by Sharpe, Jon
“Was it something I said?” Clementine asked, falling into step.
“I’m restless,” Fargo confessed.
“Aren’t we all? I can’t stand still for more than five minutes.”
Only halfheartedly, Fargo joked, “I know a cure for that.”
“Do you, indeed?”
“Wait until everyone falls asleep and I’ll show you,” Fargo said.
To his delight, Clementine coyly smiled and whispered, “I’ve been thinking, and I might just take you up on that.” She winked, brushed her arm against his and walked back to the fire, her hips swaying more than he had ever seen them sway.
Fargo stared at the red sun and then out over the watery deathlands and finally at the lovely vision grinning invitingly over her shoulder at him.
“Son of a bitch.”
20
The best-laid plans of mice and plainsmen, Fargo told himself.
It was pushing midnight. Sergeant Morgan had never gone to sleep and Major Davenport had woke up and was propped on a pack.
Cleon was still out and his forehead was a hot coal to the touch.
The Kilatku woman and her son had been asleep for about an hour.
As for Clementine Purdy, she was losing her effort to stay awake, and kept nodding off. When her chin sank to her chest for about the tenth time, she snapped her head up, yawned, and said regretfully, “I suppose I better turn in. I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“I can’t sleep at all,” Davenport said. “The pain is keeping me awake.”
“I’ll sit up with you, sir,” Sergeant Morgan offered. “Fargo, you might as well catch some shut-eye. I’ll wake you about three.”
Fargo looked at Clementine. “Two would be better.” If the rest were asleep, he still might have a chance.
“It’s a quiet night for once,” she said as she prepared her blankets. “For the swamp, anyhow.”
That it was. Few gators bellowed. Few frogs croaked. The insects, too, were strangely absent.
The sky was clear, and a crescent moon added its light to the myriad of stars.
Fargo lay and admired them until sleep claimed him. He didn’t dream, or if he did, he didn’t remember it when he was awakened.
“It’s two, according to the major’s watch,” Morgan informed him.
Davenport was still up.
Fargo hid his disappointment and filled his tin cup with much needed coffee. He sat cross-legged and was taking a sip when he realized that the swamp was completely still. Not a single sound emanated from the wellspring of terror.
“Peculiar, isn’t it?” Davenport said when Fargo raised his head and cocked it to one side. “Everything fell silent about half an hour ago.”
“I sure can’t explain it, sir,” Morgan said as he pulled a blanket to his chest. He yawned and closed his eyes. “I’m bushed.”
Good, Fargo thought. That left the major, who was doing his share of yawning, too.
“I wish I hadn’t agreed to this mission,” Davenport said. “It hasn’t turned out anything like I hoped it would.”
Fargo didn’t respond. He figured if he stayed quiet, the sooner the major would drift off.
“If my leg doesn’t heal, I imagine I’ll be assigned to a desk job. That would drive me crazy. I’m a man of action.”
Fargo bit off a laugh.
“Yes, sir,” Davenport said. “Our lives never proceed as smoothly as we’d like. How about you? Have any of your dreams ever been shattered?”
Fargo would be damned if he’d answer.
“Don’t care to talk about it? I can’t say I blame you.” Davenport closed his eyes and pulled his hat over them. “Wake me at first light, if you would be so kind.”
“First light,” Fargo said.
Soon Morgan was snoring, and by the rise and fall of the major’s chest, he’d fallen asleep, too.
Fargo would give them a while before he woke Clementine. He refilled his cup and settled back. The quiet was nice. For a brief span the swamp was at peace.
He’d never have thought it possible.
The fire dwindled until only a few flames licked the air. He didn’t add more fuel.
Starlight and moonlight combined to cast the swamp in eerie relief. The water had a preternatural sheen.
When Fargo heard a faint splash, he assumed it was an alligator. He went on savoring the peaceful atmosphere until something moved at the limit of his vision, something low to the water. Another gator, he reckoned. From now on they were high on his list of critters he could do without, like rattlesnakes and scorpions.
Fargo turned his head and saw a second something moving toward their patch of dry ground. He looked the opposite way and there was a third.
Alarmed, Fargo set down his cup and placed his hand on his Colt. Whatever the things were, they had two to three humps. They were like no animal he’d ever seen.
He was about to rise and move to the water’s edge when one of the humps unfurled.
With awful clarity, Fargo perceived the truth. The long, low things weren’t animals; they were logs. The humps were men.
Even as it dawned, all the humps sat up. Their pale, splotched skin, their small size, the knives and clubs in their hands—Fargo’s blood became ice and for a moment he was too stunned to shout.
Then the first log bumped dry ground, and Fargo shattered his paralysis to holler, “The Kilatku! The Kilatku are attacking!”
That was all he could get out before three of the diseased people-eaters rushed him. In the pale light they seemed more like apparitions born of demented nightmare than flesh and blood, but there was nothing fantastical about their flint knives and their clubs or their pointed teeth.
