Lost Man's River(223)

That they were so suddenly in peril, that the battering wind and awful racket might end in senseless violence, seemed incredible to Lucius, who could scarcely take it in. In this instant, there was less danger from the guns than from that dog—a large knob-headed male, squat and tawny, patched with brown, as if hacked rudely from a block of tropic wood. “He ain’t tied,” Whidden’s mouth was shouting, over the airboat’s roar.

Crockett Junior spun the propeller in reverse, and the roar died in a buffet of hot wind as he killed the engine. In the stunned quiet, the airboat lost headway, riding its bow wave toward the bank. “You huntin trouble, Whidden boy? You come to the right place!” And Sally shrieked, “Junior? Take it easy, honey! There’s no need to act crazy!”

Mud and Dummy had lowered their automatic rifles but neither made a move toward the dog. The pit bull, shivering, strained forward on the bow, tendons, jaws, and dirty gold eyes taut. As Whidden yelled, “Mud, grab that fuckin dog!” it sprang, striking the bank with an audible hard thud of bone-filled paws.

Stiff-legged, the dog circled the two strangers, leg by leg, the bristles of its nape as stiff as wire. A rank canine smell rose from its hide, and from its clamped jaws came a low steady rumble. Lucius’s instinct was to freeze and not look down, as if the least twitch might betray his fear to this morose animal. That in these stark instants he could still hear the light tsik-teriu-tsik of the vireo would strike him later as the furthest reach of hallucination.

Sally had sunk onto the gunwale, weak with fear, perhaps trying to defuse the situation. Not sure what was happening, Andy House folded his arms and clutched his elbows, as if holding himself quiet by main force.

“Junior,” Crockett mimicked Sally. He jumped down from the pilot seat as his men swung aboard the Cracker Belle. Covered by Dummy, Mud pushed Andy aside and poked the muzzle of his carbine into the boat cabin.

“We’re not armed,” Whidden said, face set and drawn. The pit bull turned toward his voice and jammed its snout against his calf and left it there.

“If I tole him to,” Crockett muttered heavily, “that dog’d go for a bull gator.”

“That a fact?” Whidden’s voice was amiable and easy, but their eyes were locked like adversaries in a fight. “Yessir, you stupid fuck,” growled Crockett, “that is a fuckin fact. I lay a T-bone by Buck’s nose and go out to the store, he won’t never touch it.”

“You got him trained up good, all right.” Whidden risked a downward glance at the rigid dog. “Course I ain’t seen Buck since a pup. Might not remember me.”

“Buck don’t forget.” Crockett’s voice had turned aggrieved and bitter. “Buck don’t never forget. He ain’t like you.”

“We’re supposed to meet Watson Dyer here, and the Parks people,” Lucius explained. As Sally hissed at him to stay out of this, he pointed at the skiff across the river. “My younger brother—” But he stopped as the one-armed man yanked a third carbine from a rack on the helmsman’s platform and the dog turned toward him.

Whidden whispered, “You shut up, okay?”

“No safety on this thing,” Crockett warned Lucius, “cause I ain’t learned to work a safety with my teeth.” He swung the short rifle like a crutch and pointed the black hole of it at Lucius’s eyes.

“We ain’t lookin for no trouble, Junior,” Whidden said. The rifle swung toward him, and again the pit bull pushed its muzzle hard into his leg, bulk shivering. Whidden let all expression fade. With his eyes half closed, he looked almost sleepy.

“Whidden boy? You never read our sign?” The carbine swung toward the sign reading KEEP OUT and swung right back again. “You’re lookin to get some people killed,” he muttered.

House cleared his throat. “You don’t mean that, son.”

The one-armed man breathed noisily. “Mr. House?” he grated. “No disrespect. You shut the fuck up, too.”

Mud’s head emerged from the cabin of the Belle. “Nothin down here, Junior,” he told Crockett, who tossed his head sideways toward the house itself. Mud circled the house, checking the doors and windows. “Okay,” he called. Reboarding the airboat, he leaned his gun against the platform. “Your old home sure stinks,” he said to Lucius.

Crockett whistled to the dog—“Come in here, Buck!” He climbed back up onto his seat, yelling at Whidden. “Get off this river, boy!”

When Lucius called desperately, “Now wait a minute!” Sally cried, “Let Whidden handle this!”