“They’re uneasy,” she whispered.
I looked at the men gathered around the fire and realized they were in two groups watching us. Red, Swift, Johnnie, and Syd were off to one side, while Rhames, Blue, and Lucy were together. The split didn’t surprise me, but I had no idea what they could want. We had decided on a route and there was no going back to the Indians. For better or worse, we were together until we reached open water, or died trying.
We walked toward the men.
“Now that you’ve got us in the middle of nowhere, you gonna kill us off and take our share?” Red called out.
He must have seen the question on my face.
“Aye, you don’t know he took all our guns,” he continued, and moved closer, the men behind him murmuring in approval and following.
“They was shooting at fairies,” Rhames said. “Had to take them away. I think the cat put the fear in them. If they kept that up we’d be out of powder and shot.”
While I agreed with his actions, I knew we had to give the guns back. We would need whatever skills each man had in order to escape the river of grass. “You can have them back. But, only enough shot and powder for hunting.”
They nodded their heads in approval, and I could hear Rhames shifting behind me. “We’ve got to trust them,” I said under my breath. My leg felt like it was about to collapse, and I felt Rory grip me tighter. “I trust you haven’t wasted the last few days. We leave in the morning.”
“Now that’s the captain talking,” Red said, and the men agreed.
Rory helped me back to the pelt and Lucy hovered over me, immediately removing the bandage from my leg.
“No move, Mr. Nick,” she said.
“She’s right. You can’t travel like that,” Rory said.
“We don’t have a choice.” I met theirs eyes as I said it. “We’ll be in boats. I don’t need the leg to paddle.”
“You heard the captain. We shove off at first light.” Rhames reinforced the order.
The men scattered, and Rory and Rhames huddled by me. “What do we have for supplies?” I asked.
“The meat from the cat was rancid, but the boys have shot a few deer, and the women have been foraging. Probably enough food for a week or so,” he said, listing our inventory.
“Well, water is not a problem.” I was optimistic that we could reach the Keys in a week. There should be opportunities to hunt along the way, but I felt better knowing we were setting out well provisioned.
“And ammunition?”
“Damned fools wasted more than I want to tell you, but if we don’t have to skirmish, we should have enough to hunt.”
I jumped as Lucy put a fresh poultice on my wound. As she cleaned the puss, I glanced down at my leg and saw the incisions made by the panther’s claws.
“Lucy says the claws have poison. You’re lucky she’s here,” Rory said.
“And Blue as well. Grabbed those claws and boiled them down, he did. After he puts that paste on those darts he blows, there won’t be a man standing.”
My leg throbbed, keeping me awake through the night, and I wished for the unconscious state I had spent the last few days in. Unable to sleep, I crept closer to the fire and removed the map from its oilskin case. The light reflected off the old parchment, and I studied the unknown area. Provided we could take a direct route, the distance seemed close to what we had covered on the lake. I expected it might take longer because of the sawgrass, but as long as there was water underneath it, we could use the poles to push the shallow-draft canoes through it.
I must have dozed, as movement in the camp startled me awake, and I pulled the map away from the edge of the fire where I had dropped it, only inches from destruction. Not that it was much help anymore; the area we were about to enter was totally undefined, but all the same, I felt better having it. I placed it back in the oilskin and grabbed the rifle by my side to use as a crutch.
Rhames caught me as I stumbled and hauled me to my feet. “No good to have the men see you like this. Let’s get you to the boats.”
I gained my footing and, once standing, I was able to use the rifle as a crutch and hobbled to the canoes. I sat on the gunwale of the closest boat and waited for the group to gather. They were ready in minutes and loaded the boats, careful to distribute the treasure and provisions equally, both for weight and to minimize our losses if a boat went down.
I was in the first boat and we were able to use the homemade paddles on the last stretch of open water. After a mile we started to see growth below the water and before we reached another mile, we were in the sawgrass. We stowed the oars and unlashed the poles. I felt guilty having to stay seated as Rhames poled our boat. The craft seemed stable, buffeted by the grass on all quarters. While he pushed us along, I tried to gauge the effort required to move through the stiff vegetation, but his face was unreadable. The grass was everywhere, dark green with some brown, and sharp edges, which appeared to give it strength. From my position in the hull, I could see little else. With nothing else to look at, I studied the field stretched out in front of us and noticed that the water must be low. There were clear delineations on the blades of sawgrass, similar to the tide markings on the mangroves by the ocean. I looked back at Rhames and watched him as the pole entered and left the water. The bottom appeared to be only a few feet below the boat.
Just as I realized how low the water was, we bumped against a mud shoal. He drove the pole deeper into the muck and the boat moved over it, but I wondered what that small bump foretold of the journey ahead.
The next few hours passed without incident, and I started to relax and eventually drifted off to sleep.
I was jarred awake as the boat grounded, and I felt Rhames jump out. I looked up and saw an island with several small cypress trees, the high-water mark on their trunks suggesting that the land would be covered during high water. In this case, the low water was a blessing, as we had solid land to make camp.
24
We ate dried deer meat and drank the juice from the last of the coconuts before savoring the fat-rich flesh, which we used our hands to scoop from the shells into our mouths. The last day and a half, we had poled the boats through never-ending fields of sawgrass. Single herons and clouds of small, white birds called ibis flew overhead, and fish jumped in the small patches of open water. But, for the most part, it had been miles of the same, the silence broken only by faraway grunts from the ever-present gators. Close to exhaustion, we took turns poling and resting. I tried to gauge our progress, but with no landmarks it was impossible.
As the sun set I had tried to take a turn at the pole. Several of the others had switched out with Rhames to take a turn in my boat. He had been stoic, as usual, in his efforts. Rory was in the bow of my canoe, leaning against a chest when I rose. The pain in my leg was unbearable for the first few minutes as the blood revisited the wound, but it eased and soon I was used to it. The exercise felt good, although I was terrified we would hit a mud shoal, and I would be unable to balance myself. Within minutes, I could see Rory’s chest rise and fall in a deep sleep.
It was close to dusk when I swatted the first mosquito from my nose, hoping it was a stray. The air seemed to get heavier and envelope me in its grasp, and I started to sweat. Mosquitos swarmed and I felt feverish. I was about to sit and wake Rory when I felt the first hint of a breeze on my face.
In itself it was nothing, but I turned and looked behind me. The moonlight revealed a long, thin line of clouds on the horizon. These winter storms pushed the humidity in front of them, making it feel like dog days of summer, far different than the drier January air, before they moved through. From the looks of it, we were in for a blow, and in the middle of miles of nothing, there was no way to protect ourselves.