Free Arkansas Assault by Jon Sharpe Page B

beagle lying beside him. “Pirate Jack heard ’em, too. You said you wanted two or three witnesses. Well, you’re lookin’ at ’em, son. Me, Queenie, and Pirate Jack.”
    Fargo hesitated, taking in the soft aromas of weeping willows. Life on this tug boat—at least at night—could be comfortable and relaxing. As long as Cap’n Billy and his talking pets were far, far away.
    “What I need to know, Cap’n Billy, is how I can get on that island.”
    “Ain’t no way. Not with the dogs.”
    “What dogs?”
    “I ain’t actually seen ’em but I sure as hell have heard ’em. Man killers, for sure. Plus there’s the timber itself. I played there when I was a young’un. Really easy to get lost. Thickest timber I ever seen. Like one of them African jungles you read about.”
    “I couldn’t get past the dogs?”
    “Not them dogs. The Key’s good sized but not that good sized. Them dogs would find you right away. You’d be dead in two minutes.”
    Fargo set to rolling himself a smoke. He offered Cap’n Billy the makings but Billy shook his head. “What else is on the Key? You got any idea?”
    “I got no idea. Not for sure. But I got suspicions.”
    “Like what?”
    “Well, I was goin’ by there one morning when it was real foggy. Could barely see your own hand. If I didn’t know this part of the river so well, I’d never have chanced it. Anyway, I got a little lost and got closer to the key than I normally would. They’ve got NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere and who knows if they wouldn’t just start shootin’ at somebody who got too close to them? Now I can’t swear this because I could only see in little bits and pieces through the fog. But I’m pretty sure I saw what they was off-loadin’ that day. And this was two days before the Fourth of July a couple of years ago.”
    “You didn’t say what they were off-loading.”
    “Well, it looked to me like they was takin’ bodies off and puttin’ them on the key. The funny thing was, the little look I got at them, the bodies didn’t seem dead. Their arms was flailin’ around too much. They looked like they might justa been knocked out or somethin’, you know what I mean? Kinda flounderin’ around. But you’d never see a dead person flounder like that. I had a lotta experience with dead people, believe me.”
    He obviously wanted Fargo to ask him about all the experiences he’d had with dead people, but Fargo knew that he might be here for hours if he let the Cap’n start slinging the shit.
    “You ever think of any way you could sneak on that island, Cap’n?”
    The old fart laughed. “Sure. There’s an easy way.”
    “There is?”
    “Get yourself captured and let them take you there.”

11
     
     
    A few minutes later, Fargo was on the road to the Noah Tillman ranch. Given all the turbulence around him, Fargo realized that the deep shadows on either side of the road could hold people who wanted to get rid of him. The animals in the surrounding woods sounded lonely and desolate in the transition from day to night.
    Soon enough, Fargo passed the spot on the stage road where Daisy had been buried. Her only sin had been being the missing man’s sister. No matter where you went, there were predators like the Tillman family. And no matter where you went, there were innocent victims like Daisy. The primitive law of the jungle also applied to the affairs of human beings. He was most interested in meeting Noah Tillman. He just hoped he could hold his temper in check.
    As he approached the Tillman ranch twenty minutes later, he noticed that a pine tree shook slightly, even though there was no wind at all. Man with a rifle, for sure, monitoring Fargo. And if there was one, then there’d be two.
    The second one appeared moments later, stepping out from behind a pile of boulders off to the side road.
    Even in the dusk, which tended to soften things, the gunny looked formidable. Short, wide, and looking very comfortable with the carbine he’d