by Sharpe, Jon
Disease, Fargo realized with a jolt. The entire village had been wiped out by sickness. He remembered the same thing had happened to the Mandans and several other tribes, and a terrible suspicion took hold.
At the very center of the village was an open space, and there, placed in a row, were dead white men. All had been horribly mutilated and finished off by having their throats slit.
Fargo had found the surveyor and five of the six men in his party. Vultures and other scavengers had been at them and there wasn’t much left.
Fargo pondered, trying to reconstruct the sequence of events. The Kilatku had brought the surveyor and his men to their village. That much was obvious. But as friends or as enemies?
Just beyond stood a giant clay pot next to a fire pit. On an impulse, Fargo went over and looked in. His stomach churned and he swallowed bitter bile.
It was a cooking pot. Inside lay bones that had been gnawed clean of the meat. He could see the teeth marks. A skull leered at him, and by its size, Fargo had a hunch this was the sixth member of the surveying team.
So the Kilatku were cannibals. They’d captured the white intruders and boiled and ate one of their victims.
Was that what made them sick? Was that how they came down with the disease?
Like the Mandans and other tribes before them, the Kilatku had no immunity to white disease. It must have spread like wildfire. Too late, they’d realized the whites were to blame, and massacred the others. And then what? Waited around to die? Or fled into the depths of the Archaletta Swamp?
Fargo turned and almost collided with the woman and her son. She had a strange expression on her face. “I’m sorry,” he said. Cannibals or not, the Kilatku didn’t deserve this.
She gazed at the bodies and bowed her head and a tear trickled down her cheek.
“Are there any more of you?” Fargo asked, knowing full well it was useless.
She looked at him quizzically.
Fargo pointed at several dead Kilatku and then at her and the boy and arched his eyebrows and gestured at the surrounding island and the swamp.
A gleam came into her eyes. She opened her mouth and said what sounded for all the world like, “Ah.” The lines of sorrow on her face deepened. She said a few words and touched her chest and the boy’s.
Fargo thought he understood. She and her son were the last of their kind. “Damn.”
A log had been placed not far from the pot. He walked over and sat. He was suddenly tired. The ordeal of following her through the swamp had caught up with him. He set the Henry’s stock on the ground and leaned his forehead against the barrel.
The woman and the boy sat next to him. She showed no fear. She touched her bosom again and the boy’s chest and pointed at his own. She did that several times while giving him a questioning look.
“You don’t mean—?” Fargo said, and realized she did. She was offering herself to him, offering to be his woman and the boy to be his son.
Fargo was about to give an emphatic shake of his head but changed his mind. He would do what he could for her, short of that. But what could he do, other than take her back to civilization?
He wondered how it was that she and the boy hadn’t come down with the disease. They must be immune, probably the only ones in the tribe.
She smiled, and to his consternation he saw that her teeth had been filed to points.
Fargo needed to rest. He pantomimed stretching and yawning and got up. Since he wasn’t about to sleep in a village of the dead, he walked to the outskirts and selected a grassy spot.
Clouds continued to scuttle across the sky like so many great gray crabs.
The woman and the boy had followed him. She sat cross-legged and said something.
Fargo shook his head and propped his hands behind him.
He reckoned to nap for a bit and head back. With a little luck he could rejoin the others before sunset.
Again the woman addressed him and pointed at the woods. She seemed agitated.
Fargo didn’t see any cause for alarm. All the warriors were dead. They weren’t near water so gators weren’t a worry. Nor had he seen any of the big snakes.
This was about as safe a spot as any.
The woman extended her finger at the village, her agitation worse.
Again Fargo thought he understood. “I doubt I’ll catch whatever it was.” Closing his eyes, he drifted off.
When he opened them again, night had fallen.
15
“Hell,” Fargo said, and sat up. He jammed his hat on, grabbed the Henry, and gave a start. The woman and the boy were gone. He’d taken it for granted they would be there when he woke up.
Fargo stood. A breeze had picked up, a warm wind that did nothing to relieve the heat and the humidity.
With the fall of darkness, the swamp had come alive. From out of it rose the roars and grunts of gators, the thrum of a thousand bullfrogs, the occasional shrieks of quarry.
Cradling the Henry, Fargo moved toward the village. If the woman was anywhere, he figured, she was there.
The cone lodges reared like oversized beehives. The bodies were hard to make out.
Fargo stopped and hollered, “Woman, where the hell are you?” She wouldn’t understand but she would know he was up and return.
From the woods came crackling and rustling noises.
Fargo spun. It must be an animal. When nothing appeared he debated what to do. The bodies lying everywhere gnawed at his nerves. It didn’t help that although the victims had been there a spell, the smell of death was in the air.
Fargo decided to look for her. He skirted several still forms. He was passing a hut when he detected movement inside. Moving to the opening, he dropped to a knee. “Is that you?”
No one answered.
Fargo bent and looked in. It was black as pitch. No way in hell was he going in there.
