Bayou Trackdown by Jon Sharpe

stared at the wet blood on his fingertips, and rose. “It can’t be. That brute did all this!”
    It was then the Breed returned bearing a tin cup filled with water. He held it out to Remy but Remy angrily swatted it aside. “How many?” he demanded, and grabbed the Breed by the front of his shirt. “How many, damn you?”
    “I haven’t checked.”
    Remy shoved him. “Do it! Now!” He took a step but his legs wobbled and he started to pitch forward. Namo caught him and held him, and Halette clasped his hand.
    “Are you all right, Uncle Remy?”
    “ Oui , child,” Remy said as Namo lowered him so he could sit.
    Fargo was listening to the sounds of the swamp. The frogs were croaking again, the crickets chirping, the gators bellowing. The beast was gone. Or was it? It might be lurking out there, watching and girding to finish what it had started.
    “Did any of you see the thing?” Remy asked Namo and his children. “Do you know what it is?”
    “He does,” Namo said, nodding at Fargo.
    “What could possibly do all this?” Remy swept an arm at the bodies and the shattered tents. “The cries it made. It didn’t sound like a bear.”
    “It wasn’t.”
    “Well? Tell us, damn you.”
    “The monster of the Atchafalaya Swamp is a razorback.”
    “What was that you said?”
    “A razorback. A wild boar.”
    Remy uttered a sharp bark of disbelief. “You’re crazy. I caught a glimpse of it as it came through our tent. It was gigantic. Bigger than the biggest black bear.” He shook his head, and winced. “No. Hogs don’t grow that size. They just don’t.”
    “Some razorbacks do.”
    Fargo recalled hearing somewhere that the first hogs were brought to America long ago by the Spaniards. Some escaped and reverted to the wild. They multiplied like rabbits. Now, razorbacks were common from Texas to the Carolinas. A normal boar grew to no more than four or five hundred pounds but every now and then a giant one appeared, twice that size, a king among its kind, a thousand pounds of might and malice with tusks a foot long and a hide so thick that most slugs barely penetrated.
    “ Mon Dieu ,” Namo breathed. “To think! My fair Emmeline was killed by a pig .”
    “A razorback out to kill everyone it comes across,” Fargo amended. He also recalled that boars were known to roam territories of fifty square miles or more.
    “Our fires should have kept it away,” Remy said. “My men knew better than to let them go out.”
    Fargo told him about the Mad Indian, and the dousing.
    “Wait. Are you saying the Mad Indian is helping the thing? That the Mad Indian put out our fires just so this boar would attack us?”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Namo said.
    “Is it?” Fargo countered. “The Mad Indian hates whites. He blames us for the smallpox that wiped out his people. He follows the razorback and does what he can to help it kill as many of us as it can.”
    “Can it truly be?”
    “The razorback would kill the Mad Indian, too, wouldn’t it?” Clovis asked them.
    “Not if he was careful.”
    Out of the dark came the Breed. His shoulders were slumped and he tried twice to say, “Only three.”
    “Only three what?” Remy said.
    “Besides you and me, only three of us are still alive and they won’t last long.”
    As if to accent the point, sobs were borne by the breeze.
    Remy grabbed the Breed by the shoulders. “The women! Not the women too? Where is Pensee? And Delmare?”
    “I—” the Breed began, and sadly shook his head. “I am sorry, my friend. All the women are dead. Pensee is one of the worst. The beast split her like a melon.”
    “No!” Remy looked wildly about. “ All of them? All our friends? All those we called brothers and sisters?”
    “All.”
    Halette began crying.
    Remy sank to his knees and wrapped his arms around himself. Chin bowed, he said morosely, “They counted on me. I was their leader. I was to keep them safe.”
    “You took precautions,” the Breed said. “No one could