by Sharpe, Jon
Cleon was so weak they had to carry him. Fargo had examined him at daybreak and found that infection had indeed set in. It would be a wonder if he lived out the day.
Fargo volunteered to take the lead. He had a keener sense of direction, and with the woman to help, stood a better chance of not getting lost.
As they were about to shove off, Clementine came over.
“I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather go with you.”
About to step into the other boat, Major Davenport scowled. “Nonsense, my dear. He has the squaw. Besides, we need you to look after Cleon.”
“Sergeant Morgan is better at doctoring than I am,” Clementine said. “And the squaw, as you call her, is so small, she can’t hardly lift a paddle.”
“I insist you go in ours.”
“Insist all you want. I’m going with Skye.”
“You’ll be out in front where the danger is greatest.” Davenport refused to let it drop.
“Be that as it may,” Clementine said, bending to help Fargo push out his boat, “I’ll be in this one.”
Fargo stayed out of their argument. He agreed with Davenport that she was taking a risk but she was a grown woman and could do as she pleased, and he wouldn’t mind her help paddling.
Mother and son sat in the bow, their arms around one another.
“I have a confession to make,” Clementine said as they cleared the island and entered a channel. “I didn’t do this just to help you.”
“You want to ask the Kilatku her recipe for stuffed white man?”
“Goodness, no. I came with you because I’m sick of the major’s advances.”
“He’s not the perfect gentleman?”
“Oh, no, in that regard he’s fine. It’s just that he hovers over me so, and keeps dropping hints. I’ve made it plain I’m not interested but he doesn’t seem to know how to take no for an answer.”
“Men,” Fargo said.
Up ahead the snout and head of an alligator broke the surface.
“Look at the size of that thing,” Clementine gasped.
Fargo stopped paddling and reached for the Henry but the gator sank from sight with barely a ripple. His skin crawled as they passed over the spot and he watched to be sure it didn’t come after them or attack the other boat.
“When I get back to Washington,” Clementine remarked, “I’m going to treat myself to a pair of alligator shoes. I hear they’re quite popular in Florida and some other Southern states.”
The rest of the morning was uneventful—for the Archaletta. Nothing tried to eat them. Nothing tried to bite them. Once some herons took noisy wing but that was all.
Fargo kept his eyes skinned for sign of Bodean and Judson. That they didn’t try to pick him off didn’t lull him into thinking they wouldn’t. They were waiting for the right time, the right place.
“Your friend has been awful quiet,” Clementine commented.
Which was an understatement; the Kilatku mother hadn’t moved or spoken since they broke camp.
“Maybe it’s me,” Clementine said. “She doesn’t like I’m in your boat.”
Fargo hoped not. The last thing he needed was a jealous cannibal.
“Have you noticed how she can’t take her eyes off of you?”
“You can shut up about her now,” Fargo said.
“Prickly, are we? But it’s obvious she’s smitten.”
“Women,” Fargo said.
“I don’t blame her,” Clementine said. “It’s your own fault for being so handsome.”
Fargo looked at her. “Are you dropping hints like the major?”
“I certainly am not. I was merely suggesting that if you wanted to give your little Indian woman a tumble, she wouldn’t say no.”
“I don’t know where her mouth has been.”
Clementine laughed. “I must say, being in your boat is a lot more fun than being in the major’s.”
“If it’s fun you want,” Fargo said, “go for a walk with me tonight.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I’ll find a safe spot.”
“In this swamp? With the snakes and alligators and spiders and the rest?” Clementine shook her head. “I’d be too nervous.”
“I know ways to relax you.”
“I bet you do.”
They left it at that.
When the sun was directly overhead they stopped to rest, the two boats floating side by side.
“I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be when we are out of this horrid place,” Major Davenport commented while mopping his sweaty brow. He smiled at Clementine. “How about if you ride with us the rest of the day to brighten my mood?”
“I’m fine as I am,” Clementine responded.
“As you wish,” Davenport said. “But I’m surprised you don’t care that Cleon is in a bad way.”
“I’m doin’ all right,” Cleon croaked.
He was lying. His neck above the wound looked to be swollen and discolored and his face was as white as that snow Fargo had daydreamed about. His arm below the wound appeared to be swollen, too, and he was sweating a lot worse than any of them.
“Let me have a look at you,” Clementine said.
Fargo and the sergeant steadied the boats as she clambered from one to the other. She placed her palm to Cleon’s forehead and gasped. “Oh my God.” Very carefully, she pried at the bandage, bent, and grimaced. “The infection is spreading.”
“I feared as much, my dear,” Major Davenport said.
“We need to stop so I can boil water and dress the wound again.”
“Look around you,” Davenport said. “There isn’t a spot of dry land in sight.”
At the moment they were amid ranks of mossy cypress. Except for the trees, there was water everywhere.
“Then the first dry land we come to, we must stop,” Clementine insisted. “Otherwise, this poor man might not make it to the settlement.”
Sergeant Morgan said to Fargo, “We have another problem. I think we’re being followed.”
