Everglades Assault Read online

  The west side of the mound looked like a construction site where kids went to have their beer parties.

  “Son of a bitch,” Hervey said.

  I had no personal interest in the land—or the mound—but the indignity of it was enough to make anybody with a sense of right and wrong mad.

  “The world has its good people. But it does seem to have more than its share of assholes and jerks.”

  Hervey slammed his gear down on the ground. “And what the hell do they get out of this?” he demanded. “They get a few beads. And they get a couple of shoe boxes full of bones so they can leave them on the mantelpiece and prove to their scruffy-assed friends what experts they are on Indian culture. If they really cared about Indian culture, would they do this kind of shit?”

  It wasn’t a question that demanded an answer. While Hervey fumed, I got to work picking out a recon point for the two of us. At the top of the mound was a gathering of heavy vegetation. The sand was beach-soft and damp.

  “I think we ought to split up. If they do show up tonight, we’ll give them plenty of time to do some digging.”

  “What?”

  “Just take it easy, Hervey. You brought me along to help, remember. When it comes to fixing boats and running reefs, you’re the best. But this sort of thing falls into my line of expertise.”

  Hervey nodded, pulling at his beard. “Sorry. Okay, you run the show. But why give them a chance to do more digging?”

  “Because I want to hear what they have to say while they dig. If they’ve been trying to scare your folks out, they’ll sure as hell mention it. Maybe even joke about it. Remember, we can’t just assume these graverobbers are behind it all. Right?”

  “I guess that’s so.”

  “Okay. You keep the dog with you. Make yourself comfortable in that palmetto thicket on top of the mound. We’d better just plan on sleeping here tonight and every other night until they come back.”

  “And what if it is these guys who are playing this swamp-monster game—the ones who stole Eisa?”

  I cupped my hands together and blew between my thumbs. “I’ll make an owl call when I think it’s time to go in. You just follow my lead. If you hear that call, you’ll know I’ve got it set so they can’t get away. If they are the ones who took Eisa, you’ll have a chance to soften them up as much as you want before we take them to the law.”

  “And if they’re not?”

  “Then we’ll make sure they’ll never ever even think about coming back here.”

  “Now I wish I’d brought the shotgun,” Hervey murmured. “I had no idea they’d done this much damage.”

  I looked into my old friend’s face. “Hervey, from the look in your eyes, I’m glad you didn’t bring it. This old mound has seen enough death. And I’m no gravedigger. . . .”

  12

  They came by jeep long before midnight. There were five of them.

  At first I thought it was just a matter of our getting lucky. I’d planned on having to stake out the burial mound for a lot longer.

  But then I realized that it was Saturday night. And artifact hunters do most of their dirty work on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. I remembered what old Panther James had said about feeling their shovels in his stomach. Maybe they had been coming every night all along. Maybe they were hunting for something in particular.

  I heard the rumble of the jeep bouncing down the swamp buggy trail first. And then there was a brief flare of headlights as they swept through the undergrowth.

  Bullfrogs paused in their chorus. And somewhere a small animal squealed with finality.

  “I think we’ve got company.” Hervey’s voice was ghostly from the darkness at the top of the mound.

  “Let’s be good hosts—until I give you the signal.”

  “Take your time. I’m getting real neighborly with a snake up here that’s almost big enough to incorporate.”

  “A rattler?”

  “Naw. Indigo, I think. Moccasins probably ate all the rattlers up here.”

  Hervey wasn’t exaggerating much about the snake population around the mound. I had counted two ground rattlers and one full-grown diamondback as I made my way to the big oak where Hervey had once built a tree house. And once safely high in its limbs, I could hear snakes moving through the palmettos below.

  “You don’t worry about your dog with all these snakes around?”

  And from the top of the mound, Hervey answered, “He’s swamp-smart, remember? Gives ’em a wide berth. And Dusky, you just gave me a great idea.”

  I didn’t have a chance to ask him what the idea was. The jeep came ambling through the brush in low gear, and for one wild moment I thought their headlights had nailed my position in the tree.

  But they said nothing. Three of them were dim shapes in the back of the jeep. I could see the faces of the other two by the squint-eyed cigarette glow.

  These were no rookie artifact hunters. And it obviously wasn’t the first time they had visited this mound. They had car headlights mounted on poles and connected to twelve-volt batteries. They placed three of the lights around the perimeter of their excavation.

  It put the mound in an icy white glare. While the rest of them unloaded shovels and coolers of beer, another assembled a big wooden frame that held two levels and two sizes of screen mesh—an obvious sieve.

  The driver was the ostensible leader. He was a hugely fat man who handled himself with the pompous air of someone who believes that size suggests power. His T-shirt was sweat-stained, and he kept a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  The other four were a mixed bag: ages twenty-five to maybe forty. They chortled a lot and hit the beer in the cooler hard. They seemed delighted with what they were doing.

  While the fat man sifted, the other four shoveled. Each man had his own trench. It was clear that they planned on digging straight through to the other side of the mound. It also became clear they were all telephone-company employees from Palmville, north of Naples.

  Working on their failing phone system was a pastime.

