Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/211

 "Well, take care of yourself," remarks Ashley, gripping the extended hand.

Navarro rides slowly away, but he has not gone five yards when he checks his horse and turns in his saddle.

"Would you like to see El Terredo?" he asks, with a smile.

"It would satisfy my curiosity," is Ashley's prompt response.

"Then, my friend, take your first look, and the last for many days, if not forever. For I am El Terredo!"

Waving his hat with a graceful sweep Navarro rides away to the mountains.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

ONE WAY TO GET TO CUBA.

"Whew!" For the nineteenth time John Barker gives utterance to the expressive exclamation, as he mops his perspiring forehead.

The detective is seated in the parlor car of the Florida express, which has just left Jacksonville, and is being whirled along toward Tampa Bay.

He soon indulges in a nap, while the train rumbles on, by the scattered negro huts, with their ebon-hued occupants drawn up in solemn array to watch the flying cars, through the dense forests of moss-entwined trees, across the trestle-spanned marshes and mud-colored rivers.

Barker is dreaming of a hand-to-hand encounter with Cyrus Felton, wherein the latter has succeeded in clasping the handcuffs about his (Barker's) neck and is slowly but surely rendering futile his breathing apparatus, when the porter's voice calling out "Tampa Bay" recalls him to his senses.

The single hotel at Tampa Bay, Barker subsequently finds, is not a half-bad institution, judged by the midnight inspection, and ascertaining from the clerk that the