Davy Crockett 8 Page 8

  “Mighty smart of you,” Sedge said sarcastically. “Let a temper tantrum cost us six or seven hundred dollars. Why don’t you shoot a few more while you’re at it?”

  Arlo did not appreciate his companion’s humor. “What else would you have me do? Beg him to get his lazy ass on the move?”

  “No. There’s an easier way. All you have to do is think” Sedge said, tapping his temple. Then, striding to a young woman who cringed in terror, he leveled a rifle and jammed the muzzle into her stomach. Sneering at the old man, he stated, “I know you don’t savvy a lick of English, you bastard. But you’ll savvy this. Get on your feet and move out or I’ll blow a hole in this bitch.”

  The old man stared at the woman. She said something in an unknown tongue, and the old man shook his head. Tears came into her eyes as he stiffly rose, giving the chain a shake to loosen the shackle a trifle. Squaring his bloody shoulders, he faced Sedge, and motioned to show he was ready to comply.

  Sedge snickered. Lowering his rifle, he crowed, “There. See, Arlo? It’s not so hard when you use your brain. Darkies can’t hold a candle to white folks when it comes to smarts. You ought to know that.”

  Kastner was coiling the whip. “What I know is that I don’t much like being treated like a simpleton. What would you have done if the old geezer didn’t listen? Shoot her and him both? We’d lose twice as much money.”

  “Nah. These darkies stick up for one another,” Sedge said. “They have to. It’s how they survive.” He headed forward. “Next time one acts up, give a holler. I’ll show you how to deal with ’em.”

  From his place of concealment, Flavius saw Arlo glare at Sedge’s retreating back, and heard Arlo growl when Sedge was beyond earshot, “I’ll show you, you smug jackass. I’m tired of your attitude. More and more I like the idea of how nice it would be to have all the money, not just half.”

  So the river rats were having a falling out, Flavius mused. He wished there were some means of turning it to his advantage. They continued on, and so did he, though not for very long. Ten minutes later Sedge gave a whoop, bringing the blacks to a halt. Arlo hastened to the front to find out why.

  Flavius bided his time. The ruffians were bound to hurry on; they knew that Davy and James would be after them. Mystified, he watched the pair climb a short slope to what appeared to be a low hillock that bordered the game trail. Sedge pointed at several spots, and Arlo nodded as if excited by whatever Sedge was proposing.

  Flavius was eager to overhear, but he didn’t relish venturing into the water to sneak around. The problem was solved when the slavers herded their captives to the base of the slope, and had the blacks pick up long branches and sharp stones and whatever else could be used as implements. Arraying ten at one point and the other ten at another, Sedge, through gestures, directed them to dig.

  More mystified than ever, Flavius snuck as near as he dared. Arlo was at the bottom of the slope, back toward him, while the other cutthroat was at the top, pacing back and forth.

  “Dig faster!” Sedge goaded. “So help me, if Bowie and Crockett show up before you’re done, I’ll kill as many of you as I can out of sheer spite!”

  Arlo was all smiles. “Those two will never catch us now. This brainstorm of yours is brilliant, partner. It will wipe out our tracks for hundreds of feet. By the time Bowie picks up our scent again, we’ll be too far ahead.” He chortled. “And here I thought you were all mouth!”

  “Oh?” Sedge said.

  “You have me convinced,” Arlo said. “I admit you’re smarter than me. Just don’t let it give you a swelled head.”

  Flavius witnessed something Arlo didn’t. Sedge’s features rippled, becoming a mask of pure resentment. The expression lasted fleeting seconds; then Sedge adopted an oily smile instead. “Hell, I’ve been tellin’ you that for ages. Glad to hear you finally agree.”

  The black men and women were scooping out prodigious amounts of soft earth and flinging it to either side. The reason eluded Flavius, until one of the slaves cried out and pointed at a trickle of water seeping from the hole they were excavating.

  With a start, Flavius realized the hillock was really a slightly elevated basin. A large pool must be on the other side of that slope. Once the wall crumpled, water would gush out, flowing over the swamp for quite a ways, a minor flood that would obliterate tracks and trail alike. It was brilliant.

