by Sharpe, Jon
Fargo was racking his brain. He might jump one but the other would shoot him. He needed a distraction of some kind.
“You’re lookin’ mighty worried,” Bodean noticed, and laughed. “In a little bit you’ll be worried a lot more.”
“I wouldn’t want to be them,” Judson said.
Fargo hated being helpless. His instinct was to fight. He scanned the swamp, hoping against hope someone from the settlement might pass by or pay the trapper a visit.
“Do you admit the truth even to yourselves?” Clementine asked the pair.
“What truth, bitch?” Bodean said.
“Cleon told us how you planned to strand the whole party. Yet now you claim we’re to blame for all you’ve done. You’re despicable.”
“Keep flappin’ your gums,” Bodean said. “Make it worse for yourself.”
“You can only kill me once.”
“It’s how we kill you that counts. You’ll scream your lungs out before you die, and that’s no lie.”
“Sure ain’t,” Judson said.
Fargo came to the canoe and stopped. He couldn’t imagine what the pair had in mind.
“Go left into those trees yonder,” Bodean commanded. “Nice and slow.”
“My only regret is that I won’t get to watch you hang,” Clementine said. “Texas does that with their criminals, I hear.”
“Only when there’s proof they broke the law,” Judson said.
“In your case, bitch, there won’t be a lick of evidence,” Bodean said, and laughed.
The woods grew to the swamp’s edge. Fargo considered grabbing Clementine’s hand and making a run for it through the trees but Bodean stepped in close and pressed the rifle to his spine.
“I know what you’re thinkin’. It’s what I’d think if’n I was in your boots.”
Ten yards in they came to a half-moon inlet fringed by grass. Water lilies covered much of the surface, hiding whatever lurked beneath.
To Fargo’s consternation, stakes had been pounded into the ground, and next to each was a short coil of rope.
“We got it set up earlier,” Bodean said. “Beau told us this was the best spot. You’ll find out why soon enough.”
“Lie down between the stakes,” Judson said.
“I will not,” Clementine responded, and whirling, she bolted toward the trees.
Judson was on her before she took two steps. He slammed the stock of his rifle against her temple and she crumpled like a stricken doe.
There was nothing Fargo could do. Bodean would blow his spine apart if he so much as twitched.
“You better not have killed her, Jud,” Bodean said.
“I was careful,” Judson said. Seizing Clementine’s wrist, he dragged her over.
Bodean nudged Fargo. “Lie down, damn you. Take off that hat first.”
With Judson holding a rifle to his face, Fargo was forced to submit to having his wrists and ankles tied to stakes. He worried that Bodean would take off his boot and discover the Arkansas toothpick but the swamp man looped the rope around the boot and tied the rope so tight, he couldn’t move.
“Now for the government gal.”
Clementine groaned as she was tied.
The pair stood back and regarded their handwork with sadistic pleasure.
“We’re all set,” Judson said.
“It will be somethin’ to see. And if it works, folks will never suspect we had a hand in it.”
Bodean squatted next to Fargo. “You’re probably wonderin’ why we’re goin’ to so much bother. It’d be a sight easier to blow your brains out or slit your damn throats.”
Fargo glared.
“But like I said, we want you to suffer. And I can’t think of anything that would make you suffer more than bein’ ate alive.”
Fargo glanced at the water lilies.
“I can guess what you’re thinkin’. That there’s a gator in that pool. But a gator would drag you into the water and drown you and take you to its den.” Bodean shook his head. “It’d be over too quick.”
“And we wouldn’t get to see you die,” Judson said.
“Gators ain’t the only things that eats folks, though,” Bodean said. “There’s bears. But Beau made good money off their hides and kilt every bear he came across and there ain’t any hereabouts.”
“He liked cats, though,” Judson said.
Bodean nodded. “He liked cats so much, he couldn’t bring himself to kill the painter that lives on this island. You’d call it a mountain lion, I reckon.”
“And guess where that painter comes damn near every evenin’ for a drink?” Judson took up the account, and nodded at the inlet.
“Cats like to play with their prey and take their time eatin’ it,” Bodean said.
“And we’d get to watch,” Judson said.
“We need to make sure your scent doesn’t scare it off, though,” Bodean said. “Painters can be skittish of people.”
“That’s right,” Jud said. “We have to lure it in with somethin’ it can’t resist.” He drew the knife on his hip.
“Can you guess what that is?”
24
Jud grinned and wagged the blade. “Where to cut? The neck and the wrist, you’d bleed out before the painter comes.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” Bodean said. “How about the forehead?”
Judson tapped the tip of the blade on Fargo’s brow, each tap bringing a prick of pain. “Not a bad idea.”
Fargo boiled with fury.
“Right along the hair there,” Bodean said.
Grinning wider, Judson cut from left to right along Fargo’s hairline.
The pain wasn’t as bad as Fargo thought it would be. He felt a wet sensation and suddenly blood was in both eyes. He blinked to clear them but the world was a red blur.
