Red Grass River

that he’d cheated him, his father seemed aware that his brief partnership with DeSoto Tiger had not concluded well, and yet sent him to deliver to the Indian anyway, maybe for that reason. His father wasn’t one to explain his actions but he’d always told John Ashley and his brothers that the only way to deal with bulls of any sort was to take them by the horns. The boy had been apprehensive on that first delivery but the big Indian had affected remoteness and made no mention of the last time they’d seen each other and their transaction was brief and without incident. Thus had they carried on in every meeting since and the boy was content to have it that way.

This was the first time the Indian had shown up drunk. John Ashley saw that the jug the Indians were hefting was not one of his father’s. He stepped out of the skiff and nodded at the jug in DeSoto Tiger’s crooked finger and said, “Hope you boys aint switchin to another supplier. We’d hate to lose you all’s business.”

DeSoto Tiger stared at the jug as if he’d only just noticed it. The other Indian laughed and said hell no, they weren’t switching, they’d found the jug just laying there in the scrub. The Indians looked at each other and laughed. Shit, John Ashley thought, one drunk Indian’s bad enough and here I got two.

“Hell, boy, we dont drink nothin but your daddy’s wyome,” the smaller Indian said, using the Indian word for whiskey. “Everbody knows Old Joe’s stuff is the goodest.” This one’s name was Jimmy Gopher and he was a halfbreed as much scorned by Indians as by whites. John Ashley knew him for a mediocre trapper and truckling friend to DeSoto Tiger. “We don’t buy no shine cept your daddy’s,” Jimmy Gopher said. He stood up and came to the skiff and peered at the two cases inside and grinned.

John Ashley hefted each case in turn and set it on the ground and looked at DeSoto Tiger who still sat crosslegged. The Indian looked back at him for a long moment and then withdrew a clump of bills from inside his shirt and handed it up to Jimmy Gopher who passed it to the boy. The money was damp and pungent with the smell of Indian. John Ashley counted it carefully and then folded it neatly and put it in his pocket. “Well,” he said, turning to the skiff, “see you next month.”

“Have a drink fore you go,” DeSoto Tiger said, and got to his feet as lightly as rising smoke. He stood a head taller than the boy who was himself nearly six feet. He wore his bowler tilted forward so the narrow brim shadowed his eyes.

“Sorry,” John Ashley said, “but I got to get.”

“Heard you sold a bunch a egret feathers to Burris’ Store in Palm Beach,” the big Indian said. “For good money.”

John Ashley looked at him, then at Jimmy Gopher and then back at DeSoto Tiger. “I sell plumes sometimes,” he said. “Everybody knows that.”

“Heard you took them birds over by Pahokee Slough,” DeSoto Tiger said. His face held no hint of fellowship. “Everybody know Pahokee Slough’s my bird ground. That’s what everbody knows.”

Only now did John Ashley perceive that the Indian was drunker than he’d thought. He wished his brother Bob was with him. Bob always offered to come along on the deliveries to the Indians and John Ashley always said no, he could make the drops himself. And his daddy always looked at him from the head of the supper table and smiled.

“Aint nobody got a deed to no rookery,” he said, showing a grin and instantly chiding himself for it. You aint scared of this sonofabitch, he told himself, dont even wonder if you are.

The big Indian took a step toward him. “I wonder did you go shares with anybody in them feathers,” he said, “and I wonder how much did you cheat him on them.”

Jimmy Gopher leaned on a tree, grinning, watching with bright eyes. He’d opened one of the shine jugs and was sipping from it off his elbow.

DeSoto Tiger drew his knife from its belt sheath and affected to strop it on his shirtsleeve as he smiled thinly at John Ashley. The boy had a fleeting vision of Henry Little Bear weighted with his own bloody clothes as he was carried off the New River dock. He put his hand behind him and under his shirt and around the pistol grips.

The Indian grinned and stepped nearer to the boy. “What you got there, whitedove? A bible? A weapon?” He took another step toward him and John Ashley pulled out the pistol, a single-action Colt .44, and cocked it and pointed it outstretched at DeSoto Tiger’s chest. “Quit right there,” he said.

