“Did you hear that?”
“Stay calm. It might be a deer.”
“No deer made that sound we heard,” Halette insisted. “Whatever it is, it’s following us.”
“That’s preposterous.” But Emmeline had the same suspicion. She shifted her rifle so the muzzle was pointed at the side of the trails the thing was on.
“Should we climb a tree?
Père
says that’s the best thing to do when a bear is after you.”
“Only if it’s a large bear,” Emmeline amended. “Small bears can climb as well as we can.”
The undergrowth rustled and crackled. They stopped, peered hard to try to spot the cause, and the crackling stopped. When they moved on, the crackling began again.
“What
is
it,
Mère
?” Halette asked in stark fear.
“Stay calm,” Emmeline said again. But deep inside she was just as scared. Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t afraid of them. It was indeed stalking them and it didn’t care if they knew it. Her palms grew slick with sweat and her mouth became dry.
For minutes that seemed like hours the taut tableau continued. Mother and daughter were glued to each other. Now and then the creature in the undergrowth grunted or snorted and the mother felt her youngest quake.
“I wish
Père
was here,” the girl said, not once but several times.
The mother thought of their cabin, so near and yet so far, and her husband, and she felt a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach that brought bitter bile to her mouth. She swallowed the bile back down.
Simone had been right to take the tales seriously, and Emmeline had been wrong. Those people who vanished—they hadn’t become lost or fallen to the Mad Indian or run into Remy Cuvier’s cutthroats. Not that Remy would ever harm her, or any other Cajun, for that matter. The thing in the woods was to blame. She knew that as surely as she knew anything.
Then the growth thinned and ahead lay a stretch of swamp where the trail was no wider than a broad man’s shoulders. Water lapped the edges. Here and there hummocks of land choked with growth broke the surface.
Emmeline’s heart leaped in fragile hope. The thing could not get at them now without her seeing it. She would be able to get off a shot, and must make the shot count. Emboldened, she said for her daughter’s benefit, “Let that animal show itself now and I will put a hole in its head.”
Halette laughed a short, nervous laugh.
They redoubled their speed. A city girl using that serpentine trail in the dark of night would inch along like a turtle, but Emmeline and Halette were bayou born and bred, and to them a trail three feet wide was as good as a road. They covered a hundred yards, and there was no sign of the creature. Two hundred yards, and the only sounds were those of the insects, frogs and gators, a familiar chorus that soothed their troubled hearts.
“I guess it was nothing,” Halette broke their silence, and laughed again.
No sooner were the words out of her young mouth than a loud splash warned them that something large was in the water.
“A gator,” Emmeline said.
“Sure,” Halette agreed.
But then the thing that made the splash grunted, and icy cold fear rippled down their spines.
“It’s still following us!” Halette gasped.
“Perhaps it is something harmless.” But Emmeline didn’t believe that. Her fright was heightened by the thought that whatever that thing was, it must know about guns. How else to explain why it moved away from them when they came to the open water, yet still shadowed them?
“If only our cabin wasn’t so far.”
“We’ll make it,” Emmeline said, and patted Halette on the head. “I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”
“Frogs eat bugs and snakes eat frogs and gators eat snakes and frogs and people, too,” Halette said softly.
It was a family saying. It stemmed from when their oldest, Clovis, was younger than Halette, and they were trying to make him understand that while the bayous and swamps were places of great beauty, they were also places of great danger. To a five-year-old boy, the world was a friend. It took some doing for Emmeline and Namo to convince Clovis that he must be wary of the many creatures that could do him harm. To that end, Emmeline came up with a rhyme to remind him. Silly, but it helped, and Clovis came to see that while the world was his friend, some of the creatures he shared the world with weren’t friendly.
“Listen!” Halette exclaimed.
The thing was grunting and snorting in a frenzy, and the splashing had grown so loud, the very swamp seemed to be in upheaval.
“It’s fighting something!”
Emmeline thought so, too. A gator, perhaps. Or one of the huge snakes, rare but spotted from time to time by the human denizens of the great swamp. Town and city dwellers scoffed at the notion, saying snakes never grew to thirty meters or more and were never as thick around as large trees. But the swamp dwellers saw with their own eyes, and knew the truth.
