He cut himself a pole and attached the lure to it with some vine strings, and then went down to the first brook and started dancing the dabbler on the surface, pulling it in and out of the marsh bushes. Twice in over an hour he had a trout nibble, and then he had an honest to God strike; but the trout was five or six pounds and the catclaws weren't fishhooks. The fish got clean away and Shad gave up the idea with a mouthful of dirty words. He drank some swamp water and went on.
The sun dragged its feet across the sky like a poky fat boy in no hurry to get home, and Shad stumbled along under the heavy droop of foliage that seemed to hang motionless with the expectant air of a deadfall. He didn't know which he hated more – the bogland or the jungle. The air was punk and the sharp palmetto fronds were cutting him to mincemeat, and twice now rattlers had given him fair warning, and – and the Goda'mighty loneliness of the place.
He couldn't understand why God had to go and do this to him. I never kilt nobody, er took what weren't mine – well, nothing much ner important. You cain't call that eighty-thousand dollars stealing, because I went and found that. I never made fun a God, like some I know. Like Iris Culver fer one. Now He'd have a right to punish her, but Shad didn't see Him doing it. No; one-sided, that's what it was.
"Why me?" he suddenly shouted compulsively. "What You holding against me that makes You do me this way? What have I done?"
Instantly the swamp turned shrill. Squawk hurons cut loose as though they'd been picked alive, and limpkins began wailing their we-are-lost-children cry. And a startled, irritated grunting sounded in the palmettos.
Shad crouched, catching his breath. It wasn't gatorgrunting this time, worse – wild hog. The leader came snorting through the fronds as mean as a walleyed bull with a rump full of buckshot. He was leggy and narrow, his back like a man's hand viewed edgewise. He spotted Shad and something went out of whack in his little piggy eyes. He dropped his head and charged.
Shad forgot about God and went hell-for-leather out of there. He started for the tall timber, but too late – the hogs had cut him off. He veered sharply to the east.
They chased him right across a marsh and into the horror of the pin-downs. It was a vast thicket and he went dodging in and out of its bays, trying to find an easy way through. But there was no such thing. Shad said "Aw hell," and lunged into the jungle.
The Adam stalk of a pin-down grows out of water, pencil thin, nearly bare and red in colour, its branches bend down to the ground and take root wherever they touch, making natural hoop snares for feet, which in turn grow new stalks with branches that also bend down and take root, and the whole affair goes on like that endlessly- hoop after hoop after hoop. Shad had heard of men going insane when caught in the pin-downs.
He was ready to believe it. He went jumping, highstepping, lunging and knife-hacking into the thicket, and within ten feet he was flat on his face in the slime and thought he'd twisted an ankle. He got up, panting like a blacksmith's bellows, and looked back. The wild hogs were snorting and head-ramming the edge of the thicket, trying to find an opening to get at him. Shad started picking his way farther into the pin-downs.
What made it bad was the God-awful hurrah bushes and the titi. They rose right over his head and so thick he couldn't see an inch through them, and they whipped at his eyes, ears and neck every move he made; and that meant he had to keep whacking at them with the knife, and to do it he must keep his eyes on what he was doing, and every time he looked up from the marshy ground the hoops would snare his feet, twist his anides and send him tail over appetite.
Then he saw a pine island a hundred yards away. It was like being offered a sky hook. He hacked toward the rise, gasping, sobbing, mumbling, "I kindly thank you, God. I shorely do."
When he staggered finally onto the solid ground of the island a lassitude came over him like a ton of damp, warm earth, and he had to rib himself up to keep going.
He was beat and hungry and lost and if he didn't come up with a trick soon the swamp would get him. He needed protection and food, and that meant a weapon of some sort, something more than the knife. He could make a bow and some arrows. When he was a kid they used to make them out of saplings. He got pretty good with one, too. He'd bowled over a plentiful of coons with arrows, so why not do it again? A coon dinner would go dandy right now.
An edge, that's all he asked for. Just give him a little bit of an edge and he'd take care of the rest.
Then he saw the shebang nestled forlornly in a stand of sycamores.
He gaped, not understanding it, then roused himself and went toward the trees, but cautiously and with uneasiness, as though approaching a sepulchre.
The shebang had been constructed from deadwood mostly, age-brittle branches and old ratty looking brown palmetto fronds. It was squatty and not much larger than a good sized doghouse, and he had to go on hands and knees to get through the little doorway.
There was nothing inside except dirt, a few nameless crawlies, and a litter of dead trash that must have been a weed bed once. The only other thing was an old stiffened deerskin pouch, with a leather thong to go over a man's shoulder. The flap had two letters burnt into it:
H.H.
Shad sat down and rubbed at his cheeks with his fingertips. He'd swung full circle – right around to where his brother had ended four years before.
"Me'n Holly," he said quietly. "We both come out here to beat the pants offn this old slough – and look what we got fer our pains."
The lassitude was with him again as he left the lonely little wickiup. He walked a bit through the bays, and then looked up and around, wondering if Holly's body was somewhere nearby.
It was mid-afternoon when he stumbled upon the Indian mounds. That perked him up somewhat. He'd heard oldtimers tell of how the Indians used to bury pottery, ornaments, tools, and weapons along with their dead. There just might be something in one of the mounds he could use to help along his survival.
He circled an enormous mound that from its extraordinary size suggested that its dead inhabitant had been tenfoot tall. He'd heard tales of Indians nearly that tall but he'd never believed it. He chose a likely spot and started digging with his knife.
The bones he unearthed went to powder in his fingers, and the weapons didn't stand up any better. He found some stone implements that he couldn't account for and didn't see how he could use, and so, doggedly, shifted on to the next mound.
He dug mechanically, loosening the dirt with the knife blade, pawing it aside with his left hand. Suddenly he snatched back his hand as though he'd touched something unwholesome. He'd uncovered a small part of a man's leg – but the leg was clothed in rotting denim.
Shad stood up, staring. All at once comprehension burst through the blank barrier that shock had created. It was George Tusca's body.
"Great God A'mighty!" he whispered. "This here's the mound I done buried poor George in two years ago!"
His head snapped around and for the first time he actually saw the nearby tupelo trees, saw the very tupelo that George Tusca had hanged himself from.
He knew where he was – he was out!
You go into that hurrah thicket there and down to the guzzle he'd named Tusca Creek, in honour of George's memory, and you follow the creek for two miles and it flows you right into Tarramand Lake, and you take Mink Creek for another mile and that brings you to the river. And way-hay, roll and go! You're heading for home!