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  David started talking fast. "Ma'am, please, we're not hear to cause trouble, we didn't even know this place existed. We're tracking something dangerous, very dangerous, and the trail led here. Please . Take Buttercup and go inside."

  The woman was perfectly calm and unconvinced. "You could say I'm a tracker myself. Whatcha huntin'?"

  "There's a creature, a beast ... it's been stalking the towns. It's already killed twice, it's here in the swamp now, and it's close and heading right for us. Listen to me. You do not stand a chance. I am begging you. Give us our guns and go inside."

  The woman's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I heard about a couple killin's over the last two months. Somethin' made a real mess, they say, sure tore the poor bastards to shreds. One in Tavares, the other Mount Dora, as I recall ..."

  Max nodded hopefully. "Exactly, you heard right."

  But the narrowing of the woman's eyes just led to a smirk. She snuggled the butt of her shotgun more comfortably against her hip. "I'll give it to you boys, you're clever, usin' a little fact for your fiction. Gotta be the best excuse I heard yet from somebody comin' to steal my hides. But, really, now, how'd you hear about us? That son of mine's been talkin' too much over at Woodrow's bar-top again, ain't he?"

  "No one's been talking to anybody," Max said. "Listen, lady, I wish we had time to earn your trust but we don't. Didn't you hear the howling earlier?"

  Now she was almost smiling. "Yeah ..."

  "That's the beast we're after," David said. "If we don't get to it, there's going to be more killing and it's going to begin with us. It knows we're here."

  "That howlin'. You're sayin' that was your critter ...?"

  " Yes ," Max replied.

  She let out a laugh and a snort. "You two ain't from around here are ya? Don't you know there ain't nothin' in this swamp that howls but Buttercup? If you're tellin' me the truth, then you came all this way out here on your wild goose chase, trackin' my dog! Ha!"

  Max and David shook their heads. "When was the last time you heard your dog howl like that ?" David asked.

  Her smile faltered a moment, but then it returned with a mix of disdain and amusement. "Shit, boys. The swamp can do funny things to a sound." She relaxed just enough to push that errant lock of hair behind her ear. "Okay, okay. This has all been highly entertainin', but you made me take my supper off the stove and get cold. So why don't you make life easier on all of us and just get on out? If you make me shoot ya then I'll have to be the one to bury ya, 'cause I can't be tellin' the county sheriff 'bout that, no matter how good a friend he is." She waggled the gun barrels upward as a way of giving Max and David permission to stand. "Slow, now," she warned. "Thanks for the guns. I can always use 'em. And if you see that loose-lipped son of mine again, tell him the next hide that I'll be hangin' on the racks is his."

  Max and David slowly rose. And the swamp's curtain of noise dropped away.

  The woman's face crinkled in bafflement. Trembling, Buttercup jerked to the right with a ragged growl and stared past the clearing.

  Max said, "Aw, shit ...!"

  The men rushed for their shotguns. The Beast burst out of the tree line, a massive blur of silver, froth and fangs, brilliant and glowing under the full moon. They heard the woman gasp out, "Sweet Jesus in Heaven ...!"

  They clawed for their shotguns and rolled between the Beast and the woman. She stumbled backward, letting both barrels loose right over their heads. The Beast's mass blotted out all light as it leapt over Max and David. They thrust upward and fired.

  Through the clanging in his eardrums Max could hear the woman scream. He heard the wet, animal sound of fangs in flesh. The men leapt to their feet to see the Beast sprawled limp upon the woman, and Buttercup jerking viciously at the creature's neck.

  They rushed over, kicking at the dog and hammering her with their gun butts, but she wouldn't let go until a moan came from beneath the Beast. The woman's right hand, flung outward from the impact, twitched. Buttercup let go of the Beast to snuffle and lick her palm.

  "I don't believe it!" Max said, "She's alive!"

  They bent to heave the carcass off her, but only the head and torso rolled away, barely attached to the haunches by scraps of fur and flesh. They pulled the woman out from under the remains, and her eyes fluttered open as Buttercup whined and circled, unable to reach her mistress through the men.

  She said again, slurring, "Sweet Jesus in Heaven ..."

