Blackwater Read online

  Blackwater

  Jack Rogan decides to return home from years of gambling on the Mississippi riverboats, but he makes a big mistake when taking what he thinks is a shorter, faster route back to Texas.

  The Louisiana swamplands are teeming with all sorts of dangers, not least Gaston Savoy and Homer Lamb, and their kin from the secluded waterside community of Whistler.

  Captured and stripped of his money, his guns and his fine sorrel mare, Jack is compromised into making a deal with his captors.

  Meanwhile, a faction of corrupt businessmen decides to make a move on the valuable timber that spreads throughout bayou country. When they hire professional gunmen, Jack discovers the main reason for his capture; and learns just what is expected of him.

  By the same author

  Ironhead

  The Landbreakers

  The Frightened Valley

  Borderline

  Death Song

  Shot Gold

  Punchers Creek

  Hog-Tied

  Freighter’s Way

  Brevet Ridge

  The Bull Chop

  Wolf Hole

  Rio Bonito

  Trailing Wing

  Three Trails

  Teal’s Gold

  Blue Wells

  Sparrow’s Gun

  The Guilty Hour

  Blackwater

  Abe Dancer

  © Abe Dancer 2016

  First published in Great Britain 2016

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2106-6

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.crowood.com

  This e-book first published in 2016

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Abe Dancer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  1

  Jack Rogan had just finished a late breakfast in the Blackwater hash house. Sitting in the pungent interior, he was on his second cup of coffee, listening to low voices from a table somewhere close behind him. He was trying not to get interested in the way of their conversation when his attention turned to the opening of the screen door. At first there didn’t appear to be anyone entering, but then he looked down and saw the dog.

  It was an elderly coon hound, and it came in limping, had dark wheals across its shoulders from which the blood had flowed and clotted. It hobbled with one forepaw held away from the floorboards, a bewildered look of fear in its lustrous eyes.

  ‘Jeeesus, feller, who the hell you been mixing with?’ Jack said, easing himself from his chair. He dropped to one knee to stroke the animal’s head, but no sooner had he moved, than the screen door slammed full open. A gaunt young man with long white hair, stomped in, didn’t bother looking up.

  The dog immediately cringed. It whimpered and tried to slope away, attempted to avoid the stout switch that snapped down at him.

  With a curse, and a wince from aching bones, Jack got to his feet. Using big strong fingers he grabbed the man by the wrist with one hand, whacked him very solidly across the side of the face with the other. Then he let go, watched steely-eyed as the tormentor staggered back out through the rusted screen.

  Losing balance, the man dropped his whip and fell from the sidewalk into the street.

  Jack followed. With a meaty shoulder, he shoved open the screen door, ripping it away from its top hinge. He stepped out, lifted the toe of his boot and kicked the whip away from the boards, set himself to consider the situation.

  The fallen man was Blanco Bilis. He lived in a fishing shack, bankside to the Village River, usually came to town in the evenings when he’d sit on the boardwalk opposite the High Chair Saloon, watching the dancing girls descend the steps from their rooms above. Now, dribbling wet dirt, he ran the back of his hand across his mouth. Lying on his side, he stared around in wild temper for whoever it was who had hit him.

  ‘Touch that old dog again, and I’ll take that stick to your bare ass,’ Jack threatened.

  ‘What the hell’s it to you?’ Bilis scoffed.

  ‘Nothing much. But it might be to him.’

  ‘Stupid, interferin’ pokenose,’ Bilis snarled, furious and humiliated. He pushed his right hand into his jacket front, drew the short-barrelled pistol from under his left arm.

  Jack, not seeing a gun around the man’s waist was waiting for such a move, was already in the street. He took two steps towards Bilis, lashed out hard at the man’s gun hand. He shifted his considerable weight and ground his foot down until Bilis gasped and released the gun into the acrid dirt.

  ‘Little hideout gun, you gutless son-of-a-bitch,’ Jack rasped, then stamped on the fleshy part of Bilis’s nose. ‘Now you’ve been slapped, kicked and squashed. Unless you want worse, I suggest you get right back to wherever you belong,’ he added.