  Another black yelled. More water seeped through, bearing globs of earth, eating at the dirt like acid. Arlo had the slaves move to the north of the slope. Sedge, descending, examined their handiwork, and commanded ten to apply themselves where the slope was weakest. In no time whole sections were being expelled by gushing torrents.

  Almost too late, Sedge ordered the diggers to safety. The slope was eroding at a fantastic rate. Violent spray shot from it at several points.

  Viewing the watery onslaught was like watching a damn buckle. Flavius was enthralled. Abruptly, with a turbulent rending and a sibilant hiss, half the slope shattered and was borne toward the trail by a foaming wave over six feet high.

  Only then did Flavius awaken to the danger he was in. The water was rushing toward him, and if he broke into the open to flee, the river rats would spy him and open fire. Yet what else could he do?

  Roaring like the Biblical Leviathan, a solid frothing wall bore down on him with the destructive force of a runaway steam engine.

  ~*~

  “There, Mr. Crockett. Right about there is where I saw your friend fall in.” Sam nodded. “Sedge gave him a fierce wallop. About split his skull open, it looked like. That’s when he fell, and two gators were on him like tomcats on a mouse.”

  Davy moved into the water. A wide area was discolored, darker than it should be, and bits and pieces of flesh bobbed like tiny corks. Bile rose in his throat.

  “I saw one of the gators bite down,” Sam detailed. “Then I started to run to help, but Arlo hit me. I must have blacked out. When I came to, I was in the water my own self, and a gator was swimming toward me. I crawled into the weeds and lay there for I don’t know how long, too weak to get up. I’d lost a lot of blood.”

  “Which is what saved your life,” James Bowie commented. “Arlo mistook you for dead, or he’d have finished you off.”

  “I’m terribly sorry about Flavius,” Sam told the Irishman. “He was a sweet, kindly fella. Powerful fond of talking about food, but there are worse flaws.”

  It was meant to cheer Davy a trifle, but he was too distraught. Not Flavius! he thought, wading deeper. The level rose to his knees.

  “I wouldn’t were I you, sir,” Sam warned. “Those monsters are still around. And they’re like hogs. They never get enough.”

  “He’s right,” Bowie said. “Get out of there.”

  Davy refused. He had to be sure. He had to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that his best friend was gone, gone forever. A pale object bobbed nearby, an object remarkably like a human forearm. Loathe to touch it, Davy poked it with Liz’s stock, turning it over. It was a limb, all right, but it belonged to an alligator.

  Bowie had moved nearer to cover him. “The gators must have fought over the body. They do that sometimes.”

  “But there’s no sign of him,” Davy said. Hardly were the words out of his mouth when he saw something else floating a few yards further out. Thrusting the stock underneath, he lifted a soaked, jagged strip of buckskin into the sunlight. “Damn!” Bowie swore.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Sam reiterated.

  Davy searched for more strips, but there were none. He roved to the right and left, the water rising almost to his hips. To his pistols. He didn’t care. All he could think of was Flavius, ripped into a hundred bits, and how it was all his own fault for dragging Flavius on this latest gallivant.

  “Come back!” James said. “What are you trying to prove? You’ll only get yourself killed, Tennessee.”

  What was he trying to prove? Davy asked himself. The alligator had likely dragged the rest of Flavius off to its lair. He couldn’t
give his friend a decent burial. Couldn’t even kill the gator. All he could do was mourn. His eyes moistened and his throat constricted, and he was on the verge of sobbing when he remembered who bore even more of the blame. “Arlo and Sedge,” he said aloud.

  Bowie had stepped into the water. “What about them? If we push, maybe we can catch up before dark. You do want to see justice done, don’t you?”

  Davy had never wanted anything more. Wading onto shore, he wrung the buckskin, neatly folded it, and slid it into his leather pouch. He would take the keepsake to Tennessee. The least he could do was have a formal ceremony, with a coffin, a minister, and flowers. He owed that much to Flavius. And to Matilda, who was bound to take the news hard. For all her carping, despite the countless tongue-lashings she had given Flavius, she cared as deeply for her husband as any woman alive. “I’m ready.”

