by Sharpe, Jon
“Or he hates us.”
“What did we ever do to him?”
“We’re white.”
“Not everyone hates on account of skin color,” Clementine said. “I don’t.”
“He’s not you.”
“Yes, but we’re all human beings.”
Fargo grunted. She was one of those. People who took it for granted the whole world thought the same as they did.
“You do that a lot,” Clementine remarked.
Fargo turned, and stopped. It had suddenly occurred to him that everyone was at the clearing; no one was guarding the boats. Hurrying to the path to the inlet, he broke into a jog. When he reached it he breathed a sigh of relief.
The boats hadn’t been taken or cast adrift.
Climbing into one, Fargo sat and placed the Henry across his legs. At least in the boat he was somewhat safe from snakes and gators.
As if to remind him they were out there, an alligator swam past twenty yards out.
To the north, a snake was hanging from a tree, evidently waiting for prey to pounce on.
Fargo told himself that from here on out, he’d fight shy of swamps. They had a thousand and one ways to kill a man, and none of them pleasant.
A twig crunched, and down the path came Clementine Purdy, looking for all the world as if she were taking a Sunday stroll. “There you are. You ran off without saying a word.”
Fargo patted the boat. “Without these, none of us might make it back.”
“Ah.” Clementine stood near the bow and folded her arms. “I’m afraid I’d be helpless without you and the major.”
“Helpless as hell,” Fargo said.
Clementine’s lips pinched tight. “There’s no need to be insulting.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“We’ve been all through that. More than once. I have my duty. A greater cause, if you will.”
“Dying so someone can make a map doesn’t strike me as much of a cause.”
“I have the distinct impression that you don’t think very highly of me.”
“I think highly of your body.”
Clementine blinked. “How can you, at a time like this? With Judson lying back there at death’s door?”
Fargo was about to say that Judson planned to strand them and got what he deserved, when he spied movement in the vegetation. “Hold it,” he said, and went to raise his rifle.
“What is it?” Clementine asked, swiveling in the direction he was looking.
The next moment a figure hurtled from concealment with a knife in one hand and a club in the other, and sprang at her.
13
Fargo had the Henry up and pointed, and for a split instant, he hesitated.
It was a woman, not a warrior. Small, slightly built, naked from the waist up, wearing a short bear-hide skirt of sorts, split for ease of movement. Her face was twisted in fury as she let out a fierce cry and raised her club to bash Clementine Purdy over the head.
Fargo shot the club. The woman was so close he couldn’t miss, but he was gambling with Clementine’s life.
The slug smashed the club from the woman’s grasp and wrenched her arm. Yelping in pain, she stopped in her tracks but only for a second. She started at Clementine again and raised her knife.
In a bound Fargo was out of the boat. He smashed the barrel against the woman’s forearm and she yelped and the knife went flying. Sticking his foot out, he tripped her and she pitched to her knees. He pointed the Henry’s muzzle at her face and said gruffly, “That’s enough.”
She might not savvy his words but she understood the tone. Holding her wrist, she glared at him and at Clementine and said something in her tongue.
“Don’t shoot her,” Clementine said.
Fargo wasn’t about to. But someone else thought he was. Out of the growth raced the small boy. He ran to the woman and threw his arms around her neck. Fear lit his eyes, and he stood between her and the Henry, shielding her with his body.
“Her son?” Clementine guessed.
Fargo lowered the rifle, but not all the way. Moving around the pair, he kicked the flint knife and the club out of their reach.
“Why did she attack us?” Clementine asked.
“How the hell would I know?” Fargo scanned the swamp growth for more Kilatku but the woman and boy appeared to be alone.
“You could try to be nicer to people,” Clementine said. She stepped nearer to the pair, smiled, and squatted. “How do you do?” she said. “Do either of you speak English?”
They stared.
“Let me,” Fargo said, suspecting it would be useless. He tried anyway; he told them he was not their enemy in Spanish, in the Sioux tongue, in Apache, in the Blackfoot language. He might as well be speaking Martian.
The woman kept looking from him to Clementine and back again. She was a frightened doe poised to bolt.
“Look at her,” Clementine said. “Does she look in good shape to you?”
No, Fargo reflected, she didn’t. The woman was as dirty as the boy and scratched from briars and limbs. Both had their ribs showing.
“I wonder when they ate last.” Clementine smiled and slowly reached toward the woman, saying, “Don’t be afraid. I want to be your friend.”
The woman did an incredible thing. She screeched in mortal terror and flung herself and her son back onto the ground.
“What in the world?” Clementine blurted.
Clasping the boy tight, the woman babbled and shook her head, her eyes riveted to the tips of Clementine’s fingers.
“What do you make of it?”
Fargo was going to say, “How the hell should I know?” again, but said simply, “Beats me.” He bent and held out his hand to help the woman to sit up, and damned if she didn’t screech louder and skittle backward on her shoulders and hips. She stopped when he pulled his hand back.
“Strange,” Clementine said. “It’s as if she’s afraid of being touched.”
