'Sam! Look a-here! It's his skiff. Old Shad's gone to earth!'
Jort.
Shad grimaced and readjusted the dead log against the living tree. The blame thing was as heavy as petrified wood. He balanced it where he wanted it – just resting on the edge – and gave it a tentative prod. The log wobbled precariously. Good enough. He skinned down the cypress trailing the creeper after him, looked around and selected a root close to the ground yet with a three-inch clearance, and threaded the vine through it and drew it out onto the trail.
The run wasn't but two feet wide, and fronds were hanging over and touching down every which way, and that would make it just that much harder for Sam to notice the trigger. He stretched the free end of the vine across the path, under the fronds, and tied it to another root drawing it just tight enough to ease off the slack.
Then he cut a frond and hurriedly swept away his tracks around the area. That Sam could get by on less giveaway than that. Finished, he started stepping off new tracks, going toward the widow-maker; stepped over the trigger and went on his way.
It was a crude sort of deadfall, he knew, because he hadn't had time to lay out the job properly But you just couldn't tell what you might catch when you cast your net – even if the net had holes.
Sam would be in the lead and he'd be coming with his nose to the trail like a vacuum cleaner, eyeing every blade of grass, every leaf and indentation in the ground, and maybe he'd blunder into the trigger before it could click in his brain just what it was. Yeah. That's the way he hoped it would work. With Sam out of the way he could lose Jort and Mr. Ferris. Lose 'em for good and all.
He didn't waste any time getting across the island. He was eager to see just what was waiting for him beyond. And when he did it was like a slap from the hand of God. Badlands.
First off it was a good-sized shallow prairie, studded with small hummocks; but swinging on around and beyond, and God only knew how far, was a thicket of pin-down, hurrah bushes and titi the likes of which he never dreamed could exist.
'The end of nowhere,' he whispered in dull awe. 'So blame far out the hoot owls nest with water turkeys.'
It was a trap all right, and it was ironic when he called to mind the one he'd just set for Sam. You pure-out reap what you sow. He'd known for an hour just what it was he had to do, but he'd stalled it off right down to the fag end of the inevitable. But I got to have something to go at 'em with. You cain't match an eight-inch knife against carbines and shotguns and expect to come off sassy and without more holes in you than God intended. Then he remembered the bow and arrows.
It wasn't much but it was going to have to do. He trotted back into the jungle, reaching here, there, any- damn-where for a suitable sapling. He found one. It had spring but not too much, and he started hacking it free.
That goddam Sam must a picked up my markers; and that means I'm as good as dead, and so is Mr. Ferris and probably Margy too – less I git them first. But if I kill Sam and Jort, I got Mr. Ferris to kill too, and there's no way around it and escape a murder charge.
A shout rang high and urgent, splitting his thoughts like an axe blow.
'Look out thar!'
And he heard the dull crash of the widow-maker.
A moment later Jort's voice bellowed all over the swamp. 'Fer the love of God, Sam! You just about to got me logmashed dead! You suppose to be keeping your goddam eyes open!'
And Sam's cry, all squeaky with after reaction, 'Well, goddam-a-mighty! I done spotted hit, didn't I? You ain't deadfalled, is you?'
'No, but I'm just as well shoulder-brokt, is what I am!'
Shad couldn't hear the rest, and it didn't matter anyhow – he'd missed them, missed every damn one, and now they'd be on their guard.
He cut loose a stretch of grapevine and ran for the prairie. The panic was right with him now, hugging him like a wiry boy riding bareback the first time.
He went sloshing across the water, passing the smaller hummocks until he found one as long and fat as a fair-sized shanty and three-four foot high with thick green reed. He climbed up and in, lunging and worming and sprawling toward the center, hacking at the blame Moses reed. He went to work shaping his weapon, notching the bow nocks, skinning down the hunk of vine.
The world was a mean dog. Turn your back, step out of line, and it bit you good. The world didn't ask for you, didn't want you; and if your folks were stupid or careless enough to bring you into it, the world set out to do its best to get rid of you. If you were tough you might dodge disease, if you were lucky you might escape or live through accidents, but it made you pay for living.
And when you came into the world you had only one privilege and that was the right to howl. And even then if you howled too loud or too long someone or something would come along with a big stick and close your mouth. And it was like that even at the end. So you clench your teeth and you do your howling inside where only you can hear it.
If you have it, all right; you fight like a wildcat in a vice to hang onto hit. But if you ain't got it, and they ain't noway of gitting it, then you just as well go out in the swamp and drown yourself, or go put the lookout end of a 12-gauge in your mouth and tap off the trigger with your big toe.
And even if it was legal money they wouldn't let him keep it. They'd whack him with taxes. They'd clean him down to the change in his jeans and say thanks and look us up again if you ever get another fortune. So you learned to get in there and grab and hold what you got and keep your big damn mouth shut about it.
And now he was going to have to kill three men, or try to, and one of them would probably kill him. And in the vivid moment before it happened it would mean a great deal to him, but once it was over it wouldn't matter to anyone and the world would make another check mark on its slate and look around to see who it could mash next.
'God,' he said. 'God, God.'
There was a crash of thicket somewhere nearby on the island, but when he looked around he found he was too deep in the tules to see anything. He could hear though.
'Well, I'll be double-damned! I never seen nothing like this here afore.' Jort.
'Ner me neither.' Sam.
'Must be the pure-out dead center of the hull shebang! Bet nobody ben here since way back when the devil weren't no more than knee high to a toad-frog.'
And then the tone but not the words of Mr. Ferris speaking.
And Sam answering, 'No sir. Ain't Shad ner nobody else fool enough to git him into that pin-down hell.'
'Not draggin no gal with him, he ain't.'
'Jort, I done tolt you he ain't got that little gal no more. The tracks cold show that.'
'Mebbe so. But what I want to know is where's he at now?'
'I cain't have the answer to ever'thing, Jorty.'
Shad started crawling from center out and worked into a mashed down place where some recent animal had made a nest. He could see through the tule-screen now, could see the three of them standing on the bank with the island behind them. He went back to work frantically He cut three thirty-inch reeds; they were slender and with a fair heft to them, not all air inside. He sharpened the three piles and then began notching the string nocks at the other ends. For feathers he used soft, pubescent cottonweed leaves, running them through the nocks where he'd split the ends.
Something splashed and he looked up. They were moving into the water, Jort and Sam fanning out, Jort carrying a shotgun, Sam with a carbine, and Mr. Ferris staying back near the island with no weapon at all as far as Shad could tell.
'He's in one of these here tussocks, Jorty,' Sam called.
'Well spread a little, cain't you? Stop riding my tail. He ain't armed you know, Sam, er he'd've bush-whacked us sooner.'
'Well – yeah -'
There wasn't time to make more arrows. Shad humped over on his knees, pushed two of the arrows point
