“I have half a mind to—” She stopped. “Goodness. What are you doing out this late?”
Fargo heard someone reply but so quietly he couldn’t hear what they said. Then Liana stepped back and two small figures entered. “What the hell?” he blurted.
Clovis and Halette appeared nervous. The boy had his Sharps and the girl was wringing her hands. They came straight over.
“Monsieur Fargo, we’re sorry to bother you but when we went to find Uncle Remy, the Breed told us he is half drunk.”
“Hetsutu,” Fargo said.
“What?”
“The Breed has a name. It’s Hetsutu. You might want to use it from now on.”
Halette stepped up and placed her hand on his arm. “We’re awful worried and we don’t know what to do.”
“About what? And where’s your father? Shouldn’t you be telling him this?”
“That’s just it,” Clovis said. “It’s him we’re worried about.”
“He left us.”
“What are you talking about? Where would he go at this time of night?”
“Into the swamp,” Halette said.
Fargo was dumbfounded.
“Someone brought word about the Mad Indian,” Clovis said. “Papa holds him partly to blame for Mama’s death so he tucked us into bed and told us he would be back in the morning and for us not to worry.”
“He went into the swamp,” Halette said again, and trembled with fright. “I begged him not to but he wouldn’t listen.”
A slew of cuss words were on the tip of Fargo’s tongue. Instead he said, “The damned fool.”
“Will you go after him?” Halette pleaded. “He shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“He shouldn’t be out there at all.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start looking.”
“For me. I don’t want to lose him too.” Tears welled in Halette’s eyes.
Clovis put his arm around her. “Don’t cry. If he won’t do it, we’ll go look for Papa ourselves.”
Fargo had to let it out. “Son of a bitch.”
13
The swamp, as Hetsutu had said, was unusually still.
And sure enough, one of the pirogues was missing.
Fargo stood gazing into the dark and debating whether to take the other pirogue and go after Namo or stay put and wait for Namo to return. To find him out there would be next to impossible. But he’d promised Halette and Clovis he would try so he cupped a hand to his mouth and bellowed Namo’s name on the chance Namo was within earshot.
There was no reply.
Fargo had less than an hour before he was to meet Hetsutu in front of the tavern. He’d left the kids with Liana and told her that if he wasn’t back by midnight to let Hetsutu know where he had gone.
Placing his Henry in the bottom of the second pirogue, Fargo pushed until it floated free, climbed in, picked up a paddle, and was under way. He stroked as quietly as he could, wending among the moss-laden cypress. He had gone only a short way when he stopped paddling and coasted. A glance back confirmed he could still see the lights of the settlement.
Fargo wasn’t about to venture much farther. Even with his keen sense of direction he could easily become lost. Landmarks were hard to recognize at night, even more so in a swamp where everything was mired in murk and the dark tangle of waterways was a maze.
Again Fargo cupped a hand to his mouth and hollered. Again there was no answer.
“Damn it.”
Fargo let the pirogue drift. He was about to call out once more when he heard a shrill cry. Not the squeal of the razorback, but the thin bleat of something much smaller. He heard it a second time, off to his left, and used the paddle. It was an animal in distress. That there weren’t any snarls or growls suggested a predator wasn’t to blame. But you never knew.
Another cry, much closer, prompted Fargo to pick up his Henry. He was drifting toward a mound covered mostly with grass. He couldn’t make out much about it other than that there appeared to be something on top of the mound, something alive, something that was frantically jumping up and down.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t any bigger than a cat.
The pirogue bumped to a stop. Fargo expected the animal to bolt but it stopped jumping and stared down at him, its eyes dim gleams in the starlight. Climbing out, he moved toward it. Instantly, the animal erupted in a frenzy of hopping and bleats of terror.
Fargo bent and saw what it was. But what he was seeing made no sense.
Someone had caught a rabbit and tied it to a stake. Held fast by a rawhide cord around its neck, the rabbit shrieked and tried desperately to bound off.
Fargo stepped back, thinking that would quiet it, but the rabbit only screeched louder. The only purpose he could come up with for staking it there was as bait. But bait for what? he wondered. For a fox? A cougar? An alligator, maybe? And where was the hunter who had staked the rabbit out?
Then, from the benighted swamp beyond, floated a very human laugh. Not loud, or long, but enough that Fargo could tell that the person laughing wasn’t quite sane.
The Mad Indian.
It had to be. But that meant the lunatic had staked out the rabbit. Fargo sought some sign of the madman and happened to glance toward the settlement. The lights were plainly visible. Much more so than when he had been among the cypress.
An awful idea came over him.
Fargo tried to remember everything he knew about wild hogs, and razorbacks in particular. Their diet consisted of just about anything and everything. They were partial to acorns and roots and tubers. They liked berries and fruit and sometimes ate grass. They also liked meat. Razorbacks, in fact, were known to devour all kinds of living things: frogs, snakes, birds, even fawns. He’d heard tell that the succulent flesh of young rabbits was a favorite. Razorbacks had been known to root out rabbit warrens just to get at the young ones.
Fargo looked at the rabbit. It appeared young to him.
And then from the dark came a grunt and a squeal. There was no time to lose. Fargo yanked on the stake but it refused to budge. It had been pounded in too deep. He put down the Henry, gripped it with both hands, and tried again.
The rabbit was in a panic. It flopped wildly about and screamed—if its cries could be called that. But whatever they were called, they served their purpose.
A thousand pounds of sinew and gristle was bearing down on that mound. The razorback was coming to feed.
“Damn,” Fargo hissed, and tugged harder. He could try to dig the stake out but that would take too long. Then it hit him. “What the hell am I doing?” Quickly, he slid his hand into his boot and drew the Arkansas toothpick. A single slash was all it took to sever the cord.
In a twinkling the rabbit was gone. It flew down the mound and leaped into the water and swam with amazing speed—straight into a living mountain. Jaw snapped and bone crunched and the rabbit shrieked one last time.
Whirling and snatching up the Henry, Fargo sprang for the pirogue. He bumped his shin climbing in. Grabbing the paddle, he pushed off and started to turn the pirogue toward Gros Ville. A squeal and loud splashing from the other side of the mound warned him he was out of time.
Fargo stroked toward a cypress choked with a spidery veil of moss that hung clear down to the water. He barely got behind it in time. Parting the moss, he saw the huge mass of the boar appear atop the mound.
The razorback raised its snout to the sky. It sniffed loudly, then grunted and moved in small circles. The stake drew its interest. The boar tore at it with its tusks.
Fargo held his breath, not daring to move. If the boar caught his scent it would be on him before he could get out of there.
The razorback stopped rooting. It gazed about and stared directly at the moss screening Fargo. Could the thing see him? It was his understanding that hogs and pigs couldn’t see any better than humans but he could be wrong.