by Jon Sharpe
A third one gazed at the bleak ruin of their settlement. “We must defend what is ours.”
Fargo realized there was no talking them out of it, and he didn’t try. He did say, “There’s something you should keep in mind. The razorback didn’t show up here by chance. The Mad Indian lured him.”
“What are you saying, monsieur? That the monster is the Mad Indian’s pet?”
At that, some of them laughed.
“Don’t mock him,” Remy growled. “If he says it is so, it is.”
“Now I have heard everything,” the surly Cajun said. “You, of all people, trust an outsider?”
With two men to a craft, the avengers pushed off.
“They’re fools,” Remy declared.
“What does that make us?” Fargo wondered.
15
The great swamp was as oppressive as ever. Shadowy gloom held sway where the canopy was thickest. Occasional patches of sunlight gave a luster to the gator-and snake-infested water it didn’t deserve.
The swamp was a world unto itself. A hostile world. A world that would kill the unwary in the blink of an eye.
Fargo sat in the stern of the pirogue, paddling. Remy was in the bow, Namo in the middle. They sat tensely, eyes constantly probing the vegetation and the water, their rifles across their legs. It was nearing midday and the sun was nearly directly overhead.
“I used to love the swamp but now I hate it,” Remy broke their long quiet. “It is a foul place.”
Namo said, “Despite all that has happened, I will always love it. To me it is my home.”
Remy nodded at a cottonmouth that was slithering away from their craft. “To that it is home. To us it will always be alien. We will always be intruders. Unwelcome intruders.”
“There is a beauty to the swamp,” Namo insisted. “One must look beneath the surface to appreciate it.”
“Look beneath the surface and you will find an alligator ready to bite your head off or a water moccasin ready to strike.”
Fargo didn’t get involved in their argument. He understood both points of view. To him, the swamp was a festering quagmire. Yet he could see why Namo liked it as much as he liked the mountains and the prairie.
“We should stop soon and rest,” Namo proposed. “No sense in tiring ourselves out our first day.”
They were gliding along somber ranks of cypress, the trees spaced far enough apart that they had an easy going. That soon changed. Before them rose one of the intermittent tracts of land that broke the monotony, this one several acres in extent. Remy made for a point where the ground sloped. Hopping out, they hauled the pirogue out.
Namo carried the pack to a grassy spot. “This looks safe enough.”
Fargo didn’t sit when they did. His leg muscles were cramped and he paced to relieve the pain.
“How do we even know the razorback came this way?” Remy said.
“This is the direction it was heading when we heard it last.”
“But we’ve seen no sign of it. No sign at all.”
Namo was opening the pack. “I suspect it sticks to the water. But we’re bound to find something.” He indicated the rank growth. “It could be hiding in there for all we know.”
“After we kill it I am leaving the Atchafalaya.”
“You don’t mean that,” Namo said in surprise. “You have lived here your whole life.”
“And what has it gotten me? I’m an outcast, shunned by my own kind. All my friends are dead.”
“I’m your friend.”
“You know what I mean. Life was bearable so long as I had other outcasts to share it with.”
“Where will you go?”
“New Orleans, I think. I’ve been there a few times and there is much about it I like.”
“You won’t last a month,” Namo predicted. “City life isn’t for the likes of you. Or me, for that matter.”
Fargo was listening for sounds of wildlife but there weren’t any. Not so much as the chirp of a bird. That struck him as peculiar. Moving a few feet from the others, he peered into the growth.
“I’m not you,” Remy said to Namo. “You have the swamp in your blood. I merely tolerate it.”
“My offer holds. You can come and live with us if you like. My children adore you.”
Remy looked away and was a while answering. When he did, his voice had a husky quality. “I thank you. The three of you are the only people left in this world who truly care about me. But no, my friend. Think of what others would say. The talk. The gossip. I am not held in high regard.” He chuckled. “To put it mildly.”
“What do I care what other people think? So you are an outcast. You have never killed a Cajun.”
“That I would never do.”
“Then let people say what they will. There are always small minds and loose tongues.”
Remy smiled. “I can see what my cousin saw in you, Namo Heuse. You have a fine quality.”
“I pull my pants on one leg at a time like every other man. But I won’t be swayed by the opinions of others.”
Fargo was listening with half an ear. He was more interested in why the spit of land was so empty of life. He was about to say something when he gazed at the high grass a few yards behind Remy and Namo and a tingle of alarm shot down his spine. “Look out!” he hollered, while simultaneously jerking the Sharps to his shoulder.
The two Cajuns reacted with razor reflexes and sprang to their feet.
Out of the grass hurtled an alligator six feet long, or so. It snapped at Remy, its razor teeth narrowly missing his leg. Its own legs pumping, it dived into the water with a loud splash. Bubbles rose, marking its underwater course, and then stopped.
Remy cursed luridly. “Did you see? It almost had me. It is an omen. I must get out of this swamp while I still can.”
“That could have happened to anyone,” Namo said, eyeing the surface with his rifle up.
“Here, yes. But you don’t see many alligators wandering the streets of New Orleans.”
