“Wake up, Charlie, John! Have a look at this!” The freight train was rolling to a near stop, probably to pick up a load of logs on its way south to Miami. Vince Nelson had been squinting through a slight opening in the sliding door of their boxcar, and now he rolled it wide open with a bold shove so the other two stowaways could see what he’d been gawking at.

The early morning sun streamed into the boxcar as the train barely crawled over a low bridge across a river maybe a quarter-mile wide. Below them an incoming tide had brought in a swift current the color of aquamarine. Their mouths hung open as they studied mounds of live oyster beds, then deep pools of clear water with the slender tops of large snook stacked like cordwood against the bridge’s wooden pilings. Every few seconds the surface would break with the leap of a frisky fish that they would soon come to know intimately as mullet. On the north side of the river was a handsome red lighthouse and a few outbuildings. On the south or right shore were several docks and frame houses sitting behind a shallow sand beach. Well beyond them to the east they could make out silent whitecaps surging in from the Atlantic Ocean.

In a few minutes they could feel the train start to lurch forward again. It was time for a quick decision. “Who needs to go to Miami?” boomed Vince. “Look at all that land and water. You’ll never go hungry living in this place.” As soon as the train reached the other side of the bridge, the three young adventurers from Trenton, New Jersey had swung to the ground with their bags of clothes, knives, guns and trapping gear.

At age 23, Vince had already ridden the rails so long that he didn’t think twice about walking atop a freight train swaying along at sixty miles an hour. He was already an experienced trapper, tanner and hunter. Today “surv