much at home ? And I want to hear all about your journey, and what father thinks of the country, and how you like the idea of settling here and — heaps of things."

May Allison gave a little contented laugh, snuggling down amongst her cushions. " One thing at a time," she said. " What have I been doing since you married ? Well, I've been taking care of father, and housekeeping for him, and getting my accounts into horrible muddles, and looking forward to your letters. Then I've been longing to know how you and Tom were getting on, and what your home was like, and whether you like being married. Do you know, I think I'm a little afraid of Tom. He sometimes looks so grave and stern ; and I had seen s© little of him when he took you away. Father has a tremendously high opinion ofhis judgment though, and it was Tom who really persuaded him to come out. He's doing very well at the bank, isn't he ? " Kitty nodded, with just a shade of impatience. She took two or three quick little womanly strokes, digging her sculls deep into the water and jerking them out again.

The action came from the arms and shoulders instead of the swing of her body. There was a faint trace of bitterness in her voice when she answered. " Oh yes, he gets on very well. He ought to ; he works hard enough. He goes to his wretched old bank at ten o'clock in the morning and stays there the whole day long. I never see a sign of him all day, and he goes to sleep in his chair after dinner while I'm playing the piano. Six days out of every seven I'm left to my own devices from morning till night, and — well, it is not exciting." The petulant laugh with which she concluded did not ring quite true, nor did she meet her sister's eyes. May sat quite silent for a moment, her face very grave and wistful in the moonlight. The boat glided under the shadow of a clump of cypress ; and she leaned forward, speaking almost in a whisper.

" Kitty, you and Tom — get on all right, don't you ? " Her sister looked into the pretty, eager face and a faint smile flitted over her own. "Of course we do. We're a model married couple of three years' standing, very prosaic and sometimes deadly dull. Don't let us talk about that. Tell me all about your journey and what you think of New York. How did you like the passage across ? " " Oh, it was horrible, simply horrible." May gave a little shudder. " The day after we left Queenstown I thought I was going to die, and poor father was even worse ! But they all declared it was not at all bad for the time of year ; and by the time we got to New York father had photographed everybody on board and nearly worried his steward to death about developers and dark rooms and things." Both girls laughed.

Their parent's unbounded enthusiasm for amateur photography had long been a standing family joke. The results were so invariably out of all proportion to the labour they entailed. " Is he as bad as ever ? " " Worse. The number of plates he spoils is positively alarming. But he says he's going to work wonders out here and I had quite a long lecture about actinic rays in the train to-day. Kitty, I don't much like American trains. The way they mix up men and women in one Pullman car is really quite embarrassing. I was just going to sleep last night when I heard a tremendous scrambling outside my curtains. I peeped through and saw a very fat man clambering up the ladder into the top berth and he had taken half his clothes off. It's rather — a promiscuous arrangement, isn't it ? " Kitty laughed.

" You'll soon get used to the ways of the country ; but I don't know that you will find them an improve ment on our English ones," she said. " Did New York surprise you ? " " It's the funniest town I ever saw in my life and quite the untidiest. They have carriages with nigger coachmen, and horses with long tails, and they pave the streets with great cobble stones. Then they put bales and boxes all over the pavement and they call it a side walk, and they charge you a dollar to go half a mile in a hansom and the drivers run into each other because nobody controls the traffic. Some of the shops are quite lovely, though, and the hotels have the most beautiful soft carpets. But oh, how hot they keep them and what a lot of iced water everybody drinks ! " Kitty laughed, pleased and amused at her sister's enthusiasm ; though it suddenly seemed to intensify the three years' difference between them.

For a woman ages very rapidly in Florida, even more so than outwardly appears. " Beware of insular prejudice," she began with mock solemnity and suddenly broke off. " Look," she said, " do you see the lightning ? It will keep on like that half the night." May followed the direction of the uplifted arm. Away in the distance, behind a bank of greyish cloud, the lightning ran in little vivid streaks that seemed to chase each other outwards into the open violet of the sky, darting hither and thither in tiny flashes to which the night-haze gave an impression of softness that made them look more like mere reflections from a great dim mirror than a reality. A cloud sailed over the face of the moon and the boat drifted into a dark bank of shadow. A faint breeze ruffled the water's surface and died away, and for some moments the silence was intense.