AS soon as he discovered that Jan and Chicma were not in the stockade, Dr. Bracken realized that they must, somehow, have got over the fence. Although he was a wiry and powerful man, the doctor was unable to leap high enough to grasp the top of the twelve foot barrier that confronted him, nor did Chicma’s method occur to him.
To have Jan seen at large with one of his chimpanzees would mean the destruction, of all his plans, and perhaps of himself. Lynchings were not unknown, and the monstrous crime he had committed would arouse these people to a killing frenzy.
He dashed around the house to where the stockade jutted out from the menagerie. Here his trained hunter’s eye quickly found the tracks where Jan and Chicma had alighted, and he hurried away on the trail, feeling confident of being able to soon overtake his fleeing quarry. He smiled when he saw the spots of blood mingled with the boy’s footprints, for he believed that the lad would not long endure the pain of attempting to escape.
He crossed the stretch of saw palmetto and the pine-crested hummock with speed and confidence, but when he entered the marsh on the other side he lost the trail time and again where the tracks were concealed under water, and only found it by repeated circling and searching. This took time, and time, to him was very precious, for he knew that while he was floundering about, there in the muck and water, his quarry was getting farther away.
After about a half hour he decided that he would save time in the end by going back and borrowing a pair of bloodhounds from the sheriff.
He made the excuse that one of his apes had escaped; but it was with great difficulty that he dissuaded the sheriff from accompanying him on the hunt.
The hounds made much swifter progress than the doctor, so much so that they were soon out of sight, and he was able to follow them only by the sound of their baying.
He had traveled a considerable distance into the marsh when he met a Seminole Indian named Pete Little, whom he had often seen around Citrus Crossing.
“You make big hunt?” the Indian asked.
“Yes. One of my apes got away.”
“I seen it,” said Pete, and cast a look at the doctor that was full of meaning. “Red-head boy with it, about sixteen, seventeen year old.”
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Trevor, she’s red-headed. Her baby boy was stole sixteen year ago.”
“And—”
“I poor. You rich. For thousand dollar I forget.”
“I think that can be arranged,” said the doctor, his face suddenly gone pale. His perfectly controlled features betrayed no other sign of his emotion. He added suddenly, with feigned terror: “Look there, behind you! A moccasin!”
At the sound of that dread word, the Indian turned. He saw no moccasin, but realized too late that he had been tricked. There was a sharp report, a stinging pain that shot through his left side like the searing of a hot iron—and oblivion. As he pitched forward on his face in the muck, the doctor holstered his smoking forty-five, kicked viciously at the prostrate form, and hurried on after the baying bloodhounds, whose distant cries had suddenly changed to fighting growls.