  "Are you all right?" David asked, checking her over as Max helped her to sit up. "Are you in pain?"

  "No ... Sweet Jesus that thing headed straight for me! It looked me in the eye, looked me square in the eye, and came right at me!"

  Max helped David search for bite marks. The Beast's blood still had a silver sheen to it, but it would be fading soon. They looked for any gore that didn't catch the moonglow ... human blood. But the woman was drenched in nothing but shimmering viscera.

  "Knock it off, knock it off!" she finally said, rolling her shoulders away from them.

  Max took that as a good sign. She reached between them and comforted Buttercup with a shaky pat on the dog's broad head.

  "Can you stand?" Max asked her.

  "Yeah, I think so. Damn it to hell, what was that thing?"

  Max and David each had her by an arm and helped her to her feet. That was when Max noticed that they, too, were covered with silver-tinged blood, and they all looked at the dead Beast.

  David heaved a sigh. "I think we overdid it."

  It was massive. But, hell, the Beast was always massive. Prehistoric in dimension, it matched pound for pound the legendary brawn of any ancient canine or sabertooth. It was beyond belief, beyond comprehension, even when it lay dead and as good as shot in two, its torso at a grotesque angle from the hind area.

  The blood- the blood everywhere , turning the sandy soil to mud- was losing its luster now. But as long as the moon shone blanched and fierce on the carcass, the fur would never dull. The pelt was glistening as if silver leaf had been worked through it.

  Wobbly, the woman knelt down to look long into the face of the Beast. She spread her hand, staring at the creature's fangs, exposed in its slack, gaping jaws, then looked at her fingers, trying to comprehend just how long those canines were. She whispered yet again, "Sweet, sweet Jesus. And the head! I just ... I never seen anything so damn big ..." She looked toward her right where the largest alligator skulls sat on sagging racks, then back again. "What the Sam Hill is this thing? Looks sorta like a wolf, from what I seen in pictures, but just look at it!"

  "It's not a wolf," David said, starting to swat at mosquitoes. He glanced around until he spotted where his and Max's hats had fallen off. He went to get them.

  Buttercup was snuffling up to her mistress.

  Max said, "Lady, don't let your dog lick the blood."

  "Buttercup, up on the porch," she ordered. The dog groaned and paced once or twice, unsure, but did as she was told. "So why shouldn't she lick at the blood? This thing got rabies?"

  "Nah. It's just that we don't know if tasting the blood ... well ... at this point, it's hard to explain."

  The woman stood back up, still shaken, but a gleam was coming to her eye. "This pelt's gonna fetch a shit load of money. Too bad it's in two halves."

  "Money?" Max echoed, taking his hat from David.

  Still looking down at the carcass, the woman said, "Aw, you'll get your cut, don't worry. I mean, hell, you boys helped kill it. 'Course you're also the one's who ripped it in two and that'll drop the price some. Still ... Hey, easy there, Tonto! What're you doin', diggin' for gold?"

  David had his gloves off and was kneeling next to the carcass with his hands probing deep into the entrails. "No," he replied, "silver."

  "Silver, huh. Okay, I get it. Tonto .. Hi-ho, Silver. Suppose I deserve that."

  David nodded without looking up. "In spades. But I really am looking for silver."

  Max's heart hammered with hope. "You think so?" he asked.

  "Here's one. It's de
formed but it's all there," David replied, almost smiling, but didn't take his hands out of the carcass. Max yanked off his own gloves, dropped to his knees and plunged his hands into the hot remains of the torso.

  "What the hell are you two doin'?"

  "Lady ..." Max looked up at her over his shoulder. "What's your name, anyway?"

  "Millie, and what the hell are you doin'?"

  "Here's two more," Max said, but he avoided pulling the silver out, too. He worked his fingers over them blindly. The impact had smashed them into the shapes of toadstools.

  Nothing was said for a while, leaving Millie grumbling but too unsure to interfere. The swamp's night singers began their choruses again as the mosquitoes swarmed, gorging on the thickening pools of the Beast's blood.

  Finally, David said, "I think that's all in this end."

  "Me, too," Max replied. "You let both your barrels go, right?" David nodded. "Then the fourth must've gone all the way through."

