that he could help, and saw that there wasn't one. Clearly she intended to do all the paddling herself. She gestured for him to keep his head down, then settled into a steady rhythm with the paddle. It bit quietly into the water and pushed them along, first on one side of the pirogue, then the other. The splashes were so faint that Longarm doubted if they could be heard more than a few feet away.
He could still hear Royale's men shouting among themselves as they searched for him and Millard, though, and the growing frustration was plain to hear in their voices. There had been no more shots, which gave Longarm reason to hope that Millard had gotten away. After having such a perfect setup for his investigation fall into his lap, he hated the idea of having to start over if Millard wound up dead at the hands of Royale's men.
More streams intersected the one on which they were traveling, and Longarm quickly grew confused by the twists and turns of the route that the young woman was following. He knew that the shouts of Royale's men were dying away in the distance behind them, however, and for the moment, that was all he cared about. His lovely young rescuer and guide, self-appointed though she might be, was doing an excellent job of getting him out of a whole mess of trouble. Longarm slipped his Colt back in its holster, figuring that he no longer needed it, at least for the time being.
Within half an hour, they were out of the marshes and back in the bayou country, with huge cypresses spreading their limbs over the twisting, slow-moving waterways. Now that she didn't have to worry so much about noise, the young woman paddled with stronger strokes, and the pirogue slid easily over the water.
'I'm mighty obliged for what you did back there,' Longarm said, breaking the silence between them. 'Reckon you saved my bacon, ma'am.'
She turned her head and flashed a dazzling smile at him. 'This bay-konn of yours, him is good with the hush puppies, no?' Her Cajun accent was thick, but the words still sounded soft and musical coming from her.
Longarm chuckled. 'I suppose you may be right. I'm Custis Parker.'
'Cussstisss,' she repeated, drawing out the name. 'Name is Claudette, mine.'
'Well, Claudette, you came along just in time. Those fellas who were looking for me would've found me pretty soon, and when they did they'd have done their best to put some bullets in my hide.'
She nodded as she paddled, and without looking back at him, she said, 'Knew they wanted to kill you, I did. Heard 'em yellin' 'bout it. Figure any man in so much trouble, gotta help him.'
'You know who those other gents were?'
She shrugged her shoulders without breaking the rhythm of her paddling. 'Smuggler men.' The distaste in her voice was evident.
'You don't like the smugglers? Lots of folks in this part of the country are mixed up in it, I hear.'
Claudette shook her head. 'Other people, not me. I catch the crawfish, trap the otter and the nutria for their furs, get by jus' fine.'
'What about your family?' asked Longarm.
Again, she shook her head. 'Gran'pere the last one left, an' the sickness take him last winter, it did. Now jus' me, but I don't mind.'
'Where do you live?'
She brought the paddle back into the pirogue and used her right hand to point. 'My home, there.'
Longarm leaned over to look past her, and saw that she was pointing at a shack built on the edge of the bayou, part of it extending over the water on its stilts like some of the others he had seen today. This one was surrounded by thick brush and cypress trees, however, so that it seemed even more cut off from the rest of the world as it perched on the edge of the slow-moving water. Claudette turned and smiled at Longarm again, then resumed paddling toward the ramshackle cabin.
There was a crude ladder built on the side of the shack that hung over the water, and Claudette sent the pirogue skimming straight toward it. As they came alongside, she caught hold of the ladder, which led up to a door mounted on sagging leather hinges. She stood up, steadying herself with the ladder, and tied the pirogue to it with a stout cord. Then she climbed up to the door and opened it, and Longarm couldn't help but admire the play of the muscles in her legs and rear end under the thin dress. She looked back over her shoulder and beckoned for Longarm to follow her.
He reached up and grabbed the ladder, waiting until Claudette had disappeared into the cabin before he started up. When he stepped through the open door into the shack, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Here under the cypress trees, the world was cloaked in perpetual green shadows, but the light was even dimmer inside the cabin. He saw Claudette moving on the other side of the single room, and after a few seconds he could tell that she was starting a fire in an old wood-burning stove.
'Heat you up some gumbo, I will,' she said. 'He's gonna fill up your belly. Mighty tasty, I guarantee.'
Now that she mentioned it, he was getting hungry, Longarm realized. It had been a long time since breakfast in the hotel dining room this morning. He figured it was well past mid-afternoon, and when he pulled out his watch and flipped the cover open, he saw that he was right.
'Pretty-pretty watch,' said Claudette when she saw what he was doing. 'Gran'pere, he have him a watch like that. When he die, bury it with him, I did.'
'Looks like you could have used it,' commented Longarm as he put his own watch away.
Claudette waved a hand to indicate their surroundings and said, 'Time, she don't matter here in the bayou country.'
Longarm knew what she meant. In this region of heat and water and lush vegetation, this ever-shifting borderland between the sea and the shore, one day was much like the next. There were few changes, few reasons for anyone to know exactly what time it was.
He looked around the inside of the cabin. Besides the stove, it was furnished with a rough-hewn table, several rickety-looking chairs, and a narrow bed with a straw mattress. Through a window in the front wall, he saw a hammock strung between two posts that held up a rotting porch roof.
Claudette noticed him looking around, and she dropped her gaze to the unpainted planks of the floor as she said, 'This a mighty sorry place to live, you're thinkin', Custis. And you're right.'