Fargo leaped to his feet. He drew and fanned a shot at a charging pale troll and the slug smashed the cannibal to the earth. Another slashed with a blade and he sidestepped, only to narrowly avoid having his ribs staved in by the club of a third.
Another log landed, and then one more. The Kilatku rushed the camp.
Yells and a scream pierced the air. The others were awake, and fighting. A gun cracked. A club thudded and someone shrieked.
Fargo shot a blotched face. He spun and shot another. Arms wrapped around his lower legs and he tried to wrest free but his own movement caused him to stumble and trip and the next second he was on the ground with not one but two Kilatku on top of him. He gripped a wrist to keep a knife from biting deep, slammed the Colt against the second cannibal.
Hissing, the Kilatku with the knife sought to stab him.
Fargo jammed the Colt against the man’s chest, and fired. It folded his attacker in half and he kneed him in the head and sent him sprawling. As he rose, his hip was struck a jarring blow that nearly drove him to his knees. Twisting, he shot a warrior with a club.
For an instant he was free of attackers. Glancing about him, he beheld the grim tableau in all its grisly horror.
A bone-handled knife jutted from Cleon’s chest. The Kilatku woman wouldn’t be putting his hand on her tit ever again; her skull had been crushed. Sergeant Morgan was grappling with a pair of diminutive warriors who fought as fiercely as men three times their size. Major Davenport struggled with another.
Fargo didn’t see the Kilatku boy—or Clementine Purdy.
Then she screamed.
A warrior was trying to pull her toward a log and she was resisting mightily. But small as he was, the man proved stronger, and in another few steps he would have her there.
Fargo aimed and blew out the warrior’s brains.
A death rattle caused him to whirl.
Major Davenport had been stabbed in the throat. His hands over the wound, he tried to speak as a dark fountain gushed from his mouth and his neck. His eyes found Fargo’s just as life faded.
Fargo heard a grunt and a blow.
The warrior who stabbed the major had joined the pair attacking Morgan. Morgan’s left arm was next to useless, and between the three of them, the warriors were forcing him down.
The Colt was empty. In a bound Fargo reached the Henry. He shoved the Colt into his holster, scooped up the rifle, and shot the Kilatku who had stabbed Davenport. The other two were so intent on killing Morgan that they were ducks in a barrel; he put a slug into the head of one and then the other.
A splash drew his gaze to the water. A log was moving away. On it were the last warrior and the boy.
Fargo jerked the Henry to his shoulder. The warrior looked back and he aimed at the man’s face. At the same moment, the boy hugged the warrior.
Fargo didn’t shoot. He slowly lowered the Henry as the log faded into the swamp.
Bodies covered the ground.
Clementine was on her knees, crying.
Morgan lay on his back, a hand to his side, groaning.
Fargo went to Clementine first and hauled her to her feet. “You need to get hold of yourself.”
“But—” she said, and sniffled. “That one almost—” She stopped.
“You’re safe,” Fargo said, and steered her toward Morgan. “Take deep breaths until you calm down.”
Clementine nodded and did but she couldn’t stop weeping.
“The major?” Morgan asked them, turning his head.
Fargo shook his own.
“I should have protected him.” Morgan coughed and crimson speckles came out his nose.
“How bad?” Fargo asked, squatting.
“A knife in the ribs,” Morgan said. “I think it punctured a lung.”
“Damn,” Fargo said.
“I know.” Morgan coughed some more, and tried to sit up. “Help me,” he requested.
Fargo got a pack and slid it behind him and helped prop him. “Anything else I can do?”
“Just stay with me until it’s over.”
“Until what’s over?” Clementine asked. She was dabbing her eyes and nose and sniffling.
“Me,” Sergeant Morgan said.
“Oh, God. Not you, too?” Clementine burst into fresh tears.
Morgan looked down at the blood seeping between his splayed fingers. “Never thought I’d die in a swamp.”
“I’ll bury you,” Fargo said.
“With what? Your bare hands?” Morgan pressed his forearm to his mouth and coughed into his sleeve. “It would take half the day. It’s best you push on.” He nodded at Clementine. “You have Miss Purdy to think of.”
“I’ll get her out or die trying.”
Morgan nodded and smiled an odd little smile. “I’m weak as a kitten. It won’t be long.” He held up his other hand and Fargo gripped it.
“Thanks,” Morgan said, and died.
21
In the Rockies, sunrise was spectacular. Brilliant hues of pink, orange and yellow nearly always heralded the new day.
Not the swamp. The sky was a soup of clouds. A shadowy pall hung over the tangles of vegetation and the tainted water.
Fargo sat and watched a heron snatch a fish. When the great bird flapped its wings and flew aloft, he envied it its ability to fly unhindered and not have to slog through the morass of muck and reptilian monsters.
The cheek that had rested on his leg for hours now moved and Clementine Purdy stirred and opened her eyes. Sitting bolt upright, she glanced fearfully about at the bodies.
“You’re safe,” Fargo assured her. “You have nothing to worry about.” Which was a bald-faced lie but he didn’t want her to burst into tears again.
