We sailed lagoons in crazy craft; dreamt on shady shores through sultry noons; shouted to the dead logs on river banks till they took fear, and dived and splashed away. We pitched our tents by black waters. We beat brave trails through the fens.
“I’d like to stay here forever,” said Red Roane.
By what way I go, with what drinks I drink, in what bed I lie down, I remember you who got your prayer, Red Roane—you who are in the swamp grass and swamp water forever.
Beating our way slow and heavily, at high noon, of the new year’s first day in 1899, near Okechobee in the marshes, came we two on a hidden hut. It was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness like a monument to death. Better the naked swamp. Better the clean quagmire for bed.
An old crone, moaning within that dreary hut, drowned out the sharp, short gasps of another woman. Red Roane came up singing, slapping his deep chest, swinging his muscular arms. Sunlight on his brown face, and sunlight in his red hair. At the hut’s door, facing us, lounged a man with yellow eyes. Poor white trash. A gun was in his arm’s crook. He spat tobacco juice at the earth. There was loathing, murder venom in his face!
Red Roane faltered back from that stare. He stopped short, and laughter left him. His brave eyes were troubled by that madman’s hate. Yellow eyes staring—eyes of a rattlesnake!
An old Indian crone peered out beneath the crooked elbow of the ruffian in the doorway, she who had been dolorously singing. With a scream, she thrust out her skinny old arm, pointing it at Red Roane.
“He dies!” she screamed. “We want his soul!”
Another woman, hidden, moaning within the hut; a woman in her travail. New life from the womb—a life must die! I grasped the arm of Red Roane.
“Come away!” I said, “Come away from these mad witches!”