Bayou Trackdown (15 page)

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.

“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.

Fargo flattened behind a log and replaced the spent cartridges. The undergrowth was ominously still.

Namo whispered his name to get his attention. “One of us must stay here to keep the madman from getting away while the other two go in after him.”

“I’m not staying,” Remy said, and before they could think to stop him, he rose and plunged into the vegetation.

“What is the matter with him today?” Namo asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went in after him.

Fargo swore. He was the one who should go; he was the better tracker. Shoving the Colt into his holster, he rested the Sharps’s barrel on the log and scoured the greenery.

A troubling thought struck him. What if the Mad Indian picked that island for a reason? In the dense tangle the madman could easily pick them off.

A fly buzzed his ear.

A centipede crawled along the log.

The quiet was unnerving.

Fargo kept expecting to hear a shout or a shot. He did hear a slight sound behind him in the water, and twisted. The barest of ripples disturbed the surface. A fish or a snake, he reckoned, and faced the vegetation.

A bird screeched.

A cricket chirped.

Another sound behind him made Fargo turn his head a second time. There were more ripples. Small ones. The same fish or snake or maybe a frog or turtle, he figured.

The minutes crawled.

Fargo thought he heard voices. Then, from far off, Remy yelled his name. Quickly rising, Fargo ran a dozen yards in. “Where are you?”

Remy yelled again but it was impossible to tell what he was saying.

“I can’t hear you! What’s wrong?”

Again Remy shouted but only one word was clear. “Slipped.”

“I still didn’t hear you!”

“Watch out! We think he slipped past us into the swamp!”

“The swamp?” Fargo repeated. Why would the Mad Indian go into the swamp on foot? The answer hit him like a five-ton boulder. Whirling, he flew back to the pirogue and the canoe—only they weren’t there.

Forty feet out the Mad Indian, only his head and arms showing, was paddling the canoe as fast as he could paddle. Not quite that far, the pirogue was drifting.

Fargo had a choice to make. The Mad Indian or the pirogue. It was really no choice at all. Without the pirogue they were stranded. He set down the Henry, shucked the Colt and placed it next to the rifle, sat and tugged off his boots. By then the Mad Indian had vanished, but not the pirogue.

Trying not to think of gators and cottonmouths, Fargo waded in. It didn’t help that he couldn’t see under the surface. Anything could be down there.

The water rose to his knees. It rose to his waist. Kicking off, he swam after the pirogue. It was moving faster. A current had caught it.

Fargo pumped his arms and legs. He was a fair swimmer, but only fair. His skin never crawled as it was crawling now. He hated this, hated it with all he was.

To his left were floating plants he didn’t know the name of. As he came up to them, they bulged upward. Something was underneath, and moving toward him.

Fargo wished he had the Colt. He wished it even more when an alligator’s snout appeared. Then the eyes and the rest of the head. It was staring at him. He swam faster.

The short distance to the pirogue seemed like a mile.

Fargo glanced back just as the alligator sank under the water. Relief coursed through Fargo. He thought the gator had gone back under the plants. But no, a second later it reappeared, all of it this time, its tail flicking as it gave chase in an almost leisurely fashion.

It didn’t matter that the gator wasn’t much over five feet long. Its mouth was rimmed with the same sharp teeth as all other gators.

It could rip him open and take him under just as a bigger one would.

Fargo swam harder. Twenty feet to the pirogue, and the gator was more than halfway to him. He realized he wouldn’t reach it in time. Stopping, he dog-paddled and brought his legs up to his chest. He had to pry at his pant leg to get hold of the Arkansas toothpick.

The alligator slowed and circled. Evidently it was unsure if he was suitable prey.

Fargo held the knife under the water and turned to keep the gator in front of him. He knew how fast they could strike. He also watched its tail. A blow from that could stun him and make him an easy meal.

The gator swam slowly.

Maybe it was only curious but Fargo couldn’t count on that. From the island came yells. Remy and Namo were coming but they were a ways off yet.

“Fargo? Have you seen the Indian?”

“Why don’t you answer?”

Fargo wanted to but it might provoke the alligator into attacking. The thing was beginning another circle. He continued to turn but his legs were growing tired. He couldn’t tread water forever.

“Fargo? Where are you?”

Fargo took a gamble. They had rifles. They could scare the alligator off or send it to the bottom. “Here!” he hollered. “Come quick!”

The gator exploded into motion, coming at him with its mouth agape. Fargo kicked to one side and the jaws snapped shut inches from his chest. In an effort to keep them closed he grabbed at the snout and nearly lost his fingers. Swimming backward to put distance between them, he felt something bump his right leg. Something alive. Something that coiled around his leg as a snake would do. He glanced down but couldn’t see what it was.

“Hell!”

A gator near him and a snake under him.

Fargo kicked but the snake—if it was one—clung on. And just then the alligator came at him, going for his neck and face. Which was exactly what Fargo wanted it to do. Twisting, he thrust up and in, sinking the toothpick to the hilt in the gator’s throat.

In a twinkling the gator turned and swam for its plant sanctuary, the water growing bright with blood.

Fargo kicked at whatever was wrapped around his one leg and whatever it was slid off. He looked for the snake to rise up and bite him but nothing appeared. Not wasting another moment, he swam for the pirogue, which had lodged against a moss-encrusted cypress. He pulled himself up and over and lay on the bottom, grateful to be alive. A shaft of sunlight warmed his face but the rest of him was soaked. He slowly sat up and got hold of one of the paddles.