“Goodness,” Clementine said. “I shouldn’t have dozed off on you.”
“It was the middle of the night,” Fargo said. “You were tired.”
Clementine stared aghast at Sergeant Morgan and at Cleon. “It’s all coming back to me. Those poor men. They even killed that poor little woman who was so fond of you. And she was one of their own.”
“We’ll fix breakfast and head out.” Fargo had no desire to linger longer than was necessary. Flies would soon swarm. Buzzards would circle and give their position away.
“I’m not really hungry,” Clementine said. “Coffee will do.”
Fargo was happy to oblige. He rarely started a day without a cup or three. As he went about making it, she fussed with her hair and her dress.
“Do you think we’ve seen the last of them?”
“The Kilatku?”
“Who else?”
“Yes.” Fargo thought of the two swamp rats who wanted him dead. “But we’re not out of danger yet.” Far from it.
“If we can only make it to the settlement. The first thing I’ll do is fill a tub with hot water and take a long bath.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Me taking a bath?”
“You naked.”
“I will say one thing for you. When you get an idea into your head, it stays there.”
While the coffee brewed, Fargo placed all their packs in the boat he’d been using. The same with the food, canteens, everything. He also stripped the dead of their weapons.
“It’s a shame we can’t take the body of a Kilatku back,” Clementine remarked.
“What the hell for?”
“No one has ever seen one. It would be quite a sensation.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Fargo said, and motioned at a nearby warrior covered with loathsome blotches.
“Oh,” Clementine said.
Fargo was glad to put the site of the near-massacre behind them. For a while they glided along a tranquil channel. Then it was imminent death as usual, with a network of bogs and quicksand and dark pools.
Clementine stayed quiet, much to his relief. Few things annoyed him more than having his ear bent with senseless prattle. But he should have known it wouldn’t last.
“So tell me, what’s the first thing you’ll do when we get back?”
“Get drunk.”
“Perhaps I’ll join you after I take my bath.”
“Or you can stay in your room with your clothes off and I’ll join you.”
“You never give up, do you?” Clementine asked with a grin.
“Live longer that way.”
“Which reminds me,” Clementine said, anxiously peering about. “Do you think we’ve seen the last of Bodean and Judson?”
Fargo was honest with her. “No.”
“What do they hope to gain? We don’t have enough money to make robbing us worthwhile.”
“They’re out for blood and only blood.”
“All because you stood up to them and did what was right.” Clementine shook her pretty head. “That’s not fair.”
Fair, Fargo had found, was one thing life wasn’t.
She lapsed into silence and for the better part of an hour they toiled at navigating the treacherous maze. He would have gone on a while longer but she raised her paddle out of the water and set it beside her, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not used to this. My shoulders are killing me. Can we rest a bit?”
Fargo’s answer was to place his own paddle down.
“Thank you.” Grimacing, Clementine rubbed her right shoulder and then her left. “I can’t wait to reach Suttree’s Landing.”
Fargo listened with half an ear. He was probing the swamp ahead for sign of Bodean and Judson.
Clementine did more fussing with her dress, which was matted and rumpled and bore streaks of dirt. “I must look a sight.”
“We’re in a swamp.”
“That’s no excuse. I’ll look a lot more attractive with clean clothes.”
“Even more with no clothes.”
“Like a dog worryin
g a bone,” Clementine said, and grinned.
Fargo stared at her bosom. “Bone, hell. I’d rather worry your tits.”
“Let’s not be crude. I don’t know if I like being treated like a trollop.”
“Ladies like to do it as much as tarts.”
“Oh, do they, indeed?” Clementine said. “You must think you’re an expert on the female gender.”
“I’ve poked a few.”
“Please,” Clementine said, coloring. “No more of this frank talk. I don’t know as I can take it.”
“You’re too damn timid.”
“About that I am. I was taught it’s something a lady never, ever talks about. Not even in the privacy of her bedroom.”
“People,” Fargo said, “do the stupidest things.” Or didn’t do them, as the case may be.
“It’s easy for you to judge. But who’s to say your scruples are better than anyone else’s?”
“Never claimed they were.”
Clementine bowed her head and sighed. “Sorry. I’m irritable. It’s this muggy swamp and all the damn bugs.”
“Did you just swear?”
She laughed, and Fargo was about to lean across and kiss her on the lips when there was a thunk on the side of the boat.
A middling-sized gator had risen from the depths. It stared at them, flicked its tail, and swam away.
“I thought it was going to attack us,” Clementine said breathlessly.
So had Fargo, for an instant there.
“It never ends,” Clementine said. “I’m experiencing a nightmare but I’m wide awake.”
“How about we push on?” Fargo suggested. “Are your shoulders up to it?”
“Let’s find out.”
With every mile, the likelihood of an ambush rose. Bodean and Judson couldn’t let them reach the settlement, not when Bodean and Judson’s necks were as good as in a noose if that happened. He figured they would play it safe and use their rifles from a distance.
It wasn’t long after they resumed paddling that Fargo spied smoke. Not a lot. Enough to suggest a small campfire.
