There used to be a trade with Cuba, but now that has gone;
and beyond the supplying of Key West and the small fringe of settlements
they have no market. How well the cowboys serve their masters I can only
guess, since the big owners do not dare go into the woods, or even to
their own doors at night, and they do not keep a light burning in the
houses. One, indeed, attempted to assert his rights, but some one pumped
sixteen buckshot into him as he bent over a spring to drink, and he left
the country. They do tell of a late encounter between two rival foremen,
who rode on to each other in the woods, and drawing, fired, and both
were found stretched dying under the palmettoes, one calling deliriously
the name of his boss. The unknown reaches of the Everglades lie just
below, and with a half-hour's start a man who knew the country would be
safe from pursuit, even if it were attempted; and, as one man cheerfully
confided to me, "A boat don't leave no trail, stranger."
That might makes right, and that they steal by wholesale, any
cattle-hunter will admit; and why they brand at all I cannot see, since
one boy tried to make it plain to me, as he shifted his body in drunken
abandon and grabbed my pencil and a sheet of wrapping paper: "See yer;
ye see that?" And he drew a circle O, and then another ring around it,
thus: (O). "That brand ain't no good. Well, then--" And again his
knotted and dirty fingers essayed the brand I O.
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