Sacrifice of Buntings (16 page)

“But everyone heard them talking about the bird,” Dorothy said. “Someone would check it out.”

“Maybe. But if no one finds anything…” Rachel paused to let her words sink in. “The deal might be delayed, but it wouldn’t be dead.”

With that, Lark started paddling faster. Rachel worked to keep the canoe headed in the right direction, and Dorothy and Cecilia fell in behind, working hard to keep pace. After better than an hour of steady paddling, Dorothy yelled, “Can we stop and rest for a minute?”

Rachel gladly shipped her oar. She wanted a chance to look at the map of the swamp she had bought.

The laminated map opened up to about the size of an eight-by-eleven sheet of paper. Judging from where they started and where they were now, she placed them halfway between the Mizell Prairie and the Christie Prairie.

Lark leaned to look over her shoulder. “How much farther do we have to go?”

“We should be able to turn east somewhere in here.” Rachel pointed to the map and held her hand up to shield her face from the sun, looking for an opening along the edge at the prairie. “Swamper’s Island isn’t on this map.”

“What?” Dorothy exclaimed. “You mean to tell me we have been pushing through the floating peat and lilies, and we don’t even know where we’re headed?” She took a swig off her water bottle. “It’s already getting close to twelve thirty.”

Based on Dwayne’s instructions, that meant, at a stiff clip, they were two hours from camp. That gave them two and a half hours to play with.

“We need to head east.” Rachel pointed to the map. “I say we paddle another hour. Then, if we don’t find any sign of them, we turn back.”

“What are we going to do if we find them?” Lark asked.

That part of her plan was hazy. “Stop them from shooting the bird.”

“How?” Lark asked, pulling her braids through a hole in the back of her cap and wiggling her fanny on the wide seat. The canoe rocked gently side to side. “By letting them shoot us?”

“Let’s find them first,” Dorothy said, sounding more like her old self than Rachel had heard her all week. “Then we’ll think of something. Right, Rae?”

Rachel smiled, hoping she exuded more confidence than she felt. “Right.”

“Oh my, here we go again,” Cecilia said.

They paddled a short distance farther, and then Lark discovered a path to the east. The peat bogs closed in tighter, and Rachel had a more difficult time shoving the clumps out of the way.

“We’re never going to get turned around in here,” Lark said.

“Stop worrying.” Rachel wasn’t about to admit she was thinking the same thing. “Keep paddling.”

A few more strokes brought them into more open water, and the landscape in front of them changed from floating peat to actual land. Tall cypress trees anchored the banks, with blackgum filling the understory.

“Look.” Rachel pointed with her oar to a green canoe tied up a short way upstream.

“Let’s go ashore here,” Dorothy suggested.

A brief discussion ensued about whether it was better to tie off upstream or downstream of the men’s canoe.

“Let’s tie off here,” Lark said, paddling toward shore. “We don’t plan on them getting ahead of us.”

“That’s right,” Dorothy said. “Grab the knee. We can pull the boats up on the backside.”

Rachel crawled up into the bow and stretched outward. Her hand brushed the bark of the cypress, and then something moved on the ground.

Rachel froze. An eight-foot-long
alligator opened its mouth, hissed, and lunged. Rachel yanked back her hand and screamed.

At least, she thought she had screamed. Her mouth came open, but all she heard was the blood rushing in her ears.

Throwing herself back into the canoe, she clamped one hand over her mouth and with the other frantically signaled for Lark to back paddle.

“It won’t follow,” Dorothy said, her voice low and calm. “It’s more interested in finding a mate.”

Rachel’s heart banged against her rib cage, threatening to burst through her chest. Her breath came in sharp, short bursts.

“Breathe, Rae. Deep breaths. See, it’s okay.” Dorothy pointed to the alligator backing up onto the land. Cecilia and Lark both looked as white as the water lily flowers, a stark contrast to the lush greens of the swamp, and a dead giveaway of how scared they were.

“Why don’t we pull up there?” Cecilia suggested, pointing to a spot nearer to Anderson and Wolcott’s canoe.

“Because we don’t want them to know we’re here,” Dorothy said.

Rachel remained speechless. Inhale, two… three… four; hold, two… three… four; exhale, two… three… four. It was an exercise she had learned in yoga class to calm herself down.

Cecilia looked confused. “Aren’t we planning to tell them?”

