“How do you propose doing that?”
“We camp and make a lot of noise so that it can hear us or smell us,” Remy proposed. “If nothing else—” He suddenly stopped.
“If nothing else what?”
When Remy didn’t answer, Fargo glanced at him and saw that his attention was fixed on something off to their left. He looked, and blurted, “Speak of the devil.”
It was the Mad Indian.
16
“We can’t let him get away!” Namo Heuse shouted, and brought up his rifle to shoot.
But the Mad Indian was already fleeing. He had spotted them at the same instant they spotted him and he was working his paddle furiously, heading his canoe deeper into the swamp.
The crack of Namo’s rifle galvanized Remy into working his own paddle. “You missed.”
So it seemed. The Mad Indian had bent low and was stroking with amazing swiftness for a man his age. He glanced back and gave voice to that insane cackle of his.
“He must pay for my wife,” Namo said grimly as he set down his rifle and scooped up his paddle.
Fargo was waiting for a clear shot. They were in among cypress and the Mad Indian was using that to his advantage, wending right and left among the trees so there was nearly always a tree between his canoe and their pirogue. Twice Fargo fixed a bead but each time a tree trunk or trailing moss thwarted him.
“Do you know what this means?” Remy said. “If the Mad Indian is near, the razorback must be near, too.”
Fargo was keeping an eye out for it. But the boar had an uncanny knack for attacking unexpectedly and might be on them before he could put a slug into it.
The Mad Indian kept on cackling.
Remy swore. “He gives me chills, that one.”
Namo was hunched forward as if he would dive over the bow. “He is nothing but a crazy old man.”
“Crazy, oui. But for all we know God is on his side and not ours.”
Fargo and Namo both glanced back.
“Since when do you care about God?” Namo asked. “And how can you say something like that? It’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Remy countered. “The Mad Indian’s people were wiped out by disease brought by white men. In God’s eyes maybe we are in the wrong and he is in the right.”
Namo shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Next you will tell me you want to go to confession and make amends for all your sins.”
“I am only saying,” Remy said. “And just because I have killed and like to drink and indulge in women doesn’t mean I am completely without faith.”
“Bah. After what happened to Emmeline, I have begun to doubt there even is a God. She did nothing to deserve dying like she did.”
Fargo interrupted them. “Less talk and more paddling.”
The Mad Indian was widening his lead. He was one man to their three but his canoe was smaller and lighter than the pirogue and he was amazingly strong for a bundle of sinew and bone.
“He is making fools of us,” Namo said, and increased his speed.
Fargo continued to stay alert for the razorback.
The Mad Indian’s teeth flashed and his laughter carried to them along with, “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad!”
“As if we don’t know that,” Namo rasped.
“He is taunting us,” Remy stated the obvious. “Rubbing our noses in what we have driven him to.”
“Don’t start with that again. He can’t possibly be in the right. Not with all the people he has had that monster pig of his kill.”
“I just had a thought,” Remy said.
“Not another one.”
“What if he raised it? What if the Mad Indian raised that razorback? Some Indians raise hogs, do they not?”
“Oui. But you’ve seen the razorback. It is no hog. It’s a wild boar. As wild as they come. It would as soon turn on the Mad Indian as attack us.”
“But sometimes wild boars come close to Indian villages to forage for food,” Remy persisted. “It could be there is more to the razorback and the Mad Indian than we suspect.”
“You are full of silly thoughts today.”
“Go to hell, Namo.”
After that they paddled in silence. Fargo stayed out of it. The way he saw things, whether the Mad Indian did or didn’t raise the razorback was irrelevant. The orgy of death and terror must be stopped.
To their collective chagrin, they were falling farther behind. Namo and Remy paddled harder but it did no good.
“We’ll never catch him,” Remy declared.
“Don’t give up.”
“Did I say I would?”
The Mad Indian swept around a cypress and didn’t reappear.
“Where did he get to?” Namo wondered.
“Paddle, damn you.”
They flew past the same tree. Spread before them was a small island, an oasis of growth so thick as to appear impenetrable. On the shore, half in and half out of the water, bobbed the Mad Indian’s canoe, the paddle lying on the ground a few feet away.
“We have him!” Namo cried.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than an arrow streaked out of the foliage. Namo had no time to react but he was lucky—the shaft struck his paddle and was deflected.
Fargo drew his Colt and banged off two quick shots, firing at the spot the arrow came from. More cackling greeted the blasts.
“You missed,” Remy said.
The pirogue lurched to a stop next to the canoe and the three of them piled out, seeking cover.
Fargo flattened behind a log and replaced the spent cartridges. The undergrowth was ominously still.
Namo whispered his name to get his attention. “One of us must stay here to keep the madman from getting away while the other two go in after him.”
“I’m not staying,” Remy said, and before they could think to stop him, he rose and plunged into the vegetation.
“What is the matter with him today?” Namo asked. Without waiting for an answer, he went in after him.
Fargo swore. He was the one who should go; he was the better tracker. Shoving the Colt into his holster, he rested the Sharps’s barrel on the log and scoured the greenery.
A troubling thought struck him. What if the Mad Indian picked that island for a reason? In the dense tangle the madman could easily pick them off.
A fly buzzed his ear.
A centipede crawled along the log.
The quiet was unnerving.
Fargo kept expecting to hear a shout or a shot. He did hear a slight sound behind him in the water, and twisted. The barest of ripples disturbed the surface. A fish or a snake, he reckoned, and faced the vegetation.
A bird screeched.
A cricket chirped.
Another sound behind him made Fargo turn his head a second time. There were more ripples. Small ones. The same fish or snake or maybe a frog or turtle, he figured.
The minutes crawled.
Fargo thought he heard voices. Then, from far off, Remy yelled his name. Quickly rising, Fargo ran a dozen yards in. “Where are you?”
Remy yelled again but it was impossible to tell what he was saying.
“I can’t hear you! What’s wrong?”
Again Remy shouted but only one word was clear. “Slipped.”
“I still didn’t hear you!”
“Watch out! We think he slipped past us into the swamp!”
“The swamp?” Fargo repeated. Why would the Mad Indian go into the swamp on foot? The answer hit him like a five-ton boulder. Whirling, he flew back to the pirogue and the canoe—only they weren’t there.
Forty feet out the Mad Indian, only his head and arms showing, was paddling the canoe as fast as he could paddle. Not quite that far, the pirogue was drifting.
Fargo had a choice to make. The Mad Indian or the pirogue. It was really no choice at all. Without the pirogue they were stranded. He set down the Henry, shucked the Colt and placed it next to the rifle, sat and tugged off his boots. By then the Mad Indian had vanished, but not the pirogue.