Jort went after the gator in a wild piledive, landed fullbodied on its back and wrapped himself around and hung on. "_The rope!_ Goddam you, Shad! _Git his goddam snout with the rope!_"
The gator rolled, its tail spanking along the broken surface. Shad stepped back quickly, pawed water from his face, and looked down at the hopeless tangle of rope in his hands.
"Sam!" he shouted. "For God's sake _come help us!_ I don't know what to do with hit -"
"God a jaybirds, Shad! His snout! _His snout_, boy!"
"Come in here and help me, you son-o-bitch! Don't just stand there like a goddam fool! I'm all end over rope!"
Sam made a helplessly frustrated gesture with his right hand, his face all a-squint and mouth-twitching, and came wading into the pool, holding the 12-gauge high.
"Git the loop shook out there – the loop -" Sam wagged his hand in the air. "Wait'll Jorty swings the snout up again – Jort! _Jorty! Look out, man!_ You near to damn put my leg in his mouth!"
Shad step-sloshed backwards in the water hurriedly, getting himself a pace behind the frantically screeching Sam. He looked down at the man-and-gator battle. Jort had a tiger by the tail – Shad winced and rammed a flat hand blow into Sam's narrow back. The woods colt shot into an all arms and legs bellyflop, dragging a scream of terror after him. Shad turned and went high-stepping it for shore. When he looked back he saw pieces of Jort, gator and Sam all hurlyburly in the pool.
He ran all the way to where the skiffs were beached, heaved Jort's gator boat free of the mud and shoved it out into the creek, then got his own off the bank and piled over the bow. He stobbed out of the cane and pickereiweed, prodding Jort's skiff with the pole now and then to keep it ahead of him until he had it in mainstream. There a sluggish current gave it a quarter-turn and started herding it down the creek.
Shad dropped on the thwart, breathing fast and thick, and grinned after the big skiff.
Something was coming God-awful fast through the palmettos and laurel bays. He looked back and saw a great chunk of glistening flesh ploughing the brush. For just a moment – because of the muscular bare chest, the swinging thigh-thick arms, the wild-on-end hair, and the eyes that should have belonged to someone in a madhouse – Shad thought he was seeing vividly Holly's last minutes in the swamp; and something, maybe only the sense of a cold loss, maybe the apprehension of premonition, touched him and he shivered.
Jort came through the last of the palmettos and planted himself spread-legged in the mud. He wiped at his face and stared out at Shad. Then both of them heard Sam's wild passage through the marsh. He was making more noise than a bull moose going to a cow.
Jort's head snapped around and he bellowed at Sam. "Go find that goddam scatter-gun!"
"But – but, Jorty, _it's underwater_."
"Good God, I _know hit's underwater!_ Git it!"
Jort looked back at Shad, then at his skiff that was drifting lackadaisically dowstream.
Shad grinned. "I wouldn't count much on using that shotgun, Jort," he called, "Them shells'll be swoll up like a dead doe's bladder."
Jort nodded. He was rubbing his right fist in his left palm.
"Reckon you're right Shad. Reckon you put it over'n me this time."
Shad had to laugh. "Say, Jort, did you git a chance to see old Sam when I shoved him right down the gator's mouth? He looked about as happy as man being flung down a privy."
Jort chuckled, his great naked belly jerking up and down. "That Sam," he said appreciatively.
Shad looked over his shoulder. "Reckon you'n Sam will have some foot rambling to do afore you come up with your skiff. Mind the cottonmouths now."
Jort nodded again. "I'll keep'em in mind."
"See you," Shad called.
17
"Yeah," Jort murmured. He watched Shad stob his skiff on round a bend and start north on the main artery of Lost Yank. Then he was gone and Jort looked down at his hands. "Yeah – I'll see you."
He didn't do anything for five minutes. He stood there in the warm mud and stared at the water until Sam came slogging back with the 12-gauge. Sam dropped right where he stopped. He felt like yesterday's newspaper left out in the rain. He gasped and moaned a little and looked around at the cane and palmettos.
"What we goan do now, Jorty?"
Jort blinked and looked down at him. "Do? We got us a lot a things to do. Got my skiff to go git first off."
Sam's alarm perked up. "Where is hit? Did that Shad go and -"
"Shet up. Hit won't go far. They's no end a log litter below here. Mebbe we might have to spend the night out here but that's all."
"Well, I ain't taking me back in no slough water again, Jorty," Sam said with conviction. "I tell you that right out." He stalled for a moment, his eyes slipping sideways to a hurrah blossom, but not really seeing it. "Did you see that gator's mouth, Jorty?" he whispered. "Did you see them stobpole teeth?"
Jort's pouchy hips jerked sardonically. "I shore God must a. Eight times I had my head down his throat. And that Shad said he was wore out. Some wore out."
"Yeah," Sam muttered. Then he trembled. "Why did you have to go to mention Dorry in front of Shad?"
"It don't matter. He don't know nothing about her."
"Well, I don't like talking about her is what. I keep hearing the noise that sinkhole made when we dropped -" His voice shut off and he trembled again.
Jort grunted and said, "Never mind about that now. If we cain't find that skiff, then we got to find us an islet. I ain't fixing to spend the night in no marsh."
Sam nodded and sighed. "Guess we just ain't never goan see that Money Plane now."
"You gone coo-coo?" Jort wanted to know. "We just made our last mistake when we went to stop Shad down at Breakneck. From now on we got us a plank and we're going to be God-busy nailing hit down. First off we're goan find my skiff; then we'll hustle back to Sutt's Landing and git us some more shotgun shells and pick up Shad's carbine from my place, and stock up the skiff with some eats."
Sam cocked his head curiously. "Why we doing all that, Jorty?"
Jort looked exasperated. "Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Because Shad is right now on his way to pick up his money, is why. And when he gits hit, he's going to come lam-tailing down to the Landing to git Dorry Mears – _he thinks_.
"Only you'n me is going to be waiting in Breakneck fer him, Sam. And this time they ain't going to be no hanky pankying er passing the time a day with Mr. Shadrack Hark. We goan blow holes in him, Sam. And we goan take care of him like we done with that girl. And then you'n me is goan take off to some cee-ment city with our cash and see how do other folks live."
Sam's head nodded slowly, absently.
"Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah. That's what we goan do."
Jort put his fist in his palm and rubbed it. He looked around at the wild splendor of unrestrained and endless growth.
"Hell of a place, ain't it?" he commented matter-of-factly.
In the stillness of swamp hush Shad went up Lost Yank until he saw an opening on his starboard. The breach was between two pine islands and it was a water-lettuce prairie. He grunted with satisfaction. It was what he wanted – a cut-through to the Money Plane creek. He stobbed the skiff to the edge of the thick green carpet and started in. Within twenty feet he knew it wasn't going to work.
He shipped his pole and went over the side. The water and lettuce rushed up to his lower chest and stopped. He grabbed the painter and started hauling.
An hour later he was still hauling.
By six in the evening he had crossed three creeks, had climbed back into the skiff and explored each one of them for a mile down, looking for his markers. He hadn't found anything he could say he recognized. Each time he would return to the broad belt of water lettuce and start hauling the skiff east.