She was staring at me now, as she said, “My father once told me he considered you more like a son than just some cracker boy. So I guess that could make the two of us brother and sister in a way. He also told me you kept your brain where your heart should be. True?”

There are rare people who exude sufficient confidence that they can direct outrageous questions at strangers, yet make the question sound reasonable, even flattering. She was one of those few.

I said, “Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

I watched her smile for the second time since our arrival. “Guess he was right, huh?”

We were standing in a clearing between four pole houses—chickees—that were built around a central fire pit. The chickees consisted of a sapling floor built a couple of feet off the ground beneath a roof of palm thatching. The cooking chickee was open on all sides. There was a pump for water, a wood-burning stove and a porcelain sink that drained onto the ground.

We’d already seen the tree where, according to the woman, Chekika had been hanged a hundred-and-fifty-some years earlier. The “Hanging Tree,” she called it, her inflection making it a proper noun.

It was a massive Madeira mahogany, long dead. Put three or four men at the base, and they might be able to circle their arms around it. Most of the upper limbs were broken off; woodpeckers had riddled it with striated holes, but it was still solid. Perched on the highest knob was one of the rarest birds in the Everglades, a snail kite. The snail kite sat one hundred feet above, indifferent to us, a large, hawkish looking male, cobalt blue.

“When we were kids,” Billie told us, “Joseph used to talk about Chekika, because Chekika was his great-grandfather. Which means he’s my great-great-grandfather. He was what the old people, the elders, called a Spanish Indian.

“It’s because the government sent the last band of Calusas to live in Cuba. They had to learn Spanish. They gave them a spot on a hill just west of old Havana, but it wasn’t their home; it wasn’t Florida. So they paddled back. More than a hundred miles of open water in dugouts.

“Chekika was different. Like my father. Now like us.”

We listened to the woman talk about it. She said if the American military had attacked Indians down on the Keys, it would have been called an engagement. But because it was Chekika who initiated the attack, history referred to it as a massacre.

There is a predictable variety of bitterness associated with the cliché thinking that every conquest-minded European was evil, and all indigenous peoples were noble. But there was no hint of that in her voice.

She told us that there are five hundred and fifty federally recognized tribes in the United States. The largest, the Cherokee and the Navajo, have close to a million members. Some of the smallest tribes have fewer than a dozen men and women left; are on the verge of extinction.

“For the enemies of Native Americans,” she said, “extinction has always been the favorite option.”

She told us that her band, the Egret Seminoles, were just one unrecognized tribe out of two-hundred-and-forty-some groups petitioning, trying to get the federal government to verify all the research that had been done, to grant confirmation, and make it official.

She spoke matter-of-factly, like an interested historian. She looked the part, standing there in her park ranger khaki shorts and man’s rainbow-banded Seminole shirt, strings of traditional glass beads around her neck. An interesting-looking woman: a little over six feet tall, narrow-hipped, flat-chested with good shoulders, high cheekbones beneath velvet cocoa skin, her hair cut short. Plus those eyes. Star tlingly intense eyes.

I liked her frankness; her no-nonsense manner.

When Tomlinson placed both his hands on the tree, closed his eyes for a moment, saying, “There’s a powerful spirit in this creature; it’s still strong and alive—” she cut him off abruptly, saying, “If you’re doing that for my benefit, please stop.”

As Tomlinson turned to her, smiling, she added, “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t have much patience with the whole Indian stereotype business. We don’t worship nature—never did. We don’t all have fuzzy animal names. We’ve never had shamans—that’s a Russian word—and the only people who give any credence to that ridiculous book, Black Elk Speaks, are New Age whites who have more money than brains. Turquoise Indians, I call them, because they wear turquoise like it’s supposed to mean something.”

Still smiling, Tomlinson said something heavy and guttural that surprised the woman, then made her laugh. It also seemed to cut through the awkwardness of strangers meeting. Seemed to put her at ease. She answered Tomlinson in the same singsong language, before adding, “I’m impressed. That’s a Maskókî maxim I haven’t heard since my grand-mother died. Very appropriate, too.”

Now she didn’t seem to mind at all when Tomlinson placed his hands on the Hanging Tree again, eyes closed, and asked, “How often is she struck by lightning?”

Billie Egret answered, “A lot,” walking away.

Her terms, it seemed, included getting to know us better before she volunteered information. “She’s getting the feel of us,” Tomlinson whispered to me as we followed her back to the main camp.

