The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

chile do mak’ a mess. Now yo’, Mistuh Val, jest put eberythin’ jest so. But Miss ’Chanda leave eberythin’ which way afore Sunday! Looka dat now.” She pointed to the half-open door of the closet. A slip lay on the floor. Ricky must have been in a hurry; that was a little too untidy even for her.
    A sudden suspicion sent Val into the closet to investigate. Ricky’s wardrobe was not so extensive that he did not know every dress and article in it very well. It did not take him more than a moment to see what was missing.
    “Did Ricky go riding?” Val asked. “Her habit is gone.”
    “She ain’ gone ’cross de bayo’ fo’ de hoss,” answered Lucy, reaching for the curtain rod. “An’ anyway, Sam done took dat critter down de road fo’ to be shoed.”
    “Then where—” But Val knew his Ricky only too well.
    She had a certain stubborn will of her own. Sometimes opposition merely drove her into doing the forbidden thing. And the swamp had been forbidden. But could even Ricky be such a fool? Certain memories of the past testified that she could. But how? Unless she had taken Sam’s boat—
    Without a word of explanation to Lucy, he dashed out of the room and downstairs at his best pace. As he left the house Val broke into a stumbling run. There was just a chance that she had not yet left the plantation.
    But the bayou levee was deserted. And the post where Sam’s boat was usually moored was bare of rope; the boat was gone. Of course Sam Two might have taken it across the stream to the farm.
    That hope was extinguished as the small brown boy came out of the bushes along the stream side.
    “Sam, have you seen Miss ’Chanda?” Val demanded.
    “Yessuh.”
    “Where?” Carrying on a conversation with Sam Two was like prying diamonds out of a rock. He possessed a rooted distaste for talking.
    “Heah, suh.”
    “When?”
    “Jest a li’l bitty ’go.”
    “Where did she go?”
    Sam pointed downstream.
    “Did she take the boat?”
    “Yessuh.” And then for the first time since Val had known him Sam volunteered a piece of information. “She done say she a-goin’ in de swamp.”
    Val leaned back against the hole of one of the willows. Then she had done it! And what could he do? If he had any idea of her path, he could follow her while Sam aroused Rupert and the house.
    “If I only knew where—” he mused aloud.
    “She a-goin’ to see dat swamper Jeems,” Sam continued. “Heh, heh,” a sudden cackle of laughter rippled across his lips. “Dat ole swamper think he so sma’t. Think no one fin’ he house—”
    “Sam!” Val rounded upon him. “Do you know where Jeems lives?”
    “Yessuh.” He twisted the one shoulder-strap of his overalls and Val guessed that his knowledge was something he was either ashamed of or afraid to tell.
    “Can you take me there?”
    He shook his head. “Ah ain’ a-goin’ in dere, Ah ain’!”
    “But, Sam, you’ve got to! Miss ’Chanda is in there. She may be lost. We’ve got to find her!” Val insisted.
    Sam’s thin shoulders shook and he slid backward as if to avoid the white boy’s reach. “Ah ain’ a-goin’ in dere,” he repeated stubbornly. “Effen yo’all wants to go in dere—Looky, Mistuh Val, Ah tells yo’all de way an’ yo’all goes.” He brightened at this solution. “Yo’all kin take pappy’s othah boat; it am downstream dere, behin’ dem willows. Den yo’all goes down to de secon’ big pile o’ willows. Behin’ dem is a li’l bitty bayo’ goin’ back. Yo’all goes up dat ’til yo’all comes to a fur rack. Den dat Jeems got de way marked on de trees.”
    With that he turned and ran as if all the terrors of the night were on his trail. There was nothing for Val to do but to follow his directions. And the longer he lingered before setting out the bigger lead Ricky was getting.
    He found the canoe behind the willows as Sam had said. Awkwardly he pushed off, hoping that Lucy would pry the whole story out of her son and put Rupert on their track as soon as possible.
    The second clump of willows was something of a landmark, a huge matted mass of sucker and branch, the lower tips of the long, frond-like twigs sweeping the murky water. A snake swimming with its head just above the surface wriggled to the bank as Val cut into the small hidden stream Sam had told him of.
    Vines and water plants had almost choked this, but there was a passage through the center. And one tough spike of vegetation which snapped back into