Judson laughed. “There. That should do it. It’ll dry before the painter comes but he’ll still smell it.”
“Cats have good noses,” Bodean said.
“Now for the bitch.”
Fargo struggled to stay calm. He went on blinking and tossed his head but his vision only became worse. It struck him that if the blood did dry, he wouldn’t be able to see when the cougar came.
“It’s done,” Judson declared.
Fargo glimpsed vague movement.
“Beau told us the painter always comes along about sundown so you have a few hours yet,” Bodean said. “Think of those sharp teeth and claws while you’re waitin’.”
Judson laughed.
“A half hour or so before the sun goes down, we’re goin’ to take the canoe off a ways and watch from where we can’t be seen.”
“We wouldn’t want the cat to catch our scent,” Judson said. “Might spook it.”
“Any last words?” Bodean taunted.
Fargo refused to give them the satisfaction of venting his rage.
“No?” Bodean said. “Well, I have some for you. After this is all over, we’re helpin’ ourselves to that stallion of yours.”
“Not that we have much need for a horse to ride,” Judson said.
“No,” Bodean said. “We get around mainly by boat and walkin’.”
“Horse meat, though, sure is tasty,” Judson said, and smacked his lips.
“We’ll think of you as we’re roastin’ your animal over our fire.”
“And as we’re bitin’ into a juicy piece,” Judson threw in.
They cackled.
Fargo listened to their footsteps fade. His right eye was still covered in blood but his left had cleared a little. Turning his head, he saw Clementine with blood over her brow; only a little had gotten into her eyes.
Coiling every sinew in his body, he tested the ropes and stakes. First one limb
and then the other and then all four at once, straining with all his strength. Not one stake moved. They were imbedded deep.
Fargo sank back. Think, he told himself. He had a few hours yet. It wasn’t hopeless.
Clementine moaned. She was coming around. Her whole body started and her eyes snapped open and she looked around in a panic.
“You’re all right,” Fargo said. “They cut you but not deep.”
His voice seemed to soothe her. She blinked and shuddered and swallowed.
“Where did they get to?”
Fargo told her everything.
“A cougar is coming?” Clementine said in disbelief. “They hardly ever attack people. Do you think this one will really eat us?”
“There’s no predicting.” Fargo would rather not be there to find out.
“They’re insane, the pair of them.”
“Sons of bitches, yes,” Fargo said, “but as sane as you or me.”
“How can you defend them? Who in their right mind stakes human beings out for animals to eat? It’s torture, pure and simple.”
Fargo could have told her that Apaches and other tribes tortured their enemies all the time, and they weren’t insane, either.
Clementine did as he had done and pulled at each of her stakes. “It’s no use.”
“We can’t give up.” Fargo tried again. He tried until sweat poured from every pore and his arms and legs hurt like hell. Subsiding, he gathered his strength for another attempt.
“I refuse to die like this,” Clementine said. “It’s humiliating.”
“More so than being shot?”
“Don’t patronize me. Who wants it on their headstone that they were eaten by a cougar?”
“I doubt Bodean and Judson will go to that much trouble.”
“My family and friends will. They won’t rest until they learn the truth. They’ll find my remains and take them back East and give me a proper burial.”
“If you say so.”
Twice more Fargo sought to move a stake, any stake. Twice more he failed. Exhausted, he lay staring at the clouds through his one eye.
“Skye?” Clementine said softly.
Fargo grunted.
“The swamp,” Clementine whispered. “God in heaven, the cougar isn’t the only thing that might eat us.”
Fargo raised his head. At first he didn’t see what she was talking about. Then a water lily moved, and he saw the tip of a snout and the eyes of an alligator. “It’s a small one. It won’t bother us.”
“Are you sure?”
No, Fargo wasn’t, but he didn’t tell her that. And where there was a small one there might be a big one.
He couldn’t afford to worry about gators. He had a greater worry; namely, to get free before the painter appeared.
To that end, he grit his teeth and heaved against the stakes holding his wrists. Both had been pounded in so far, the tops of the stakes were practically flush with the ground.
But this wasn’t the Rockies where the ground was as hard as iron. This was swamp soil. Soft soil. Easy to dig in. Eventually, he should be able to loosen one or both.
He concentrated on that and nothing else. He surged against the ropes until his arms and shoulders couldn’t take the pain anymore, and rested a bit. As soon as the pain faded, he surged again. Over and over and over, so many times over the next couple of hours, he lost count. His shoulders grew so sore, moving them was agony. His wrists became chafed and bloody. Every muscle in his arms ached. He didn’t care.
For once Clementine stayed mostly quiet. She told him when the small gator submerged. She mentioned a large snake that glided past.
The sun was a golden bowl of fire on the western horizon when she said his name.
“I can see the canoe! Bodean and Judson are going out a ways, as they said they would.”
Fargo was running out of time. His body was a welter of pain. Steeling himself, he tried yet again.
The right stake moved. Not a lot. A fraction, only.
