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 père snores.”
“C’est très 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.
As the evening wore on, the men relaxed and mingled. All save Onfroi, who hung in the background like a vulture circling a carcass. Fargo got a crick in his neck from keeping an eye on him.
Clovis and Halette liked Remy. That was plain to see. Halette sat on his leg and they listened to tales of his wild times. Tales toned down, Fargo suspected, so as not to shock them. It was obvious Remy cared for them as much as they did for him. So much for the hard-hearted scourge of the Atchafalaya Swamp.
Namo insisted his children turn in at ten. “They have had a long day and we have a long way to go tomorrow to reach Gros Ville.”
“You are giving up the hunt?”
“Never! I won’t rest until the thing that killed my Emmeline is a pile of rotting flesh.”
Remy offered his tent to Namo and the children. As for Fargo, “You may sleep where you will. We can lend you blankets if you need them. But be warned. It’s not uncommon for us to find snakes in them when we wake up in the morning. They like the warmth.”
“I know about snakes,” Fargo said. Rattlers did the same thing. “And we have our own blankets.”
The spot Fargo chose was under a cypress a stone’s throw from the southernmost fire. He bundled a blanket for a pillow and then spread out another and was about to lie down when a figure detached itself from the shadows. Instinctively, suspecting it was Onfroi, he swooped his hand to his Colt.
“Don’t shoot me, monsieur,” Pensee teased, coming over and standing so that her chest practically touched his.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“If I have to tell you, then perhaps you don’t know what pleasure is.”
9
Fargo glanced toward the large tent and the silhouettes backlit from within by a lantern. “What about Remy?”
“What about him?” Pensee rejoined. “I’m free to do as I want. To be with who I want. And from the moment I laid eyes on you, I wanted you.”
The camp lay quiet under the stars. About half the men had turned in. The rest were swapping stories at the fires or playing cards or rolling dice. None were paying the least bit of attention to Pensee.
“What’s the matter? Can it be you are afraid? I didn’t take you for timid.” She snickered. “Or is it that you don’t like women?”
“If I liked them any more, I’d own my own whorehouse.”
“Is that so?” Pensee pressed her bosom to his chest, her hips to his hips. “Then why hesitate? Life is too short for hesitation. We must take what we want when we want or we may never get to take it at all.”
“Is that your outlook on life?” Fargo was scanning the camp to be sure they weren’t being watched. He didn’t see Onfroi anywhere and that bothered him.
“It is the only one to have. Why deprive ourselves of the pleasures life offers? Of food and drink and, yes, intimacy.” Pensee lightly ran a fingertip along Fargo’s chin. “Me, I deprive myself nothing. This way, when I die, I won’t have any regrets.”
“None of these gents are going to try and stick a knife in me?”
“Are you always so cautious?” Pensee rose onto the tips of her toes and nipped his chin with her teeth. “What if one did? C’est la vie, eh?”
“Doesn’t that mean ‘that’s life’?”
“Oui.”
“You’re not worth dying over.”
Offended, Pensee took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “That’s a fine thing to say to a lady who is offering herself to you. Have you no respect?”
“I could ask the same of you. You’re the one who doesn’t seem to care if I get stabbed or shot for touching you.”