Swamp Sister

raft. Mr. Ferris waded up and carefully took a position with him. He held the gun at Shad's side. 'No tricks now,' he murmured.

Shad said nothing. They shoved off and began kicking and pawing their way through the golden-heart. A fat old soft-shelled turtle came tread-legging toward them and stopped abruptly to raise its reptilian head. It looked them over without expression and decided to sound. They were halfway across.

Shad saw what was trying its best to look like a log come drifting out of a tussock – just a few little woodish-looking knots poking above the surface and leaving an almost imperceptible wake. He glanced at Mr. Ferris.

'What's wrong?'

'Kink in my leg.' He felt the. 38 dig him slightly.

'Don't get gay, Shad.'

Shad wet his lips and started kicking again. When he looked toward the tussock he saw that the 'log' had vanished. It was one of those far-out gators, he thought apprehensively. One that didn't give a damn for man or battleship. He felt like a man who steps deliberately in the path of a car, hoping to be sideswiped slightly and collect damages, but loses his nerve at the last moment and leaps back to the curb. He started to call a warning to Mr. Ferris – but stalled.

It's my only chance. It's a purely poor edge to hinge my life to, but the only one I'm apt to get.

He clamped his mouth, looked around at the water. Where was the damn thing now? What if it was coming up from the bottom to chomp his legs? Fear tingled in his buttocks, and automatically he started to haul more of him onto the raft. Right away his end tipped down with a gurgle of incoming water.

'What are you trying to do?'

Shad looked wildly at Mr. Ferris. He wanted to say it was the kink in his leg again, but he couldn't get the words started. That damn thing was coming for them, he could feel it – coming with that shopping bag it used for a mouth wide open.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

Shad couldn't hold out. He started to say gator, but it was too late. The scut-shot gator reared straight from the bottom and slammed the underside of the raft.

Shad flew up and backwards, the concussion-slam of the raft like a cannon ball in his chest, and – turquoise sky spinning into green-falling jungle – heard the CA-PLAM! of the. 38, and then he struck the water, saw it crash in over his eyes all silvery, and then it was olive-green and he was turning in it, trying to find his equilibrium, vacuum packed and without au. and black bleary shapes were thrashing around him and something – maybe Mr. Ferris' foot -struck his left ear, ramming him farther down into the throbbing shadow, and he saw a torpedo-like form coming at him and knew it was the gator and there wasn't a thing he could do about it and – Something in his left hand – the brief case. The oncoming shadow was bigger, taller, the jaws opening at right angles to the body. Shad tried to scream and swung the brief case around instinctively and into the teeth-studded mouth; felt it rip away from him as he went spinning in the gator's compressible displacement; and he was shouting, He didn't take my hand! God let me still have my hand! And a part of him tried to send a message to the muscles of the hand to clinch or not to clinch, to confirm or deny; but his nervous system was all out of whack and nothing was getting through, and the rest of him was insane panic and it made him kick and thrash and got him up and out of there right now.

He hit the surface, lunging up to his armpits for air, and he grabbed at the sky without knowing it was silly then he settled again, treading, turning wildly about, looking, and twenty feet off saw the great thrashing gator tail whip up and slam down _slam p!_ at the pond, and just a rolling glint of the ivory-tied belly and incongruously – a small human hand widespread and clutching out of the welter of water. And then everything went under and Shad didn't give a damn because he was going all arms and legs for the bank. He went crawling, water-wheezing and gasping up the bank and sagged into a soggy heap of shot nerves. He felt like an old shirt that had been manhandled on a scrub board by a husky washerwoman. Then, remembering with a start he looked down at his left wrist to see if his hand was still along. He started giggling, a low pitched, ghastly sound and couldn't seem to stop.

22

How long it had gone on he didn't know, but it seemed that all his life he had heard it – someone crying Shad – Shad – Shad over and over, and he couldn't understand it.

But it ended the giggle fit.

He sat up with his nerves vibrating like strummed guitar strings and saw Margy running along the bank; and it struck him suddenly that had she been her sister, Dorry, she would have stopped first to gawk at the Money Plane. But Margy never took her eyes off him, and for a second he thought she was going to run right over him. And then she was down in the mud and in his arms and clinging to him tightly.

He got her set back from him a bit so he could see her face, and he tried to be angry with her and said, 'Thought I told you not to budge till I come?' But he was too happy because he was alive and she was alive and with him, and he pulled her back to him and hugged her again, keeping one hand in her hair and liking its tactile quality.

'I heered that shot,' she said. 'I thought – I just couldn't wait no longer -'

'All right. Calm down. Nothing's wrong now. That shot was just Mr. Ferris having his last say.'

She straightened up on her knees and looked at him, and she'd never looked prettier to him, with her blouse all catclawed and her face mud-streaked and her hair wild and going every-which-way.

'What happened to him? Did you kill him?'

'No. He's down in the bottom of the slough gitting his self gator-drowned.' And that gave him the trembles again because it might have been him. 'I never seen such a gator. He was pure-out crazy'

She turned and looked at the water. The surface was placid and black except where the reflection smeared it green. She shivered.

'What about Jort and Sam Parks?'

'Dead. At least Jort be. Sam's gone off coo-coo in the pindowns.' He thought for a moment. 'Margy, Mr. Ferris was a thief – just like the rest of us.'

She didn't care about Mr. Ferris.

'You didn't find out nothing about Dorry, Shad?'

He looked at the water. He had a pretty good idea what had happened to Dorry. He reckoned that like Holly and Sam she was long gone without a trace. 'No,' he said. 'She probably run off with some drummer. We'll probably hear some day'

Margy didn't pursue it, but she didn't believe it either. She held Shad's hand. It amazed him that she hadn't once asked about the money.

'That eighty-thousand dollars is down to the bottom of the slough,' he told her.

She nodded. 'Let it stay there.'

He looked at her. 'What?'

'Let it stay there. That's where hit belongs.'

He couldn't believe her. 'You done hit your head on a breather er something? _That money's ours_. Hit belongs to you and me, Margy.'

She looked down at the mud without expression and shook her head.

'No, it ain't ours. It ain't nobody's. I don't want it.'

'Well, I'll be bitched fer fair.' He stood up and started taking down his pants.

'What you fixing to do?'

'That don't take no heap of guesses. Fixing to git me into that slough and find my money'

She got up and moved back from him. 'No. No, Shad. Don't go to do it. I don't want you to. I don't want you gator-et.'

He stripped the soggy pants from one leg. 'Stop fretting. That old gator is long gone to his cave by now. Having Mr. Ferris fer Sunday dinner.'