“So the white dogs say,” the man said, and cackled. “What will you do now that you have caught me?” And he laughed again.
“I’m not your enemy.”
“All whites are my enemies. I will hate your kind until the day I die.”
“Why? What did whites ever do to you? And where did you learn to speak the white tongue?”
The Mad Indian pushed up off the ground, his bony fists clenched, his teeth bared. “What did the whites do?
From over by the fire Namo Heuse yelled, “Fargo, is someone with you? What is going on?”
The Mad Indian glared at the Cajuns and then at Fargo. “By the words of the black robes will you die! An eye for an eye, they told my people! An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth!”
“The black robes?” Fargo repeated. “Do you mean priests?”
The old man threw his head back and howled with vicious hate. “Black robes! Black robes! Black robes!” he cried while hopping up and down, first on one foot and then the other.
“What the hell?”
The Mad Indian pointed a gnarled finger at Fargo’s chest. “It kills you! It kills you and I am happy! What do you think of that, white dog?”
“No wonder they call you mad.”
“Mad?” the old Indian said, and did more prancing. “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!”
Namo and Clovis were running toward them, Namo with Halette in his arms. “Who is that, Fargo?”
“The local lunatic.”
Suddenly the Mad Indian whirled and sprang to his canoe. With unexpected speed he swung up and over the gunwale, scooped up the paddle from the bottom, and commenced a flurry of backstrokes. “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!” he tittered insanely.
Namo came to a stop. “It’s him! The Mad Indian!”
“If he were any madder he’d be rabid.”
“Shoot him!” Clovis urged.
“What for?” Fargo wasn’t about to kill an unarmed old man whose only offense, if it could be called that, was that he was completely out of his mind.
The canoe was twenty feet out and still retreating. Another cackle mocked them, along with, “All of you will die! You’ll see! This is his swamp, not yours! He has come from the time before to slay and punish!”
“What is he talking about?” Clovis asked.
“Beats the hell out of me.”
The canoe and its crazed occupant melted into the ink and the moss. The lapping of the paddle faded.
“First the monster, then the Mad Indian,” Namo said. “It must be true, what people say, that the two are linked.”
“How can that be,
“I don’t know, son.”
Nor did Fargo, but he did have an idea about something else. “It was the fire,” he remarked.
“What was?”
“The reason the monster, as you call it, didn’t attack us. I suspect it was afraid of the fire.”
Namo grinned excitedly. “If that is the case, we can use fire to trap it and kill it.”
“If it doesn’t kill us first,” Clovis said.
8
Four days they searched. Four days of stifling heat and awful humidity. Four days of bugs and more bugs. Four days of always being on the watch for snakes and gators. Four long, exhausting days, and at the end of the fourth day they had nothing to show for it.
“Not a sign anywhere,” Namo said angrily. “How can that be?”
Fargo admitted he was stumped. They were traveling north, the direction the creature went that night it paid them a near visit. It was also the direction the Mad Indian went. They stopped at every island, every hummock, every bump of land. They looked for tracks, scat, places where a large creature might have bedded down. They found nothing.
The only conclusion Fargo could come to, the only thing that made any sense, was that the so-called monster spent nearly all its time in the water. A lot of animals did—snakes, frogs, alligators—but they all came out on land. Only fish spent their entire time in water, and whatever the monster was, Fargo was sure of one thing—it damn sure wasn’t a fish.
Fargo began to understand why the Cajuns who hunted the thing never found it. The beast was either incredibly intelligent or incredibly wary, or both. Its senses were superior to human senses, and it knew the swamp better than they did.
Then there was the Mad Indian.
Fargo didn’t know what to make of him. That the Indian showed up after they heard the creature the other night suggested the Indian was following it. But why anyone, even a lunatic, would follow an animal that was going around attacking and killing people, was beyond him.
Namo had been excited the morning after they heard the thing. He was certain they would catch up to it before nightfall. But by the third day he was glum, and by the fourth morning he was scowling at the world and everything in it.
That evening they camped on a strip of land so deep in the swamp, it was doubtful any other white man ever set foot there. Clovis gathered wood and Namo kindled the fire. Fargo put coffee on.
The one bright spot was Halette. She talked, but only when spoken to. Not once, though, did Fargo see her smile. Most of the time she sat in the pirogue with her head bowed, a portrait of misery.
To complicate things, their provisions were running low. They could make do for another three or four days, provided they came across game to shoot.
All these factors combined led Fargo to remark, “We should head back to the settlement tomorrow.”
“To Gros Ville?” Namo looked about to argue the point. But he sighed and said, “
“Without your kids.”
“What?” Clovis said.
“We have been all through that,” Namo reminded him. “You agreed they could come.”
“Look at your daughter. Your son is wore out, too. Find someone to leave them with or you can come out again by yourself.” Fargo tried to soften the sting by adding, “We can cover more area by ourselves, make better time.”
Clovis objected. “No, Papa. Don’t listen to him. I want to be with you. I loved Mama. I have that right.”
“You will do as I say,” Namo responded. “I don’t want to leave you but the scout has a point. You do slow us down, if only a little.”
From that moment on Clovis didn’t hide his resentment. Where he had been friendly, he was now cold.
Fargo didn’t care. He had been hired to do a job. The children were complications he could do without.
The next morning they headed back. That night they thought they heard, far off in the distance, the squeals and shrieks of the thing they hunted. But it didn’t come near them.
They were a day out from the settlement when they rounded a cluster of cypress and came on a large island. Half a dozen pirogues had been drawn up, and as many tents and lean-tos erected. Several campfires were going. Hunters or trappers, he thought, until Namo Heuse stiffened.
“We will try to slip by without them seeing us.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Listen to me. If they see us, let me do the talking. And if they want us to join them, keep your guns close and don’t turn your back on anyone.”
“Damn it, Namo. What’s going on?”
