“Thank you.”
“Save it for after. If we’re still alive.” Fargo nodded at the kids. “And if they are.”
“We can head out at dawn. I came by pirogue. It is faster than walking. And safer.”
“I have a horse.”
“Where we are going is not for horses, monsieur. You must leave the animal here.”
“That’s my point. There’s no stable or livery.”
But there was Liana, and when Fargo asked, she agreed to let Fargo tie the stallion out behind the tavern, and promised to feed and water him while Fargo was gone.
“For you, handsome. But only for you. And be careful out there, yes? The swamp is a very dangerous place.”
Fargo had no need to be reminded. But he shut it from his mind for the time being, in part because she invited him to stay with her a second night if he wished. Of course he wished. While he waited for her to close, he went out for some air. Night had fallen over the Atchafalaya. From the swamp came bellows and croaks and an occasional roar.
Fargo had been in swamps before. There were no more treacherous places on earth. They were home to a host of things that could do a man in. The prairie and the mountains had their perils but compared to a swamp they were downright hospitable. He could never live there. Not that he shied from danger. He just wasn’t fond of snakes and even less of quicksand, and he had a passionate dislike for mosquitoes. And, too, he preferred to have a horse under him, not a canoe.
Far off something screamed. A death shriek, unless Fargo was mistaken. Prey had fallen to a predator. He thought of the animal they were going after. He didn’t buy that nonsense about a monster. There must be a logical explanation. Whatever the creature was, if it was flesh and blood it could be killed. All he needed to do was get it in his gun sights.
“Mister?”
Fargo nearly jumped, and cursed himself for his nerves. He turned, surprised to find Clovis Heuse. “Does your father want to see me?”
“No. I came looking for you myself. It’s him I want to talk about, though.”
“I’m listening.”
“Don’t let anything happen to him. Losing our mother was awful enough. We couldn’t stand to lose him, too.”
“I’ll do my best but I can’t make any promises.”
The boy didn’t seem to hear him. “I’d take it poorly if he died. I might even blame you. Something to keep in mind.” Without so much as a “good night,” he wheeled and walked off.
Fargo stared after him in disbelief. Was it his imagination or had he just been threatened?
6
The stillness was what got to you.
Whole stretches of the swamp were as still as a cemetery. Moss-covered cypress reared in rows like head-stones, their branches bowed as if they were about to pounce on the unwary. Willow trees hung their branches as if weeping for the fallen. Shadow and gloom held sway even in the bright of day.
The wildlife seemed to have been sucked into the muck and the ooze. Nary a bird chirped. Even the insects were quiet.
Fargo was glad when they came to a bayou. The open channel was a relief after the murk. It felt good to have the sun on his face. He stroked his paddle, matching his rhythm to the Cajun’s.
Between them perched Clovis and Halette. The girl sat facing Fargo, not her father, her face vacant, her eyes pits of emptiness. Now and again Fargo would glance at her and for a few fleeting seconds he caught a glimmer of—something. When that happened he made it a point to smile but she never smiled back.
Clovis sat with a rifle across his legs. For twelve years old he was a remarkable shot, as he’d demonstrated when a large cottonmouth glided toward them and he put a slug smack in its eye when it was still a good twenty feet away.
“Nice shooting,” Fargo had complimented him.
“Shucks, mister. That wasn’t anything.”
“Don’t brag, boy,” Namo said over his shoulder. “It’s not seemly.”
Now, as they moved at a brisk pace along the winding bayou, Fargo thought to ask, “Where are we headed? You haven’t told me.”
“To where I saw the beast. It’s far into the Atchafalaya, further than most ever go.”
“What makes you think the thing is still there?”
Namo’s arms pumped with effortless ease. “I noticed a pattern. One or two would go missing and everything was fine for a month or so. Then more would disappear, and it was fine for a while.”
Fargo put two and two together. “You think the thing has a territory it roams, like a bear or a cougar?”
“That would explain a lot, yes.”
“But what it doesn’t explain is what the thing is and where it came from and why it’s attacking people,” Fargo said. Most animals avoid humans if they can help it.