Fargo had come to a decision. “I’m going to scout around. It could be the boar was here.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” Namo said.
“I’ll give a holler if I need you.” Fargo penetrated the tangle, moving slowly, treading with care, watchful for snakes and other gators. A mosquito buzzed him but flew off. Then a butterfly flitted by, a splash of color, reminding him the world wasn’t all gloom.
Fargo came on a game trail. He sank to one knee to examine it. Deer tracks were plentiful. In a patch of dirt he also found the prints of a skunk and a raccoon. Farther on he saw bobcat tracks. He rounded a bend and drew up short.
There, plain as could be, were different hoofprints. They were larger than the deer tracks, and more rounded. The dewclaws were longer, and more pointed. Only one animal made those kind of tracks.
Wild boar.
Fargo looked up, his skin prickling. He almost called out to Remy and Namo. But the tracks were fresh. The animal might be near. He didn’t think it was the razorback; the tracks weren’t big enough.
The quiet took on new meaning.
Fargo wedged the Sharps to his shoulder and kept going. It could be the tracks were those of a sow. And it could be the razorback was paying her a visit. Male boar were as randy as an animal could be.
The trail was as sinuous as a snake, turning and twisting every which way. Suddenly it ended at the last thing Fargo expected to find: a spring. Edging close, he touched his left hand to the water and let a drop fall on the tip of his tongue. It tasted clean and cool.
The spring explained all the tracks. It explained what the wild boars were doing there.
Another trail led to the spring on the other side. Dense growth was everywhere else.
Fargo scoured the vegetation but saw nothing. He lowered the Sharps, cupped his palm, and dipped his hand in. He raised his palm to his mouth and drank. He dipped his hand again, drank again. Somewhere off in the swamp a frog croaked. He wondered why there were no frogs at the
spring. He dipped his hand in a third time, and froze.
An eyeball was staring back at him.
Fargo pretended not to notice. He looked past it and then roved his gaze back again.
The eyeball was fixed on him unblinkingly.
Only then did Fargo realize that what he took for shadow wasn’t shadow at all but a large animal. The silhouette left no doubt as to what it was. Either a boar or a sow. It wasn’t the giant razorback but that hardly mattered. Any wild boar that size could kill.
Calmly, Fargo sipped from his palm. The Sharps was at his side. If he snapped it up the boar might charge. Since it wasn’t the one they were after he would as soon let it live. He began to back away and to slowly raise the Sharps, just in case.
Fargo didn’t think to look over his shoulder, which made his surprise all the greater when a squeal came from behind him. He glanced back and saw two young boars, or piglets, which told him the large animal in the brush was a sow and these were her offspring.
“Oh, hell.”
With a savage squeal the sow burst into the open. She had her head up and her mouth wide.
Fargo dived out of her way. She bit at him but missed and went on by. Rolling onto his shoulder, he took a quick bead but the sow hadn’t turned to attack him again. She was racing down the trail with her young.
Rising, Fargo waited a suitable interval, then started back. He was extra cautious. Where there was one sow there were often more. The females lived in groups known as sounders. If Fargo recollected rightly, there could be anywhere from a dozen or so up to fifty animals in one sounder. Only females and young. The males kept to themselves except when mating.
The last thing Fargo needed was to run into twenty or thirty at once.
He had no trouble finding the spot where the Cajuns and the pirogue should be—only they weren’t there.
Fargo looked around in bewilderment. He refused to believe they had up and left him. He went to shout but thought better of it. Hunkering, he waited. All sorts of wild imaginings went through his head. What if they had seen the razorback and gone after it? Or spotted the Mad Indian and gone after him? And what if they never came back? It would take him months to find his way out of the swamp, if he even made it.
Out on the water another cottonmouth appeared, coming in his direction.
“Swamps,” Fargo said in disgust. He picked up a stick and threw it. He missed, but the stick hit close enough that the cottonmouth turned and swam away. “Good riddance.”
A peculiar call came out of the cypress. A bird, Fargo reckoned, although it could well be a person imitating a bird. The Mad Indian, maybe.
To say Fargo was relieved when he saw the pirogue glide into view was an understatement. Standing, he controlled his temper and simply said once they were in earshot, “I don’t much like you going off without telling me.”
Namo was in the bow. “My apologies, mon ami. But you were taking so long, we thought we could put the time to good use.”
“That’s right,” Remy said. “We were looking for sign of the razorback but didn’t see him.”
“We did find evidence of other boars.”
“They’re here,” Fargo confirmed. “I saw a female and her young.”
The Cajuns brought the pirogue broadside to the shoreline so he could climb in.
“It could be the razorback will show up here eventually,” Remy said. “So the question is, do we wait or do we push on?”
“We push on,” Namo said. “It might be days or weeks before he shows, if ever.”
Fargo agreed with Heuse.
As they rounded the spit of land the underbrush crackled and out rushed several large sows. Squealing angrily, they pawed the dirt and showed their teeth but didn’t plunge into the water in pursuit.
Remy chuckled.
“What can you possibly find humorous about them?” Namo wanted to know.
“To a male boar they are beauties.”
