Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1914-02-01
V aldez'
} O u r n a |
Continued from page ~

want few facts-if your company deals in
them"
White bent over the map for few mo-
ments.
Here, he said carelessly, "is the Spanish
Causeway and the Coakachee River. It's
all swamp and jungle, | suppose although
| see you have it plotted into orange groves,
truck gardens, pineapple plantations and
Villas"
"Some day." Munsell began, again-but
Whites calm wink discouraged further at
tempts. Then the young man tapped with
his pencil lots numbered from 200 to 2Io,
slowly, going over them again for emphasis
Are those what you want?" asked Mum
SELL
"Those are what | want
All right. Only | can't give you 2Io.'
"Why not?"
Yesterday party took strip along the
Causeway including half of 2Io up to 22o."
Cant get all of 21o?"
"I'll ask the party. Where can | address
your"
White stood up: "Have everything ready
Tuesday. I'll be in with the cash"
And on Tuesday he kept his word and the
land was his for few hundred dollars-all
except the half of Lot No. 2Io, which it ap-
peared the party declined to sell, refusing
to consider any price whatever
Its like woman, remarked Munsell.
"Is.your party a woman?'
Yes. | guess she's into some game or
other, too. Say, what is this Seminole
County game, Mr. White?-if you don't
mind my asking, now that you have taken
title to your-h m !-orange grove"
Snakes said White cooy
But when White went away he was a
trihe worried, and he wondered uneasily
why anybody else at that particular time
should happen to invest in swampy real es-
tate along the Spanish Causeway.
He knew the Spanish Causeway. In
youthful and prosperous days, when his
parents were alive, they had once wintered
at Verbena Inlet.
And on several occasions he had been
taken on excursions to the so-called Spanish
Causeway-a dike-shaped path, partly
ruined, made of mari and shell, which ira
versed the endless swamps of Seminole
County, and was supposed to have been
built by De Soto and his Spaniards.
But whoever built it, Spaniard Seminole
or the prehistoric people antedating both
there it still was, ruined remnant of high
way penetrating the otherwise impossible
sWamps.
III Tie CdIc-Icc I'd yS vi SCllOOl, vi dIHueIlCe
and of youth, White had been taken to gaze
upon this alleged relic of Spanish glory.
He now remembered it very clearly.
And that night, aboard the luxurious
Verbena Special, he lay in his bunk and
dreamed dreams awake, which almost over
whelmed him with their magnihcence. But
when he slept his dreams were uneasy, in
terspersed with vague visions of women who
came in regiments through Towering jun
giles to drive him out of his own property
1t was a horrid sort of nightmare, for they
pelted him with iron-bound copies of Valdez,
knocking him almost senseless into the mud.
And it seemed to him that he might have
persisted there had not his little red-haired
neighbor extended slender, helping hand
in the nick of time.
At Verbena Station he disembarked with
his luggage, which consisted of a complete
tropical camping outfit, timed food, shot
gum rifle, rods, spade, shovel, pick, crow.
In his hand he carried an innocent looking
satchel, gingerly. 1t contained dyna-
mite in sticks, and the means to explode it
safely.
To hackman he said: "I'm not going to
any hotel. What want is wagon, team
of mules, and a driver to take me and my
outfit to Coakachee Creek on the Spanish
Causeway. Can you fix it for me?"
The hackman said he could. And in half
an hour he drove up in his mule wagon to the
deserted station, where White sat all alone
amid his mountainous paraphernalia.
When the wagon had been loaded, and