Go Home, Stranger

Eleven

She was not at the car when he arrived. He looked at his watch and grunted. It was 12:30. Ten minutes went by while he fretted impatiently. When she did arrive she was hurrying and out of breath.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I had some business that took a little longer than I’d expected.”

“It’s all right,” he said shortly, as they got in the car.

They were both deep in thought and spoke little during the drive back. She thanked him quietly and went into her cabin.

Reno changed into fishing clothes and went down to the float with rod and tackle box to pick out a skiff. There was no whisper of breeze and the bayou lay flat and glaring like polished steel between the walls of trees. The sun beat relentlessly on his back and shoulders, and before he had rounded the first turn his clothes were dripping with perspiration. There was no other boat in sight. When he came abreast the arm of the bayou that ran off toward the north, he turned in. The channel was narrower here.

He looked back over his shoulder from time to time to check his course, keeping as close as possible to the bank and the overhanging trees to take advantage of the shade. He could be a thousand miles from civilization here, he thought.

He had no definite plan, nor any idea of what he might find. He was drawn merely by the fact that all the information he uncovered led him more surely in the direction of Max Easter. Suppose Counsel’s dead, he thought. It almost had to be Easter who killed him. He had the motive. He was here on the bayou, and he’d been waiting a long time.

He stopped pulling the oars for a minute and looked out through the trees as he lit a cigarette, conscious of a nagging dissatisfaction that he could not escape. There were two weak places in this line of reasoning. In the first place, he didn’t know Counsel was dead. It was just a guess, even if a good, logical one. And secondly, he was no nearer to answering the most baffling question of all and the one that had to be the key to the whole thing: what had Counsel come back for? Not just to see if Easter would kill him—that was a cinch.

He shook his head and took up the oars again. At least he could get a good look at the big man at close range. And if it developed he hadn’t come back from town yet . . . His eyes were tough as he thought of the houseboat. Easter, or somebody, hadn’t been squeamish about shaking down his cabin. It could work both ways.

He pulled steadily, and in about twenty minutes he came to the first fork in the waterway. He took the left-hand channel, as Gage had directed, and mentally noted an old snag as a landmark for the return trip. It would be easy to get lost up here. He wondered how Easter came and went; then he remembered the pickup truck. There must be a road that came nearer to the houseboat somewhere above.

There was none here, however, nor even any trails along the banks. He must have come two miles or a little more by this time, moving in a generally northwesterly direction.

He came to the second fork and stopped rowing to look about him. Go to the right here, he thought. The right-hand channel was narrow, not more than twenty yards across and almost a tunnel under the overhanging trees, while the other was wider and ran straight ahead for another two hundred yards before it swung left around a bend.

Reno wondered for a moment if Gage had meant what he had assumed: right hand facing forward. A man rowing a boat is traveling backward, but that would normally be disregarded in giving directions . . . He shrugged. Gage was no fool, and he had been in boats before.

He was about to take up the oars again when he suddenly jerked his head erect and looked around, trying to identify and locate the sound he had heard. It was not a gun. The muffled roar of it was too deep for that. And where had it come from?

He swung around in the skiff, facing forward, and saw nothing but the empty reach of the bayou shimmering in the sun. The dead, lost-world silence of the swamp closed in again, and he could hear his own breathing as he listened. It was an explosion of some kind, he thought, completely mystified, But it wasn’t a big blast, and it had come from not very far away.”

Then the sound came again. This time there was a string of three, evenly spaced, about five seconds apart. They came from somewhere up the larger, left-hand channel. There was no mistaking the direction now. He dug in the oars and began pulling swiftly toward-the bend up ahead.

Somebody blowing stumps out of a field, or clearing right of way for a road? Road? He thought. Field? There was neither within miles. They used bulldozers now, anyway.

He came around the bend, swung his head expectantly, and saw nothing. This stretch of waterway was as devoid of life and movement as all the others. Less than a hundred yards ahead there was another turn, to the right this time. He rowed on.

