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Ruthie struggled for optimism. “We’re almost there!” she whispered fiercely, spying the curved archway like a mouse hole in the fort’s southwest wall.
“They’re going to see us,” Gifford fretted. His eyes stayed on the sky, on the too-big ship hovering just out of shooting range, combing the edges around the fort. “We can’t dodge the light. We can’t outrun it!”
“Maybe we don’t have to. ”
“Ma’am?” Gifford asked, lifting his eyebrows at Josephine.
“It’s not far. Another what—fifty yards? Start the engine. ”
“Ma’am!” Ruthie gasped.
“You heard me. Start the engines. This blower can outmaneuver that dirigible any day of the week. We’ll make a dash for it, cross our fingers, and slide right under the wall before anyone up there has any idea what to make of it. ”
“But, ma’am—,” Gifford began.
Firmly, she cut him off. “Every single moment you delay costs us time. The ship will swing around momentarily, and the light will come with it. The longer it takes them to see us, the less time they have to shoot us. ”
Ruthie looked faint, but Josephine clasped a hand down on her knee. “Buck up, darling. They aren’t likely to hit us. ”
“How can you be so sure, eh?”
“Because if we’re within striking range, so are they. Pull the cord, Mr. Crooks! Pull it now, or I’ll do it myself. ”
He reached for the cord and gave it a yank. The engine sputtered, but did not catch. He pulled again. This time it burbled to life in a cough that rose to a roar. He threw the boat into gear as the two women simultaneously lifted the spokes up out of the water and drew their oars into their laps.
Lacking the forward momentum of a craft in motion, the little blower struggled against the saw grass, forcing past it only with difficulty at first. But as the motor drove and the diesel chugged, it pushed onward, stronger, faster, so that the grass slapped up against the sides. The women ducked down and Gifford Crooks leaned forward, one hand gripping the steering lever and the other manning the gears. He dropped them lower when the turf choked their progress, and urged them higher when the way was clearer.
The dirigible above swooned and spun, and its light swung around to hunt them. It found them within moments, but it had a hard time keeping them.
The blower dashed through the black-water muck, skimming the top and leaving a terrific trail of fetid spray and shredded leaves, grass, and cattails behind it. Every few moments, the light would catch up to them, hold them, and slip away again. They were moving too swiftly, in too stark a zigzag pattern, for any lamp above to track them for long.
Overhead, the sound of artillery came in a smattering line of pops, but if anything landed close to the blower, there was too much noise and motion for Josephine, Ruthie, or Gifford to hear it. If bullets landed, they were fired from so far away that they merely dropped into the water, and any larger shells that were incoming, only stabbed at their wake.
Josephine wished to God she’d thought to bring a flag, not that it would’ve mattered, necessarily. She had to trust that whoever was watching from the fort was aware that this small blower speeding toward the canal was not the transport of any Texians or other officials. She had to believe that the men on guard would assume they were in search of shelter, or to provide reinforcements or information, or for some mission other than sabotage.
It was either assume this or turn back. If she was right, they’d be allowed under the wall. If she wasn’t, they’d be blown out of the water before they reached it.
At night, with or without the light that beamed down from above like the angry glare of an archangel, no one would recognize her on the tiny boat. No one would know her, or hear her name even if she had time to shout it.
Soaked to the bone, she and Ruthie grasped the handholds, and each other, and kept their heads low, as if they could duck out from underneath the penetrating gaze of the light. Faster and faster their destination approached. They neared it at a breakneck speed, dodging left to right and back again, zipping around unnavigable clumps and clusters of foliage, tree stumps, and fallen masonry boulders from the old walls.
Their mouse hole destination wall grew bigger on the immediate horizon, illuminated by the swishing glances of lights from the air, and by the sometimes-flashes of tracer bullets flicking from ground to sky, sky to ground. Gifford Crooks aimed for the portal and squinted against the spray of swamp water misting into his eyes, flying off the grasses. He set his course, gunned the engine to the outside limit of what it could sustain, and gave it all the fuel the thing could manage.
Surging with a bounding leap, the blower nearly leaped off the surface of the clotted water, then slapped back against it and moaned, the swamp hissing against its undercarriage.
Ruthie prayed in French. Josephine held her breath.
And just before the craft slipped beneath the arch, Gifford cut the engine and let the blower glide forward—holding its course but slowing to jerk them all in their seats. Josephine toppled to the floor and took Ruthie with her. Gifford threw himself down on top of them, sheltering them with his own body.
The blower drifted from violent night to sudden midnight, emerging on the other side of the mouse hole into a ground-floor warren that was more mud than water. It heaved and skidded sideways up onto the closest bank, lodging itself in the mud and settling with a wet sucking sound.
The engine died.
The sudden silence left Josephine shaky; she lifted her head and pulled Ruthie close, just in time to hear the clicks of guns being made ready, and pointed in their direction. Gifford looked up, held out his hands, and said, “Fellas, kindly ignore the uniform. I’m with the bayou boys, and they’ll vouch for me. This here is—,” he started to say, gesturing at Josephine.
“Miss Early!” the nearest man gasped, and he lowered his gun. He was not a tall man, nor a particularly fearsome one in appearance, but the others deferred to him all the same, and all the guns present were soon pointing at the ground.
Though he was balding on top, around the sides and back, he had enough hair for a ponytail tied with a bit of leather. His clothes were smeared with gunpowder and soot, which had clearly become the operating uniform for everyone inside the fort. At a glance, they might have all been the same race, or the same army. The same group of burrowing resistance fighters, determined to dig in and raise hell.