A vague recollection pricked at Fargo’s memory but he couldn’t give it form and substance.
Boots scuffed the ground, and Major Davenport and two troopers arrived. “What’s going on here?” the officer demanded, and saw the mother and her boy. “By God, two of them.”
Continuing to hold her son as if in fear for his life, the woman sat up.
“She attacked me but Skye stopped her,” Clementine said.
“So their women are as hostile as their men,” Davenport said.
“What men?” Fargo said.
“Eh?”
“We haven’t come across a single warrior yet,” Fargo pointed out.
“They’re out there,” Davenport said. “They have to be.”
“Then why haven’t they attacked?”
Davenport scratched his chin. “I confess I’m mystified. But it’s a golden opportunity. We’ll take this pair to camp and hold them until their people reveal themselves.”
“Is that wise?” Clementine asked.
“Unless we want them harassing us from now until doomsday, it is,” Davenport said. “We won’t harm them. That will show the other Kilatku we’re friendly.” He gestured at a trooper. “Private Lyle, help them to their feet.”
“I wouldn’t,” Clementine said.
Private Lyle slung his rifle and stepped closer and held out his hand.
Jumping up, the woman and the boy cried out and frantically retreated until they bumped against a boat. Halting, they held one another and quaked.
“Why, they’re scared to death,” Davenport said.
“Of what?” Clementine said.
“Isn’t it obvious? They don’t want to be taken prisoner. Not that they have any choice.” Davenport nodded at the other trooper. “Assist Private Lyle. Don�
��t lay a hand on them but keep them between you and if they try to run, stop them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Fargo went along to the clearing. He was still concerned about the boats but he was more worried that something would happen to the mother and boy and bring the wrath of the whole tribe down on their heads.
A bandage had been applied to Judson’s eye. He was unconscious, Cleon watching over him.
Bodean had recovered, and the moment Fargo appeared, Bodean strode toward him. He didn’t even glance at the mother and the boy.
Fargo thumbed back the Henry’s hammer.
“Twice now you’ve beat on me, you son of a bitch,” Bodean growled. “There won’t be a third time.”
“I couldn’t let you kill him,” Fargo said.
“He put out Judson’s eye,” Bodean snarled. “Judson might die.”
“I’m sorry for him—” Fargo lied.
“Like hell you are. You haven’t cottoned to us from the start. That fight in the saloon, and now this. I’m tellin’ you. If Judson gives up the ghost, that boy is dead. You hear me?”
“It’s up to Davenport to—” Fargo again tried to get a few words in.
“He can go to hell too, him and that female, both, with their crazy notion of makin’ friends with the Kilatku.” Bodean swore. “That boy showed us how they feel about us. It’s their hides or ours, and I don’t intend to stop breathin’.”
“You try to hurt him, I’ll stop you.”
“Next time I won’t give you the chance.” Wheeling, Bodean stormed off.
Mother and son were by the fire, flanked by troopers, whispering.
Fargo went over. He could use a gallon of whiskey but coffee would have to do. As he was taking his first sip he acquired an unwanted shadow.
“I need you to scout the island,” Major Davenport said.
“And when the Kilatku jump me, where will you be?”
“The general forced me to bring you along,” Davenport said. “He claimed you’re the best tracker alive, and the best Indian fighter, besides. Well, here’s your chance to prove it.”
“Why not let them come to us?”
“Is the great scout afraid?” Davenport taunted.
“The great scout isn’t stupid,” Fargo said.
“Something is fishy about all this,” Davenport said. “We need to know if they’re out there or if the woman and the boy attacked us on their own.”
Sergeant Morgan had come over and was listening. “I’ll go with him, sir,” he volunteered.
“I need you here,” Davenport said. “I can’t afford to lose you.”
“But you can afford to lose me?” Fargo said.
“Yes. You haven’t impressed me much so far. Here’s your chance.”
Fargo was about to tell the bastard that he didn’t give a damn what Davenport thought of him when he noticed Clementine wringing her hands and biting her lip.
“Hell,” he said.
“You’ll do it?”
Instead of answering, Fargo turned and was in the insect-and-reptile infested vegetation before he could come to his senses. He went a few yards and crouched. A mosquito buzzed his ear but he didn’t swat it. He stayed motionless, braced for a war whoop and the rush of painted forms.
No one appeared.
The flies went on buzzing and crickets went on chirping. Frogs croaked and a brown snake crawled lazily along.
Fargo not only had to watch out for the Kilatku, he had to be careful where he stepped and make sure the plants he brushed against didn’t harbor venomous death. It was nerve-racking, worse than being on a scout in Apache country. He covered barely ten yards in ten minutes.
He might have gone on at his snail’s pace but sharp cries broke out at the clearing, and Major Davenport bellowed, “Stop her, someone! Don’t let them get away!”
Behind Fargo the undergrowth crackled, and through it came the woman and her son. They were small and thin but fleet as deer and would pass within a stone’s toss of where Fargo was hunkered. Waiting until they were almost abreast of him, he darted over. His foot snagged in a vine and he tripped. He didn’t fall, but it slowed him enough that the woman and her offspring bounded past.