“I have an idea what it is but I don’t want to say anything until I’m sure. And if I’m right, we will be in for the fight of our lives.”
“Don’t forget your kids,” Fargo said with just enough resentment to let Namo know he was still angry.
“They’ll be fine. You’ve seen Clovis shoot.”
Fargo looked at the children and again caught a gleam in Halette’s eyes. But the next moment the blank look came over her again. “What are you playing at?” he quietly asked.
“What was that?” From Namo.
“I was talking to myself.” Fargo didn’t want to get the man’s hopes up, only to have them dashed.
For over a mile they relied on the bayou. Presently, though, Namo veered into a tributary, which in turn merged into the swamp and once again they glided through brackish water so dark Fargo couldn’t see the bottom. Twice he spotted alligators. The first, a small one, dived out of sight. The second, almost as long as their pirogue, stared balefully from atop a hummock where it was sprawled in reptilian ease.
“We’ll see a lot more,” Namo let him know.
“I can’t wait.”
The change from day to night was abrupt. What light there was didn’t gradually fade. One moment the swamp was its perpetual gray, the next they were plunged in black.
“We should stop,” Fargo suggested.
“I can go another hour yet.”
Fargo didn’t see how, not when he couldn’t see the other end of the pirogue from where he sat. It invited disaster. Night was when all the gators were abroad. And there would be no warning if they came on a poisonous snake. “What about your kids?”
“For them we stop.”
After they pulled their craft onto a small island, Namo gathered wood for the fire and got it going using a fire steel and flint. On his hands and knees, he puffed tiny fingers of flame to crackling life.
Clovis had shot a squirrel shortly before the sun went down so supper consisted of coffee and squirrel stew. The boy skinned it and chopped the meat and didn’t care one whit that his hands were covered with gore.
Fargo ate with relish. He wasn’t fussy when it came to food. Cook it well, and he would eat just about anything. He was on his second helping and had just set his coffee cup at his feet when loud crashing broke out across a narrow span that separated their island from another.
“Deer,” Namo said. “They caught our scent and ran off.”
Clovis came around the fire and held his rifle out to Fargo. “Want to look at it? It was my mother’s. We found it where she died and Papa gave it to me.”
It was an old Sharps. Somewhere or other the stock had cracked and been wound with strips of leather. Fargo pressed it to his shoulder and sighted down the long barrel. “Nice gun.”
“Have you ever fired a Sharps, monsieur? They kick.”
“I owned one,” Fargo enlightened him. For years, until he switched. There were days when he thought about switching back again.
Clovis gazed with interest at the Henry propped against Fargo’s leg. “Why did you give it up? A Sharps will drop just about anything.”
“That it will,” Fargo agreed. But the Sharps was a single-shot rifle. The Henry held fifteen rounds in a tubular magazine and another in the chamber. Someone once joked that you could load it on Sunday and fire it all week. “But there are times when I need to spray a lot of lead.”
“Such as when?”
“Oh, when a war party is after your scalp and there are five or ten of them and only one of you.” Fargo gave the Sharps back and said fondly, “But I’ve dropped many a buff and many a griz with one of these.”
“When I am older I will go to Texas and shoot some buffalo,” Clovis said. “I have always wanted to do that and we do not have any in Louisiana. No grizzlies, either.”
“Count your blessings.”
“I’m not afraid of them.” Clovis patted his Sharps. “Not so long as I have this.”
“A lot of people are afraid of the monster, as they call it,” Fargo remarked.
“Not me. I hate it. I want it dead for what it did to my mama. I don’t care what it is or how big it is. When we find it, my Sharps will kill it.”
“What is this ‘we’?” Namo broke in. “You will protect your sister like I told you and leave the shooting to me.” He caught himself. “And to Monsieur Fargo, of course.”
“Of course,” Fargo echoed. But to tell the truth, he still didn’t see why Namo needed him. The Cajun knew the swamp better than he ever could.
“I have been meaning to ask,” Namo said. “Is it true you shot the biggest grizzly ever killed?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I read it somewhere.”