He’d never before pointed a loaded firearm at anyone but he had several times seen it done. He’d seen his first mankilling at age seven when Porter Longtree shot Morris Jones through the eye on the front steps of Kennison’s Store. There had long been bad blood between the two men and the general opinion of the killing was fairly summed up by John Ashley’s daddy when he said it couldnt have ended any other way and whichever of them got killed for sure had it coming. John Ashley had since witnessed other acts of bloodletting and seen other men killed and could not have named an acquaintance who had not. And now, pointing the .44 at DeSoto Tiger, he was pleased to feel no tremor in his gunhand even as he felt his pulse thumping in his dry throat.

DeSoto Tiger raised his hands and said, “Whoa now, boy.” He laughed and said, “Dont you know when you being wolfed?” He lowered his hands and shook his head, still grinning. He looked at Jimmy Gopher whose smile had gone weak. “Boy thought we was serious.”

Jimmy Gopher’s laugh was hollow. His eyes had gone skittish.

John Ashley lowered the gun, still unsure of the moment.

“We had you goin, huh?” the big Indian said. “Should see your face. Hell, I bet you’d jump five feet if I did this.” The Indian feinted with the knife and the boy jumped back and lost his footing on the slick landing and staggered into the water up to his knees and regained his balance and again pointed the gun at DeSoto Tiger.

“Easy now,” DeSoto Tiger said, laughing and raising a placatory palm. “See how we got you goin? Hell, boy, we just funnin. You dont want to shoot somebody’s just funnin.” He stepped forward and put his hand out to John Ashley and said. “Come on out the water.”

He gave his free hand to the Indian and DeSoto Tiger’s fingers locked around his wrist. Jimmy Gopher called “Hey Johnny” and as he turned to look at him the big one yanked him off-balance and he knew the knife was coming and he lunged sideways and felt the blade nick his neck. The big Indian’s hold was iron and the blade was on its backswing and all in the same instant the boy turned his head aside and shoved the pistol against the Indian and the knife cut through his cheek as he pulled the trigger. DeSoto Tiger grunted and fell away.

The pistol blast raised a great wingbeating cloud of shrilling white egrets off the trees. John Ashley swung the pistol toward the tree where he’d seen the shotgun and saw that the gun was still there and he caught a flash of Jimmy Gopher’s white shirt as the Indian vanished into the deeper hardwoods.

DeSoto Tiger was sitting in water to his chest with his hands clasped to his stomach, staring down at the blood rising darkly to the surface.

John Ashley slogged up onto the bank and retrieved the Indians’ shotgun and took it to his skiff and laid it inside. Then heard an agitation of water behind him and turned to see DeSoto Tiger looming huge and brightly bloodstained at his belly, his face contorted with malice as he came with one hand clawing for him and the other brandishing the knife. John Ashley shot him in the chest and the Indian stopped short and took a step back and then started for him again and the boy fired into his face and the Indian’s head jerked and his bowler tumbled from his head and he did a wobbly sidestep and fell on the sloping bank and slid in the mud to the edge of the water and under the dark hole in his forehead his open eyes held no light at all.

John Ashley felt of the cuts on his neck and cheek and neither was severe. He packed mud in the wounds to stanch the bleeding. A riot of sensations churned in his chest. He looked on the dead man and felt a confusing tangle of regret and exultation. Then said aloud: “Try to cut my head off. You damn well had it comin.”

It took a while for his pounding heart to slow, his breathing to ease.

He set the two cases of whiskey back in the skiff—and then paused to consider. He went to the Indians’ dugout and in the last light of day saw that the pelts were prime quality. They could not belong to a dead man nor to any who abandoned them. He brought the bow of the Indian dugout around and tied it to a stern ring on his skiff with a short length of line. He thought of going through DeSoto Tiger’s pockets but could not bring himself to touch the body.

Then he was poling hard in the sawgrass channel and making away into a moonless night black as ink but for a blazing spangle of stars.