“Nonsense,” Major Davenport said. “You’ve been saying that all morning and I haven’t seen or heard a thing.”
“It’s a feeling I have,” Morgan said to Fargo. “I can’t shake it.”
Fargo appreciated the warning. He wasn’t as ready to dismiss it as the major. Morgan had been in the army for more than a decade; he wasn’t prone to nervous fits.
“Could Bodean and Judson have slipped in behind us somehow?” Clementine asked.
“Anything is possible, ma’am,” Sergeant Morgan said.
“Come now,” Major Davenport said. “Don’t worry her needlessly. They’ll stay in front of us and ambush us when we least expect.”
“That’s worrisome enough,” Clementine said.
Fargo offered water from the canteen to the mother and the boy. They each took a single sip. He also gave them a piece of his jerky that they ravenously ate.
“We should get under way,” Davenport declared. “The more miles we cover, the sooner we’re out of this mess.”
Clementine frowned and looked at Fargo as if to say she was sorry about the next words that came out of her mouth. “I better stay with Cleon. But that means Skye has to handle his boat by himself.”
Davenport could barely contain his delight. “It can’t be helped, my dear.”
“I’ll help you paddle, major, if you’ll let Sergeant Morgan go with Skye,” Clementine said.
Davenport didn’t hesitate. “You heard the lady’s suggestion, Sergeant.”
Morgan switched boats. If he resented being a pawn in the major’s romancing of Purdy, he didn’t show it.
The cypress went on for miles.
Fargo didn’t recollect passing through so many on their
way in. They were heading in the right direction, though, and that was what counted.
Out of the blue Sergeant Morgan said, “For what it’s worth, I don’t like how the major treats you.”
“He’s in love,” Fargo said.
“He thinks his rank impresses her. He told me as much.”
“He has to impress her with something,” Fargo quipped. “A pecker the size of a pencil won’t do it.”
Morgan chuckled. “Ever notice how the self-important ones always puff themselves up?”
“That, and they love mirrors.”
Grinning and nodding, Morgan said, “I’ve seen a side to him I never suspected. He’s not the man I thought he was.”
“This hellhole wears on all of us.”
Morgan glanced across. “We both know he’s in over his head. He was assigned to escort Miss Purdy not because he was the best officer for the job. He has friends in Washington, and he saw this as a way to boost his career.”
Fargo thought of Clementine’s remarks about her own career, and said nothing. He scanned the cypress ahead for openings wide enough for their boats and caught a bright flash high in a tree. “Look out!” he cried.
The next moment a rifle boomed.
19
Sergeant Morgan was flung back as if by an invisible hand.
In a twinkling Fargo had the Henry to his shoulder. He centered on a silhouette, thumbed back the hammer, and fired.
A sharp cry pierced the swamp. The silhouette separated from the bole and fell, but only a short way. Clutching a limb, it swung around to the far side of the trunk.
Fargo jacked the lever to feed another cartridge into the chamber. He waited, hoping for another shot, but the bushwhacker didn’t reappear.
The woman and the boy had flung themselves to the bottom of the boat, the mother with her body over her son, shielding him.
As for Morgan, he half hung over the side, his face twisted in pain, a stain spreading on his shirt.
Quickly, Fargo pulled him in and steered the boat behind a tree wide enough to offer some protection. Setting down the Henry, he said, “Let me have a look.”
Morgan’s big hand was over the wound. Grunting, he moved it. “Damn me, anyhow. I should have spotted him.”
The other boat thumped against theirs.
“How bad is he?” Major Davenport asked.
“Don’t know yet,” Fargo said. “Watch the trees.” He helped Morgan slide out of the blood-soaked sleeve. The slug had penetrated below Morgan’s collar bone and left an exit hole the size of a walnut. But there was good news, too. “The bone’s not broken and you’re not bleeding much.”
“We need to dress it,” Clementine said, “or it will get infected, like Cleon’s.”
“There has to be dry land somewhere,” Major Davenport said.
They hurried on, never knowing when another shot might shatter the stillness.
For a while Morgan helped paddle one-handed but his strength gave out.
Then their luck seemed to change. A low hummock, sparse of rank growth, marked the end of the trees. Fargo brought his boat in and hopped out. He gave Morgan a hand, and pulled the boat high enough that it wouldn’t drift.
Clementine bandaged the sergeant and cleaned and redressed Cleon’s wound.
While she was occupied, Major Davenport crooked a finger at Fargo and walked to the end of the hummock, out of earshot.
“I want your honest assessment.”
“We’re in deep shit,” Fargo said.
“I concur. It will slow us down even more with the sergeant wounded. So I’ve been thinking.”
“I’m listening.”
“What if you and I and Miss Purdy were to go on ahead? Without the extra weight we can make good time. When we reach the settlement we’ll send help back for Sergeant Morgan and the swamper.”
Fargo stared.
“What?” Davenport said. “We’ll leave food and water for Morgan and Cleon and the Kilatkus.”
