A few moments later, the flames from the buoys reached the half-saddlebag of madre del Diablo that had been left unused. The Sturgess Queen cracked open in a thunderous explosion of fire and splinters. Archie and Houndstooth toppled over under the force of the shockwave. The Gate blew back in a gust of shrapnel. The blast sent feral hippos flying—several of them bowled into the ranger’s tower. The tower gave a mighty groan.

It creaked.

It tipped.

It fell.

Archie and Houndstooth watched as Travers, tiny at such a distance, clung to the railing of the sentry post for a long moment before dropping into the water. They watched as the ferals that had survived the explosion, recovering but shaken, swarmed him.

They were too far distant to hear his screams, but they could see his body flying through the air as the furious feral hippos tossed him between each other.

“I told you,” Houndstooth gasped. “I told you that he would suffer.”

“That you did,” Archie replied. They couldn’t hear his screams over the sounds of the ferals, but it was enough for both of them to simply watch as the ferals destroyed him in the water next to the wreckage of the Harriet Gate.

“Well, ’oundstooth. I would say this caper was a raging success, no?” Archie asked.

“It wasn’t a caper,” Houndstooth mumbled just before he blacked out.

Archie patted his chest as he lay on the ground beside her. “I know,” she murmured. “It was an operation.”

She sat next to him as the water calmed. When he woke, she knew, he would want to go after Adelia. He would want to beat Gran Carter to her. He would want to go find Hero, and together with them, he would want to see justice served. But for now—just for a few hours—she decided to let him rest. He would need it.

The sun rose higher in the sky overhead, and the day grew hot. Houndstooth and the hippos slept; and Archie watched as the ferals, unconstrained by dam or Gate or raging current, took the Mississippi.

Epilogue

Gran Carter rode up to the dock of a little clapboard house a mile outside the Harriet Gate astride a borrowed Arnesian Brown hippo named Pauline. Hero was in front of him, tied at the waist to keep them upright.

He dismounted and hauled Hero up to the back door of the house, leaving Pauline beside the other hippos at the gated dock. Carter’s nostrils flared. He smelled the air and shook his head—by some miracle, Hero was not putting out the familiar septic battlefield stench of a gut wound. There was only the clean, hot smell of blood in the air.

A miracle.

Or was it? Carter rapped hard on the door and waited for the doctor to answer, hoping he’d be at home. While he waited, Carter reflected on the facts.