Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

“Wait!” shouted Massey as they sprinted up the trail. They couldn’t let these travelers get away; it might be days before anyone else came along this remote path. “Hold on!”

“Wait for us,” called Floyd.

The creaking of wagon wheels stopped. The wagoner had obviously heard them. When Aidan, Massey, and Floyd came running around the next bend in the trail, they skidded to a stop, shocked to find four sunburned men in buckskin breeches standing behind a wagon and aiming crossbows at them. Their eyes had the blank look of men who knew what it was to pull the trigger on another man. But the really mesmerizing thing about the men was their enormous hair. It stood high on their heads and flipped back like great duck wings, plastered with potato starch on either side. It was the past year’s fashionable hairstyle in Tambluff.

Aidan and his fellow travelers instinctively raised their arms and froze where they stood. The mule stamped at the sandy ground and jingled in his traces, and a rain frog chirrripped from a bush beside the trail, but there was no other sound in the tense moment.

A fifth man, tall with a curling mustache, leaned on the side of the wagon. He was obviously their leader. He had the biggest hair of all. His elbow rested on a burlap-wrapped bale, about the height and width of a small breakfast table. He squinted at Aidan, and his mouth twitched slightly beneath his bristling mustache, but he didn’t say anything.

Massey’s surprise soon gave way to indignation. “What is this?” he demanded. “Why are you pointing those things at us like we was enemies or criminals?”

The lead wagoner seemed satisfied that Aidan and company were unarmed. He gestured for his men to lower their weapons. “In the forrrest,” he explained, addressing Massey, “you can’t be too keerrrful.” In the man’s speech, Aidan noticed the rolling r ’s of Corenwald’s hill country dialect.

Floyd noticed it too. “You boys ain’t from around here, are you?” he asked. He observed the shiny red of deep sunburn on their cheeks and noses, and the insect bites that dotted every inch of skin not covered in buckskin, and he couldn’t resist a little dig. “Eastern Wilderness can be pretty mean on a bunch of hill-scratchers.”

One of the crossbowmen, taking offense, leveled his weapon at Floyd’s chest, but his leader reined him in again. “I rrreckon we’re plenty mean ourrr own selves,” he said with a hint of menace.

Massey paid little attention to the stranger’s remark. There were a lot of tough talkers in the Eastern Wilderness. Massey was pretty tough himself, and he hadn’t given up hope that these strangers would be of assistance. “The reason we flagged you down,” he said, “was because we need some help.” The lead wagoner said nothing but merely stared at Massey. Massey carried on. “We was floating a raft of timber down the Tam to Last Camp and beached it on a sandbar. We’d be obliged if you could help us get it back into the water.”

The mustachioed stranger paused before answering. “I don’t rrreckon we can. We got to get wherrre we going.”

Floyd and Massey were astonished. “That ain’t how we do things in the wilderness!” spluttered Floyd. “We help each other out, carry each other’s load. ’Cause one of these days you gonna need somebody’s help.”

“Well, as you pointed out alrrready,” said the stranger, “we ain’t from around herrre.”

Massey was furious. It wasn’t only the strangers’ refusal to help that enraged him-after all, sometimes a person wasn’t in a position to help-but their total disregard for the ways of the wilderness was infuriating. That’s when he realized what Aidan had known when he first set eyes on the wagoners. These were plume hunters, probably the ones who cleaned out Bullbat Bay. The bale in the wagon, no doubt, was a bale of plumes.

“What’s in the wagon?” asked Massey. He knew he was probably picking a fight, but he didn’t care.

The wagoners stared him down. “It’s a cotton bale,” lied their leader. “We’rrre taking it to market.”

Floyd laughed at the bold-faced lie. “You got a cotton patch in the woods somewhere?”

“Yeah,” said the tall stranger. “That’s rrright.”

Massey pointed at the bale in the wagon. “Kind of little for a cotton bale, ain’t it?”

“We ain’t verrry good farmers,” answered the lead wagoner. The crossbowmen smirked.

Massey’s thick neck was bulging, and his face turned as red as the sunburned wagoners’. “You’re a liar, stranger! I know that’s a bale of bird plumes.”

The four crossbowmen raised their weapons again and fingered the triggers. “That’s rrright,” sneered their leader. “What do you aim to do about it?”

Aidan could see that letting Massey and Floyd do the talking wasn’t going to work. And they certainly weren’t going to be able to fight their way out of this mess. Besides being outnumbered, he and the alligator hunters didn’t have a weapon among them. He spoke for the first time since they had hailed the wagon. “Ahem,” he gestured at the lead plume hunter. “Could I have a word?” He gave a broad, knowing wink. The plume hunter waved him over, and they stepped off the trail while the rest of the plume hunters continued to hold Floyd and Massey at arrowpoint.

Aidan spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone. “My friends here are a little old-fashioned. Not what you’d call men of the world. But they’re harmless.”

The stranger didn’t react, but he seemed to be listening. Aidan continued: “The way I look at it, if folks in Tambluff-or Pyrth, even-want plumes, they’re going to get plumes. They might as well get them from you. Am I right?” The stranger raised his eyebrows. He was warming up just a little.

“Here’s the thing,” said Aidan, leaning in a little closer. “I know a man who’d be very interested in your plumes.”

“I’ve alrrready got a buyer,” answered the plume hunter.

“Where’s your buyer?” asked Aidan. “Tambluff? Middenmarsh?” The stranger didn’t answer. Aidan was undeterred. “That’s a long way to haul such a valuable load.” He pointed at the armed men who were menacing his friends. “It’s a long time to pay four guards.” He paused dramatically. “I know a man at the edge of the wilderness.”

“I’m listening,” said the stranger. He was calculating what the saved travel days would mean to him.

“Follow this trail to its end at the River Road.” Aidan was whispering now. “Turn north on the River Road, and the first farmstead you come to is called Longleaf. Ask for Errol.”

“This Errol,” asked the plume hunter, “does he pay market price?”

“He’ll give you exactly what’s due you,” Aidan assured him.

“’Cause plume hunting ain’t easy,” said the hunter, “and I aim to collect what I’ve got coming to me.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” said Aidan. “Errol will give you everything you’ve got coming to you.” He found it hard not to smile at the thought of his father giving these rogues what they deserved. That would put a spring back in the old boy’s step. Aidan only wished he could be there to see it.

“Tell you what,” said Aidan. “You call your guards off my friends there, and I’ll even write you a letter to hand to Errol when you get there.”

The plume hunter thought a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “Why not?” he said. He motioned to the crossbowmen again, and again they pointed their weapons at the ground. The tall stranger looked under the seat of the wagon and found a sheet of palmetto paper, an inkpot, and a quill pen made from an egret plume, gaudily fluffy and as long as Aidan’s forearm. Such a dandyish writing instrument seemed comically out of place in the wilderness, but the plume hunter seemed proud of it. Aidan nodded in mock appreciation and began writing: Dear Errol-