  Bilis made a protective move towards the front of his face, cursing thickly, almost choking on the drama.

  ‘You’ll be seeking vengeance at your peril, feller. I’m past being too young to indulge in second chances,’ Jack warned as he turned away.

  The hound limped out onto the sidewalk. It lowered its head, took a short look at Bilis, then a more thoughtful one at Jack.

  Jack returned the look. ‘I’m not long in this town so I can’t look after you,’ he said. ‘Pack your traps and find some new quarters. That hobble should sucker most folk.’

  On the trail away from Blackwater, Jack was going to head west. He’d decided to bend south, make his way through bayou country, away from the Mississippi Delta, cross the Sabine River into Texas. The land was swathed by lakes and ponds, cut by creeks and bayous. But it was good thinking time, and he was in no hurry.

  In ten years, Jack had accumulated more than $1,000, mostly from playing stud poker on the paddle steamers that plied between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Now, he wore a store-bought suit, carried a new .36 Navy Colt and rode a fine sorrel horse. The ride to Beaumont was going to be his last real journey, make the circle just about a full one.

  Travelling through the unknown country was his choice, but it made him jittery. When he’d proposed taking the short cut into Texas by heading south around the big lakes, he’d been vividly advised against it.

  ‘Swampers,’ the Blackwater liveryman had said, spitting in the dust as if something offensive had come to mind. ‘Land’s just crawlin’ with ’em. They live so close to the water, some say they come from under it. It’s a fact, they drink turpentine an’ eat snake. They get ’emselves lathered up over nothin’ an’ think with their goddamn squirrel guns. You wanna go above the swamps, a long ways above, not through ’em. Take that as a friendly warnin’, feller. They ain’t nice people,’ he stressed, just missing Jack’s feet with another line of chaw tobacco juice.

  ‘Yeah, I think I might have already met one of ’em,’ Jack replied, already deciding not to heed the advice. ‘If and when you hear of trouble, head straight for it. By the time you get there, it’ll most likely be cleared up,’ his pa had once told him.

  But now the moon was fading fast and the cypresses were closing in on him. Thin layers of mist rose from the still backwaters, and bullfrogs and crickets were laying down their carpet of night sound. Jack was thinking it wasn’t the most comforting country he’d ever ridden through, that his pa’s words weren’t the most appropriate.

  He shivered, grinned confidently as he turned and put the sorrel into a slow run of creek water. ‘At least I’ll be laying me a soft bed tonight,’ he called, waving an arm at the thick Spanish moss that festooned the surrounding cypress trees. He started to look out for a good campsite, something with good all round cover, s
omewhere he’d feel safe sleeping.

  Shouldn’t be too difficult, he thought as he reined in. He held the sorrel very still, turned his fingers around the butt of the Colt at his hip. ‘What was that?’ he mumbled, his eyes peering into the murkiness. A big, blue heron launched itself from a tangle of submerged roots, flew directly overhead with heavy wing beats. He took his hand off his gun and watched the prick of his sorrel’s ears. ‘It’s a bird,’ he offered, gently heeling forward. ‘We’ve spent too long in civilization.’

  Jack didn’t know much about the clandestine ways of the people who inhabited the bayous, but he’d been told not to ignore them or take them for granted. So he’d take precautions: make his camp well back from anything that appeared to be a track; have his horse stand off from the bedground. And he wasn’t going to light a fire. Maybe he’d even set up a trip ring before climbing into his blanket.

  Jack was three hours into what was, for him, an uncommon open-air slumber. It was a shallow sleep, and he was mostly awake when the song of the night critters suddenly ceased.

  He didn’t see the shadow that moved in the yellowy, moonlit glade. He was telling himself not to make a move, to keep very still, even though instinct wanted him to react. Whoever was approaching would likely have a gun trained on him, would probably pull the trigger at his slightest waking movement. Wait until I know he’s more fully occupied. Like when he’s touching me, Jack thought and suppressed a shudder, prepared himself for the moment.

