Dilson's Key Author:Colonel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: It takes a wise boy to keep clear of the ruts his father made. —Uncle Charley. CHAPTER I. It Reads Like the End of the Story. THE sun was shining with t... more »he warmth of spring. The air was fresh and a long deep breath was as exhilarating as a glass of champagne without the after effects. The branches of the mangrove trees on innumerable islands, under the influence of the gulf breezes, were bowing their respects to the sea. Beaches are scarce on the west coast of Florida down toward Cape Sable, but the islands are many and much alike. On this bright Sunday morning, two men—visible only to the pelicans, cormorants, coons, and other life peculiar to that locality that could not understand and would not tell—left a motor-boat hid under the mangrove trees and, taking arow-boat which they had towed to this point behind the motor-boat, quietly made their way from one island to another apparently afraid they might be discovered. One was a man of fifty years, stout, six feet tall, with grizzly hair and rugged features. The other was a boy of twenty-two or thereabouts, the son of the older man. Each wore a belt full of cartridges with a six-shooter in the scabbard. Laying across the lap of the boy was a 38-55 Savage rifle. The father was rowing and by his side was a rifle, the butt resting on the floor and the barrel leaning on the gunnel of the boat. Noiselessly the boat approached an island, the opposite side of which had a beach facing the open gulf. These two landed on the mangrove side of the island and tied the boat to the roots of a mangrove tree. Taking their guns, they cautiously and silently made their way through the labyrinth of interlacing roots until they reached the higher ground where the mangroves gave way to scattered cocoanut palms and low bushes. Before comin...« less