  "You had two apiece a-what?" Millie snapped.

  "Solid cartridges," David replied, pulling his hands out. "We had our shotguns loaded with solid cartridges."

  "You use solid slugs? Through and through? I never heard of such a thing! How you keep your aim steady enough to hit anything farther'n a yard or two?"

  "Most of our work's close up." Max stood and motioned toward David as they tried to find a dry place on themselves to wipe their hands. "He makes them special. Buckshot would be impossible to completely clean from the wound. Same for a fragmented casing. If the slugs are solid, they're easier to retrieve."

  "You ain't really saying they're whole made of silver --"

  "I'm really saying."

  Astounded, Millie looked at their empty hands. "So where are they?"

  "We can't remove them yet," David said. "We only wanted to know where they were so we can get to them quickly later."

  Millie's face scrunched until it looked like a pear gone rotten. "Why?"

  Max and David glanced at each other. Then Max said, "You believe us now? What we've told you about this thing?"

  Millie planted the palm of one hand on a blood-soaked hip and swatted mosquitoes with the other. "Safe to say. Yeah."

  "Then trust us just a little longer."

  * * *

  There was plenty to do until the right moment. The Beast's carcass had to be wrapped into the tarp Millie provided. Max and David salvaged what they could of what had dropped out of the Beast and placed the gore in a bucket. David looked at the entrails there and pursed his lips.

  "There's a lot of dirt stuck to the guts," he said. "Do you think if we leave them that way, they might infect?"

  Max, standing beside him, crossed his arms thoughtfully. "Maybe we should clean them ..."

  Millie hissed in disgust, washed up now with a netted, beekeeper-style hat of her own on. She was sitting on the bottom porch step with Buttercup. "Shit, boys, whadiya gonna do, eat 'em?"

  "No," David replied, stilling musing over the bucket. "It's just that we've never made such a mess of it before. Frankly, we're not sure it's going to work this time."

  "Listen, fellas. You gonna tell me the whole tale or just keep feedin' this to me piecemeal?"

  Max turned to her. "Right now we've got to keep moving. I promise things will be clear before the night's out. You said you trusted us and, believe me, we've done this plenty of times ..."

  "Yeah, well ... Tonto there said you never made such a damn mess before, too."

  David turned to her and said, "Are you trying to insult me, Millie, or should I just assume you're stupid?"

  Millie smirked. "Well, if you don't like Tonto, I'll need somethin' else to call ya."

  David gave her one of those looks he'd used on Max plenty of times over the years: his irked, suffer-the-fools one. Then he glanced Max's way, and Max knew he was wondering if they should stick to the aliases they'd been using for this trip. It was precaution they had learned to take. They didn't always make friends when they were on a hunt. Max gave him a shrug: what the hell?

  "My name is David. His is Max." First names only, at least for now. "Do you have a second pail? Or a washtub?"

  "Got both."

  Max cocked his head amiably. "Then lead us to your pump."

  Max and David didn't find any buckshot in the carcass, so Millie's shots had gone wild, a good piece of luck if all turned out well. All they had to focus on, then, was the damage they had inflicted and they did what they could to clean the bucket of remains at the outdoor pump. Millie made herself useful by keeping Buttercup shooed away from the Beast's covered carcass. Finally, the men washed themselves up as much as possible, and Max looked toward the sky. The moon had dipped below the cypress.

  "We better get in place," he said. "Millie, you mentioned a break in the trees somewhere near ...?"

  "Back of the shack, is what I said. Not far off. Got us a trail that leads into better water. More bayou than swamp. Gonna lug that thing down there?"

  "Yeah."

  "Gonna tell me why?"

  "Not yet."

  Millie stared at Max and David a moment as she scratched behind Buttercup's ear. "Welp, I'm all pins and needles. Gotta flatbed cart you can use."

  They left an unhappy Buttercup closed up and cursing in the shack while the three made their way down the trail. Millie led the way, lantern in hand, as the dense cypress gave way to saw palmetto. The air began to freshen, and Max could see mangroves hunched like a low-lying wall behind the palmetto scrub.