Finally, Rachel’s heart rate slowed enough that she drew a final deep breath and exhaled loudly and slowly. “She’s right, Dorothy. We have to let them know we’re here. How else are we going to stop them?”

Besides, after her encounter with the alligator, it made sense to her that they should start making more noise. Hadn’t Dwayne said the swamp creatures steered clear if they knew you were coming? The last thing she wanted was to surprise another creature like the last one.

“Not only that,” Lark said. “If Anderson and Wolcott hear us, they might just hightail it back to their boat.”

“Or start gunning for us,” Dorothy said.

That thought gave Rachel pause. She pictured the men stuffing their bodies under the batteries in the swamp. The alligators would dine out all spring. Maybe it was better to keep their mouths shut.

She went with the compromise. “I say we keep quiet until we know where they are. Meanwhile, let’s pull the canoes up upstream from where their canoe is. There isn’t apt to be an alligator too near where the men went ashore, and we can hide the canoes from sight behind that large cypress knee.”

Stuffing down her fear, Rachel scrambled out first, then held the canoes steady while the rest of them clambered ashore. The ground felt spongy, but solid. Cecilia slipped, knocking a chunk of peat free with her foot.

Dorothy batted it away. “Watch it.”

While Dorothy tied up the boats, using a talent she had mastered years ago teaching Girl Scouts how to tie knots for a merit badge, Rachel rescued her camera cell phone out of her wet bag. It showed no signal, but she might get a signal farther inland, and if they came upon Wolcott and Anderson doing anything illegal, the phone just might come in handy.

“All set?” Dorothy asked, brushing her hands together when she tied the last knot.

“Ready,” Lark said. She didn’t look anxious to go first, so Rachel took up the lead.

“Follow me.”

A narrow deer path ran back through the woods. From the way the leaves were disturbed, she suspected Anderson and Wolcott had followed it too.

“Watch where you step,” Dorothy warned. “Some snakes, like the pygmy rattler, like to hide in the leaf litter.”

Great, just great
.

How many types of snakes had Dwayne said lived in the swamp? Thirty-four? Of course not all of those had been poisonous, but at least a third of them were.

They were a hundred yards in when a flash of red, black, and yellow on the deer path caught Rachel’s attention. She stopped dead in her tracks. Lark walked right into her, followed by Dorothy and Cecilia. A four-person pileup.

“What’s wrong?” Lark asked.

Rachel pointed to the ground about ten feet ahead. “Do you see that?”

A small snake with red, yellow, and black bands slithered into the brush.

“’Red on yellow will kill a fellow,’” recited Dorothy. “I think it’s poisonous.”

“Are you sure it’s not ’black on yellow, deadly, fellow’?” Cecilia asked.

“Yes, I’m sure, Ceese. I taught science class for twenty years.” Dorothy turned back to Rachel. “Either way, don’t touch it.”

Like she needed some sort of sign, or even a person, to tell her that. “Don’t worry.”

Rachel counted to twenty, giving the snake ample time to go on its way, and then pressed on. A glance at her watch caused her to quicken her step. They’d used up another hour, and their time was dwindling.

After about a mile, she stopped. The island had grown sandier as they walked and the tree canopy more open. Standing near the bottom of a small dip, she peered through the trees. Ahead the path turned just before a small rise.

Her adrenaline surged.

“This is it,” she said softly. “This is the place in the film.” She pointed the landmarks out to the others. “I remember the lush hillside and the bend in the path.”

A male voice spoke from the other side of the rise. All four women dropped to the ground.

“Do you see anything?” he said.

Victor Wolcott?
Rachel thought so by his polished manner of speech.

“No, but this looks like the place Saxby described.”

There was no question that the whinier voice belonged to Nevin Anderson.

“Guy would never have told them a thing if he knew what they were up to,” Dorothy whispered.

Rachel’s heart ached that Dorothy still believed in him after all they’d discovered.

“Did you hear that?” Anderson asked. Stress made his voice crack in pitch.

Had he heard Dorothy speaking?

“Hear what?”

“It sounded like a rustling in the trees over there.”

Rachel could see the barrel of a gun above the green vines on the hillside. She put her finger to her lips and gestured for the others to move off the path. Then she signaled that she was going to try and go around for a better look. Lark followed her, sticking so close on her heels that Rachel periodically kicked her.

“Back off, Lark,” she whispered.

“What the hell is all this crap?” Wolcott was saying.