He was rounding the turn now, and started to swing his head around to look. He heard the vicious splatt! As the bullet slammed against the water and went whining off into the distance, and he was already off the seat and diving over the side before he heard the sound of the gun itself.

He came to the surface, gulped a breath, and before he could get the water out of his eyes and look around the second bullet threw up a geyser of swamp water two feet off to his left. He went under, pulling downward and to the right. His movements were hampered by clothing and shoes, and he wondered if he could make it to the screen of overhanging limbs along the bank before he had to surface. It shouldn’t be more than thirty feet.

He felt leaves brush his hands, and surfaced. He was in deep shadow, and there was no shot. The man, wherever he was up the bayou, couldn’t see him here. Softly turning his head, he looked out through the leaves. Except for his skiff the bayou lay deserted under the glare of the sun. The shots had come as mysteriously out of nowhere as the explosions he had heard. He looked back at the boat. It was rocking gently and drifting a little.

He was shooting from somewhere pretty far up this reach of bayou, Reno thought bitterly. And it wasn’t any twenty-two rifle. That was high-velocity stuff, the way it churned up the water before I heard the shot. I’ve got to get out of here before he gets any nearer with that gun.

He caught a projected root and pulled himself up the bank. His body brushed against the stem of a bush, shaking it a little, and almost immediately there was the ominous scream of another flattened bullet tearing off into the timber. A severed twig floated down onto his head.

Too damn close, he thought, as he made it onto the bank and .dropped behind a log.

He swung his head and looked back toward the channel. His view down the long reach was cut off by the trees, but he could see straight out toward the other side and he could see the skiff. There was something strange about it, something he had half noticed before and had had no time to consider then.

Never mind that, he thought. If that guy’s coming down this side with his rifle I’m a dead pigeon if I don’t fade, but fast. The best thing to do is head back along the bank. He raised up a little to study the cover he would have. Except for the area right near the bank, it was open timber, big trees and lots of them, but little underbrush. Getting to his feet with a quick lunge, he started to run to his right, paralleling the bank. Water sloshed noisily in his shoes. He had hurtled forward less that a dozen strides when he heard the gun crash again. He threw himself down and rolled behind the uprooted earth of a fallen tree.

Closer, he thought, gasping for breath. A lot closer, and it was a different gun. There were two of them. One was covering the open reach of the bayou, and the other was running down this side looking for him. And they knew he didn’t have a gun. All they had to do was move in and pick him off. He couldn’t even hide, because they could track him by the trail of water his soaked clothes were leaving. He felt goose flesh rise and prickle between his shoulder blades as his mind flashed crazily back to the thing that Gage had said: “Your sister’s already lost a husband.”

He turned his head and looked swiftly behind him, out across the channel. The boat was still there. It was a desperate gamble, but if he stayed where he was he had no chance at all. He was on the point of land where the channel made its bend, and the man was behind him. There was nothing left but the water.

Again, in that brief and chilling second in which he considered his chances, he was conscious of the thing that had bothered him about the boat. And this time he knew what it was—the boat was rocking.

Now that he understood, he heard the slup, slup of small waves coming in against the bank. In this absolutely breathless calm? There was nothing to cause even a ripple on the water.

But there was no time to think about it. He slid backward and eased down the bank into the water, feeling his skin draw up tight as he expected the bullet to come crashing into him every second. There was no telling where the man was now. Just before he went under completely, he took a big breath and turned to mark the exact position of the boat.

He swam straight out, trying to stay far enough off the bottom not to stir the mud and give himself away to the man on the shore. If he missed the boat, he would have to try to make the other side before one of them could get here with their boat. They must have one up above somewhere. He’d have to surface to get his breath, but if he did it fast enough he might succeed. It would take a lightening fast shot to line up a rifle and squeeze off the trigger in that brief second. Getting out on the other side without being killed, however, would be something else.

He turned on his side and opened his eyes. He kicked ahead three more strokes and swung his face, searching, feeling a terrible urgency now. His breath was almost, gone. Then he saw the skiff, ten feet over to his left. He kicked again, and was under it.