Increasingly uneasy, he prowled the village from end to end. He found no trace of the woman or the boy. He was alone with the Reaper’s handiwork.
Since he wasn’t about to try to return to Clementine and the others in the dark without the woman to guide him, he ventured into the woods and gathered downed limbs.
Presently, he had a small fire crackling near where he’d slept.
In all that vastness, his was the only light.
Fargo thought of Clementine and her willowy thighs. “Hell,” he grumbled.
There was still no sign of the Kilatku woman and her son.
An hour became two and Fargo regretted taking his nap. He was too awake to fall back to sleep.
He wished he had the Ovaro. He wished they were in the Rockies or on the plains. Anywhere but here.
“Listen to me,” Fargo said in disgust. “Whining to myself.”
He added a branch to the fire and sat back. Tilting his head, he looked for a glimpse of the stars, in vain.
An owl hooted. Another bull alligator let the swamp know it was in a mating mood.
Fargo gazed at the cone huts, wondering if there was anything in them worth taking back. As poor as the Kilatku were, he doubted it.
He yawned and stretched and listened to the crickets and the frogs.
A new sound registered, faintly at first, a scrape-scrape-scrape as of something being dragged. It came from the village.
Puzzled, Fargo set the Henry across his legs. He tried to assign the noise to a cause and couldn’t.
A shape appeared. Small and spindly, it moved in short jerks. And it was coming in his direction.
Fargo stood. He saw other shapes, four, five, six, all moving stiffly as if something was wrong with their limbs.
“What in the hell?”
From out of the night to his right flashed the woman and the boy. She cried out and gripped his hand and pulled.
Fargo stood firm. She wanted him to get out of there but he’d be damned if he’d run. The strange shapes had to come into the firelight to reach him, and he could drop them with the Henry.
The woman glanced at the figures and uttered another cry. She stopped pulling, seized her son, and fled.
“Big help you were,” Fargo said. He was so intent on the stiff figures that he didn’t think to add more fuel to the fire.
A sudden gust of wind reduced the flames to tiny fingers. It reduced the circle of light, too.
Fargo grabbed for a piece of firewood just as another gust caused the flames to flicker and shrink and go out entirely.
Bending, Fargo puffed on the embers. He expected the fire to flare to renewed life but it didn’t. He was shrouded in gloom so black, his hand was invisible at arm’s length.
He looked up. The shapes were moving faster. On two legs, which told him he was wrong about the disease wiping out everyone except the woman and the boy. Other Kilatku had survived. He raised the Henry and tried to fix a bead on a lurching silhouette.
A hand fell on his shoulder.
Thinking it was the woman, Fargo turned. The face nearly touching his wasn’t hers. It was a warrior’s, the skin blotched, the flesh diseased, the lips curled from filed teeth, the eyes seeming to glow with sheer savagery. The man stank to high heaven.
“Jesus,” Fargo said.
The warrior bit at his neck. Fargo flung himself back. He tripped and sprawled and the apparition came after him. Slamming his boot into the Kilatku’s chest, he sent the reeking ruin stumbling.
Shuffling sounds came from all sides. The others were closing in.
Heaving upright, Fargo pointed the Henry at the warrior who had tried to bite him. The man lurched and he fired point-blank into the scrawny chest. Whirling, he shot a Kilatku reaching for him with fingers hooked like talons.
He backpedaled, collided with another, and butt-stroked the man’s head.
Yet another darted in fast and low, arms spread, mouth agape and showing those awful teeth.
Fargo shot him. Then he did as the woman had done: he ran. Should one of the warriors bite him, he might come down with the disease. He wouldn’t risk that.
He was lucky they hadn’t used weapons. Maybe in their ravaged state they weren’t thinking straight.
No sooner did that cross his mind than a Kilatku was in front of him and a flint knife slashed. He sidestepped, felt a sting and rammed his Henry into the blotched face. The Kilatku went down and he leaped over him and was in the woods.
Fargo didn’t stop. He needed to put distance between him and the village. He looked for the woman but didn’t see her.
The woods seemed otherworldly. The moss-covered trees were misshapen and drooped, the undergrowth was a sickly hue. Not a single animal cry broke the stillness.
For one of the few times in his life, Fargo lost all sense of direction. Without the stars, he couldn’t tell north from south or east from west. He was truly and literally lost.
The trees ended at water. He was in it up to his ankles before he stopped. Retreating onto dry land, he hunkered next to a cypress.
All he could do now was wait and see if the warriors came after him.
He was panting, and slowed his breathing. He must stay perfectly still and be completely quiet. He was the hunted, not the hunter.
An hour went by. Two.
Once, he thought he heard shuffling. Another time, there was a shout, a man’s voice. No one answered.
Toward dawn he started to doze. Jerking his head up, he shook himself to stay awake.
Gradually, the sky brightened from black to gray. The forest acquired colors and depth.
