Inverness kept on rowing with long, full, unhurried strokes. Maxton ran up and down the bank in a frenzy.
Vangie rolled out from under the huge torch the cabin had become, jumped to her feet, ran for the safety of Papa’s fishing road through the woods. The burning cabin made everything as bright as day, and at the edge of the undergrowth she ran right into Trask’s arms.
“Got you, bitch!” he panted.
She ripped his face just as her mother had done, he staggered back, letting go of her, so she had room for a high dancer’s kick, the sort where they try to touch their nose with their knee. Only his scrotum was in the way. He emitted a pneumatic “Whoosh!” and Vangie ran into the woods. He got one shot off, aiming low despite his pain, but missed. Bent over, cursing foully, he staggered after her.
Even through his panic, Maxton heard the shot. It helped ease his fear, he began looking around. And shit, ten yards away up the bayou, there was Vangie’s flatboat drawn up nose-to on the bank. He trotted toward it, still wobble-kneed from the shock of that screaming fireball rolling out of the cabin at him.
Dain, grunting, hit him like a blocking lineman. He went sprawling, the gun went flying.
Maxton scrabbled for it in the mud as Dain put a foot against the prow of the flatboat and, with a great heave, sent it shooting backward out into the channel. Maxton came up with his gun, but Dain was already zigzagging away as he fired. Lucky for him, no barrel-clog of mud. Two more shots, but Dain was gone, back into the undergrowth.
Maxton whirled back toward the flatboat. It was being carried away by the current in the same direction Inverness had disappeared — around the front of the island. He looked back to where Dain had disappeared, then back to the boat.
He could dive in, swim after it — he did his dutiful laps at his health club in Chicago three days a week. But what if Dain had the pirogue hidden somewhere, came out after him, smashed in his head with a paddle? He would be too vulnerable in the water, even with the gun...
The underbrush rattled behind him. He spun and fired again. There was instant crashing and thrashing, then sudden silence. Almost reluctantly, Maxton edged across the clearing past the settled angry red remains of the cabin and the black ugly charred remains of Nicky.
His cocked and ready Colt airweight .38 six-shot revolver was outthrust toward a patch of shadow where he feared Dain might be lurking. He was feeling better again. He had a gun, Dain didn’t. Trask obviously had winged the little bitch, would have her waiting for him. He couldn’t remember how many shots he had fired, but he had a fistful of extra bullets in his pocket.
A couple of yards to the right of where he thought Dain was, the top of a bush moved slightly. He shifted his aim without making any noise.
“Dain?” he called.
The next bush moved, surreptitiously, slightly. Maxton edged closer. Hell, he’d hit him with one of those shots, Dain was trying to crawl away. But he had to make sure.
“Maybe we can deal.”
Silence from Dain. A charred timber in the cabin collapsed in a shower of sparks, jerking Maxton’s head around. He turned back quickly. A third bush was moving. Feebly. Yes! He went into his firing crouch.
He called softly, “All I’ve ever wanted is the bonds!”
No answer.
“I don’t want the girl. Not any more.”
Hell no, he didn’t want her. Trask already had her. The top of the next bush moved slightly. He brought up his gun. Sidled closer.
Dain was lying on his back under the bushes, dappled with moonlight. He held a long willow stick in his good hand, angled up against a branch of an overhead bush three yards away. Unlike Maxton, he had kept count of the shots fired.
“Just two more, damn you,” he muttered to himself.
At almost the same time, Maxton’s voice came again.
“What do you say? Not you, not the girl. Just the bonds.”
For answer, Dain jammed the stick hard against the bush, and so close together they were almost one, two slugs ripped through the undergrowth where he should have been. He was already on his feet and bursting out of the thicket.
Maxton was five yards away, digging a handful of shells from his pocket to feed into the gun’s open cylinder. Dain’s charge rocked him back on his heels, sent the bullets flying. But Maxton swung the .38 in a vicious arc — the barrel slammed down on Dain’s injured shoulder.
Dain cried out with the pain, spun away, fell, rolled away from Maxton’s surprisingly quick and viciously kicking feet, was as quickly on his own feet, ready. They circled like fighting dogs seeking advantage. But Dain was backing up as he circled, away from the last embers of the burned-out cabin.
Maxton sprang.
He was a powerful adversary and he had the use of both arms and a pistol as a club. They grappled, fell, rolled over and over, striking, kicking, grabbing. Dain, hampered by his useless arm and the need to protect his wound from Maxton’s blows, was fading fast. His bandages were soaked in new blood.
He managed to break free, get to his feet, back up a low rise with a big sycamore tree in the dip beyond it. He was staggering. Maxton swung the heavy revolver again, Dain ducked, but the gun sight raked across his forehead. Blood ran down into his eyes. Maxton laughed.
“I’ll chop you to pieces, Dain.”
He feinted twice, then leaped in with another terrible swing of the gun. But Dain sprang forward inside the blow, with his last despairing strength got his good hand on Maxton’s windpipe. Squeezing. Maxton’s eyes began to bug out. The gun slammed into Dain’s back, but because they were chest-to-chest there was little force in the blows.
Then Dain fell backward to land at the very lip of the knoll, dragging Maxton down on top of him, with a leg already drawn up to his chest so the raised foot would plant itself firmly in Maxton’s belly. As the big man came down on top of him, the leg pistoned straight up. Maxton’s momentum, guided by the throat grip and given terrific force by the thrust of that catapult leg, sent him right over Dain’s body in a flip.
Under the wide-spreading sycamore the flat black slowly seething depths of the tar vat sent up sluggish bubbles. Dain released his grip on the throat and Maxton went out beyond him and down, screaming horribly when he landed spread-eagle on his back in the bubbling tar, still clutching his useless gun. He tried to rise, pull free, but he was already burning. Several jerky motions, still screaming, but all they did was send waves of tar from the sides of the vat rolling back over him. In a few moments, he subsided to a shapeless smoking mass.
Dain missed that part. He had passed out.
Vangie was leaning against a tree, panting, half a dozen yards off the road through the woods. She could hear the sounds of Trask’s supposedly stealthy pursuit behind her, but she didn’t move. Not too far behind, Trask also stopped, panting, to listen for sounds of his fleeing prey. His face was cut by slashing branches, blackberry thorns.
As he dashed sweat from his forehead with the back of his gun hand, Vangie burst in apparent wild terror from cover a dozen yards away. She was gone even as he fired — still low, still trying to bring her back alive. He was a good soldier, a good button man. He had his quirks, but he knew how to obey orders.
He plunged away after her.
But it was harder now, the moon was lower, its light dimmer. He stopped, listened. He didn’t know that Vangie was sitting on the ground a few yards ahead of him around a bend in the track, also listening. She had been hard-pressed to keep from losing him. She was poised for flight, but there was nothing to flee from. She couldn’t hear him moving around. She took her big Bowie knife from the sheath, nervously, put it back.