Bayou Trackdown

Suddenly they were spotted. Someone shouted and armed men hurried to the water’s edge. More were by the tents, along with three women. So they weren’t hunters or trappers, after all.

A broad-shouldered Cajun wearing blue pants and a red sash with a pair of pistols tucked under it waved and smiled and called out to them in French. Then his gaze settled on Fargo and he switched to English. “Namo? That is you, isn’t it? With your little ones? Come pay me a visit.”

“Oui,” Namo answered, and stroked for the island.

Fargo didn’t like the looks some of them gave him. It wasn’t outright hostility but it was close to it. “Who are they?”

Namo didn’t answer.

Their pirogue glided in close and waiting hands pulled it onto dry land. The man in the red sash helped Halette out, saying gallantly, “It is a pleasure to see you again, princess. And you too, young Clovis.”

Namo put his hands on their shoulders. “I didn’t expect to find you so near Gros Ville. The last I knew, you were camped well to the south of here.”

The broad-shouldered man shrugged. “I must move around a lot. As you know, there are some who would love to put a knife into my back.” He turned to Fargo. “But who have we here? A new friend, eh? Perhaps you would be so kind as to introduce me.”

“Skye Fargo,” Namo said, “permit me to introduce Remy Cuvier.”

For once Fargo’s poker face failed him. He shook, and was surprised by the other’s strength.

“Ah. You have heard of me, I see. I trust the stories have been flattering?” Remy laughed. So did some of his men.

A sallow Cajun with a pockmarked face said, “We don’t like outsiders. We don’t like them at all.”

“Now, now, Onfroi. He is with Namo and Namo is family and you will treat them as I do, yes?”

Onfroi nodded but he was not happy about it.

“Family?” Fargo said to Namo Heuse.

“I didn’t tell you? Remy is my wife’s cousin. Or was, I should say.”

“Oui. I have spent many a happy night at their cabin,” Remy declared, and patted Halette on the cheek. “When these little ones were infants, I bounced them on my knee. I love them dearly.”

Fargo said, “You’re not what I expected.”

“You imagined an ogre, perhaps?” Remy was a great one for laughing. “After all, I am the terror of the swamp, am I not?”

“To hear everyone talk,” Fargo replied.

“I am not a terror to my own kind, monsieur. I have never killed a fellow Cajun. Outsiders, yes. And there are some of my own kind who hold that against me.” Remy paused. “They don’t understand, as I do, that outsiders always bring trouble.”

Namo said quickly, “I sent for him, Remy, to help me kill the monster that killed Emmeline. He is a famous plainsman.”

“Who is far from his plain. But no matter. Emmeline is no longer with us but you are still family and under my protection. And those with you, as well.” Remy gave his men a meaningful glance and put his hands on his pistols. “If there is anyone who thinks it should be otherwise, now is the time to say so.”

No one did, although Onfroi shifted his weight from foot to foot and fingered the hilt of a stag-handled knife.

Remy escorted them to one of the fires and indicated logs they could sit on. He clapped his hands and demanded drink and food, and two women hustled over and filled tin cups with coffee for Fargo and Namo. Clovis and Halette were given tea.

As Fargo sipped he noticed that Remy’s men had casually spread out and formed a ring around them.

“So tell me what you have been up to?” Remy prompted.

Namo related their hunt, and when he came to the part about hearing squeals and something big moving in the swamp, Remy interrupted him with, “We have heard it too. Several times. One night it came quite close. I ordered my men to throw wood on the fires and we stood with our rifles ready but the thing did not attack. I swear to you, though, that I saw its eyes off in the dark. They glowed as red as the pits of hell.”

“Fargo is of the opinion it is afraid of fire,” Namo mentioned.

“He could well be right. We always keep our fires going all night. Perhaps that is why it has left us alone.”

“Have you seen the Mad Indian too?” Fargo asked.

“Him?” Remy laughed. He shifted on his log and crooked a finger at a man leaning against a tree. “Breed! Come over here, if you would.”

Part Cajun and part Indian, the Breed wore Cajun clothes but had his hair in braids and a hawk feather tied to the braid on the left. His waist bristled with revolvers and knives and what Fargo at first mistook for a tomahawk but turned out to be a hatchet. “Yes, my friend?”

“This one”—Remy indicated Fargo—“wants to know about the Mad Indian.”

“And you want me to enlighten him? Very well.” The Breed hooked his thumbs in his belt. “The Mad Indian is the last of his people. His was a small tribe, the Quinipissa. Many years ago they fled into the swamp after a fight with La Salle, the Frenchman. Later a white trader gave them smallpox, and they all died save for the mad one. Now he hates whites, hates them so much, his hate has made him mad.”

Fargo frowned. White diseases, it was said, had killed more Indians than all the white guns combined.

“How do you know all this?” Namo inquired.

“I have Washa blood. I hear things you wouldn’t.”

“But what has this Mad Indian to do with the creature that killed my wife?” Namo wondered.

“That I wouldn’t know.”

As Fargo listened, he became aware that one of the women was eyeing him as a hungry man might eye a side of beef. A shapely brunette whose wafer-thin dress clung tight, she had green eyes, high cheekbones, and inviting pink lips. When he glanced at her she boldly met his gaze, her hands on her hips, her pose saying all that need be said.

Nothing escaped Remy. He caught their looks, and chuckled. “Perhaps I should introduce Pensee. She has been with me for four years now, and there is no finer female anywhere.”

“Merci,” Pensee said.

“Is she your woman?” Fargo asked.

Pensee answered for herself. “I belong to no man. Remy befriended me when no one else would. For that, he earned my friendship, and my loyalty.”

“She had acquired—how shall I put this?” Remy said, with a flick of his eyes at Halette. “A certain reputation. The prim and proper wanted nothing to do with her, so I took her into my fold.”

“Decent of you.”

“Not at all,” Remy candidly admitted. “My motive was selfish. I have too few women in my merry band.”

Fargo asked her, “Do you hate outsiders too?”

“To me a man is a man,” Pensee said. “His race, his color, matter little. It is how he is under the sheets.”

“What do you mean?” Halette asked.

Remy scowled at Pensee, then smiled and said to the girl, “She means she doesn’t like men who snore in bed.”

“Mon pere snores.”

“C’est tres ennuyeux,” Pensee said.

“Ca m’est egal. Ne vous en faites pas.”

“What a charming child.”

“Enough,” Remy warned. “She is a delight. You could learn from her if you weren’t so full of yourself.”

Pensee walked off, her hips threatening to rip loose from her spine.

“She has a temper, that one,” Remy said, and chuckled.

Fargo had no desire to spend the night but he didn’t see how he could get out of it short of fighting his way off the island. And there were simply too many for him to take on alone. Then, too, he had an obligation to Namo. To say nothing of his fondness for the girl.