VIII
AN EXILE FROM "GOD'S COUNTRY"
About —85, if I remember rightly, there was an almighty frost in Florida, almost as bad as the one of —94, when the orange trees were killed as far south as Indian River, and that was why Ben Habersham shifted stakes and came into Painted Rock. It was also the reason why I knew him, and it was the reason that Susy Habersham became acquainted with Samuel J. Weekes, who owned a cattle ranch on the upper waters of Wolf Creek, a saloon at Big Springs, and a store in Painted Rock itself. Habersham was a big, loose- jointed, slop-built Simple Simon, who took to erecting windmills for irrigation as he had raked up an agency for some new kind of wind fakement, on the
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