“You’d really do that?” Fargo said, making no attempt to hide his contempt.
“I have to think of the greater good, of what’s best for everyone,” Davenport said. “They’ll only slow us down.”
“We’re not leaving anyone behind.”
“Perhaps I should have made myself clear,” Davenport said. “I wasn’t asking your opinion. I’m in command and you’ll do as I say, and I say that the three of us are taking one of the boats and going for help, and that’s that.”
“No,” Fargo said, “we’re not.”
“Excuse me?”
“When we go, they go with us.”
“You overstep yourself. You don’t have the authority to countermand my orders.”
Fargo patted the Henry. “Sure I do.”
Davenport turned the color of a beet. “Have a care. I can see to it that the army never hires your services again. Or better yet, I can have you thrown in a stockade.”
“You’ll be in there with me once General Powell hears what you’ve done.”
Davenport considered that and adopted a friendlier tone. “Why be at loggerheads? If you’re that worried about them, you can stay and Miss Purdy and I will go on alone.”
Behind Davenport the water rippled.
Fargo said nothing.
“Cat got your tongue?” the major said.
A pair of eyes and a snout broke the surface. Then the ridges that ran down the reptile’s broad back.
“Fine,” Davenport said curtly. “Be childish. Miss Purdy and I are going on and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”
The alligator glided in closer, not making a sound.
“Say something, damn you.”
Fargo debated, and slowly pointed. “Behind you,” he said.
“Eh?”
Major Davenport started to turn just as the gator hurtled out of the water. Davenport bleated, his cry punctuated by the snap and crunch of the gator’s jaws on his leg. He screamed as he was slammed onto his back and dug in his elbows to keep from being pulled into the water.
Fargo put a slug between the brute’s eyes. Once, twice, a third shot, and the gator went into a roll there on dry ground.
Davenport shrieked, rolling with it.
Darting in, Fargo jammed the Henry against the gator’s head and fired one more time.
The alligator opened its jaws, took a few steps into the water, and collapsed.
Davenport was out cold. His left leg was badly mangled and bleeding profusely.
Hooking his hands under the major’s arms, Fargo hauled him toward the others.
Morgan, despite his wound, came to help. So did Clementine. The three of them staunched the blood with wads cut from a blanket and Clementine cleaned the wound and bandaged it.
By then the sun was high in the afternoon sky.
Fargo decided to stay there for the night. Neither the major nor Cleon were in any shape to be moved. Morgan could get around, but slowly. He wouldn’t desert them, as Davenport had been so willing to do.
Since the hummock was bare of trees, Fargo stepped into a boat to go for firewood. The woman and her boy climbed in with him.
Except for the insects, the swamp was unnaturally quiet. Fargo suspected that Bodean and Judson were nearby, waiting their chance.
A dead cypress leaning low to the water was a godsend. He piled enough broken branches that it would last them the night.
As they were heading back, the woman squatted next to him, took his hand off the paddle, and placed it on her breast.
“Is that all you think about?” Fargo said. He wished he knew why she kept doing it.
The woman smiled and wriggled her hips.
Hoping he didn’t hurt her feelings, Fargo removed his hand
. “If it wasn’t for those damn teeth . . .”
She sat back and held her son and stared accusingly at him until they reached the hummock.
Major Davenport had revived and Clementine had propped him on a pack. “I hate this swamp more than I’ve ever hated anything.”
At last, something they agreed on, Fargo reflected.
“You were lucky not to lose your leg.”
“I might as well have,” Davenport said bitterly. “I can’t walk. I’m of no use.”
“You can paddle.”
“True. Which is why I want to carry through on my original idea.”
“You and her, alone?”
“Damn it, man. It’s the best chance we have. We can be at Suttree’s Landing by this time tomorrow.”
“If you don’t get lost.”
“We won’t if you come with us.”
“How many times do I have to say no?” It took all of Fargo’s self-control not to hit him. “We all go or we all stay, and you don’t have a say.”
“Impudent bastard,” Davenport muttered. “Do you know what I think?” He struggled onto his elbows. “I think you knew that alligator was behind me. I think you didn’t say anything until it was too late. I think I might be crippled the rest of my life because of you. What do you say to that?”
“I think you should learn when to keep your mouth shut.”
“I was wrong,” Davenport said. “There is something I hate more than the swamp.”
“Go to hell.”
Fargo got a fire going. He placed coffee on and tried to sit back and relax but it was impossible.
Cleon was asleep and mumbling in the delirium of fever. Major Davenport soon drifted under, as well. Sergeant Morgan tossed and turned.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Clementine said, sitting across from him. “We came all this way for nothing. Disease solved the government’s problem for them. Now they can finish their survey undisturbed.”
“Good for them.”
“Please be nice. I can’t take you being surly on top of everything else.”
Fargo got up and walked the perimeter of their sanctuary. He was uneasy. The sun would set soon and he didn’t relish another night in that hell. He counted on their fire to keep the wild creatures at bay but it would also tell Bodean and Judson where they were.