Now she took a seat at a table beneath one of the chickees, and spoke generally, telling us about herself, what she was doing. She owned a condo in Coral Gables—she was working on her doctorate in political history at the University of Miami—but she lived here much of the time with two older aunts and three much older uncles. The six of them, along with Ginny Egret and James Tiger, made up the voting board of the Tribe of Egret Seminoles, Inc., a trademarked corporation formed to ensure that the tribe—once formally recognized—had both a business and political infrastructure in place.

“Under the corporation, we also created the Egret Seminole Land Development Enterprise,” she said. “We did it to explore how we can best use the little bit of land we own jointly, and the possibility of purchasing—or annexing—property that adjoins ours.

“That’s how I met Geoff. He came to me as the front man for Jerry Singh. They had a business offer. Singh wanted to sell us thirteen hundred acres of adjoining land on a long-term deferred loan, and at a price next to nothing. In return, we’d allow him to build and manage a casino resort.”

DeAntoni said, “He wanted to sell you church property.”

“Yes, and he still does. Singh bought the land cheap when he was first starting out. Back when it cost next to nothing because it’s mostly swamp. A little later, if you don’t mind getting your feet wet, I’ll walk you to where the property lines meet.”

Billie told us she felt the casino idea was plausible and the potential for profit was huge. But, as she explained to Minster, even if she did get the tribe to go along with the idea, it wouldn’t be easy. There was a lot of red tape involved; several government agencies to deal with. First and foremost, though, the Egret Seminoles had to successfully petition the Department of Interior’s branch of Acknowledgment and Recognition.

So she and Minster had spent a lot of time together, trying to work out the details.

She said, “The main problem is that the U.S. government is constantly . . . daily . . . perpetually devising ways they can erode Indian sovereignty. The gaming industry is their favorite target. Have you ever heard of James Billy?”

“I was talking about him on the way here,” Tomlinson told her. “A tough old ’Nam vet who really got the tribe on its feet.”

“That’s him. When I’d go on a rant about protecting tribal sovereignty, he’d tell me, ‘Hell, honey, sovereignty ain’t nothin’ but who’s got the biggest gun!’ In the final analysis, he was absolutely correct.

“So now we’re working on getting our guns together. Back in the nineteen fifties, when James was growing up, less than a half-dozen Seminoles had even graduated from high school. Today, we dress our warriors up in three-piece suits and pay them to fire off injunctions instead of bullets. So that’s how I got to know Geoff.”

There was an odd modulation when she said his name, Geoff. Was I imagining a hint of tenderness?

No.

Because she then added, “I hope you’re right about him still being alive. I don’t believe it, but I hope you’re right.”

The way she said it was like she cared about the guy. Cared about him a lot.

That’s what Billie wanted to know.

It was a white, ton-and-a-half GMC, double tires in the back with a skid-mounted tank in the bed and Sawgrass decals on the doors. A dark-haired man in coveralls was standing at the rear of the truck, doing something with a wrench.

It was the quarry I’d seen on the way in.

“That’s odd; he’s on our property,” she said. “He’s got no business being in here. What I don’t understand is, Why would he want to be there?” Meaning a shallow, marl-looking pit fifty yards or so wide, with an access road that was overgrown with brush. The road ended abruptly where the truck was parked, backed up to the wall of the quarry as if it were a bunker.

I thought, Dumping garbage, but said nothing. A man alone, not dozing, not eating. It was the only explanation that made sense.

We’d walked a mile or so north. Had waded through a couple of sections of sawgrass and water, which DeAntoni didn’t like. Wild animals, he said, made him jumpy.

“All the snakes and crap Florida’s got. Alligators. We’ve already seen enough big gators, sister. So no more, okay? Then you got your black widows, scorpions, plus that hurricane business with a wind that comes blowing down and puts the snatch on people.”

Billie chuckled when he added, “Hell, you Indians can have the freaking place, far as I’m concerned.”

Most of our walk was on high ground. Dry, too, after one of the driest winters in the state’s history, but starting to green now that we were entering the rainy season.

We’d followed the woman through pinelands and grass prairie, through stands of young cypress where she pointed out ghost orchids growing wild, swamp lilies and leather ferns. She knew the names of all the birds, too: wood storks, hawks and great egrets with their reptilian eyes.

Once, she stopped, knelt and touched a finger to a paw print that was bigger than my hand. “Black bear,” she said. “A big one. Big and healthy.”

