Part 10 (2/2)
”I see,” said I, trying to speak carelessly; ”you desire to pilot me.”
”I don't desire to but I gotta go with you.”
”An accurate map--”
”Can it, old sport! A accurate map is all right when it's pasted over the front of your head for a face. But I wear the other kind of map _inside_ me conk. Get me?”
”I confess that I do not.”
”Well, get _this_, then. It's a cash deal. If the goods is up to sample you hand me mine then an' there. I don't deliver no goods f.o.b. I shows 'em to you. After you have saw them it's up to you to round 'em up.
That's all, as they say when our great President pulls a gun. There ain't goin' to be no shootin'; walk out quietly, ladies!”
After I had sat there for fully ten minutes staring at him I came to the only logical conclusion possible to a scientific mind.
I said: ”You are, admittedly, unlettered; you are confessedly a chevalier of industry; personally you are exceedingly distasteful to me.
But it is useless to deny that you are the most extraordinary man I ever saw.... How soon can you take me to these Coquina hills?”
”Gimme twenty-four hours to--fix things,” he said gaily.
”Is that all?”
”It's plenty, I guess. An'--say!”
”What?”
”It's a stric'ly cash deal. Get me?”
”I shall have with me a certified check for ten thousand dollars. Also a pair of automatics.”
He laughed: ”Huh!” he said, ”I could loco your cabbage-palm soup if I was _that_ kind! I'm on the level, Perfessor. If I wasn't I could get you in about a hundred styles while you was blinkin' at what you was a-thinkin'
about. But I ain't no gun-man. You hadn't oughta pull that stuff on me.
I've give you your chanst; take it or leave it.”
I pondered profoundly for another ten minutes. And at last my decision was irrevocably reached.
”It's a bargain,” I said firmly. ”What is your name?”
”Sam Mink. Write it Samuel onto that there certyfied check--if you can spare the extra seconds from your valooble time.”
II
On Monday, the first day of March, 1915, about 10:30 a.m., we came in sight of something which, until I had met Mink, I never had dreamed existed in southern Florida--a high range of hills.
It had been an eventless journey from New York to Miami, from Miami to Fort Coquina; but from there through an absolutely pathless wilderness as far as I could make out, the journey had been exasperating.
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