  Bowie’s long legs ate up the distance. It was soon obvious, however, that Sam was not sufficiently recovered to hold to the pace Bowie set. They stopped twice in fifteen minutes, Davy chafing at each delay. His impatience was as plain as the nose on his face. “Maybe you should go on ahead,” James proposed. “Sam and I will come as fast as we can.”

  “Will you be safe?” Davy asked, thinking of the Karankawas.

  “Safer than you’ll be,” Bowie said. “A man alone is easy pickings.” He paused. “You should overtake them before nightfall. But if you don’t, pick as high a spot as you can find and build a fire so snakes and the like will let you be.”

  Davy did not waste another moment. Touching a finger to his coonskin cap, he was off, jogging at a reckless speed. The position of the sun told him it was past four, but he was still supremely confident. It was the middle of the summer. Sunset didn’t occur until eight o’clock. That gave him plenty of time. The river rats had an hour’s lead, maybe slightly more. Nowhere near enough. He would have Arlo and Sedge in his rifle sights before night fell.

  Within an hour, Davy’s legs were sore, his muscles taut. He should stop and rest a spell, but he refused. He would when Flavius’s killers had been punished, not before.

  It was about five-thirty when the Tennessean came to a barren strip of soft earth the slavers had crossed. He was halfway across when a distinct set of footprints brought him up short in amazement. They were overlaid on top of the tracks made by the river rats and the blacks. Moccasin prints, these were. Squatting, he ran a finger along the edge and noted the width and depth.

  Only one person could have made them. A person who was as much Davy’s brother as his own kin. “I wish I may be shot if these aren’t his,” he said to himself.

  But they couldn’t be.

  Davy had the strip of buckskin in his pouch to prove it. He had Sam’s testimony and the evidence of his own eyes. He compared the tracks to his own, studied them from various angles, and held to his opinion.

  “Flavius!”

  Renewed vigor animated Davy as he took up the pursuit. Somehow his friend had survived and was trailing the slavers on his own. That in itself was cause for distress. Flavius was a fairly competent woodsman and a fair hand with a rifle, but he was no match for two merciless vermin like Sedge and Arlo.

  More time passed on turtle’s feet. Davy found where the slavers had briefly stopped, which was encouraging. Every delay on their part worked in his favor. He grew weary, but would not slow down.

  Guilt racked him. He had not been there when Flavius needed him; he would not make the same mistake twice.

  Then a strange thing happened.

  The terrain became monotonous marsh. For quite a while Davy had been flying along a winding game trail the slavers had used. He expected to come on them at any moment. Rounding a bend, he was up to his ankles in muddy water before he realized the trail had ended with bewildering suddenness. Stopping, he backpedaled onto dry ground and scrutinized the area ahead.

  Something was amiss. Water stretched for hundreds of yards to the north and south and west, yet there was no indication the river rats had gone around. What then? Davy couldn’t see them wading across, not at the risk of losing valuable slaves to marauding gators. Where else had they gone then? Had they vanished into thin air?

  Davy slanted to the right, slowing when another peculiar fact struck him. For scores of yards to the east, bushes and trees poked up out of the water as if they had recently sprouted. Which was impossible. And if they had been there a good long while, the water, plainly, had not.

  Baffled, Davy tramped to the south a short distance, then an equal distance to the north. Beyond certain points the water was clear. As improbable as it seemed, an upheaval of some kind—a flood caused by God knows what—had inundated a wide dry tract. Including the slavers’ trail.

  What could have caused it? was the big question. Rain had not fallen in days—in weeks. And floods did not occur on their own. Something had to trigger them.

  Davy returned to the trail, debated, and waded on out. Lady Luck willing, he would pick up the tracks again on the other side. Provided the slavers had gone straight on. He counted his steps, and at 210 he stepped onto dry terra firma again. However, a hasty survey filled him with apprehension.

  No footprints were anywhere to be seen. Davy glanced at the blazing orb in the western sky, well on its downward arc, and indulged in a bout of lurid swearing. The unthinkable had happened. Despite his best efforts, despite spurring himself to exhaustion, he was worse off now than when he’d started.

  He had lost the trail.