She said she often found panther tracks in the area, too.

When I inquired, she told me she’d noticed a significant increase in the amount of wildlife in the ’Glades since her childhood, particularly gators and wading birds. “But that doesn’t mean the Everglades is back to the way it was when Chekika and Osceola were alive. And there may be a lot more damage to come.”

Her reasoning surprised me. She said she felt the biggest threat to the region now came from the state and federal governments, and a mega-billion-dollar project called the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan.

“But that’s a good thing,” Tomlinson argued. “The scientists, most of them, anyway, say we need to make the ’Glades a free-flowing water system again. Restore the Kissimmee and increase the amount of wetlands by a couple of hundred thousand acres.”

That, Billie told him, is exactly what scared her.

In explanation, she first listed a string of environmental disasters masterminded by government scientists and engineers. Back in 1912, they used biplanes to seed the Everglades with a paper-barked, Australian tree called the melaleuca. The exotic tree reproduced like wildfire and displaced whole regions of natural habitat. Then they did the same with casuarinas, or Australian pines. “Environmentally safe windbreaks,” state biologists called the tree at the time.

It was government “experts” who transformed the Kissimmee from a hundred miles of pristine river into a fifty-six-mile ditch, renaming it C-38 Canal. The results were ruinous.

Then, in 1957, at the southern base of mainland Florida, government engineers dug the Buttonwood Canal to drain the area north of Flamingo and provide easy boat access to the mangrove backcountry. For the first time in history, the canal allowed fresh water, laden with decaying sediments, to flow directly into Florida Bay.

Again, the results were disastrous. It all but destroyed the fishery in Florida Bay, yet state biologists balked at admitting the truth, or taking responsibility. It wasn’t until 1982 that the canal was finally plugged.

“I don’t trust them,” Billie said. “Government scientists use Florida like a lab rat. They say they want to return the natural flow of water? The Everglades used to include nearly all the land south of Orlando. It’s less than half that size now. When they started draining the sawgrass, tree islands like Chekika’s Hammock got bigger. The bigger islands provided more habitat for wildlife that’d been forced inland by development.

“So what’s going to happen when they cover half the original land mass with the whole, original amount of flowing water? They’re going to flood us out, that’s what. When water reduces the amount of uplands habitat, where’re the bear, the deer, the people—where’re we supposed to go. Miami?

“This has been one of the driest winters ever, but the water’s already come up so much here that some of the trees are getting root rot. Our island’s shrinking.”

She added, “This place is delicate. The ’Glades has spent the last hundred years adapting to change, evolving, surviving. Now they want the area to go through the whole process again, but in reverse.” Sounding emotional for the first time, she added, “Anything as beautiful as the Everglades has to be fragile. Like a butterfly.”

Tomlinson was listening to her, not agreeing but not disagreeing, either. In a soft voice, he said, “Everglades. Yes, this place is the real Magic Kingdom.”

My interpretation. Something about the way he behaved when Billie called out to him, “Hey, mister! Mind if I ask what’re you doing down there?”

She startled him. Made him jump. He didn’t expect anyone to come walking up out of the sawgrass the way we did. Ninety-nine percent of the people, they’ll look around when surprised.

Not this guy.

He was about fifty yards away and slightly below us. He stiffened at the sound of her voice. Paused as if thinking about what to do. Then he turned away from us, his face partially hidden by an open hand as he waved, maybe trying to appear friendly, but maybe trying to shield himself, too.

Still waving, he called back a gruff, “Howdy!”

My second assessment: He was trying to disguise his voice.

I watched the man duck slightly, keeping the truck between us and himself. He didn’t rush, kept it calm, but he didn’t waste any time opening the driver’s-side door and getting in.

Billie was walking fast toward the access road. Then she began to trot as the truck pulled away. I jogged along with her, for no other reason than the man’s behavior did not seem appropriate for the situation.

She was motioning at the driver, calling for him to stop. But he didn’t. When he passed within fifteen yards or so of us, he waved again, palm open—shielding his face once more.

“Asshole,” Billie said. She was looking at the truck as it bounced away. “And wouldn’t you know: There’s mud on his license plate.”

Yes, it was an abandoned limestone quarry, or “barrow pit”; limestone dredged to built roads. The pit was rocky, honeycombed with holes.

I know enough about Florida geology to recognize that this area would be described as a karst formation. A karst is a limestone area that consists of sinkholes and abrupt ridges—some as high as fifteen or twenty feet above sea level.