There were other tales, too. Of things only talked about behind locked doors in the flickering glow of candles. Of goblins and ghosts and three-toed skunk apes. But Emmeline never believed in any of that. Her Namo did. He was as superstitious as a person could be, but he was a good provider and a good husband, so she put up with his charms and bones and rabbit’s feet.
The splashing and grunting ended in a high-pitched squeal that climbed to an ear-piercing shriek.
Halette said, “Something is dying.”
Emmeline went rigid with shock. She almost told her daughter that no, that wasn’t it. The squeal wasn’t the death cry of the loser; it was the cry of triumph of the victor. At last she realized what it was, and fear filled every fiber of her being. “Run,” she said.
And they ran.
A hundred feet more would bring them to a hummock, and trees. Those trees, Emmeline hoped, would prove their salvation. She held her daughter’s hand firmly and the two of them fairly flew. She could go faster, but Halette was at her limit.
“
Mère
!”
Emmeline had heard. The splashing was coming toward them. The thing had decided to end the game of cat and mouse and was making a beeline for them. They must reach the trees or they were doomed.
Suddenly the hummock appeared, a low mound bisected by the trail. The trees were not many, but some had thick trunks and might resist being uprooted. Emmeline raced to one, hooked her hands under Halette’s arms, and practically heaved her at the lowest limbs, shouting, “Grab hold and climb!”
“What about you?”
Emmeline whirled. The massive monster was almost on top of them. She jerked her rifle to her shoulder and took aim. But even as she fired, and her daughter screamed, Emmeline knew these were her last moments on earth. Her rifle boomed but it had no effect, and then the thing was on her. Emmeline tried to be brave—she tried not to scream—but God, the pain, the searing, awful ripping and rending.
It seemed to go on forever.
2
Skye Fargo was a long way from the mountains and prairies he loved to roam. A big man, broad at the shoulder and slim at the hips, he sat a saddle as if born to it. He wore buckskins and a hat that was white when he bought it but now was a dusty shade of brown, and a red bandana. On his hip was a Colt. In his boot in an ankle sheath nestled a twin-edged Arkansas toothpick.
Fargo was close to Arkansas now, or as close as he had been in many a month. He was in Louisiana, in the backwater bayou country, winding along what the locals called a road but anyone else would call a path. It was pockmarked with hoofprints and rutted by more than a few wagon wheels.
So far the directions in the letter had been easy to follow. But then, finding something the size of the Atchafalaya Swamp was easy for a man who had an unerring instinct for finding his way anywhere. The Trailsman, folks called him, not because he followed known trails but because he broke new ones.
Skye Fargo had been where no whites ever set foot. He had explored vast tracts of untamed country overrun with hostile men and savage beasts. That he was still breathing said a lot about his ability to handle himself.
The trail was leading Fargo ever deeper into the swamp. As he rode he studied the riot of plant growth. Many were plants seldom if ever seen west of the Mississippi. Take magnolia trees, which Louisiana had plenty of. Oak trees and cypress were also common, the latter especially so in the swamp, where Spanish moss hung from many a limb. Flowers grew in profusion—lilies, orchids, jasmine and azaleas.
Honeysuckle was abundant. Fargo liked the sweet taste. It reminded him of many idle hours spent as a boy plucking and sucking.
Where there was a rich variety of plant life, there was invariably a rich variety of animal life. Louisiana was rife with deer and bear. Wildcats thrived. Musk-rats plied the waterways. Raccoons and opossums and polecats were all over. Then there were the cougars, the alligators, and the snakes.
Fargo could do without the snakes. It was bad enough having to deal with rattlers. But here there were also cottonmouths and copperheads and a few coral snakes, or so he had been told.
Birds were as numerous as everything else. Warblers, robins, wrens. Sparrows, finches, woodpeckers. It went without saying that ducks and geese found all the water to their liking. As did brown pelicans.