Ahead was another dark cypress grove.
Swarms of what Fargo took to be gnats descended. He could hardly breathe without getting some into his nose or his mouth. To ward them off he covered the lower half of his face with his bandana.
Remy started muttering.
“What bothers you?” Namo asked.
“This is a waste of our time. We could hunt forever and not find the razorback.”
“Are you saying we should sit around Gros Ville and do nothing?”
“Non. I am saying we should do this smart. Maybe the Mad Indian is not so mad, after all.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“He lured the razorback to the settlement, didn’t he? Perhaps we should do the same and lure it to us.”
“How do you propose doing that?”
“We camp and make a lot of noise so that it can hear us or smell us,” Remy proposed. “If nothing else—” He suddenly stopped.
“If nothing else what?”
When Remy didn’t answer, Fargo glanced at him and saw that his attention was fixed on something off to their left. He looked, and blurted, “Speak of the devil.”
It was the Mad Indian.
16
“We can’t let him get away!” Namo Heuse shouted, and brought up his rifle to shoot.
But the Mad Indian was already fleeing. He had spotted them at the same instant they spotted him and he was working his paddle furiously, heading his canoe deeper into the swamp.
The crack of Namo’s rifle galvanized Remy into working his own paddle. “You missed.”
So it seemed. The Mad Indian had bent low and was stroking with amazing swiftness for a man his age. He glanced back and gave voice to that insane cackle of his.
“He must pay for my wife,” Namo said grimly as he set down his rifle and scooped up his paddle.
Fargo was waiting for a clear shot. They were in among cypress and the Mad Indian was using that to his advantage, wending right and left among the trees so there was nearly always a tree between his canoe and their pirogue. Twice Fargo fixed a bead but each time a tree trunk or trailing moss thwarted him.
“Do you know what this means?” Remy said. “If the Mad Indian is near, the razorback must be near, too.”
Fargo was keeping an eye out for it. But the boar had an uncanny knack for attacking unexpectedly and might be on them before he could put a slug into it.
The Mad Indian kept on cackling.
Remy swore. “He gives me chills, that one.”
Namo was hunched forward as if he would dive over the bow. “He is nothing but a crazy old man.”
“Crazy, oui. But for all we know God is on his side and not ours.”
Fargo and Namo both glanced back.
“Since when do you care about God?” Namo asked. “And how can you say something like that? It’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Remy countered. “The Mad Indian’s people were wiped out by disease brought by white men. In God’s eyes maybe we are in the wrong and he is in the right.”
Namo shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Next you will tell me you want to go to confession and make amends for all your sins.”
“I am only saying,” Remy said. “And just because I have killed and like to drink and indulge in women doesn’t mean I am completely without faith.”
“Bah. After what happened to Emmeline, I have begun to doubt there even is a God. She did nothing to deserve dying like she did.”
Fargo interrupted them. “Less talk and more paddling.”
The Mad Indian was widening his lead. He was one man to their three but his canoe was smaller and lighter than the pirogue and he was amazingly strong for a bundle of sinew and bone.
“He is making fools of us,” Namo said, and increased his speed.
Fargo continued to stay alert for the razorback.
The Mad Indian’s teeth flashed and his laughter carried to them along with, “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!”
“As if we don’t know that,” Namo rasped.
“He
is taunting us,” Remy stated the obvious. “Rubbing our noses in what we have driven him to.”
“Don’t start with that again. He can’t possibly be in the right. Not with all the people he has had that monster pig of his kill.”
“I just had a thought,” Remy said.
“Not another one.”
“What if he raised it? What if the Mad Indian raised that razorback? Some Indians raise hogs, do they not?”
“Oui. But you’ve seen the razorback. It is no hog. It’s a wild boar. As wild as they come. It would as soon turn on the Mad Indian as attack us.”
“But sometimes wild boars come close to Indian villages to forage for food,” Remy persisted. “It could be there is more to the razorback and the Mad Indian than we suspect.”
“You are full of silly thoughts today.”
“Go to hell, Namo.”
After that they paddled in silence. Fargo stayed out of it. The way he saw things, whether the Mad Indian did or didn’t raise the razorback was irrelevant. The orgy of death and terror must be stopped.
To their collective chagrin, they were falling farther behind. Namo and Remy paddled harder but it did no good.
“We’ll never catch him,” Remy declared.
“Don’t give up.”
“Did I say I would?”
The Mad Indian swept around a cypress and didn’t reappear.
“Where did he get to?” Namo wondered.
“Paddle, damn you.”
They flew past the same tree. Spread before them was a small island, an oasis of growth so thick as to appear impenetrable. On the shore, half in and half out of the water, bobbed the Mad Indian’s canoe, the paddle lying on the ground a few feet away.
“We have him!” Namo cried.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than an arrow streaked out of the foliage. Namo had no time to react but he was lucky—the shaft struck his paddle and was deflected.
Fargo drew his Colt and banged off two quick shots, firing at the spot the arrow came from. More cackling greeted the blasts.
“You missed,” Remy said.
The pirogue lurched to a stop next to the canoe and the three of them piled out, seeking cover.