For millions of years, naturally acidic rain and groundwater flowed through these limestone karsts, dissolving conduits and caverns out of rock. Some plates of limestone fell, some rose. Thus the unusual elevation.

This quarry had been dug into the side of a high ridge. Searching around at the bottom of it, we found a couple of daubs of white goo that smelled like fuel oil—insecticide, DeAntoni suggested. Nothing more until Billie held up a large, empty fertilizer bag, and said, “Look at this. He must be one of the golf course maintenance guys. Probably came out here to get away from his supervisor, sneaking in a nap.”

She told us her primary worry was that the guy had been dumping trash. She said the Sawgrass staff did that a lot—dumped their junk on Indian property. Old refrigerators, air conditioners, broken bedding and wallboard—anything too bulky or heavy to drive to the county dump.

She said she’d complained to Jerry Singh, but got a sense of indifference behind his promise to speak with his staff. Plus, it didn’t stop. They kept right on dumping.

She told us she thought Singh was secretly encouraging the dumping for the same reason he was encouraging his staff to bully the local Indians. If the Egret Seminoles agreed to Shiva’s terms, the Seminole corporate board would have the power to hire and fire. It would be a way for the Indians to rid the area of the Ashram’s thugs.

Tomlinson asked, “Then why would you want to go into the casino business with someone like Shiva? I’ve got to be right up front with you. I think the guy’s a slime.”

She answered. “I don’t want to go into the casino business with him. With Geoff involved, it might’ve been a different story. I doubt it, but at least there was a possibility. Now there’s not a chance—as far as I’m concerned, anyway.”

“Then why deal with him?”

She thought for a moment, perhaps calculating how honest she should be. Finally, she said, “I’m dealing with him for a real simple reason. We want his land. I want his land. Not for a housing development or anything like that. I want to replant it. Make it part of our home again. But just because I was elected tribal chair, that doesn’t mean I make the final decision.”

She explained that the Egret Seminoles as a tribe were still considering the casino proposal because Shiva had, in her opinion, conned her five older aunts and uncles. Billie said that, as chairman, she could vote only in the event of a tie. So Shiva had effectively captured the interests of a majority of corporate members on a voting board of eight.

She told us, “A year back, Singh sent a limo and drove us all to his Palm Beach Ashram. He gave us the red-carpet treatment; anything we wanted. What impressed my aunts and uncles, though, was his office. On his office walls, he’s got these carvings of pre-Columbian masks and totems. They were copies of Calusa masks. Masks that almost no one knows about.

“Singh acted surprised when my uncle identified them. It was like Jerry had no idea what they were. He claimed to have carved the masks himself because the images kept coming to him night after night in his dreams. Jerry told us he was a mystic, and sometimes received messages that he didn’t always understand right away. Then he told my aunts and uncles that maybe the masks—the fact that he saw them in his dreams—were a positive sign about the casino. ”

DeAntoni said, “Did they believe him?”

“I think they’d like to believe him. I love my relatives, but they grew up in poverty. I think they’d like a reason to justify voting for the casinos, and have some money for once. So, they’re still waiting to decide.”

“Waiting for what?”

“Shiva promised them another sign. A more powerful sign. Maybe someday I’ll tell you what he promised them he’d do—it’s actually kind of funny. It’ll never happen, of course. So what I’ve got to do is figure out how to get Shiva’s land without agreeing to let him build casinos.”

As she said that, she handed the bag she’d found to Tomlinson, and he held it up for me to see. It was the industrial variety; triple-thick brown paper. Printing on the outside said that it had contained fifty pounds of ammonium nitrate commercial-grade fertilizer, manufactured by Chem-A-World Products, Bucyrus, Ohio.

As I looked at the bag, I said, “Is anyone doing any blasting around here?”

She said, “No. In the Everglades? They’d never allow it. They used to back when they were digging barrow pits, but not now.”

As I asked Billie if ammonium nitrate was a fertilizer commonly used by golf courses, DeAntoni’s cell phone began to ring.

She shrugged—I don’t know—as Frank put the phone to his ear and, after listening a moment, said, “Speak of the devil.”

A minute later, he closed the phone, putting it away, and said, “That was our Scotch-drinking pal, Eugene McRae. Jerry Singh already contacted him and asked about our little visit. He’s there right now. The Bhagwan, I mean. Mr. McRae said that Singh would be happy to answer any questions we had about Geoff Minster.”