Desperately seeking escape from their own
tortured chunk of hell, they needed a specimen
from this great and gracious world they planned
to steal. But swamp-roving, 'gator-fighting
Allen Nixon wasn't the type to be cut up alive!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was absolutely nothing wrong or weird about the FloridaEverglades at night. At least, not to Allen Nixon. He sat alone in thestern of a flat-bottomed rowboat paddling calmly, albeit soundlessly,with one small oar. The moon was down and the tall old pines were somany black rips and tears in the star-studded gown of the sky. Thestars themselves dropped their fiery pin-points in the glassy surfaceof the winding bayou. The tangled banks, where sometimes the cypressbranches dipped heavy and sodden into the water, were shadowed blurs sothat the bayou was a twisted ribbon between them.
Nothing strange. Nothing unusual. Certainly not to Allen Nixon.Twenty-four years ago he had been born here, only a score or so milesnorth at the fringes of the great swamp, where a little Seminolevillage stood beside a bayou just like this. There his white father hadloved and married his Indian mother; there he had lived and gone tothe Mission School and then, in his 'teens, to the High School up inJacksonville. Now he and his younger brother Ralph, with their parentsdead, were running a small farm their father had left them. It was backat the mouth of the bayou, where the Gulf lapped in the starlight onthe sandspits, and the tangled wire-grass was alive at night with thecroaking of the marsh-hens. Ralph had not wanted to come out tonight.He was tired, perhaps lazy. He said he would have the four 'gatorsskinned by the time Allen got back at midnight; and he'd help withwhatever others Allen brought in. Perhaps he would, but more likely hewouldn't.
So Allen Nixon, with the moon down, was paddling up into the silenttwistings of the bayou alone. He was a tall, lean fellow, lanky likehis father, with muscles hardened by a lifetime of the work of thebackwoods. He was bareheaded; his sleek, straight, dead-black hairglistened in the starlight. His grey flannel shirt was open at amuscular throat. He sat erect, with his legs, clad in dark trousers andworn leather puttees, stretched out to the shotgun, knife and hatchetthat lay in the bottom of the rowboat. The faint night-breeze fannedhis rugged face, bronzed by the hot Florida sun and swarthy with theSeminole heritage.
Now he was rounding a sharp curve in the bayou, and the breeze wasmore squarely in his face than ever. That was good. No scent of himcould blow forward to reach any 'gator that might have surfaced onthe starlit stretch ahead. Two was all he hoped for tonight, andthen he would head back. Quietly he shipped his oar and adjusted asmall electric torch on a band around his forehead. Then with itspencil-point of light sweeping the bayou ahead of him, again he startedpaddling. Even more silently, this time, so that there was no drip fromthe blade as he skillfully raised it, no least murmur of splash as hebrought it forward and dipped it again. An alligator, lying quiet withonly a tip of nose and eyes at the surface, is more alert, more readyto scurry away than a mouse.
There was in Nixon's mind nothing but intentness to see the two littlepin-points of fire in the bayou surface, two among the many that werereflected stars, yet he would see the difference, the spacing, a littlegreener, more glowing fire which would mark them as the eyes of adrowsing 'gator. He was think