Kitabı oxu: «Her Own Ranger»

CHAPTER ONE

June—Miccosukee Seminole Reservation,

north of Everglades National Park

CARSON WARD, SEMINOLE-BORN and tribal-bred, sat in the back of his private canoe, not only to steer his passengers through the silent, unmapped waterways but to watch for the first bullet to warn them. It would come... and probably soon. It was only a question of when.

The poachers working the land guaranteed it. For years now, they’d fouled the waters with the blood of Everglades alligators, and last summer, with the blood of Carson’s father. He’d been a park ranger, too. Ferris Ward had imbued his son with a love of the Everglades and a sense of guardianship toward it. A sense of justice—that was an equally important legacy from his father.

Today was another battle in the war Carson intended to win. The poachers were clever, and as skilled at survival as he was. But this time...

Carson’s smile was deadly. This time, he had an edge against the men invading his people’s ancient homeland. The three other people in his canoe weren’t the tourists they seemed to be. Instead of rangers, they were Seminoles like him—natives who knew their land as no non-tribal ranger ever could.

“Everyone okay?” Carson quietly asked in English. Those present spoke fluent Seminole, but deception was an art that required attention to detail. If they were going to look like tourists, they had to sound like them, too.

Sitting in the point position was Ray Weaver, cousin of thirty-six-year-old Carson and his junior by five years.

“No, I’m not okay. I feel like a damn idiot.”

Carson grinned. Unlike him, Ray wasn’t NPS, a ranger with the National Park Service. As a professional manager of one of the tribe’s more prosperous hotel-casinos. Ray preferred tuxedos to a ranger’s boots. But, like Carson, he’d grown up in these swamps. He considered the Disney World T-shirt and Mickey Mouse hat, complete with ears, an insult to his manhood, even if the baggy shirt beneath the life jacket did cover a bulletproof vest.

Carson was immovable on that point, though he wore no vest himself. He wasn’t foolhardy, but his position in the rear of the canoe meant he was doing most of the steering, something he couldn’t easily accomplish with a heavy bulletproof vest. Wearing one would have ensured that if the canoe upended he’d sink straight to the bottom of the Everglades. Carson preferred to take his chances.

Ray preferred the same, but Carson refused to risk anyone else’s life, hence Ray’s present complaints. Ray was loyal to family and fiercely loyal to Carson’s late father. When he’d discovered Carson was planning this trip, Ray had insisted on coming along as reinforcement.

“If anyone from the casino saw me, I’d die of embarrassment.” Ray touched the mouse ears on his ball cap and flinched. Suffering in silence wasn’t his strong point. “This reeks big-time. I can’t believe people actually spend money on this trash.”

“Hush, or I’ll make you wear the camera around your neck as well,” said the older woman behind Ray. “Remember, noisy with the oars. We’re all supposed to be tourists.”

“I’ve been paddling canoes my whole life,” Ray grumbled. “I don’t know how to be noisy.”

“Try,” Carson insisted. “We don’t want poachers thinking we’re a threat.”

“Fine. I’m splashing. Are you happy, Mother?”

Ray’s mother, Deborah Weaver, was Carson’s aunt and Ferris Ward’s sister. When the poachers had killed Ferris, his widow, Mary, decided to leave the tribe’s wetlands home. Ray found her a job with one of the prosperous tribal bingo halls. Mary, like Ray, detested the Everglades as much as Carson and Deborah loved them. Ray only returned for family reasons, nothing else.

Carson had stayed behind, unwilling to give up his family home or his job as a ranger. Mary repeatedly begged him to join her. He refused, vowing to stay and find his father’s killers, determined to bring them to justice.

As only children, Carson and Ray looked after their aunts; Deborah was a widow, too, whose husband had died of natural causes years ago. Protection was the tribal way. Of the two mothers, traditional Seminole Deborah Weaver had always been the stronger parent, the stronger woman. She’d volunteered to accompany her nephew and son today, shrugging off their objections.

“You should’ve stayed home, Mother,” Ray muttered, not for the first time. “We’ve got armed crazies out here. You could get hurt.”

“Ray, I’m wearing a bulletproof vest and a life jacket.”

“That won’t keep you a hundred percent safe. Carson, why didn’t you chain her to her loom?”

