Shad looked at him. "What's wrong, Sam?" he asked. "Cold?"
Sam's head jerked as though Shad had struck him, and his voice leaped out fast and high like a wood duck taking off in startled flight. "No, I ain't cold. How in hell could I be cold out here?" He wiped at his face with the back of his wrist.
"Take hit easy, Sam," Jort said softly, and because of a certain quality in the big man's voice, Shad looked at him sharply.
Jort's great moon face swung back to Shad, frowning and smiling at the same time, and he tilted his head slightly, directed at Sam's back. That meaningful look of bewildered amusement was asking wordlessly if Shad didn't agree that Sam was a caution.
Shad said nothing, but he didn't like it. There was a snag in the line somewhere, he thought. They've done something and Jort's afeered Sam'll kick over the bait can. He planted his stobpole deep, ready to shove off. But Jort said, "Why'nt you leave your skiff here, Shad? We kin all fit snug-like in mine."
Shad shook his head, not looking around. "Uh-uh. I like to keep hit handy." He shoved down on the pole, hard, sending the skiff abruptly into the slough.
Looking around a moment later he saw they were following close in his wake; Sam sitting forward with the 12gauge, chewing his lower lip with his overbite, averting his eyes quickly when he saw Shad looking; Jort standing massive and sure in the rear, stobbing with one hand, the other tucked carelessly in his hip pocket.
Shad sent an underbrow look at the tangle of cypress knees that suggested a weir, and then turned the bow of his skiff into Lost Yank Creek.
"I tell you them Cajuns is crawly eaters. They eat snails, and snails is crawlies," Jort Camp claimed.
"Naw they ain't neither. A snail ain't a crawly," Sam said peevishly.
"Well, hit myself if they ain't! Shad, ain't a snail a God shore crawly?"
They were sitting in a canebrake that fronted Lost Yank Creek; only the creek had thinned out to a guzzle that a good spit with a little breeze behind it could span. They had stobbed up Lost Yank for two-three miles and had beached their skiffs in the early afternoon. Shad had picked up his knife and lunch and was starting for the Springfield when Jort had made the first move to show that the cat-andmouse game was drawing to a fast close. He'd stepped hastily through the ankle-high water from his skiff to Shad's, beating him to the starboard gunwale by a fraction of a second.
"No need in us overloading ourselves, Shaddy," he'd said, and his grin had been affable enough but it hadn't reached his hard little eyes. "I ain't fixing to shoot me no gator, you know. Got to take 'em alive, else they ain't worth mud."
Shad had hesitated, watching Jort's eyes, wondering if this was really the moment both he and Jort had been waiting for. Then he'd glanced over his shoulder. And there was Sam standing on the bank by the bow of Jort's skiff, holding the 12-gauge in both hands, his trigger finger inside the guard, but not quite pointing the barrel at Shad. So Shad had scratched at the corner of his mouth and nodded. "All right. Suits me."
And he'd sloshed up to Sam and pushed on by him without a glance.
He'd led them to the gator's cave – a hole in the creek bank under a sycamore bole – but the old bull wasn't at home. Then they'd crept a little farther into the marsh to a shallow cypress pool where, Shad claimed, the gator liked to take the afternoon sun. But he wasn't there either, and so they'd crossed over the stream to hide and wait for him in the canebrake. And then Jort and Sam had started arguing about bugs.
"Ain't a snail a God shore crawly, Shad?"
"Well, I don't know." Shad gave it a little thought. "You cain't say they really crawl like bugs do, because they ain't got no legs -kind a squish and slide like a snake."
Jort pointed a commanding finger at Shad. "Well, but you say a snake crawls, don't you? You don't say a snake comes a-squishing, do you? Bet your butt you don't! Snails is pure-out crawlies, and anybody goes to eat 'em is a goddam crawly eater, like I said."
Sam said he didn't know about people being crawly eaters, but he knew too damn well that the crawlies were "people eating" him. He slapped at his face and missed a gnat, and then gave the back of his neck a slap.
Jort was pulling the makings from his pocket, and he grinned and said, "Perk up, Sam. Nothing's ever so bad hit cain't git a little bit worser." His eyes slid to Shad. "Take Shad here," he offered. "Bet when he first found all that money he reckoned he had him the hull world by the tail." Jort came to a dramatic pause like an act with perfect timing.
He shook a thin window of golden Durham flakes in a creased wheat-straw paper, leaving a slight depression in the middle, brought his thumbs up, rolling the inner edge in and over the tobacco as forefingers flapped the outer edge over and down. He ran his tongue along this edge, crimped one end and tamped the other with a matchead. He put the cigarette in his mouth and thumbnailed the match aflame.
Shad didn't move.
"Bet hit seemed just thataway, huh Shad?" Jort prompted.
Shad thought about the knife in the back of his belt. He'd have to get Jort first. The 12-gauge was bad, but Jort was worse. He looked around, his expression flat, sizing up their positions. Jort was hunkered down a yard from his right; Sam was squatting six feet away, half-facing him. He'd have to make a full-armed sweep at Jort's chest with the knife, and piledive Sam at the same time. "You talk like a man with no sense, Jort," he said.
Jort stared back at him, the smile still lingering on his fat face. "Shad," he said evenly, "you lying hard as you kin go. You think fer a minute we don't khow what you and Dorry Mears was up to?"
Sam flinched. His eyes went all twittery, blinking rapidly at Jort, at Shad, down at the shotgun in his lap.
"Ain't no sense you a-mean-eyeing Sam thataway, Shad. Every'body knows about you'n Dorry." Jort folded his hands behind his neck and gave his back a stretch.
"And," he added casually, "they ain't no sense that I kin see in you gitting yourself busted up like kindling over hit. I reckon they's enough fer three."
Shad looked at him, tensing his arms. "How's that?"
Sam's quick eyes caught the nearly imperceptible tightening in Shad's limbs and it was the last straw for his nervous system. He went straight up in one movement like a jackin-box, stepped back a pace or two and swung the gun barrel around. He stared at Shad, a little bit of his pink tongue slipping slowly under his overbite.
"That Sam," Jort said and chuckled. "He's hell fer spooky, ain't he?" He studied his trembling friend for ten seconds, as though he had nothing better to do. "Look at him a-standing there, Shad. Straight enough to be used fer a post, huh? Bet you could drive him like one too, and him that skinny. Only he's got him that air scatter-gun and he knows a thing er two about firing hit off. You folly me there, Shad?"
Shad pulled a grin into his cheeks. "Better not take that kind a bluff into a poker game, Jort. You'll kindly lose your money. If Sam kills me – ain't nobody goan find that old Money Plane."
Jort seemed to be appalled at the idea. "_Kill you_, Shad? My, my, what kind a fellas you take us fer? Ain't nobody said nothing about _killing_ folks. But, Shad, you ever seen a fella try to run away with his legs all blown to Billy-be-damned by a scatter-gun?"
Suddenly Sam's skinny frame tightened into listening attention, then his head whipped around and he ducked behind the maiden cane.
"Something coming," he whispered.
Shad got his eyes off Jort and looked across the creek. The palmettos beyond the cypresses were rustling, and just before they burst apart the three men heard gator-grunting. The old bull waddled out of the palm bog and down to the sandy bank of his private pooi.
He was all gator, ten foot of him, and the armour on his back was so dense he looked like a many-horned monster from a primordial age. He lumbered along with the peculiarly embarrassed gait of a gator out of water and fetched up alongside a long dead log that sloped from the bank into the centre of the pool. He raised his snout and the two excretory ducts under his throat discharged the God-awful musky fluid from his glands. Instantly the air all around the pool became tainted with a strong, sickening odour.