Rachel heard his foot strike something.

“It looks like an old basket.”

Anderson didn’t seem too interested.

Rachel was down on her hands and knees now, peering around the edge of the rise. She could see Anderson and Wolcott standing in a well-trampled clearing. Several old baskets were strewn about, and two spades stuck out from the dirt.

Her mind worked the information, and then it struck her. What they were looking at wasn’t a hill. It was the reason two men were dead.

Rachel signaled for Lark
to move closer.

“Do you know what this is?” she whispered.

Lark shook her head.

“It’s—”

A shot interrupted her sentence, and Rachel flattened herself to the ground, pulling Lark down with her.

Dwight Carter stepped into the clearing, brandishing a rifle like the one she had seen in the back of his truck.

“Drop your guns,” he told the men.

“What the…?” Wolcott had the decency to look scared.

Anderson mustered enough backbone to square his shoulders and put on a brave face. “This is my land.”

“Shut up,” Dwight ordered, gesturing with the rifle. “I told you to drop your guns.”

Wolcott and Anderson both complied.

Lark had risen to her knees and tugged on Rachel’s shirt. “Come on,” she mouthed, gesturing that they should go back.

Rachel dug her cell phone out of her pocket.

Still no signal.

Darn
.

“Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your backs.”

At least he wasn’t planning to kill the men outright.

Dwight yanked a roll of duct tape out of his back pocket. “Wrap that around your friend’s hands,” he said to Anderson. “Then tear off a nice long piece for yourself. We’re just gonna wait here until Dwayne comes and figures out what to do.”

It made sense to Rachel that Dwayne was the thinker. He did most of the talking. Slapping away Lark’s hand, she edged forward.

“Why the hell are you doing this?” Wolcott demanded. “You… we want the same thing. We came out here to kill that damn bird.”

“We don’t care about any stupid bird,” Dwight said.

No, what they cared about was the treasure. Aponi Carter’s treasure. If Rachel was right, this hill was Aponi Carter’s burial mound.

Lark yanked Rachel’s T-shirt again, this time hard enough that Rachel heard stitches rip. Lark was right. They needed help.

Rachel shimmied around in the tight space. Leaves rustled under her knees, and her foot struck a small rock, sending it skittering across the ground.

“What was that?” Dwight asked. “Is there someone else here?”

He started in the women’s direction. With no time to lose, Rachel rose to her feet and sprinted for the path, pushing Lark ahead of her.

Dwight crashed through the woods behind them.

“Run!” she yelled to the others, keeping her voice in a stage whisper. With any luck, maybe he would decide they were a family of feral pigs or a big black bear. “Untie the canoes!”

Dorothy and Cecilia glanced at each other, then made a beeline for the canoe. They might be in their mid-sixties, thought Rachel, but the two older women were fit. They seemed in optimal shape as they raced along. It must be all those years of hiking and bird-watching.

Lark’s height worked to her advantage. Her long legs ate up the ground.

Rachel knew how to sprint.

The same couldn’t be said about Dwight. Years of apparent beer-guzzling and bad eating habits had left him with a gut that hung over his belt, and he wheezed and stumbled as he ploughed through the woods after them.

Cecilia and Dorothy had only freed one canoe by the time Lark and Rachel reached the water. Cecilia scrambled to the back, Lark jumped in on the middle bench beside Dorothy, and Rachel leaped into the bow of the canoe, shoving away from the shore with her feet and clinging to the gunwale.

“Get your asses back here,” Dwight yelled, leveling the gun.

A shot pierced the water near the bow of the canoe.

“Paddle!” Rachel shouted.

Dorothy and Lark both worked their oars, but instead of going anywhere they turned the canoe in a circle.

Dwight fired another shot. This time the bullet sliced the water and made a whistling noise before plunking into the canoe.

That was too close
. It occurred to Rachel that Dwight might actually be shooting at the boat instead of them. Situating herself in the bow, she stuck her paddle over the side and steered them toward open water.

“Paddle together,” she yelled. “Stroke. Stroke. Stroke.”

A moving target was harder to hit than a still one, and once Dorothy, Rachel, and Lark found their rhythm, the canoe started pulling away. They zigzagged toward the opposite shore with Cecilia acting as rudder. Several more shots rang out, but none of them hit their target.

Dwight leaped along the bank. Until he stumbled over the alligator.

The gator hissed and snapped.