“I tried.” Carson dodged the spray of water Deborah sent his way with a deliberate flip of the oar. “But ever since I planned this scouting party, she insisted on coming. You know that. The tourist disguise was her idea.” Ignoring Ray’s exaggerated groan, he said, “I couldn’t shake her loose. Or her apprentice, either.”

“You should have tried harder,” Ray told him. “Should’ve told ’em both to stay home.”

“I did.” Carson hadn’t wanted the women along, either, but Seminole women—especially Deborah—didn’t take kindly to being told what to do.

“He really did,” the fourth person in the canoe replied. Adoette Fisher, twenty-seven, was recently apprenticed to Deborah at the looms, although during the busy tourist season, she often worked as an operator with the tribe’s prosperous airboat business. “She never listens, does she, Carson?”

The brilliant smile thrown Carson’s way wasn’t meant to dazzle, but to make Ray jealous. As usual, her charm failed to affect him. Carson’s heart went out to Adoette.

These days, Seminoles usually made one of two choices; there were those who worked in the modern world, often in the hotel-casinos and bingo halls, and those who lived in the wetlands, following the traditional tribal ways. In the subtropical grasslands, raising cattle on the treeless savannas was part of that life. Hand-weaving colorful cloth with intricate ancient patterns was another. Seminole textiles were in demand all over the world, much like the Southwest Navaho’s woven rugs.

Ray wanted nothing to do with looms or herds. He’d eagerly left the hardships of the Miccosukee Reservation wetlands—what he described as “smelly, buggy swamps”—for life in Florida’s city world. Adoette, a Big Cypress Reservation Muskogee Seminole, had been born and raised in those swamps; she felt at home there. Even her Indian name, pronounced Ah-do-ay-tah, meant “born beneath a big tree,” as indeed she’d been. Carson remembered Ray’s thoughts on that subject.

“To think of her mother squatting under a cypress in the mud makes me sick. I don’t care if I am Seminole. The practice is unsafe and outdated. No wife of mine will ever deliver our children that way.”

A bad combination...Ray and Adoette. Neither one wrong, neither one right. No middle ground, only trouble.

Carson knew Adoette loved Ray. Adoette had met him during her brief, disastrous try at college. When she dropped out after less than a year, she didn’t return to Big Cypress. Already a skilled airboat operator and a long-time friend of the Ward family, she’d requested an apprenticeship with Deborah, moving to the open wetlands of the Miccosukee Reservation. Although she’d never admitted as much, Carson suspected the main reason she’d done it was to be closer to Ray. But Ray knew what he wanted in a wife, and a traditional Seminole wasn’t it.

As for Carson, he didn’t want a wife, period. Not until he’d caught the men who’d killed his father.

His vow was made as his father died in his arms last summer. Carson had begun his job with the National Park Service long before Ferris retired. Ferris himself had spent his whole life in the NPS, the federal custodian of the rare and endangered life inside Everglades National Park. All park rangers were sworn to protect it. The uniform Ferris once wore had legally empowered him to shoot any human hunters who threatened the Everglades.

Ferris’s position was a unique, often solitary one, for he alone had patrolled the border between park land and Native American land until Carson was old enough to join him.

Young Carson had grown up at his father’s side. Ferris had taught him to paddle a canoe, and taught him about his home. He stayed at his father’s side, learning enough to make him want to become a ranger himself. The job was perfect for Carson, since only someone in his position had access to all the Everglades. The NPS wasn’t allowed unlimited access to the five major tribal reservations, while the tribe wasn’t allowed free access to the Everglades government lands. But Seminole park rangers faced no barriers. They were almost as free on the land as their ancient ancestors had been. Father and son had enjoyed the job and each other’s company—until a poacher’s bullet put an end to their team.

Carson had volunteered to take over the border work by himself. He continued his solitary patrol—a lone ranger—because it was the only way he’d ever find his father’s killers. They’d been operating irregularly in the Everglades for the past two summers, killing gators for their hides and leaving the carcasses for scavengers to dispose of. They were careful, cautious men like himself but with more regard for money than for life. Arrests of small-time poachers had been made, but the men who’d killed his father still eluded him. Carson vowed their capture or his own death trying.