Easy—take it easy, he thought, his lungs bursting. It would do no good to come up on the far side. The man up the bayou would be able to see him. And he couldn’t bump it, make it move suddenly. He had his fingertips up, brushing the bottom. With agonizing care he felt his way along until he found what he sought. His fingers were out of the water, but still under the boat.

With no one aboard, it rode high forward, the prow and some two feet of sloping flat bottom rising a little above the surface. With the tips of his fingers he caught the thin strip of wood running lengthwise under the center of the floor planking and slowly pulled up until his nose was against the bottom in the air space between boat and surface. He took two deep breaths, almost sobbing in the relief to his lungs. Then a small wave slapped water into his nostrils, making them sting. He choked, but remained silent.

Neither of them could see him here. They would have to be down on the exact level of the water to see this far back under the overhang of the prow. But how long could he fool them? They would know he had gone back into the water.

The boat was rocking very gently now. The mysterious disturbance on the water was dying out, the surface returning to its waxed and glaring calm. And now for the first time, when he had an instant in which to consider it, he knew what had caused it. Those explosions had been set off on the water, or under it—that was obvious. Somewhere farther up the bayou, probably around the next bend. But why? A demolition job on something blocking the channel? The hell, he thought; this wasn’t a navigable waterway. Nobody ever used it.

He choked again, and pushed his nose a little farther out of the water. It was increasingly difficult to hold his position here, painfully clenching the tips of his fingers on the narrow batten. He tentatively lowered his feet. Maybe he could touch bottom. . . . He felt nothing.

He wasn’t going to be able to remain here much longer. There had been no further shot, and he wondered whether the man along the bank had given up the chase. There was another possibility, he thought. Maybe they knew where he was and were only keeping him pinned down until they finished whatever they were doing. He felt a curious but impotent anger at not being able to find out what it was. Charges of explosive were sometimes set off like that to raise the body when someone had been lost in a river or lake. Sure, he thought bitterly, and with a goon squad standing guard with high-powered rifles?

It was maddening. If he could make it to the other side and lose himself in the timber he might be able to flank them and get a look at the bayou beyond the next bend. Whatever it was had happened right in that area. He was sure of it now. He turned his head slightly to the side so one eye was above water, and critically lined up the nearest point on the other shore. He could make it. He had to. Somehow, he had to know what was up there. Swinging back so his nose was above water again, he inhaled deeply, and swam down and away from the boat.

He had reckoned without the drag of his clothing and shoes, but that did not become apparent until too late. It was easy at first. He kicked and pulled steadily, warning himself not to hurry or to think of the man back there with the rifle. Then he swam head on into an underwater snag, which confused him momentarily and threw him disastrously off his stroke. He had to surface for air. His head came out and he gulped raggedly. He heard no shot as he pulled himself down again. But the man, if he were still there, hadn’t been expecting him The next time he’d be ready.

The shoes were growing heavier; they were like anchors on his feet. With every kick they dragged and sank a little more. He had been near to drowning twice in his life, and he knew the sensation, the unreasoning fear of water that begins to blot out everything and ends in blind and threshing panic. He fought it off grimly. The shore couldn’t be far now. He had to breathe again. His head came clear at last, with a terrible effort, and he gasped. He floundered helplessly on the surface for a moment before he could force himself to submerge again, and this time he heard the bullet’s whupp! And its lethal snarl as it went on.

He had to get back to the surface and its life-giving air. Terror was beginning to drive him up. Better to let the man try with his gun than to strangle here in this endless murky water. His arms and legs were growing weaker and trying to curl inward against him with the cramps of utter exhaustion. He struggled, biting his teeth together savagely to keep from gasping as his feet settled lower and lower. Then he felt his arms and face plow into brush. He felt nothing except the insubstantial and terrifying rake of limbs, and when he tried to raise his head there was something across his neck. He was trapped. He gulped, strangled, and began to black out.

In the dark mist of dying he felt himself threshing futilely against entangling brush and against the endless water. Somehow there was the noise of a gun mixed up in it, and splashing, and strange soft arms about his throat, and a voice pleading.

“Don’t fall. Please, please, please, don’t fall!”