  Desecrating Indian graves was their passion.

  I gave them an hour to hang themselves. I waited patiently high in the tree, hoping they would mention their scheme to scare Panther James off his land.

  But they never did.

  They bragged about other mounds they had robbed. They spoke of artifacts and tribes with the air of the pseudoscientist. They dug and talked, joked about their mistresses, and drank a hell of a lot of beer.

  I worried about Hervey sitting atop the mound. Him and his dog—I didn’t know which would be the hardest to control.

  Once I heard a big animal trot through the brush between me and the jeep, and I thought the two of them had tired of waiting and were going in for the kill.

  What finally convinced me it was time to act was when the men did start talking about Panther James’s swamp monster. I had cupped my hands to my ears, not wanting to miss a word.

  The fat man was talking. “Eddie there says he saw the tracks—isn’t that right, Eddie?”

  “Like I said before—I brought my wife and kids down here yesterday afternoon after work. She thought I’d been sneakin’ out to see Alice, and I just wanted to prove that we was down here workin’.”

  “Be the first time you was telling her the truth, Eddie,” one of them chided.

  “You want me to tell this story or don’t you? I was about to tell you how my little boy started yellin’ for me. Thought he was snakebit. I went after him on a run, and when I got there he was standing there with his mouth open, pointing at his track. You guys ain’t seen nothing like it.” He stopped shoveling for a moment and held his hands three feet apart. “I swear to God, it was this big. Looked like a barefooted man’s footprint, only a hell of a lot wider. If the Swamp Ape didn’t make it, I don’t want to meet the man who did.”

  The other men kidded him for a while. He promised to find it for them later. Most of them believed. A couple didn’t. They jabbered on a
bout the Swamp Ape, and then flying saucers as they picked the beads and bones from the mound—the fat man sticking them in the bucket like a vulture selecting the best from a bloated corpse.

  So that’s what convinced me to move in.

  It was obvious they didn’t know a damn thing about the plot to chase Panther James out.

  They were just a mindless few among the hundreds of thousands who move through this life selfishly and stupidly. They filled me with a sense of the pathetic, and it drained my anger away. There are too many out there like these men. They live a random existence without a love of truth and without a code of personal honor. They can rationalize any act, any deed, because they believe the only law they must embrace is public law. Anything that won’t get them arrested—or get them a stern warning from their preacher—must be all right.

  They’re like kids who get too used to the grownups’ making the rules.

  And they never learn—or maybe never want to learn—that the time comes when any thinking human being makes his own rules.

  So I just wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.

  Only one thing bothered me. The fat man was the only one armed. He wore a western-style .22-caliber revolver in a holster.

  And I knew that men like these don’t go to the woods unarmed.

  Before whistling for Hervey, I climbed down out of the tree and made my way to their jeep. Had they been responsible for stealing little Eisa, I would have disabled the jeep. Instead, I hunted for weapons.

  They were easy to find. There were three shotguns and a rifle protruding from the back.

  I took them and dropped them into the creek beyond the trail they had forged.

  That left only the fat man to worry about.

  I made my way back to the perimeter of darkness around the mound. The fat man was still sifting away, stopping only long enough to gulp a beer and light another cigarette. He threw the empty cans in the brush with the others.

  The only cover behind him was a small myrtle tree. I mapped a plan in my mind, then gave Hervey the owl call I had promised.

  By the time Hervey made himself seen, I was behind the fat man, hunkered down by the little tree.

  Hervey is big and bearlike by normal light. But in the stark white glare of the work lamps, he looked positively fearsome.

  And at his side, the yellow-eyed Chesapeake snarled like some hound from hell.

  One by one, the men went silent. And one by one they followed their neighbor’s gaze to Hervey.

  He stood on the top of the mound, black beard blazing, as if he were about to make a sermon. In his right hand he held a chunk of hatrack cypress. It was more club than walking stick. The four men held their shovels tightly as they backed themselves toward the shadows. Only the fat man stood his ground. His voice was a surprising falsetto, like that of an adolescent boy.

  “You got business here?” he said darkly.

  Hervey began to work his way down the mound. “Yeah,” he said. “My business is to make you put the stuff you found back in the mound. And then you’re going to cover it all back up nice and neat, and take them beer cans and leave. And if I ever catch you back here, lard-ass, I’m gonna tear your head off and use it for a doorstop.”

  The fat man looked at his four accomplices for reassurance—or maybe just to make sure they were still there.

  He said, “Those are pretty big words for one man.”

  Hervey snorted. “I figure one man is all it’ll take with five lard-asses like you.”

  I had been watching the fat man’s right hand. He was moving it ever so slowly toward his holster. I wanted to make sure I timed it right.

  There was no room for a mistake. Hervey had backed them in a corner a little too quickly. He had frightened them a little too much—and frightened men turn deadly all too readily.

  Just as the fat man unsnapped the holster latch, I ducked through the brush and grabbed his meaty hand. I thought the surprise of being taken from behind would stop him if nothing else.

  It didn’t. He was pretty quick for his weight.

  His reflexes were good. But his judgment was bad. Very bad.

