The plentiful wild rice and bullheads of the Delta fed the five men on their bayou-bridging journey to the river. The Wolves had grown so experienced in navigating the trackless morass that they hardly thought twice about wading or swimming a bayou in pairs and trios, one group always covering the other as they moved southwest. They reached the great river on a hazy afternoon two days later. Upon sighting it, Valentine forgot his doubts in the breadth and majesty of the current. Or perhaps it was just the change in the air after the miasma of the backwaters.
"Two choices, boys," Eveready announced from a team-huddle squat. "We build us a raft, or we go find the one we sunk after crossing over back in the spring. Might take a day or two to find the spot; we're just a little south of it now. If we build a raft, it means chopping wood, and that can be heard a long way off. Also, we won't stand a chance if we run into a patrol except to swim for it. If we go to the old boat and raise it, we'll have something a little more navigable. But I've got my doubts it'll even be there after all these months. The river men and patrols spend all their time along the banks, and chances are one of them already thumped it with a pole or a paddle even if it is still underwater."
The Wolves decided to vote, with Eveready as tiebreaker. Valentine was the lone vote for building a raft, as he saw little reward and a good deal of risk in blundering along the bank in search of the old aluminum fishing boat that had brought them across the first time. The others remembered a little too well the want-of-a-nail lecture they'd received before departing for the Delta. It concerned coming home with weapons and gear issued, under pain of having to spend the next year on stable and livestock duty.
So they turned north.
Traveling the banks of the Mississippi made even the bayous seem like afternoon picnicking. The flooded and unattended banks turned the great river into a twisting mass of horseshoe loops and tadpole floods. Eveready took what shortcuts he knew and always kept an eye to the river. Although they could spot a patrol boat long before the Quislings had a chance at seeing the Wolves, every appearance of one of the noisy, fiberglass cabin cruisers made them get under cover while it plodded back and forth across the river. The first day there were two such sightings, each one wasting over an hour.
Valentine was jumpy the whole march. The others noticed it and put his mood down to bitterness over the vote on how to get across the river.
"Ain't nothing here worth the bogeymen keeping an eye on," Hernandez asserted.
"C'mon, Val," Alistar added. "With that old gumbo stirrer up on point, we've never even been spotted, let alone walked into an ambush." The gumbo stirrer in question waved from the crest of a small hillock ahead. Eveready had spotted something, and the Wolves obediently waited as the Cat went in for a closer look at whatever it was.
The sun was at the final landing in its descent of the staircase at the horizon. Valentine wondered at the simplicity of the age Eveready and his own father had been born into, when a red sunset meant only a beautiful end to another day rather than the beginning of eight hours of shadowed threat.
Valentine tried listening with "hard" ears as Eveready moved up the crest of the little hill at a level so just the Cat's head could be seen from the reverse slope of the hill where the object of his attention lay. Eveready's sure footfalls snapped no branch or twig detectable to Valentine's senses, raised to atavistic acuity. Eveready stopped, having found the best vantage, and stood for a full quarter-hour, staring motionless into the lengthening shadows.
Burton, who had already acquired the veteran's knack of sleeping at any opportunity, was softly snoring by the time Eveready returned. Alistar jostled him into wakefulness with a push of his moccasined foot.
"Is it that dogleg pond where we sunk the boat?"
"It's a boat, all right," Eveready said. "But not ours. Big wooden canoe, pulled up and overturned. There weren't any leaves or twigs or anything on it, so I bet it's just been there a day or two. And I'd just about bet Trudy against one of your FreeTerritory buckchits there's oars sitting under it."
The Wolves exchanged grins, but Valentine's was forced, almost more of a grimace. Good boats didn't just get left on their own, even if they were wooden canoes. A canoe would be an impractical boat for a long patrol, and a tiring one for a trip upriver. And he knew, without knowing how he knew, that his uneasiness came from something having to do with the canoe in the same way that a plague-sheet hanging on the door of a house meant death inside. Something cold and fearful tickled at his mind.
"I say we move quick, before the owners come back," Alistar said, rubbing his palms against each other.
"It's a risk, but I'd like to be across tonight," Burton agreed. Hernandez just nodded, and the three turned to Valentine.
Eveready's eyes met his. "It's a gamble, David, but I think it's okay. You feeling all right? You look like something you ate doesn't agree with you."
Trust the Cat, who lived by and for his stomach, to chalk up Valentine's unease to indigestion.
"Just a feeling. Old Padre, the guy who raised me, used to call it a vibe. There were good ones and bad ones. I guess I'm getting a bad one. This place doesn't feel right."
Alistar made a sound that might be interpreted as clucking.
Eveready ignored it. "Son, when I used to have hair on my head, if it went up, I backed off. I wouldn't be alive today if I didn't pay attention to the part of me that was quivering like a bowl of Jell-O. Which reminds me. When the four of us are back at Newpost Arkansas, I'm going to do some trading at the butchers and make you all some apple Jell-O. My momma's own recipe, with custard creme on top."
"We'll hold you to it," Valentine said, steadiness returning to his voice. "Let's have a look at this boat of ours."
From Eveready's little hillock, it looked easy enough. The canoe was pulled up, well out of the river's reach, on a little backwater of the river. A long peninsula of land, probably an islet at some times of the year, pointed westward beyond the boat: rising and then falling away rapidly like the profile of a wooded sphinx.
Valentine, after a quick look at the overturned boat, gazed at the spur of land pointing into the river. Something about that ominous shape troubled him. But if Eveready, veteran of thirty years' guerrilla fighting against the Reapers, thought it was safe, why shouldn't he trust the wisdom that had not yet put them into danger?
Later, he castigated himself for his silence. The Wolves spaced themselves out and readied their weapons. Eveready unslung his carbine.
"I'm going to take a little look-see. You four relax, stay centered, keep your lifesign down, breathe deep. We got lucky. It'll be dark as we're trying to cross, and the moon won't be up for a while. But I want to make sure, just in case Val's radar is working better than my own."
Valentine nodded, struggling with an encouraging smile as he tried to put into practice what Eveready preached. He envisioned his body glowing with a warm red aura. As he centered himself, he envisioned that aura changing color to blue. Then he began to contract the blue, drawing it inward with each breath. As he inhaled, the blue glow shrank to a small, softly glowing ball in the center of his body. The world around him seemed to fade.
Eveready approached the boat in two great loops, moving to the low edge of the sphinx-peninsula and then back to the base of their own hill before scouting the boat more closely. He even pointed his rifle under it as he approached, but as the last of the daylight faded into twilight's gloaming, he waved the Wolves down.
The canoe was wider than most, well fashioned out of overlapping planks. Someone had put a great deal of time and effort into making it; the wood shone with a polished luster. Two men could sit abreast on its two fore-and-aft seats, and there was room for their packs under the thwarts. The canoe would have held twice their number. Four oars, matching the wood, lay underneath. They decided that the four young Wolves would row two to a side, and Eveready would sit in the center with rifle ready. Darkness grew as they inspected their prize.
"Let's get out into the current quick," Eveready ordered. "If someone starts shooting, the wood is thick enough to stop a bullet fired from anything but point-blank, so just dive into the bottom and let the river take us away. I'll row by myself if I have to. This old Reaper vest stopped a bullet in my back before. Southern Command, in its wisdom, saves this stuff for the Bears, when they can get our guys to turn in the spoils of war, that is. Many's the old Wolf that has one of these under his leathers where the officers don't see it. Not that I'm advising you young men to break regulations, now."