“Get down!” Fargo yelled, and dived.
Namo was too slow. The arrow caught him in the thigh and twisted him half-around. Gritting his teeth, he pitched flat and fired a wild shot into the undergrowth.
A crazed cackle told them he missed.
Fargo palmed his Colt. He expected more arrows but instead heard crackling and crashing. The Mad Indian was fleeing. Leaving the Sharps there, he pumped his legs. Namo shouted for him to stop. Limbs tore at his buckskins. A branch scratched his cheek.
A figure took shape, the Mad Indian bounding like one of the rabbits he used to lure the razorback. A pale face glanced back at him and another cackle tickled the air.
Fargo snapped off a shot, knowing he had missed even as he squeezed the trigger. He was too eager.
A low limb caught him, sending ripples of pain across his shoulders. He kept running. He began to gain.
The Mad Indian looked back again and this time he didn’t laugh. He redoubled his effort.
Fargo yearned for a clear shot. Just one. He thought he had it and snapped the Colt up but more growth got in the way. He ran. He ran and he ran. And he tripped. An exposed root caught him about the ankle and the next thing he knew he was flat on his face.
The lunatic tittered.
“Not this time,” Fargo vowed. He heaved erect.
The Mad Indian was nowhere to be seen.
Splashing suggested why. Fargo vaulted a log and burst through high grass and had to dig in his heels to keep from barreling into the water.
The canoe was a blot in the dark, the Indian paddling furiously. “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!”
Fargo extended his arm and did something he had rarely ever done—he shot a man in the back.
The Mad Indian stiffened, and howled. But he didn’t stop paddling and in another heartbeat the night enveloped him like a shroud.
“Son of a bitch.” Fargo was beginning to think that if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all. He lingered, hoping the Mad Indian would reappear, but then he thought of Namo and hastened in disgust back to the clearing.
Namo was by the fire, trying in vain to get the arrow out. Beads of sweat speckled his face as he grunted and said, “I’m glad you’re back. I can’t do this myself.”
Fargo knelt. The shaft had gone all the way through and the barbed tip was protruding from the back of the thigh.
“I heard a shot. Did you get him?”
“I hit him but he got away.”
“Remy was right. God is on the Indian’s side.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Where did he get the bow? I didn’t see a bow when he was bent over Toussaint. Did you see a bow?”
“He must have had it in the trees.” Fargo examined the barbed tip. It was made from bone and slick with wet blood. He moved so the firelight played over it, and frowned.
“What is the matter?”
“How do you feel?”
“How do you think I feel?” Namo snapped, then closed his eyes and said, “Sorry. I am weak from the blood I have lost. And cold. Very cold. It came over me suddenly.” He shuddered, and bit his lower lip. “Why do you ask?”
“There’s something else on the tip of this arrow besides blood.”
“What?”
“Poison.”
19
Fargo stroked strongly, smoothly, and tried not to think of the man lying in the bottom of the pirogue. It was a race against time and time was winning.
The Atchafalaya during the day was so different from the Atchafalaya at night. They were two worlds. The patches of sunlight, the chirps and warbles of the day birds, the butterflies, made the swamp seem more hospitable. Not that Fargo relaxed his guard. Under that friendlier surface lurked the same menaces.
“How much longer?” Fargo asked. When Heuse didn’t answer, he asked louder. “How much longer, Namo?”
The Cajun rose on an elbow and gazed over the gunwale. He was sickly pale and slick with sweat. “Another hour, maybe less. Keep going as you are.”
“What’s the next landmark?”
“You will come to a bayou. Follow it south.”
Fargo grunted. They would make better time in a bayou. And he much preferred the more open water to the gloom and mire of the swamp. “Lie back down and rest. I’ll get us to your cabin. Don’t you worry.”
“I am past worrying. Now I think only of staying alive.”
They intended to rest at the cabin a short while and then push on to the settlement where there was a healer Namo knew. Not a doctor in the normal sense but a woman versed in herbs and medicinal lore. Namo believed she might be able to counter the effect of the Mad Indian’s poison.
Fargo hoped so. So far Namo was holding his own but bit by bit the toxin, whatever it was, was sapping Namo’s vitality. Fargo wondered if the Mad Indian picked a slow-acting poison on purpose so his victims suffered more. It sounded like something the lunatic would do.
Ever since setting out he’d had the feeling they were being followed but he never once saw anyone. It could be nerves. The swamp, the violence, the dying, had gotten to him.
Fargo never knew but when the razorback would hurtle out of the shadows. It preyed on him the worst of anything, making him jumpy, making him see things that weren’t there.
“I’m turning into a little girl,” Fargo said in disgust. It made him think of Halette.
“What was that,
“Nothing. I was talking to myself.”
“I’m sorry I am not better company.”
“You should sleep.”
“I pass out and wake up and pass out again. One minute my blood is on fire, the next it is ice. And my lungs aren’t working as they should. Sometimes I find it hard to breathe.”
Fargo clenched his jaw. Damn the Mad Indian to hell.
Namo chuckled, but it came out like dry seeds rattling in a gourd. “In a way I should be thankful.”
“For what?” Fargo asked. The man had lost his wife and friends and now was dying himself.
“That the poison works so slowly. The Mad Indian could have used one that kills instantly.”
“Not that vengeful bastard.”
Slowly sitting up so his back was propped against the side, Namo licked his bluish lips. “We can’t blame him, you know.”
“Sure we can. He shot the arrow. He put the poison on the tip.”
“No. Not that. I mean we can’t blame him for hating us. For hating all whites over the deaths of his people. He’s the last of his kind. That is bound to have affected his mind.”
Fargo thought of the Mandans, a once powerful tribe on the upper Missouri, nearly wiped out by smallpox. He thought of other tribes, decimated by white disease. It was never the other way around. Whites always introduced disease to the Indians. The Indians never introduced disease to the whites. Until the whites came along, many tribes had been largely disease-free.
“I hate him for killing my wife,” Namo was saying, “but not for this.” He touched his leg. “I understand why he hates so much. Were I in his moccasins, I would hate us too.”
“Hate doesn’t excuse it. And you’re forgetting the razorback.”
“Forget the beast that tore apart my Emmeline? Never.” Namo coughed, and covered his mouth with his