Dwight turned and ran.

“Okay, okay,” Rachel said, feeling winded more from the adrenaline coursing through her than the exertion. “He’s either going to get in one of those canoes, or he’s going to get in touch with Dwayne and send him to find us.”

“So we need to get out of sight,” Lark said.

“Why would that Carter boy shoot at us?” Cecilia asked. “I thought we had ruled them out as suspects.”

“We were wrong,” Rachel said. “He and his brother killed Becker and Knapp.” She told them what she and Lark had seen. “It wasn’t just a small rise; it was a burial mound. Knapp and Becker had it on tape. Anyone following their directions would not only find the ivory-billed woodpecker, but Aponi Carter’s treasure. The Carters didn’t mind the trade. What they were afraid of was being barred from the island because of the ivory-billed woodpecker.”

“Do you think Fancy knows?”

Rachel shrugged. “But I’ll bet she would protect her boys.”

“I wonder how they knew we had the film,” Lark said.

Rachel had struggled with that herself. “Maybe they didn’t,” she said. “Maybe stealing the film from us was Anderson’s doing. Everybody knew that, according to Knapp, Saxby had the film, but Anderson knew something else. He knew someone had broken into Saxby’s room. Remember Guy said he had notified hotel security.”

Still
, thought Rachel,
something doesn’t add up
. Who had shoved the warning under their door? Patricia? She had told Katie her dad was in Brunswick. Patricia must have spotted her in the kitchen.

Shaking off the memory, Rachel forced herself to focus on the present. “The point is we’re in danger out here. We have to get back to the tour office before Dwight gets word to Dwayne. In order to do that, we’ll need to take a different route back.”

Rachel’s map was in the other canoe, so she attempted reconstructing it in her mind. They had crossed the Suwannee Canal to get onto the Mizel and Christie prairies. Dwayne would expect them to backtrack their route and return through the Chesser Prairie. Instead, if they cut down the Suwannee Canal, they might come upon the gap of water between Swamper’s Island and the Okefenokee Swamp Tour base—the inlet Rachel had noticed from the bus on the trip down. Either way, it should get them back faster, and with less chance of running into Dwayne Carter alone.

“Ah, we have another problem, Rae,” Lark said.

From the fear in her friend’s voice, Rachel half expected to see Dwight racing after them in the other canoe.

“What?” she asked, when the waterway appeared clear.

“We’re taking on water.”

Rachel had her feet pressed to the curve of the canoe. Now, looking down, she noticed the water filling the bottom of the canoe. Rachel stuck her hand down through the dark liquid and ran her fingers low along the side of the canoe. Sure enough, a bullet had pierced the shell just in front of the middle seat. A second hole in the bottom of the canoe marked the bullet’s exit.

“Dwight Carter hit his target.” Rachel covered the holes with her fingers. “Cecilia, we need something to use as plugs. A handkerchief, a bandana, anything I can wad up and stick in here that will slow down the water.”

Dorothy set down her paddle.

“No, you guys keep paddling.”

Rachel settled for the wet bag. Biting the corner off of one end, she ripped the bag up the center. Twisting the bottom into a cone, she tried stuffing it down into the hole.

“It’s working.”

Or it was until she tried plugging the hole on the bottom of the canoe.

A loud crack filled the air.

“What was that?” Lark swiveled her head and looked around.

It had sounded like a shot.

“Damn,” Rachel said, her fingers worrying the holes. She found a large rent in the bottom of the canoe.

“What?” Lark demanded.

“It split.”

Lark bent forward. “What split?”

“The canoe. A crack just opened up in the bottom. We’re taking on more water.”

“Are we sinking?” Cecilia asked.

“We can’t sink,” Lark insisted. “Not here.” Hysteria edged her voice, matching Rachel’s feelings inside. Even knowing they could swim in the canal didn’t quell the panic filling up her veins.

The sun was sinking in the west. In another hour they would be late getting back. In another two or three hours it would be dark.

“Let’s try and stay calm,” Rachel said. “The others will be missing us soon, and they’ll send out a search party.”

“Who?” Lark said. “Dwayne? Or Fancy?”

Lark was right.

“Paddle toward that battery over there.” Rachel pointed to the east. “It has lots of trees, so it should keep us afloat.”

“We can’t just sit out here waiting for someone to find us,” Cecilia said. “We’ll be eaten by an alligator, if the biting flies don’t finish us off.” She slapped at a buzzing insect and reached for the bug spray.