Until then, romance was out of the question. He would have welcomed a woman in his life, but his job—and now this quest—made serious courtship difficult. Carson remained solitary, grieving his father’s death, and wondering if he could ever love a woman as much as he loved the Everglades. He delighted in everything about this place—its panthers, egrets, playful manatees, its cypress draped with Spanish moss, even its snakes and those ancient dwellers, the alligators and crocodiles. The beauty of the land was his only inheritance.

In the Everglades, nature made the rules, not man. Nature determined what you ate, when you slept and the temperature when doing either. Few modern amenities existed for those in canoes.

One became a creature of the wetlands like all the others. Life continued for the fittest, the strongest, the bravest, the wisest, for male and female alike. Carson knew it wasn’t right for a man to accept a woman as second-best to the land. He’d been taught family was sacred. The bond between a man and a woman should be at least as great as that between a man and his home.

Like any healthy man in his mid-thirties, he’d had his share of relationships. But, none had ever meant enough to him to give up this life. One woman, a Seminole from Big Cypress, had wanted him to move to Miami with her; that was the closest he’d ever come to marriage. It wasn’t close enough.... So he accepted no women in his life except close friends, like Adoette, or kin, like Deborah. Maybe things would change once these poachers were apprehended. But until then...

“Next time, Mother, stay home,” Ray was saying. “Playing tourist is bad enough. Having you watch me in this getup is insulting.”

“Quiet down, Ray. Sound carries, remember?” Carson reminded his cousin.

“Yeah, Ray,” Adoette added in a whisper. “Someone could be listening.”

“Doubt it. I haven’t seen any evidence of poaching activity here. Can’t we turn around? This is a lost cause for today.”

He’s probably right. “Let’s give it another half hour, then call it quits. We’ll be home before sunset.”

“Hallelujah,” Ray said. “I’m starving. And I’m not providing our poachers with this target any longer.” Ray snatched off the Disney World hat with such violence it landed in the back of the canoe near Carson’s shoes. “There. If they want a target, it won’t be these mouse ears. Let ’em aim for something else.”

Carson bent over to move the hat away from his feet. “Ray, shut your—”

He was never able to complete that warning. The sound of a gun’s report cracked over the water just then, the force of a bullet hitting Carson in the shoulder, knocking the air from his lungs and throwing him out of the canoe.

Adoette screamed as a second shot rang out. Ray’s hoarse shout was followed by the splash of the canoe being deliberately overturned.

Carson knew his body was in shock because of the way his muscles were frozen. No pain had yet registered in his shoulder wound.

If this was a Tarzan movie, I’d be fighting the man-eating alligators.

But it wasn’t a Tarzan movie. And alligators weren’t man-eaters. They only attacked prey in a certain size range; full-grown men far exceeded that range. Without oxygen, he sank like a rock in the murky waters.

Gators weren’t the danger he needed to fear. Drowning was.

This is so stupid. I’ve been swimming all my life, and I’m drowning. I didn’t even take a poacher with me.

He tried to move his arms, but could only move one. He kicked his legs, hoping to move upward, toward the surface, but couldn’t. No sunlight penetrated the inky depths. His chest remained frozen in that sickening, winded condition. He had no buoyancy with empty lungs.

Damn! Time to pray. Please, please, please... was all he could manage. It was enough.

A hand gripped his own—a woman’s, not a man’s. If he could, Carson would have laughed. Adoette, my friend, you’ve just paid me back for all those swimming lessons I gave you when we were kids. Once barely able to wade without hysterics, she’d been, according to Ray, the only person in the history of the Seminole tribe afraid of water. But thanks to Carson’s patience, Adoette now swam. She swam well enough for both of them.

Air! I have air! He gulped in precious oxygen as his head broke the water’s surface. Carson took two more deep breaths. Only then did his eyes roll and his head fall limply onto Adoette’s wet shoulder. He withdrew from the world.

CARSON AWOKE IN IS AUNT’S chickee—the traditional summer dwelling built without walls. Deborah’s was located a tactful distance for privacy from his own family chickee. His shoulder had been treated with traditional medicines and was being wrapped. It also throbbed like hell.

“Ouch! That’s hurts!” He jerked in the hammock serving as his bed.

“I told them to call you a medi-chopper, but no, Mom here settled for the local rattles-and-bones man,” Ray scoffed.