Fargo breathed deep of the muggy, dank air. It didn’t suit him. Give him the rarified heights of the Rocky Mountains any day. There was practically no humidity that high up.
The Ovaro nickered.
Fargo had learned the hard way to trust the stallion’s senses, and he suspected that around the next bend he would see what he came so far to find. He was right.
The settlement of Gros Ville did not deserve the name. It consisted of scarcely twenty buildings. Half were shacks that looked fit to fall down at the next strong wind. One of the exceptions was a long log building. A sign in French read,
MOUILLE LANGUE
.
Fargo’s French was spotty. As he drew rein at the hitch rail he wondered out loud, “What the blazes does that mean?”
“It means,” said a sultry voice from the shadows under the overhang, “Wet Tongue.”
“I like the sound of that.” Fargo grinned, and sniffed. “Unless I miss my guess, it’s the town tavern.”
“
Oui,
monsieur,” confirmed the sultry voice. “Come in and wet yours, if you like.”
“Show yourself, why don’t you?”
Into the sunlight stepped a beauty. Thick, shimmering black hair cascaded in curls over her shoulders. Her twin melons nearly burst her tight blue dress at the seams. But it was the face that drew Fargo’s gaze. She had eyes as blue as his, with delicate arched eyebrows and an aquiline nose. Her lips were perfection: ripe and red, like cherries.
“Well, now,” Fargo said. “How about if you join me in that tongue wetting? I’ll wet yours and you can wet mine.”
The lovely vision had a soft, melodious laugh. “Are you always
très
bold, monsieur?”
“Only around pretty ladies,” Fargo said as he dismounted. Arching his back, he pressed a hand to his spine. “I’ve been in the saddle so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to stand.”
Again she laughed. “We do not see many of your kind here. You are a—what do they call it?—frontiersman?” She grinned impishly. “You fight the red Indians who lift hair, and you kill the big bears that eat people, yes?”
“I avoid the hair lifters when I can,” Fargo told her. “And I usually run from the big bears if they’re out to eat me.”
She liked to laugh, this woman. “You are a most funny man. I think I like you.
Quel est votre nom?
”
“How was that again?”
“What is your name, monsieur?”
Fargo told her.
“
Enchant’
. My name is Liana.” She held out her hand. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to grace my establishment.”
Pointing at the sign, Fargo said in mild surprise, “This tavern is yours?”
“
Oui
. My husband, Oliver, built it five years ago.” Liana’s features clouded. “When he died, I took it over.”
“He couldn’t have been that old.”
“He wasn’t. He was but one year older than I. It wasn’t old age that claimed him.” Sadness came over her.
“What then?”
Liana offered a hesitant smile. “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind. Come. You must be thirsty on a hot day like this. And my liquor is the best for a hundred miles.”
“Not just your liquor,” Fargo said by way of a compliment while openly admiring her hourglass shape.
“I can see I am going to have trouble with you.”
“Not me,” Fargo said, taking her arm in his. “I’m as friendly a gent as ever lived.”
“Perhaps too friendly,
non
?” Liana teased. “And so handsome, yes? Many ladies must find you
joli
.”
“Enough drinks and I’ll laugh at anything.”
Liana blinked, then burst into hearty mirth. “Oh, monsieur. You are playing with me, yes?”
“Not yet. But maybe I’ll get lucky.” Fargo held the door for her and then followed her in. The interior was dark and musty and smelled of liquor and beer and cigar and pipe smoke.
“
Êtes-vous mari’?
”
“There you go again.” Fargo saw three men at a corner table and another at the bar. All were dressed pretty much the same, with white shirts, made of cotton, without collars, and pants that came down only as far as the knee, either red or indigo. They all wore caps and had knives at their waist. Their expressions were not what Fargo would call friendly.
Liana was saying, “Sorry. I will speak only English. I asked if you are married?”
Now it was Fargo’s turn to laugh.
“I take it that was no? That is good. That is very good. A man so handsome should not have a fence around him.” Liana went around the end of the bar. “Now what will it be?” She motioned at a long shelf lined with every kind of hard spirit. “As you can see, I am well stocked.”