  Having grown to adulthood in the wilderness, hunting everything from alligators to snapping turtles, Cletus Savoy could usually walk the bayous without disturbing a sleepy catfish. As if mimicking the heron, he now stood completely still beside a drooping cypress. He carried a sawed-off scattergun; had one pale-blue eye on Jack, another on the trees that screened the sorrel.

  The man lowered his head, licked his lips hopefully. The Savoy clan had always been prowlers and opportunists, had indulged in most sorts of thievery. Only thievery wasn’t how they saw it. To them it was a means to an end, a way of existing, and Cletus had to exist like any other living soul in and on the water. And right now, Cletus was thinking it had been a long time since he’d any cash funds, an age since he’d poured freely from anything other than a crock of moonshine.

  But, for many months, Uncle Gaston Savoy had been trying to progress the family’s reputation. On a long trip to New Orleans, he brushed with civic improvement, acknowledged the error of ‘old ways’. He had also realized that new law enforcement did indeed have long and resourceful arms.

  As a close relative, one of the first victims of Uncle Gaston’s attempt to convert had been Cletus. There was no crossing Uncle Gaston, and until this night, many light-fingered deeds had been curbed. But Cletus prided himself on having a sharp eye for anything in its prime, and the moment he caught wind of Jack Rogan’s sorrel he knew there was something to be had, regardless of family obligation.

  He didn’t know Jack was carrying a large amount of money, but every wily instinct told him there was something else to be had along with the horse. The words, ‘Hide nothing from your minister,’ came to Savoy. It was something his uncle was fond of saying, and Savoy thought it somehow fitted the situation.

  He took a few steps forward and hunkered down, let the fingers so used to noodling catfish, go about their illusory work.

  Jack gritted his teeth, tried to keep a steady rhythm with his breathing. He stilled himself, resolved only to make a move when whoever was robbing him moved off. Shoot the unknown sneak thief in the middle of his back.

  The feeling of holding the crammed billfold caused Cletus Savoy’s pulse to pick up a beat. He eased away soundlessly from Jack’s unmoving form, but his heart was racing with expectation. He just knew he’d suddenly got rich, and in a few more minutes, he’d be that and well mounted to boot. Maybe the richest and best mounted man in the county. And what would Uncle Gaston have to say about that, he wondered.

  As Savoy approached the sorrel, he moved like smoke, curling and drifting through the dark, tupelo boles. But, like Jack Rogan, the horse’s heaviest slumber was never that deep, never that insensible. Its ears pricked, one eye opened and it let out a sharp, night-cracking whinny.

  This is the moment, Jack thought. He exploded from his sugan, his Navy Colt sweeping up in one smooth motion.

  Cletus Savoy turned one way then the other. Momentarily, he stood transfixed under the waxy moonlight, his jaw hanging open.

  ‘You’re not stealing from me, you son-of-a-bitch,’ Jack rasped.

  The swamper took off with a lame-legged scuttle, and Jack fired. He was a fair shot with a handgun, but Cletus Savoy’s run was unpredictable, gave little to shoot at.

  Cletus Savoy made it back to the trees where he’d stashed his mule. Clutching the billfold and the scattergun, he managed to swing himself up and into the saddle. ‘Run for the hollow … fast,’ he shouted, thinking he’d make it away.

  Cletus Savoy knew the surrounding country like the back of his hand, that the man chasing him, was a total stranger. What he didn’t know was, the horse Jack was riding was a clear-foot and faster than it looked. With a large moon beaming down across the watery land, there were only a few safe boltholes. Savoy had to run, but for every ten strides his mule covered, the sorrel was gaining.

  The riders covered a long mile at a wary pace. They rode around a bayou that opened into a broad lake edged with hundreds of ancient root coils and gnarled stumps. It was on the far, western side of the dark water, where the land started to clear, that Jack quickly started to close in.

  As Cletus Savoy galloped his mule through the narrows, he fired two barrels of bird-shot into the sky. It seemed the frantic reaction of a man gripped by panic. But if Jack had eased up to think about it for a moment, he might have guessed it was some kind of a signal.

