“Mais non. I’m going out check my trap when I see Abadie’s skiff hung up in a willow tree and loaded down with rat. I don’t know what to think, because it don’t make sense for him to go shoot no rat with that old boat.” He pointed a denim-covered arm toward the mouth of the canal. “So me, I come up to see the body, ’cause when you find a skiff like that, most times ain’t someone left to tell the tale.” He pushed back his hat. “Ey-yi-yi, Colette, baby, you caught a propeller in the head.” He examined the cut while Paul explained what had happened. Octave reached into his baggy pants and pulled out a bottle of aspirin and told Paul to retrieve the thermos from the bow. He dipped his handkerchief into the canal and cleaned her face with downward strokes, as though she were a little girl who’d gotten muddy in the yard. He rinsed out the cloth and told her to press it against the seeping wound, all the while shaking his head. “You babies don’t know nothing about taking rat.” He gave them a scolding look, then reached to pull the starting cord on his faded Evinrude.

They found the skiff near the mouth of the canal, barely afloat. “Careful,” Uncle Octave called as Paul reached out to grab the stern. “That thing’s like a teacup floating in the sink.” He handed his nephew his own bailing can and Paul began to empty Abadie’s boat a quart at a time. It took a half hour before he could step inside, planting a foot in the center of the rear bench and bailing with a bait bucket until the water was down to the duckboards.

The first thing Colette had done when they drifted close was to grab her gun, which was riding dry across the bow, where she had dropped it. She wiped it down, glad she had coated it with gun grease before they came out. Paul blew on the electrical contacts and wiped down the buzz coil, then drained the water from the crankcase of the engine. After several turns of the flywheel, the Ferro thudded to life, the noise and smoke driving off some of the flies from the mound of nutria.

“You ought to let me tow you back,” the old man shouted.

“No,” Colette told him. “Your aspirins are starting to kick in. We’ll be all right if Columbus here can keep us on the route.”

Soon the boat was popping along the middle of the canal, and in five minutes they were back in the main channel of the Chieftan, veering north. The smooth whine of Octave’s motor overtook them as it arced to the south through a broad, smooth turn of river, leaving them in the rainbowed spray of his prop.