Fargo gave chase. Try as he might, he couldn’t gain. Sweat streaming from every pore, he avoided a coiled snake and a large spider that dangled in his path.
His instincts told him they were near the end of the island. Sure enough, he burst into the open at the water’s edge and lurched to a stop. He spotted the woman and the boy to his right.
The next heartbeat the water bubbled and roiled and out of its dark depths rose a gator.
14
Fargo’s first thought was that it was one of the giant ones and it would attack him as the other gator had done to the hapless trooper. But it wasn’t a third the size, and as fast as it had surfaced, the alligator submerged again.
Fargo went after the woman and the boy. They were hugging the shore and repeatedly glanced back. He was startled when they unexpectedly veered into the water and seemed to run across it. When he got to the spot he saw that a submerged spine of land ran from the island toward a distant hummock. Only a few inches of water covered it.
He shouldn’t be surprised that the Kilatku knew ways of navigating the swamp no one else did. They’d lived here for hundreds of years, and could travel with ease where others struggled and floundered.
He stuck after them. It could be they’d been the only ones on the island. The rest of the tribe might not know about him and the others. The mother would spread the alarm, and the next thing, a war party would be sent to exterminate the invaders.
Fargo couldn’t let that happen. He needed to overtake the pair but instead lost ground. The submerged spine wasn’t much wider than his boots and he had to go slower than he wanted.
The woman and her child reached the hummock and stopped to look back. The woman showed no fear. Why should she? She was in her element.
It surprised him that she didn’t keep fleeing. She waited until he was fifty or sixty feet out, then turned and resumed her flight. It enabled him to cut the distance by half.
Beyond the far side of the hummock was more odious swamp. A bog gurgled and burped and gave off reeking fumes.
For the next half an hour Fargo scrambled and waded through and over some of the most hellish terrain he’d ever come across. Twice he almost stepped on cottonmouths. He was passing a thick growth of reeds when he saw a huge snout and glaring eyes; he was fortunate the alligator didn’t pounce.
Mosquitoes were legion. Other insects he didn’t know the names of swooped at him. A dragonfly the size of a bird circled his head a few times before streaking off.
The woman and the boy crossed a downed cypress. When he reached it, he clambered up, only to find his wet boots and the slick bark made for a slippery combination. Halfway across, he looked down to find quicksand.
Fargo froze. He had been in quicksand before and gotten out. But something told him that if he fell, he’d be sucked under so rapidly, escape would be impossible.
Carefully sliding first one foot and then the other, he inched into the clear.
When he reached the end of the log, he let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Up ahead, the woman and the boy had once again stopped and were waiting.
“What the hell?” Fargo said. She wanted him to keep following her. She was luring him deeper in so Kilatku warriors could finish him.
For a few moments Fargo considered going back. But no. He had come this far. He would see it through. If she did lead him into an ambush, he’d go down fighting.
When he began moving, so did she.
Fargo lost track of time. He lost track of the miles.
He followed secret paths that no
white foot had ever trod, or so he thought until he came to a stretch of dry mud and beheld an old boot print.
Fargo stopped. He spied others, evidence that several whites had passed this way. The surveyors, he reckoned, and noticed that there were no tracks pointing the other way. They had gone in—and not come out again.
Land appeared. Real, honest-to-God dry land. If it was an island it was many times larger than any other.
There were trees and wildflowers and warbling birds, a patch of paradise in the depths of hell.
The woman reached the shore and once more she and her boy stopped.
This time they stayed put.
Fargo finally set foot on solid ground. He looked at her and she looked at him. He couldn’t figure out what she was up to. He didn’t point the rifle. He simply waited to see what she would do.
He wondered why she wasn’t afraid of him. Was it because he’d stopped Bodean from killing her son?
She said a few words in her own tongue.
Fargo shook his head and said, “Sorry, lady, but I don’t savvy.”
Turning, she beckoned, and headed inland along a well-worn footpath.
He sensed her village was near.
Soon the trees gave way to twenty to thirty acres of cleared land, and over forty lodges. Constructed of reeds and stripped branches, they were conical in shape with a small opening for entering and leaving and an air hole at the top.
Fargo stopped in midstride and his blood chilled in his veins. “God Almighty,” he blurted.
Bodies littered the ground. Men, women, children, infants. They had been dead a long while. Most were piles of shriveled skin and pale bones.
Strangely, few scavengers had been at them. Even the vultures had left them alone.
A great sadness came over the woman and the boy.
Her eyes filled with tears, and she gestured and spoke at length. She was trying to tell him something, something important, he suspected.
Fargo looked, trying to figure it out. He moved among the dead. Their bared teeth, their fingers clawing at the sky; these people had died grisly deaths, in great torment. He wondered why they had been left to rot.
He came to a dead woman and bent, but not too close. Her face was as sunken and shriveled as the rest but she had more skin than most. Skin marked by dark blotches, some of which had dry scabs.