Page:Gray Eagle (1927).pdf/133

 John Marston had charged at Chancellorsville and had endured the horrors of the last days before Appomattox. Despite his poet's soul and his gentleness, there was granite in him. He knew that Red Cam was dead. The coolest, clearest-headed man, enmeshed in the tough, clinging, tangled water-growths which spread their tentacles everywhere through the deep, still water into which Cam had fallen, could hardly have saved himself. It was death sudden and horrible, but the little old man was sensible of no thrill of horror. This was the justice of the wild. It was the woods god's vengeance. A ruthless foe of the woods creatures, a killer who killed in utter wantonness, would kill no more.

It would matter little to Cam Reppington if all that was mortal of him remained where it was for the present. Later Marston would walk to the nearest plantation house and bring back some negroes to get the body out. Just now he had a more pressing task before him.

A quarter of a mile away, safely hidden amid the reeds in a sequestered cove of the lagoon, was a small, flat-bottomed punt of which he made frequent use on his visits to the egret city. Presently he paddled in this punt close to the little island of the cypress log where Sanute the ibis, too wise to venture into those alligator-haunted waters, still