“Do you know the strength of an alligator’s jaw is three thousand five hundred pounds per square inch?” Dorothy asked.

“Thank you for sharing,” Lark said. “I could have lived without knowing that piece of information.”

“But,” Dorothy continued, “the muscles that open an alligator’s mouth are relatively weak, so an average person—even you, Cecilia—can hold an alligator’s mouth closed simply by grabbing their snout.”

They reached the battery before Dorothy could continue her science lesson, and Rachel grabbed onto a shrub. Keeping one foot anchored in the canoe, she placed the other foot lightly on the battery. The water was up to her calf in the canoe, and there wasn’t much time to get everyone ashore. “Dwayne did tell us we could walk on these.”

“Provided we keep moving, dear,” Dorothy said.

“Okay, then Lark, you go first.”

“Me? Let Dorothy go first. She’s the science nut.”

“Fine. I’ll go first.” Dorothy pushed forward. Using Rachel’s shoulders, she stepped onto the battery, and Rachel’s foot on land submerged up to her ankle.

“Keeping moving,” Rachel said. “Lark, you go behind her.”

Lark caused the battery to sink even more.

“Head toward the trees,” Rachel said, but Dorothy was already headed that way.

Cecilia rummaged around in the wet bag and came up with two pairs of binoculars draped around her neck. “These are worth too much to let them go down with the ship.”

“Whatever,” Rachel said. “You need to go.”

Cecilia headed off, her arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. Rachel took a last look at the canoe, then she pulled her foot free and immediately sank into the bog.

Walking on the “trembling earth” was like walking inside a blowup ride at a carnival, except it was wet. The ground sank and shook with every step. The trees and vegetation swayed. And if she paused, even briefly, she started to sink. At least there was no time to worry about what creatures they might encounter.

“Stay as close to the trees as possible,” Dorothy shouted. “That’s where the battery is the firmest. We’ll head toward the cypress dome.”

Rachel was happy to let Dorothy take charge. According to Dwayne, the oldest and tallest cypress trees grew near the middle of the batteries, where they eventually formed forests, which made solid land. With Dorothy headed in the right direction, Rachel could struggle to stay on her feet. The young cypress and blackgum trees crashed inwards as she fought for her footing on the gnarled twist of vines and grasses under her feet. What sounded like an army of animals scurried out of their way of their procession. Rachel squirmed at the thought of snakes. Finally, she screwed up her courage to ask Dorothy what was out there.

“I’m not sure, dear. Marsh rabbits, or rats, maybe?”

Rats!
Rachel picked her feet up higher and scampered more quickly toward solid ground.

“It’s too bad the light is fading. There are several species of carnivorous plants that live in this swamp, and lots of other species—snapping turtles, bobcats, raccoons.”

Rachel had a hard time reconciling a raccoon with its Zorro mask and her present surroundings. They seemed more suited to Elk Park.

As the women neared the tall cypress, bats emerged from the Spanish moss to feed on insects, swooping so close to their heads Rachel thought she could feel the beat of their wings.

Then an alligator bellowed in the distance, and from somewhere close by, Rachel heard a squeal.

Just when she thought things couldn’t get worse. Feral pigs.

Get a grip, Wilder
. That was a legend.

One of Dwayne Carter’s stories had been about pigs. How pigs had been turned loose in the swamp, and how over time they’d grown big and mean. The ending was that a man fed them “free” corn day after day, trapped them, and sold them at market. The moral was that “free” corn (a symbol for federal aid to farmers) cost the pigs (a symbol for the farmers) their lives (a symbol for freedom). His punch line had been, “The bacon you save may be your own.” There weren’t any feral pigs in the swamp.

So what creature had made the noise?

At last the ground hardened and sand replaced the spongy ground. The shadows grew darker as the sun dipped low toward the marsh and tinged the clouds overhead in shades of red and pink. Lark collapsed at the base of an old pine, and Rachel prodded her to get up.

“There’s no time to sit,” she said. “It’s going to be dark soon, and there’s no telling what Dwight and Dwayne have done to Anderson and Wolcott.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a phone booth,” Lark said.

The phone!

Rachel reached for the cell phone in her pocket and flipped it open. One small bar edged up the outside.

A signal!

She punched the emergency speed dial.

“This is nine-one-one. Please state your emergency.”