  When I grabbed him by the wrist, he whirled away from me and sent a big overhand left toward my jaw. It was like ducking a tank.

  I felt the fist bluster harmlessly past my left ear. He had small piggish blue eyes. They held the wild look of a renegade horse as he threw another punch at me, and still another.

  Both missed.

  And he suddenly looked very worried.

  I was tired of dialogue. And besides, his revolver was still in the holster. I doubled him over with a lancing fist to the solar plexus, then caught him with a solid elbow at the intersection of neck and jaw.

  There was a jello-like repercussion when the bulk of him landed on the ground.

  He looked up at me like a fat little boy, and for a second I thought he was going to cry.

  “Watch out!”

  It was Hervey’s voice. And I didn’t waste time asking any questions. I ducked, dove, and rolled—just as I heard the toy crack of small-caliber pistol fire.

  I had been wrong. The fat man wasn’t the only one carrying a sidearm. A tall lanky guy had materialized a revolver—from his pocket, probably.

  He had a dazed look on his face, trying to level the weapon on me.

  But he never got a chance to fire again.

  The big retriever covered the base of the mound in three Homeric bounds, then crashed his considerable weight into the guy with the gun.

  The revolver went off again. And again—but aimed harmlessly at the night sky.

  Some instinct told the dog to lock onto the guy’s right arm.

  And he did—hair bristling, white teeth slashing.

  Hervey got to him, took the gun, then called off his dog. Gator heeled obediently, but still snarled at his fallen adversary.

  Hervey motioned with the revolver. “You boys are a little out of your league here. You best start covering up these holes like I told you.”

  “Jesus, that dog ’bout ripped my arm off!” The lanky guy beheld his bleeding wrist with a stare of terror.

  He was right. It didn’t look good.

  “Let’s just let them go, Hervey.”

  “Let them go! Not until these bastards have put back some of that dirt!”

  “That guy’s arm is pretty bad, Hervey. And fat boy here might have a concussion.”

  “We won’t never come back,” one of them said quickly.

  “They don’t enforce no laws about digging Indian mounds in Florida,” another of them added. “We just didn’t know it was your property.” And to Hervey’s steely look, he added, “It’s our fault. We shoulda asked.”

  Hervey spit with disgust. “Okay, okay. Go. You bastards make me sick, and I swear to God—if I ever hear about you digging mounds within a hundred miles of here, I’ll hunt you down. Each and every one of you. You can bet your lives on it. And you will be.”

  They didn’t hesitate.

  They left their shovels and their lamps and their sieve.

  Even the fat man found his feet and scrambled, lest Hervey change his mind and set the dog on them again.

  There was a strange look on Hervey’s face. He seemed to cock his head and listen expectantly. I was about to ask why when I heard the jeep start—and then heard a chorus of swearing and a muffled scream.

  Then Hervey smiled. “I guess they found the snake.”

  “You didn’t stick a rattler in there with them, did you?”

  “Naw. Couldn’t find a rattler. And I looked. Had to settle on the indigo. Where are those pit vipers when you need them?”

  I studied him for a moment, trying to figure out if he really would have stuck a rattler in the jeep. He sensed my question, and the smile disappeared from his face.

  He said, “Dusky, what would you do if strangers came into your house and started wrecking the place looking for things that are family keepsakes?”

  “I see what you
mean.”

  “I know the only thing Indian about me is my mother. It ain’t that. It’s a matter of family. Those jerks were robbing from my family. So you’re damn right I was hunting for a rattlesnake. I’da done it, too.”

  There was one more wild oath before the jeep roared off through the swamp. I smiled. “I think the indigo was effective enough.”

  Hervey chuckled. “It’ll be a cold day before they come back, I reckon.” He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the trenches in the family mound. “Think we can wait until tomorrow before we start cleaning up here?”

  I didn’t get a chance to answer.

  That’s when we heard the muffled echo of a shotgun blast.

  And then the frightened cry of a woman, her anguish seeping through the Everglades darkness....

  13

  My flashlight threw a frail beam through the night.

  Above, the tropical stars pierced the light-years, cold and clear and unconcerned with the petty struggling of two men running through the swamps on distant Earth.

  For his age, Hervey was in pretty good shape.

  Even so, he was no runner, and he was soon lagging far behind.

  I was at a disadvantage—that being I didn’t know where the hell I was or which way I was going. If you’ve ever been in the ’glades at night, you know how easy it is to get turned around.

  I noticed that the Chesapeake, Gator, was sticking just ahead of me. Every now and then, when I made a wrong turn, he’d wait a moment until I had corrected my error, then start out again.

  Finally, I realized how stupid I was being. All I had to do was follow him. He knew how to get back to the house.

  When I finally came chugging into the clearing, all the oil lamps were burning brightly in the little plank house. Myrtle stood on the porch in a flannel night dress. She held the sawed-off shotgun in both hands. When she saw me, she raised it as if about to shoot.

  “Whoa there, lady!”

  “Dusky? Dusky, is that you?”

  “Yeah. It’s me—and if you’ll lower that twelve-gauge . . .”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!”