Cay looked down at her right hand and saw that she hadn’t let go of her pen; fear had made her grip it harder. She was holding a long quill pen, feathers intact, the tip covered in ink. It wasn’t exactly a weapon that would hold up against an alligator. “Ink in their noses chokes them,” she said as she felt Alex’s strong hand on her back to keep her from falling down in fear.
Mr. Grady didn’t laugh. Instead, he frowned at Alex. “I think you better watch your young brother more closely and make sure we have no more close calls like th
at one.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Alex said.
Eighteen
After her bout with the alligator, Cay was more subdued. Adam had once commented that she’d been protected all her life and had no idea what the real world was like. At the time, she’d thought it wasn’t very nice of him to have said it, but she was beginning to understand what he meant. Not all the world was like her home, with brothers and a father to take care of her, and a mother who was always there to help her figure out what she should do about any problem.
In a way, the near attack made her feel as though she’d been given a second chance at life. If Alex hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t reacted so quickly, she would have been bitten by the alligator and pulled down under the water with him. She would never have lived through it.
For the rest of the day, she paid more attention to everything around her, from her fellow travelers to the birds overhead. As they went deeper south, she began to hear noises that she hadn’t noticed before. There was an underlying roar beneath the ever-present calls of thousands of birds that were growing louder by the minute. It sounded like a huge stone being slowly pulled over a rock bed. It was eerie and fascinating at the same time.
She glanced up from her drawing of one of the plants Mr. Grady had given her. Eli was cleaning birds for their dinner tonight, which they all looked forward to, as they’d eaten only bread and cheese all day. “What’s that sound?”
“The deep one?”
She nodded.
“Alligators. They’re settling in for the night.”
Cay tried to stamp down the terror she felt growing inside her. “There must be a lot of them to make that much noise.”
“Hundreds,” Eli said. “Thousands. They climb all over each other. You’ll see. But don’t worry about them. We’ll camp away from them.”
Cay could only nod, as words didn’t want to come out.
Mr. Grady called a halt to their travel well before sundown, and they poled the flatboat to the shore. Cay could see the remains of what looked to be an old campfire on a little hill up from the shore. “Someone’s been here before,” she said to Alex as he ran about the boat tying ropes to anchor it.
“People have been here,” he said, “but later we’ll go places others haven’t gone. Are you looking forward to that?”
All Cay seemed able to remember was the alligator’s ugly head coming up out of the water at her. Its teeth could be seen clearly, and they looked very sharp.
Alex saw her fear. “Come on. Don’t just stand there, pick up those boxes and get them ashore. Do you think you get a free ride just because you can draw pretty pictures?”
“I’ll have you know—” Cay began, but she stopped when she saw Mr. Grady looking at her. She took the heavy box Alex handed her and carried it up the hill to the campsite.
For the next hour, she was too busy to think. Alex and she put up one of the three tents, one for them, one for Eli and Tim, and the last one for Mr. Grady. She carried box after box from the boat up the hill until her legs were aching and the muscles in her arms were so weak they were shaking.
“You’ll get used to it,” Alex said as he slapped her on the shoulder so hard she nearly fell down.
“Or I’ll die,” she said after him, but when she saw Tim smirking at her, she picked up the heaviest crate that Eli had set out for them and lugged it up the hill. When all the chests were in place and the tents up, she wanted to lie down and eat half a bushel of food, but no, there was more work to be done. Alex informed her that they had to help Eli prepare dinner.
“But he has the birds. He’s been cleaning them for hours.”
“See those trees through there?”
Wearily, her hand on the small of her back, she looked through the shrubs toward whatever Alex was pointing at. Looking like something out of a child’s drawing, she saw small trees hanging with bright, round fruit. “Oranges!” she said to Alex in wonder. She’d only eaten two in her life, as they were a rare and precious commodity, usually given only as a treat at Christmas. “Are they real?”
“Very. If you hadn’t spent so much time kissing the girls back at the boardinghouse, I could have shown you orange trees around there.”
“If you hadn’t spent so much time rummaging through Thankfull’s books and flirting with her, I could have gone with you.”
Alex laughed. “Are you coming or not?”
“Where?”