Bayou Trackdown

ground all around when the strange sound was repeated. They both stopped.

“It’s closer,” Halette said.

“But still a ways off.” Emmeline walked faster and was comforted by the old Sharps in the crook of her elbow. It held only one shot but it was powerful enough to bring down anything in the swamp. And she could hit a knothole in a tree at thirty paces.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to sing?” Halette asked. “I like it when we sing.”

So they sang, a new ditty popular with children called “The Pig Song” by a man named Burnand.

“There was a fiddler and he wore a wig. Wiggy, wiggy, wiggy, wiggy, weedle, weedle, weedle. He saved up his money and he bought a pig. Tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle, tweedle.”

They were about to begin the second stanza when a rumbling grunt from out of the thick undergrowth brought them to a stop. Halette’s fingernails dug so deep into Emmeline’s palm they almost drew blood.

“It’s really close, Mere.”

“Don’t worry. I have my rifle.” But Emmeline was worried herself. She thought it might be a black bear, and if so, it had to be a big one and the big ones were hard to kill. A single shot to the brain or the heart was not always enough. She walked faster.

Somewhere off in the darkness a twig snapped.

“I don’t like this,” Halette said.

“Be brave. I’m right here.” But inside Emmeline, a swarm of butterflies was loose in her stomach. Or was it moths, since it was nighttime? She smiled at her humor, and then lost the smile when something crunched off in the trees.

“Did you hear that?”

“Stay calm. It might be a deer.”

“No deer made that sound we heard,” Halette insisted. “Whatever it is, it’s following us.”

“That’s preposterous.” But Emmeline had the same suspicion. She shifted her rifle so the muzzle was pointed at the side of the trails the thing was on.

“Should we climb a tree? Pere says that’s the best thing to do when a bear is after you.”

“Only if it’s a large bear,” Emmeline amended. “Small bears can climb as well as we can.”

The undergrowth rustled and crackled. They stopped, peered hard to try to spot the cause, and the crackling stopped. When they moved on, the crackling began again.

“What is it, Mere?” Halette asked in stark fear.

“Stay calm,” Emmeline said again. But deep inside she was just as scared. Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t afraid of them. It was indeed stalking them and it didn’t care if they knew it. Her palms grew slick with sweat and her mouth became dry.

For minutes that seemed like hours the taut tableau continued. Mother and daughter were glued to each other. Now and then the creature in the undergrowth grunted or snorted and the mother felt her youngest quake.

“I wish Pere was here,” the girl said, not once but several times.

The mother thought of their cabin, so near and yet so far, and her husband, and she felt a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach that brought bitter bile to her mouth. She swallowed the bile back down.

Simone had been right to take the tales seriously, and Emmeline had been wrong. Those people who vanished—they hadn’t become lost or fallen to the Mad Indian or run into Remy Cuvier’s cutthroats. Not that Remy would ever harm her, or any other Cajun, for that matter. The thing in the woods was to blame. She knew that as surely as she knew anything.

Then the growth thinned and ahead lay a stretch of swamp where the trail was no wider than a broad man’s shoulders. Water lapped the edges. Here and there hummocks of land choked with growth broke the surface.

Emmeline’s heart leaped in fragile hope. The thing could not get at them now without her seeing it. She would be able to get off a shot, and must make the shot count. Emboldened, she said for her daughter’s benefit, “Let that animal show itself now and I will put a hole in its head.”

Halette laughed a short, nervous laugh.

They redoubled their speed. A city girl using that serpentine trail in the dark of night would inch along like a turtle, but Emmeline and Halette were bayou born and bred, and to them a trail three feet wide was as good as a road. They covered a hundred yards, and there was no sign of the creature. Two hundred yards, and the only sounds were those of the insects, frogs and gators, a familiar chorus that soothed their troubled hearts.

“I guess it was nothing,” Halette broke their silence, and laughed again.

No sooner were the words out of her young mouth than a loud splash warned them that something large was in the water.

“A gator,” Emmeline said.

“Sure,” Halette agreed.

But then the thing that made the splash grunted, and icy cold fear rippled down their spines.

“It’s still following us!” Halette gasped.

“Perhaps it is something harmless.” But Emmeline didn’t believe that. Her fright was heightened by the thought that whatever that thing was, it must know about guns. How else to explain why it moved away from them when they came to the open water, yet still shadowed them?

“If only our cabin wasn’t so far.”

“We’ll make it,” Emmeline said, and patted Halette on the head. “I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”

“Frogs eat bugs and snakes eat frogs and gators eat snakes and frogs and people, too,” Halette said softly.

It was a family saying. It stemmed from when their oldest, Clovis, was younger than Halette, and they were trying to make him understand that while the bayous and swamps were places of great beauty, they were also places of great danger. To a five-year-old boy, the world was a friend. It took some doing for Emmeline and Namo to convince Clovis that he must be wary of the many creatures that could do him harm. To that end, Emmeline came up with a rhyme to remind him. Silly, but it helped, and Clovis came to see that while the world was his friend, some of the creatures he shared the world with weren’t friendly.

“Listen!” Halette exclaimed.

The thing was grunting and snorting in a frenzy, and the splashing had grown so loud, the very swamp seemed to be in upheaval.

“It’s fighting something!”

Emmeline thought so, too. A gator, perhaps. Or one of the huge snakes, rare but spotted from time to time by the human denizens of the great swamp. Town and city dwellers scoffed at the notion, saying snakes never grew to thirty meters or more and were never as thick around as large trees. But the swamp dwellers saw with their own eyes, and knew the truth.

There were other tales, too. Of things only talked about behind locked doors in the flickering glow of candles. Of goblins and ghosts and three-toed skunk apes. But Emmeline never believed in any of that. Her Namo did. He was as superstitious as a person could be, but he was a good provider and a good husband, so she put up with his charms and bones and rabbit’s feet.

The splashing and grunting ended in a high-pitched squeal that climbed to an ear-piercing shriek.

Halette said, “Something is dying.”

Emmeline went rigid with shock. She almost told her daughter that no, that wasn’t it. The squeal wasn’t the death cry of the loser; it was the cry of triumph of the victor. At last she realized what it was, and fear filled every fiber of her being. “Run,” she said.

And they ran.

A hundred feet more would bring them to a hummock, and trees. Those trees, Emmeline hoped, would prove their salvation. She held her daughter’s hand firmly and the two of them fairly flew. She could go faster, but Halette was at her limit.

“Mere!”

Emmeline had heard. The splashing was coming toward them. The thing had decided to end the game of cat and mouse and was making a beeline for them. They must reach the trees or they were doomed.