Chapter XIX: The Old Fort

NOT long after leaving Indiantown the boys passed into a higher country, where the road wound in and out among great towering live oaks, under which the ground was thickly strewed with acorns. Multitudes of gray squirrels frisked among the branches and made the air noisy with their chattering.

"I'll bet this is a great game country," Charley remarked, as they stopped to water their ponies at the edge of a clear-running brook. "There ought to be bear and turkeys around where there are so many acorns. Listen! if I am not mistaken, those are turkeys drumming now." From a point a little to the left of the road came a hollow thumping sound, repeated at frequent intervals. "It's turkeys," said Charley, with conviction. "Come on, let's see if we can get a shot at them."

The two lads dismounted, and, tying their ponies to convenient trees, took their guns and picked their way softly toward the sound. A hundred feet brought them to where they could look out from the shelter of the oaks into a little glade or clearing a couple of acres in extent. What they saw caused them to pause and stare in admiration and amusement. In the center of the glade was a bunch of some twenty turkeys. The sun, shining down, lit up their plumage with a thousand colors, and made of them a picture well worth remembering, but it was the antics that they were going through that drew a smile from the two lads.

The leader of the flock, a huge gobbler with ruffled feathers and drumming wings, was going through a sort of strutting, mincing dance, every motion of his being closely followed by each of the flock, moving with slow, stately dignity.

"Gee!" grinned Walter. "They are doing the 'turkey trot.' It costs five dollars to see that dance in New York."

"The ministers say it's immoral," said Charley laughingly, "so let's put a stop to it. Be sure to pick out one of the younger birds. We never could cook that gobbler tender. I'll bet he is ten years old."

The lads fired almost together, and two of the smaller turkeys sank to the ground, while the rest of the flock rose in flight, but only to settle again within easy gun-shot.

"No use killing any more," Walter said, as the two lads emerged from behind the oaks and picked up the dead birds.

"No," Charley agreed. "These will be all we can use. They would spoil before we got back to camp. But say, I am tickled to see game so plentiful. When we get the machine and camp out here, it will make a big difference in our grub bills."

"Hold on a minute," said Walter, as his chum turned to retrace his steps to the road. "Doesn't it strike you as queer--this bare space in the heart of a great oak forest?"

"It is odd," admitted Charley. "I never thought of that until you mentioned it. Let's look around a bit."

The boys, up to now, had barely noticed the clearing, all their interest being centered on the turkeys. As they advanced into it they were surprised to note that it was not a freak of nature, but had been carefully cleared by hand. The indestructible live oak stumps still bore evidence of the axe. Wonderingly, the lads made their way forward.

"Those are not live oak trees at the other end of the clearing," declared Charley, who was looking around with eager eyes. "Let's see what they are."

A few minutes' walk brought them to the fringe of trees that had drawn the lads' attention. Here they paused, with an exclamation of astonishment.

"Gee!" Charley cried, "they are orange trees, and, from their size, they must be hundreds of years old."

"And there's another clearing beyond this one," cried Walter, who had entered the fringe of trees to pluck some of the golden fruit. "Come on, let's have a look at it. The oranges can wait until we come back."

With all of boys' healthy love of mystery and discovery, the two lads pushed eagerly through the fringe of orange trees and found themselves in another but smaller clearing, in the center of which rose up high posts, forming four sides of a square enclosure.

"A stockade!" exclaimed Charley excitedly. "Let's see what's inside. It ought to be easy to break down one of those posts."

But their united efforts failed to crack any of the posts. They were all of live oak, which successfully resists the wear of centuries.

"It's no use tiring ourselves out for nothing," Charley said, after they had tried several of the posts without any success. "There must be an opening somewhere, and we have only to follow up the posts to find it." This they did, and, rounding the first corner of the stockade, came upon an opening in the wall, where had evidently once hung a strong gate. Pushing through the opening, they stood inside of the stockade, and, pausing, gazed around with a feeling of awe. The little enclosure was perhaps a half acre in extent. In the middle of it stood a small fort, cunningly constructed of big blocks of coquina rock. Around the little fort were grouped what had once been dwellings, but of which nothing now remained but their upright live-oak posts. A hole, in one side of the fort, which likely in some past age had been closed by a massive door, showed the enclosure to the fortress. Passing through the hole, the boys found themselves in a dim room, some forty feet square. The only light was the few rays that filtered through the loopholes, and the two lads had to pause to accustom their eyes to the dim twilight.

"My, but look here!" cried Charley, as his vision cleared.

Walter backed nervously toward the door, as he, too, began to perceive the grewsome objects grouped around them. Directly in front of them stood a gigantic, man-like form. Gaping holes, where the eyes should have been, stared upon them, and one long arm pointed directly at them.

"Whew, that gave me a shock at first!" exclaimed Charley, with a nervous laugh of relief. "One does not expect to stumble upon dead men in armor in the wilds of Florida. Look! there's another and another and another," he continued, pointing to the other motionless figures sprawled in all sorts of attitudes about the room. At the foot of a cunningly constructed stone stairway, the suits of armor lay so close together that the boys could hardly pick their way between them.

"The defenders evidently made a brave stand here at the foot of the stairway," Charley observed. "Let's go up and see what's in the upper chamber."

With but little relish for further investigation, Walter followed his chum as he climbed up the stone stairs.

The scene in the upper chamber was but a repetition of that below, only the floor was more thickly strewn with the suits of mail. Charley lifted the rust-encrusted visor of one, but let it drop hastily as his eyes encountered the grinning skeleton within.

"They were Spaniards who made this clearing and built this fort," he explained to his chum. "It may have been part of one of DeSoto's expeditions, or they may have been one of the treasure-hunting parties that were so numerous in the fifteenth century. Likely they became disgusted with tramping through swamps, and, when they came to this pleasant spot, they decided to stay for a time at least. So they, probably, made captives of many of the Indians, and put them to work, clearing, planting and building. But the Indians had their revenge in the end."

"You can stay here as long as you want to, but I am going to get out in the fresh air," said Walter, shuddering as he watched a hairy rat creep out from one of the suits of armor. "I will wait for you just outside the fort."

"All right," Charley agreed. "I'll be out in a few minutes."

Left to himself, the lad searched around in the corners for a few minutes, trying to find something to carry away with him as a souvenir of their strange discovery, but, finding nothing, he soon gave up the hunt, and, gathering up his game bag and gun, he made his way back down the stairs and out of the fort, glad to be in the sunshine and fresh air once more.

Walter was not in sight, and, after calling him a couple of times, Charley decided that he had probably grown tired of waiting, and had returned to the orange trees to eat his fill, and for them the lad hastened. But his chum was not there, and, with a vague feeling of alarm, the lad hurried on to where they had left their ponies, but Walter was not there. Now thoroughly alarmed, the lad fired off his gun four times in rapid succession, then waited and listened, but there came no answering report.

After a moment's consideration, Charley turned around and hastened back to the ancient clearing. He made the round outside of the stockade, and then, entering the gate, searched the inside thoroughly, but no sign could he find of the missing one. Again he fired the distress signal of four shots, but there was no reply.

The thoroughly frightened lad sat down on a block of stone, and strove to master his nervous fears and gather together his scattered wits. The whole thing was incomprehensible. Not fifteen minutes had elapsed since he had parted with Walter in the upper chamber of the fort, and now his chum was gone. He could not have gotten lost in the woods, for the way back to the ponies could be followed by a child, with its plain landmarks of orange trees and the other clearings. Besides, in that short length of time, Walter could not have got beyond the sound of the gun signal, to which he would certainly have replied.