Fargo looked at the water, expecting swamp, and smiled in surprise. He’d stumbled on a spring. Going over, he lay flat. The water appeared to be safe to drink. He dipped a hand in and took a wary sip. It tasted as water should. As thirsty as he was, he drank in great gulps but had the presence of mind not to drink too much. Taking off his hat, he lowered his face. The coolness revitalized him. He raised his head and shook it and drops flew.
Fargo sat up and reached for his hat and his hand came down on something that writhed and hissed. Recoiling, he jumped up and caught sight of a snake moving away.
“Damn this swamp.”
Jamming his hat on, Fargo reclaimed the Henry. He wasn’t sticking around. The Kilatku would be searching for him, and they knew the swamp better than he did.
In a quarter of a mile he reached the shore. Paralleling it, he sought sign of the secret trail that brought him there, the route the woman had used. For once his knack for landmarks failed him. One area of swamp looked the same as every other.
He hiked around a headland and there they were: the woman and the boy, crouched, apparently waiting.
She stood and smiled.
“I’m right pleased to see you again, too,” Fargo confessed. It felt peculiar, him having to rely on someone else to get around.
Reaching out, she took his free hand and placed it on her left breast.
“What the hell?”
She bobbed her small chin at his groin and her smile widened.
“Damn, woman. You can’t mean what I think you mean,” Fargo said in amazement.
She squeezed his fingers so his fingers squeezed her breast.
“You do mean it.”
The woman rimmed her lips with her tongue.
Fargo looked at her pointed teeth and at the boy and off toward the village and thought of the cooking pot. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
She pinched her nipple with his fingertips.
“Enough.” Fargo pulled his hand away. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but no thanks.”
The woman frowned.
Fargo gestured at the swamp. “We have to get out of here. Will you lead me back to the others?”
She stared at his crotch.
Just then, off in the woods, a scream rose to the clouds. It was a human cry, a man on the verge of oblivion or in the throes of madness, or maybe both. It sank and rose again to a keening pitch of despair.
“Hell,” Fargo said, and motioned again at the foreboding swamp.
The woman appeared scared. Grasping her son’s hand, she finally did as he wanted.
“Here we go again,” Fargo said.
16
By the middle of the morning he’d made up his mind that he was never setting foot in a swamp again.
The woman led him by a different route. A harder route, with more bogs and quicksand to avoid, and stretches where he was up to his waist in water. She constantly looked back as if she feared they were pursued.
Snakes and gators were as common as mosquitoes. Despite the clouds, the heat climbed and the humidity drenched him as much as the water.
It got so it ate at Fargo’s nerves. He jumped at splashes. He was irritated as hell at the perpetual swarms of bugs.
Swamps—some swamps, anyway, and this one in particular—were living hells he could do without.
The woman stopped on a low spine of dry land to rest. Her son curled up with his head in her lap and was immediately asleep.
Fargo couldn’t sleep if he tried. He was too on edge.
Taking a seat, he wriggled his wet toes. He’d need a new pair of boots when this was over. Provided he lived.
The woman was staring at him. She smiled her pointed-teeth smile and reached out for his hand and placed it on her breast.
“Oh, hell,” Fargo said. “Is that all you think about?” He wondered if there was some meaning to it that eluded him.
She squeezed his fingers and looked at him hopefully.
Fargo shook his head and pulled his hand back. “Quit doing that.”
Crestfallen,
the woman averted her face.
Fargo let out a sigh. “When I get back to civilization,” he promised himself aloud, “I’m going to find a willing filly and spend a week in bed.” Maybe longer.
Sudden splashing to the south made him stiffen. Probably a gator, or a fish. He relaxed and plucked at a stem of grass and stuck it between his teeth. It tasted bitter and he spit it out.
More splashing brought him to his feet. It was louder and closer. Something was out there, something big.
The woman eased her son’s head off her leg and rose. She, too, appeared worried.
“What now?”
The splashing continued and a great bulk lumbered into view.
“Goddamn swamps,” Fargo said.
It was a bear, one of the largest black bears he’d ever set eyes on. Snuffling and casting about for food, it hadn’t noticed them yet.
Fargo raised the Henry but he would rather not use it. It was a fine man-stopper but not so fine at bringing down buffs or bears.
The woman bent and snatched her sleeping son into her arms. She whispered and began to back away.
Fargo thought it wiser not to move until the bear had gone by. But he backed after her, covering the black bear and praying it didn’t look in their direction.
The bear huffed and lunged, dipping its head in the water. When it rose up, a fish was clamped between its teeth. It bit, gulped and the fish was gone.
Fargo imagined those iron jaws closing on him.
The woman reached the end of the rise and stopped. She acted uncertain whether to go or stay put.
The black bear was forty feet out, head low to the water.
Fargo began to think it would pass them by. A mass of muscle and fat that huge would be next to impossible to stop.
Uttering a cry, the boy woke up and looked around in confusion.
The bear stopped. Its head swiveled and it saw them, and sniffed.
Fargo smothered an impulse to swear. It was a good thing he wasn’t playing poker. His luck of late was downright pitiful.