  Seven

  Flavius Harris started to back away from the onrushing wall of roiling water, and tripped. He tried to rise, but it was on him before he could. A liquid battering ram slammed into his side, bowling him over. He tumbled head over heels, barely able to retain his grip on Matilda. A tremendous hissing filled his ears. Something hard hit his leg. Something else, long and sinuous, wriggled against his arm and was gone.

  Flavius tried to resist the tide, but it was hopeless. It was like being buffeted by a giant’s hand. He could no more resist the water’s pull than he could withstand a buffalo stampede. Trees shot past him. Crumpled brush whirled into a murky void. Animals flitted in front of his eyes; frogs, salamander, snakes, and more. Once, a small gator zipped on by, trail thrashing.

  Flavius had neglected to suck in a deep breath before the wave engulfed him. He needed to reach the surface, but he did not know which direction to go. Dizzy, disoriented, he struggled to slow himself down. He might as well have attempted to stem the Mississippi’s flow.

  A jarring impact did what Flavius was unable to do on his own. He smashed into a tree, the impact whooshing what little air he had left from his lungs. His left arm happened to loop around the trunk, and he clung on for dear life.

  His chest was fit to explode. His vision dimmed. Soon, whether he wanted to or not, he must gasp for air that was not there.

  The end was near.

  Then the pressure slackened. The water stopped pummeling him. He straightened, astonished when his head broke clear. He could breathe again.

  Suddenly, to his left, a huge alligator appeared. Its enormous head swung from side to side, and it snorted just like a bull. It was mad as hell and searching for something to take out its wrath on.

  Flavius did not so much as twitch. When the reptile turned and paddled furiously away, he straightened. The water level was dropping rapidly. His feet settled on firm ground and he stood.

  Around him living things writhed and flopped and squirmed. Tadpoles, fish, a bullfrog, even a turtle. To the west the white froth receded as the wave diminished. To the east, the last of the slaves entered a strip of verdant growth. Arlo Kastner was at the rear, and he never bothered to glance back.

  Flavius suppressed an urge to whoop for joy. Leaning against the ground, he checked Matilda and the pistols. Both were hopelessly soaked, and had to be dried and reloaded. The only thing was, if he took the time, the river rats might get away. And he could ill afford to lose them.

  Muddy water lapped against his legs
as he waded toward the woods. He stepped over a black snake, avoided a middling-sized gator.

  The slavers were traveling to the northwest this time. Strange, since New Orleans was to the east, but he figured they knew the swamp better than he did. He stayed well enough behind to avoid being detected.

  It disturbed him that the sun would set in a couple of hours. He never had liked the dark much, even as a little boy. Many a night he had cowered under the blankets, convinced a demon lurked under the bed or was hiding in his closet. On occasion, he’d sworn he could see blazing red eyes glare at him from corners of the room. He even gave the demon a name: Old Scratch.

  His grandmother—bless her soul—had been partly to blame. She’d had a fondness for telling scary stories. And one of her favorites involved Scratch, a spawn of the Pit who, Grandma claimed, delighted in stealing bad children and whisking them down to the nether regions, there to toil in infernal flames forever more.

  Flavius had practically been a grown man before he stopped believing in Old Scratch. He knew the demon was the product of his granny’s tall tales, yet on thunderous, stormy nights, when he lay awake beside Matilda, sometimes he glimpsed those blazing red eyes in the shadows, and he would snuggle closer to his snoring wife.

  Over an hour had gone by when it dawned on Flavius that he had made a mistake. The torrent of water had undoubtedly flooded a considerable portion of the trail, wiping out their tracks. Davy would have to search and search to find where they had gone on. It would have helped his friend immensely if Flavius had thought to blaze trees to mark the route they were taking.

  “Damn me for a fool,” Flavius said under his breath.

  It was not his only oversight. For moments later, when he hopped over a log, a large snake with curved fangs as long as his thumb darted out from under it and bit at him. By sheer coincidence, he had started to lower Liz, and the snake mistook the stock for part of his body and slashed at the wood instead. Startled, Flavius reversed his grip, fixed a hasty bead on the scurrying serpent, flicked the hammer back, and squeezed the trigger.