Free The Secret of the Swamp King by Jonathan Rogers Page A

single nest, vigilantly guarding her young. But she had no mate to gather food for them or to take a turn protecting the nest so she could hunt herself. She faced a grim choice: to see her offspring starve or to leave them vulnerable to the carrion birds while she went in search of food for them.
    â€œPlume hunters,” growled Floyd, and he spat on the ground in disgust.
    Aidan stood in shock at such a scene of devastation. The sheer number of birds shot and left to rot wasnauseating in itself. But the timing of the slaughter—during nesting season before the young egrets could fend for themselves—ensured that the colony would never recover. This rookery was gone for good.
    Aidan could feel his eyes filling with tears. “Why nesting time?” he asked. Even a hunter who cared nothing for the Living God’s creation should care enough about his own livelihood not to hunt his quarry to extinction.
    â€œNesting time’s the only time a plume hunter shoots,” answered Massey. His face was red with anger. “It’s the only time the birds wear their wedding plumage.”
    â€œEvery spring,” explained Floyd, “them poor birds put on their wedding plumes. They marry up, fix a little house out of sticks, have a few babies.” He smiled at the thought of the egrets’ domestic happiness. “They’re so proud and pretty.”
    â€œThat’s when the plume hunters come,” said Massey. “Circle ’round a rookery like this one and shoot their crossbows into the treetops.”
    â€œBig birds make easy targets,” Floyd added, “standing guard over their babies, as still as statues. And so brave and stupid, they won’t fly away and leave their young’uns unprotected once the shooting starts.”
    Massey picked up the grim account. “Before long, their mates sail in from fish hunting and light on the nest to feed their babies. Plume hunters shoot them too.”
    What Aidan saw at Bullbat Bay was a sickening sign that things would never be the same in the Eastern Wilderness. And not just in the wilderness. He thought ofKing Darrow and his paranoid rants and wondered if he would ever again be the king he had been as a young man—the king who seemed to have reawakened three years ago when he led the charge that defeated the invading Pyrthens. He thought of his own father, so changed in the months since the king had discarded him. He thought of the fine ladies and gentlemen of Tambluff, in their fine plumed hats who either didn’t care or kept themselves ignorant of the devastation wrought in the Eastern Wilderness so they could follow the latest fashions.
    Aidan felt sick, as if his stomach had been turned inside out. He stood silent for a moment with his traveling partners. There was nothing they could do here; the irreparable damage had been done. And they were in desperate need of extra hands to help refloat the raft.
    â€œThere’s a footpath on the far side of the bay,” said Massey at last. “It leads to the Overland Trail a quarter league from here.”
    They walked the path without speaking. Things are changing in the wilderness, thought Aidan. There were no written laws in the Eastern Wilderness. Or rather, there was no authority there to enforce any law. The nearest magistrate, in fact, was Aidan’s father, all the way back at Longleaf. For the few people who ventured into the wilderness, the only law was a code of honor. No hunter took from the forest more than he needed—just enough to eat, to clothe himself, a few extra pelts or hides to trade for the things he couldn’t make or find. Nobody aimed to get rich from the forest. If that’s whatpeople wanted, they would move to town or raise cattle or cotton. Settlers lived in the wilderness because they loved the wilderness, not because they wanted to tame it or to convert its resources into gold to line their buckskin pockets. The first law of