  They came to the shore of the bayou, its glistening, briny waters flowing clean and easy through the canals of the mangroves. Max and David caught a sweet, heady breeze blowing just enough to discourage the bloodsuckers, and they took off their hats and gloves with relief.

  Ahead was Millie's rickety dock, jutting out over the water some fifty feet. To its right sat a flat bottomed air boat, its caged propeller perched behind the pilot's elevated seat, and a rust-dappled canoe. To the left, the bayou stretched lagoon-like beyond the mangroves. The sky was starlit, wide open, with only a few clouds glowing bluish white, and the moon was making its descent straight down the mouth of the mangrove canal.

  Max and David sized up the dock.

  As if reading Max's mind, David said, "It's too narrow. If we keep the carcass on the cart, there won't be room for both the Beast and us. We're going to have to carry it from here."

  Max nodded. "Let me set the bucket out there first."

  He grabbed the pail from the cart, testing the dock boards as he went. Millie, pulling off her netted hat, called after him irritably, "Mister, that dock'll be standin' longer'n you!"

  The creaking and giving under his boots didn't back Millie up on that. Max kept his pace cautious as the moon slipped farther down the dome of the sky. He set the bucket on what looked to be some of the more secure boards and made his way back.

  "I don't know if it'll take the weight," he told David.

  "We don't have a choice. There's too much cover from the mangroves to try for it right here."

  "Boys, I am tellin' you that dock is a rock."

  Yeah , Max thought, and it'll probably sink like one when we get this carcass on it. He and David stepped to either end of the cart and got a firm grasp on the tarp.

  David counted, "One ... two ... up ...!"

  "Aww, crap, this son-of-a-bitch is heavy ..."

  "You already knew that ..."

  "Yeah, yeah, just walk, okay, walk!"

  "I am walking, but you can't get on the dock waddling backwards like that. Turn around ... just ... lay your end down for a second and turn around ..!"

  Max lowered his end of the tarp, caught his breath for a moment and sized up the moon. It seemed as if it just couldn't wait to set now. He turned his back to the covered carcass, dipped down and reached behind him. He got a good grip and said, "Okay."

  They lifted and began shuffling onto the dock. Millie started to follow.

  "Don't!" David shouted over his shoulder.

  "D
on't 'don't' me on my own property!"

  "Just wait to see how the dock takes this load."

  "I already told you-"

  "Millie, please !"

  "All right, all right, go on with ya then!"

  They tried to keep their footing close to where the boards would be strongest, nailed onto the dock's support beams. But it made for clumsy, slow going. Max was panting and worried. The carcass was getting badly jostled. Would the silver work its way out before they even got the Beast unwrapped? Will it have worked farther into the body, so that he and David would have to spend precious seconds probing for it again, maybe missing moonset? Either one, and all this effort after the kill would have been wasted.

  At last they were free of the mangrove shadows. The moon, far past its arc, flooded them with light.

  "Easy down," David said.

  Slowly they bent. The dock creaked low and long under the Beast's dead weight but, so far, it was holding. They unfolded the tarp from the carcass. Max picked up the bucket, brought it to the gaping ends of the two halves and gently tilted it to let the viscera slide out.

  He started probing for the two cartridges he had located earlier and had to stifle a gag. It was worse, somehow, working his hands through cold, slick innards than warm ones.He heard the grisly sounds of David probing for the other cartridge, and David warned, "It's about to set."

  "Shit." Max kept probing. Where the hell were they?

  "I can't find ... no, I found it! Max, how're you doing?"

  "I'm working on it ..."

  "You've got to hurry ..."

  "Then just let me look, all right?"

  "It's setting , Max!"

  "I heard you the first time! I got ... I got ... got 'em both!"

  "Then get out of the way, you're casting a shadow!"

  Keeping his hands buried in the carcass, Max stretched one leg across to the other side. The board beneath his foot bowed ominously and he froze. One of the cartridges almost slid out of his fingers.

  David's plea was a strangled whisper. "Hurry, Max .."

  He found his footing, held his breath, pulled his other leg over the Beast. The moon's final beams were upon the reddish-gray of the entrails and carcass's gaping cavities.