Almost fiercely, he worked it back and forth. It moved only by fractions but that was the thing with a stake. Once you moved a stake a little, it became easier. This one loosened rapidly. “Are they watching us?”
“I don’t think so. They’re talking and drinking from a jug.”
Fargo tugged at the stake. It moved a tenth of an inch. A quarter of an inch. Then he could move it half an inch. He tugged harder, tugged until he thought he’d tear his arm from its socket, until the torment was enough to make him want to cry out. The stake rose an inch. He rested for all of thirty seconds and went at it again. The stake rose another inch. Rest. Pull. Rest. Pull. The stake rose a good five inches but it wasn’t enough. “How goddamn long is this thing?” he fumed, and exerted all the strength he had left in his body.
The stake popped free.
Fargo lay back and looked at it, his shoulder throbbing. The stake was over a foot long, a straight piece of tree limb that Bodean or Judson had whittled to a point. “Where are they now?”
“Making for some reeds. I think they intend to hide there to watch. Their backs are to us at the moment.”
“Good.” Fargo twisted and gripped the stake that held his left arm with his right hand. He pushed, then pulled, putting all his weight into it. Pushed, pulled, pushed, pulled. This time it didn’t take as long. In less than a minute the stake was loose enough that when he wrenched, it slowly rose higher until, with a gasp, he pulled it all the way out.
Exhausted, he sank back. He made sure to position his arms so that it appeared they were still tied to the stakes.
“They’re in the reeds,” Clementine reported. “They’re turning the canoe. I can see their faces.”
Fargo had done all he could for the moment. Should he try to free his legs, Bodean and Judson would likely shoot him.
“What are you waiting for?” Clementine asked. “Do me.”
“Glad to,” Fargo said. “Once we’re out of this goddamn swamp.”
“What? No. I meant pull my stakes out.”
“They’re watching us.”
“Do it quick, before they can get here.”
“They have rifles,” Fargo reminded her.
“Oh.” Clementine frowned. “Damn. And I have to—you know—so badly.”
Fargo looked at her.
“Well, I do. My bladder isn’t as strong as yours. I can’t drink a cup of tea and not have to go off in the bushes.”
“It’s called taking a piss.”
“I asked you before not to be crude.”
Fargo looked at the stakes that held her, and at the swamp, and the reeds twenty yards out, and was about to tell her that “crude” was the least of her problems, when Clementine glanced past him, toward the woods, and stiffened. He knew what he would see before he turned his head.
The painter had come for its evening drink. In every respect it was a copy of the cougars that prowled the Rockies except that its coat was more gray than brown and its tail was thicker and shorter.
The thing was huge. Possibly the largest mountain lion Fargo had ever seen.
The instant he looked at it, it bared its fangs and growled.
25
“Don’t make a sound,” Fargo said quietly, and even though she was staked to the ground, he added, “and don’t move.”
Its belly brushing the grass, the cougar stalked toward him.
Fargo’s mouth went dry. The only defense he had were the stakes. But if he used them, Bodean and Judson would know his arms were loose.
The cougar stopped. Its tail twitched and it tilted its head and sniffed.
A chill rippled through Fargo. The cat had smelled the blood. And it was well known that cats loved to lick blood when they devoured prey.
“Skye,�
�� Clementine whispered.
“Shut the hell up.”
The cougar tensed at the sound of their voices, and snarled.
Fargo had no choice but to resort to the stakes if the thing attacked. They were the only weapons he had. Then he remembered. “Do you still have that derringer?”
“I put it in my pack,” Clementine whispered, “and the pack is in the boat.”
“Wonderful.” Fargo thought of the Arkansas toothpick, so near to his hand and yet so far.
And then the mountain lion was next to him.
Fargo scarcely breathed.
The cat breathed, though, on his face. Warm puffs tingled his cheek. The cougar bent its head and for a few heart-stopping moments he feared it was going to sink its fangs into him. Instead, to his amazement, its tongue flicked out and it licked the dry blood.
Clementine gasped.
The cat glanced at her and went back to licking.
Fargo held his breath. The tongue rasped like sandpaper. A few more licks and the cougar accomplished what would take five minutes of hard scrubbing; it licked his face clean.
Now, Fargo thought, it would get down to eating him.
But no. The cougar straightened and looked down at him, and purred. Just like a house cat or an alley cat. He knew that mountain lions often purred when eating, or when a mother was nursing her young.
“It likes you,” Clementine whispered.
No, it liked his blood, Fargo knew, and it might have a craving for more.
Then, incredibly, the big cat turned and sauntered off into the woods without a backward look.
“Sweet Jesus,” Clementine breathed.
Caked in cold sweat, Fargo moistened his mouth and swallowed. For a minute there he’d forgotten about Bodean and Judson but their angry shouts reminded him he was still in the frying pan.
“What the hell?”
“Come back here, you stupid painter! You’re supposed to eat them!”
The canoe nosed out of the reeds and Bodean and Judson paddled toward shore.
“They’re coming,” Clementine anxiously declared.