Adoette scolded Ray. “You’d insult your own mother and our healer? Natural plant medicine is just as good as—”

“I want the best for him, and penicillin beats swamp weeds, hands down. Not that our healer here understands English, so I’m not insulting him. Hey, cuz,” Ray said, dismissing Adoette from the conversation. “How are ya?”

Ray’s rough brusqueness disguised his true concern. If Carson didn’t ache so much, he’d smile. The two cousins were like brothers, their close bond cemented years ago. Carson managed a faint smile, allowing Ray to relax.

“Good thing I tossed off those mouse ears and you reached for them,” Ray said, “or you’d be fish food now.”

Adoette shivered in horror. “How can you say that, Ray?”

“Well, it’s true.”

She pushed Ray aside to come closer to the hammock. “Are you okay, Carson? Does it hurt much?” She took his hand in a motion that barely swung the hammock but moved his shoulder slightly—enough to make his stomach lurch at the pain.

Carson managed to swallow a gasp. “Not much. Thanks for pulling me out, little turtle.” He used her old nickname. “I owe you.”

“You were the one who taught me to swim.” Adoette squeezed his hand. “I hope you heal fast.”

“He’d heal a lot faster if you’d stop yanking him around,” Ray said. “Can’t you see you’re hurting him?”

Adoette started, and dropped Carson’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Tears filled her eyes.

Ray, you can be such a jerk, Carson thought. If I didn’t feel so lousy, I’d kick some sense into you. Adoette only cries when you’re around.

“Lucky for you the bullet came out easily,” Ray happily informed him.

“Let me see it.”

“There’s no need for that,” Deborah fussed.

“Let me see it. ”

“Save your breath,” Ray said. “I’m with you. I’m sending this slug to your boss at the station. If—when—we catch the poachers, the ballistics match should get them an attempted murder charge, too.”

“Just guard that bullet,” Carson said weakly. “So far, it’s the only new evidence we have.” He settled more comfortably into the hammock. “It might even match the bullet that killed my father.”

“But the NPS will have to send that bullet to Miami for testing,” Adoette pointed out. “It’ll take weeks to get the results.”

“I can wait,” Carson said. “Anyway, I should be recovered well before that. Thank God the bullet didn’t do more damage.”

“Stop it, right this instant!” Deborah interrupted them sharply. “This isn’t the time or the place.”

Adoette nodded. “Deborah’s right. Concentrate on getting better first. You’ll be up and about soon. That really will heal quickly. Deborah says it’s just a furrow.” Adoette pointed to his shoulder. Just the nearness of her finger to his wound caused sweat to break out on his forehead. That must be some furrow. Feels like I could drive an airboat through it.

“I’m tired,” he said in his native tongue.

“You two—out. He needs rest.” Deborah placed herself between Carson and the others in a protective maternal pose.

“Thanks again, Adoette. Later, Ray.” Carson’s eyes closed. He sighed in contentment as Deborah smoothed his forehead with a gentle hand.

“I’ll have Ray call your mother when he goes to work,” she said as the tribal healer continued his ministrations. “She’d want to know.”

Carson opened his eyes again. “What will he tell her?”

“The truth—mat her son is hurt.”

“She’ll ask how, and Ray’ll go into details. Why call her about a minor injury, anyway?”

Deborah ducked her head guiltily.

“The bullet went deep, didn’t it?”

She met his eyes. “Almost right through. You could have bled to death.”

I nearly drowned first. “So that’s what you intend to tell my mother? You’ll destroy her peace of mind—which is fragile enough as it is.”

“She’s afraid of losing you like she lost her husband.”

“That is not the point.”

“Death is the point, Carson!” Deborah’s protest was so loud the healer paused over his bandaging. “Your father was killed here. Your mother left because she didn’t feel safe.”

“That’s why the poaching has to end. This is my home. I’ll protect it and our people until I draw my last breath. To ask me to do otherwise is beneath you as a tribal elder.”

“I’m not just a tribal elder. I’m an aunt who loves you.”

“I’m not accountable to you on this matter.” He became harsh, cold, as he always did when a decision he believed in was challenged. “I forbid you to tell my mother.”

“Carson, please don’t make me choose. She’s my brother’s wife.”

“Then tell her next week,” Carson insisted. He closed his eyes again, feeling weak but unwilling to concede. “Otherwise she’ll drag me off to some Miami hospital.”

“You might be safer there.”

“They have air-conditioning. I hate air-conditioning. What if I get pneumonia?”