  A mile further on, Cletus Savoy rode towards a clearing of glistening eel grass. The moonlight and shadows cast against the backdrop of cypress and oak created a site of dark foreboding.

  Ahead of him, Jack saw his quarry slow, dragging back on the reins. He guessed the man was either going to surrender or make a stand. With his Colt held out before him, he ran the sorrel into the glade. ‘Just make a stand,’ he rasped, stating his preference.

  Savoy’s weary mule stood splay-legged, its head drooping, sweat coursing down the insides of its legs. The rider sat his saddle with hands raised to shoulder height. There was an odd, unconcerned expression on his face that Jack didn’t figure out, thought it might be that the mule wasn’t going any further.

  ‘Goddamn you,’ Jack panted, but threatening and gritty. ‘Make one more move and I’ll put a couple more holes in your runt face.’

  Cletus Savoy was careful not to blink. He didn’t raise his hands any higher, not even when the clearing came alive with a chorus of threatening, mechanical clicking noises.

  Jack understood what was happening then. But before he could do anything, he was surrounded by half a dozen actioned firearms. Each was gripped in the hands of a smirking swamper – men whose faces appeared to be identical to that of the man who’d robbed him.

  ‘Looks like rest o’ litter turn up,’ Cletus Savoy said, with an unnerving, low-pitched snigger.

  2

  A cool breeze worked its way between the trees and the heavy swags of mossy foliage. It brushed the surface of the water, moved the misty carpet into bankside rolls. Ragged clouds scudded across the face of the moon, brought a lower level of darkness to the lake.

  A raw-boned hand relieved Jack of his Colt, while another seized his arm and hauled him to the ground.

  Jack shook the man’s hand away, gulped air as a gun barrel pushed viciously against his chest. He’d been involved in more than a few fights and confrontations before, but never under circumstances like this. With their moonlit faces and pale eyes staring back at him, Jack’s adversaries showed signs of real malevolent purpose. He knew his predicament rated as one of the most scary he’d ever been in.
r />   ‘So,’ said a beanpole, whose voice already sounded like it was going to enjoy the question. ‘What we got us here, Cletus?’

  Cletus Savoy was breathing easier. He’d not ridden home, but to Frog Hollow, a customary muster point for friends and family when one of them was in trouble. He’d been thinking that, if he hadn’t made it, this man in the store-bought suit might well have run him down, already turned him into alligator meat. His legs still held a tremble, but no one could see. He reached out and pinched Jack’s cheek. ‘A real, pink-flesh trespasser is what we got,’ he replied.

  The other men were slightly tentative, but they moved in on Jack, as though he was up for sacrifice. They remained silent, moved their rifles around under their arms. They were lean, fair and pale-eyed, big-eared like Cletus Savoy. But one of them was a redhead, another had broader shoulders, wore a long straggly beard. Their common feature was the cold, unkindly stamp on each of their faces.

  ‘Ain’t that so, pink man?’ Cletus Savoy continued, poking his finger into Jack’s midriff.

  ‘Up close, you really are one ugly son-of-a-bitch,’ Jack said quietly. ‘And you’re making a big mistake doing that.’

  Cletus Savoy’s face slowly crumpled into a sneer as he took a half step back. It brought him within range of Jack’s boot, which crashed up into his groin. He jack-knifed, spewing as he hit ground.

  Someone swung a rifle butt and Jack grunted, fell heavily alongside Cletus Savoy. His head rang like a range cook’s iron as he took a foot in the ribs. His fast assessment of the situation was that one man among a group was less likely to kill in cold blood, than if he was on his own. So, let’s check this out, he thought woolly-headedly, as he spat and cursed, forcing himself back onto his feet.

  One of the group immediately shoved a gun up under his chin, breathed fetid breath into his face. ‘What you chase Cousin Cletus for? You after him or his mule? Would’ve done both, eh, if we hadn’t been about? Now you gone an’ likely squash his bean.’ The man rubbed the ball of his thumb across the hammer of his rifle. ‘Hell, we slit an’ spit men for less ’an that … feed the hogs, even. You best think on a prayer, mister, ’cause you sure goin’ to die.’