“You read wrong. The few grizzlies I’ve shot were big but nowhere near the biggest. I think you’ve got me confused with a mountain man who supposedly shot a griz the size of a cabin.”
“Then it wasn’t you?”
“I just said it wasn’t.”
“Oh.”
Fargo suspected that Namo thought the “monster” was a giant bear. So Namo had sent for someone he mistakenly thought to be a killer of giant bears. It gave him something to ponder as he lay on his back with his head on his laced fingers, gazing up at the star-speckled firmament.
The next day was more of the same. The vastness of the swamp amazed him. As big as a small state, it seemed. So big, the Atchafalaya had never been fully explored. Vast tracts had never felt the tread of a human foot. White feet, anyway. Namo mentioned that several small tribes lived so deep in the swamp, whites rarely saw them.
Which reminded Fargo of something. “What can you tell me about the Mad Indian?”
Without breaking his rhythm paddling, Namo answered, “Not much. I’ve never seen him but I’ve heard the stories. I came on one of his camps once, the day after he had been there.”
“How do you know the camp was his?”
“I heard him laugh. He must have heard me and got out of there.”
“His laugh?”
“You will know it when you hear it. It is not a laugh you forget. It is madness given sound, and why he is called the Mad Indian.”
“What does he do besides laugh at people?”
“He sets snares for rabbits. He has been seen taking them from the snares.”
“So he laughs and likes rabbit meat? He doesn’t sound very dangerous to me.”
“He has also been seen a few times near where people have vanished. No one can say for sure he had a hand in it, but it is interesting, don’t you think?”
“Interesting,” Fargo agreed. “What tribe is he from?”
“No one can say. You must understand. Here in the swamp and along the coast are many tribes that want nothing to do with whites. Tribes we do not even know the names of. Exactly how many, no one can say. It could be the Mad Indian is from one of them.”
“There are a lot of ‘could be’s about this.”
“
Oui
, from your point of view I guess there are.”
Fargo glanced at Halette. She was facing him, as she always did. For an instant he detected a glint of something in her eyes, or thought he did, but then her gaze became as blank as ever and he questioned whether he had really seen it.
The deeper they traveled into the swamp, the more alligators and snakes they saw. And that was not all. The swamp was home to a host of creatures that crept and crawled and bit and clawed. In the evening, swarms of mosquitoes besieged them. Leeches were a problem, and once a snapping turtle nearly took off Fargo’s fingers. The stifling muggy heat, the bogs and the quicksand—why anyone would want to live in a swamp, Fargo would never know.
Yet it had its beauty, too, such as occasional clear pools, sparkling gems in the maze of muck and mire. Gorgeous flowers, the likes of which Fargo had never seen and couldn’t peg a name to. Birds with brilliant plumage. Lizards at home in the trees as well as on the ground. Spiders as big as Fargo’s hand. Now and then he spied large cranes, often standing on one leg.
Fargo grew to like the Spanish moss that draped the cypress and oaks. Much of the vegetation was so unlike the vegetation of the prairie and mountains that it was like being in a whole new world. At night the thick growth added to the swamp’s sinister atmosphere.
Still, it was the wild, and Fargo loved wild places of any kind. He drank in so much that was new. But he never for a moment forgot the dangers. He was always alert for snakes, always wary of alligators.
On the afternoon of the fourth day they came to a narrow channel of clear water.
“Where did this come from?” Fargo asked.
“The swamp is not all swamp.”
The Cajun stuck to the channel until a lightning-blasted tree appeared on the right bank. “This way,” he said, and struck off into more moss-ridden ranks of cypress.
Fargo was impressed at how confidently Namo found his way around. So much of the swamp looked exactly like so much else that it took long familiarity with the byways and landmarks to navigate with certainty.
They managed another mile before the sun rested on the rim of the world. The Cajun gazed to the west, frowned, and urged, “Paddle faster! There is a spot we must reach before dark.”
That spot turned out to be a broad hummock surprisingly thin of trees and growth. They hauled the pirogue from the water and walked over to the charred remains of a fire.