His aunt hesitated. She, too, suffered from leaving the superheated outdoors and stepping inside chilled structures. “It can’t be that bad, or more patients would die there.”

Carson followed up his advantage. “Who’s to say they don’t? Maybe ‘dying of complications’ is a doctors’ code for freezing to death.”

Deborah frowned. “I never heard—” The expression on her face changed. “Carson Ward, you are so full of it.”

Carson grinned at her capitulation.

“You make a second mother’s position very hard.”

“I’m not a child who needs mothering.” Though the hand that smoothed his hair was very welcome indeed. Maybe I could use a woman in my life, after all. Get married and... He pushed away the thought, brought alive in a moment of weakness. My father’s killers first.

“You should have a family now—and you should be sending your children to the looms or the herds. Ray and Adoette, as well. Instead, I’ve lost your mother to the bingo hall and Ray to the casinos. I expect Adoette will get tired of waiting and join him there. You’re all so unsettled. When you went over the side of the canoe...if it wasn’t for Adoette...” Her voice broke. “You and Adoette are close, and Ray’s so stubborn. She might make you a good wife.”

Carson groaned. “First I get shot and now I have to endure matchmaking? God help me.”

“Just a thought that crossed my mind.”

“Keep it there. Please, Aunt.”

He flinched as the healer wrapped over a particularly painful spot. When the job was finished, Deborah brought him herbal tea with its painikilling and sleep-inducing properties.

“Drink it,” she urged.

“I will, but I need you to do something for me.”

“First drink the tea.”

Carson downed the drink and passed her the empty mug. “I want you to contact that woman. Alisha Jamison.”

Deborah looked puzzled. “Why?”

Carson moved his legs restlessly in the hammock. “You know, she’s that crusading Dian Fossey type. She and her partner—some guy Ray knows—have done those articles and TV shows that publicize poaching.”

“I know who she is. I’ve seen some of her documentaries and photographs. And the man’s name is Josh Gregory. I also remember you advised the tribe and the NPS to refuse them permission to enter our lands. You said her filming would disturb the hatchlings—and maybe interfere with the investigation of your father’s death.”

“Yeah, well, that was a year ago, and I thought I’d have caught Dad’s killers by now.”

“You’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes. She’s exposed poachers all over the world. She gets publicity for animals at risk and creates public awareness of the problem.” He paused. “Her work even led to the capture of some poachers—in Australia, I think.”

“But you said you were going to catch the poachers yourself.”

“I intend to. However, I need a distraction—a tactical diversion—while I’m doing it. Today’s was a bust.”

“We wanted to come.”

“I shouldn’t have agreed. I endangered my family and nearly got killed in the process. I’m the ranger here. This is my job, not yours.”

“Carson, don’t.”

“I’ve been going about this all wrong,” he mused. “This woman just might be our ticket to success. Alisha Jamison’s business is documenting damage done by poachers. She’s a very public figure. If we bring her onto Seminole land, the poachers will have to lie low or, more likely, retreat to park land—where I’ve got NPS assistance and trained firepower—more than we have here. While everyone’s watching her, we’ll be waiting for the poachers to come out.”

“If they come. They could cut and run.”

“They don’t run. They kill.” He shook his head. “Time to put an end to it,” he said again. “So, I need you to go back to the council.”

Deborah frowned. “It won’t be easy to convince them to change their minds, especially since you were against Alisha’s earlier request.”

“They’ll listen to you.” He felt himself getting sleepy, but forced his eyelids to stay open. “Don’t bother with a letter—have Ray fax Ms. Jamison from the casino. I want her here by the time I’m back on my feet.”

Deborah continued to stroke her nephew’s head. “Only if you promise to stay away from any more bullets.”

Carson grimaced. “That’s certainly my intention. Oh, something else...”

“Rest.”

“No. One more thing.”

He felt his aunt’s touch, felt the sedative effects of the tea, and heard his voice grow fainter. But he refused to sleep until he’d finished.

“For her own safety, I don’t want Alisha Jamison involved in my fight. I don’t want her knowing any of the specifics—about these poachers...or my father’s death.”

“If I were in her position, I’d want to know.”

“Absolutely not. She’ll be our gundog who either flushes our prey or drives them into hiding. Nothing more. Do you understand me, Aunt? Nothing more.”