Argosy vol. 283 August 13 1938
The Devil's Jaw
By ALEXANDER KEY
Author of "The Brothers Romano," "The Captain has a Cat," etc
Cap'n Lucius Shackel had been getting the gold fever regularly for years—and finally it took. A roaring saga of the Gulf
I
I BEEN tow-boatin' with Cap'n Lucius P. Shackel ever since he left his port leg in a shark's belly somewhere off Cuby, a little matter which forced us to give up sail and buy the Mary Shackel.
Tow-boatin' bein' an easier life and all, Cap'n Lucius has acquired such a terrible lot of beam an' ballast that it now takes a full fathom of 'gator hide to circumnavigate him and hold his britches up. This fact concernin' the size of his bilge is not particular important as long as you don't refer to it within his hearin', and as long as he has plenty of turnin' room and a clear channel ahead.
But just git him tangled up somewhere, and git him riled in the bargain, like, say, that time up at Spanish Landin'—then you've got something started that'll be the talk of every town on the Gulf coast.
There's been all kinds of versions about what happened that time at Spanish Landin', and no two of them alike. You can take this statement as the cold naked truth, as I was right there with him when he fought Shark-face McTigue and rammed his hickory spar slap down into the Devil's Jaw…
But I'm workin' too far to wind'ard. It starts with a little canvas bag that Cap'n Lucius takes off'n a feller over at Pensacola for a bad debt, What's in this bag I don't know, except that from the day he gits it Cap'n Lucius is a changed man. Instead of his usual three dozen batter cakes for breakfast, he don't pack away but hardly a dozen, and he acts worst with dinner and supper. When he's offered a smackin’ good price to bring ten barges of pulpwood around from Mobile, what does he do but turn it down and snap up a little job like haulin' two lighters of saw lumber to Apalachicola.
"Lucius," I says to him, bein’ his pardner with a third interest. "Are you gone plumb daft? Here you go turnin' down orders that would take care of the first payment on that new pair of Diesels we need so bad, all for a two-bit job what won't cover fuel costs."
"Minnego," he says to me, my name bein' Minnego Jones, "your job on this here craft is mate, engineer, an'-"
"-and chief cook, cox'n and shop's carpenter when the need arises," I finishes.
"Exactly," says he, "When we signed the articles together forty-odd years ago, there was nothin' mentioned about you doin' none of the thinkin'. I'll take care of that, Minnego."
"If your thinkin' don't improve more in the next forty years than it done in the last forty," I says, "then I'll quit an' take up oysterin'."
“Don’t try it," he advises. "Ye wouldn't know a oyster from a trollop."
"Trollops or scallops?"
"Don't make no difference. Ye're too old for either one." He unrolls a map of west Florida on the chart table, points at a spot; and says: "Minnego, ye was born on that there river. Ye ever hear of a place called Spanish Landin'?"
It seems I know of it, but can't recollect it right off. "What about the place?" I ask.
"Tradin' post of some kind back in the old days. The Spanish had it first, then the Frenchys, then every dirty renegade under the sun. Used to be a landin' place for slaves an' contrybrand."
WHEN I hear this last I know what's wrong. Lucius has done gone and got gold fever again. It's something that's been happenin' to him twice a year regular as far back as I can remember.
"Well," I says, lettin' out a long breath and speakin' casual like. "What's on your mind. You thinkin' of runnin' a little contrybrand yourself?"
"Minnego," he says. "If'n ye got any brains, dust 'em off. Ain't ye ever heared tell of the Devil's Jaw?"
"The Devil's Jaw!" I gape at him so hard my pipe falls plum out'n my mouth and set fire to my pants. "Sure I heard of the Devil's Jaw," I says, puttin' out the fire. "Who ain't? I know it's supposed to have more money buried there than any other place on the whole durn coast—but what good's that doin' us? Ain't nobody livin' knows what the Devil's Jaw is, or where it was located. It's just a bloomin' myth!"
"'Tain't no bloomin' myth, Minnego. I got a mighty strong suspicion what it is, an' for months I been figgerin' out just exactly where we'll find it. All ye got to do is help me git a bearin' on Spanish Landin'—then I'll show ye more money than ye ever dreamed existed."
"Bilgewater!" I says. "Why don't you tell Amos McTigue of the Cajun about it so he can go git himself lost up there in them swamps; then we'll be rid of him for good. He's spent twelve years lookin' for the Devil's Jaw—when be ain't stealin' business from us.”
"Minnego," he says earnestly. "Don't crack no jokes about that Shark-face McTigue. I'm mighty serious 'bout this business. See this?" he says, holdin' up the little canvas bag what is the cause of all his craziness.
"I see it," I answers, reachin' for it. "Let's have a look at what's inside."
But he shoves it back in his pocket before I can grab it. "Naw,” he says. "I’ll demonstrate it at the proper time. I don't want to start puttin' no 'wrong ideas in your thick head."
Well, there ain't a thing to do but humor him, so I study on this Spanish Landin' business all the way in to Apalachicola. By the time we are clear of them two lighters of saw lumber, I've scraped the barnacles off'n my memory and the thing has come back to me.
It was called Spanish Landin' in my pa's time, but these days it's known as Gun Landin' on account of the Civil War cannon what was placed there to keep the Yankee boats from steamin' up to Georgy. The cannon has fell down into the mud and everybody 'uses it to tie up to when they happen to stop there at night. I been by it lots of times, but to tell the truth I ain't tied up there since McKinley was shot.
It's a wild and lonesome bit of country, all swamp and blacker'n hell. And it's a mighty onhealthy place in more ways than one—specially for a feller what wants to go pryin' around where he ain't got no business to be. It is with this last thought in mind that I amble down to the Bray's Saloon to feel the bartender out on the subject. This bartender he is an old river man, and he talks to river men every day in the year.
He just shakes his head when I mention Gun Landin'. "Better keep away," he says. "Or was you thinkin' of goin' up there?"
"Oh," I says. "I just heard there was good turkey huntin' thereabouts."
He starts to give me some more dope, then looks over my shoulder and lets out a grunt. Behind me a new voice speaks up, raspin' like a rusty file.
"Don't you know, Minnego," says the file voice. "That the huntin' season ain't open yet?"
I’D RECOGNIZE that voice if'n I'd had both ears blowed off, and I wouldn't have to see the sneakin' little hatchet-faced buzzard that it belongs to. I speak advisedly, for. Cap'n Amos McTigue of the Cajun is the ace scavenger between here and Tampa. He's just a young squirt of fifty or so, but he's as cussed as a man three times as old.
I says. "And as for huntin', there's an I open season on carrion, so don't you forgit it."
He gits purple and mad as a hornet. "Damn you!" he rasps, stickin' his beak out at me. "If you didn't belong in the old men's home, I'd trim you down and teach you some manners."
"Any time," I says. "Any time." And I slips on my pair of brass knuckle dusters what has served me so handsomely ever since the Garfield administration.
The varmint looks at them and he looks at me, and if'n looks was buckshot and I was a regiment, I'd all be dead. "We'll settle this later, Minnego," he says.
"Suits me," I tells him as he starts for the door. "I'd hate like hell to smell up this place with the likes of you."
I'm hopin' I'm rid of him by the time I start back to the Mary Shackel, but durned if I don't run into him again when I'm turnin' the corner at Water Street. He is just standin' there under the street light, squintin' contemplative across at where the Mary Shackel is tied up and when he sees me he grins, real nasty.
"So you're goin' turkey huntin' up it Gun Landin', eh?" he rasps. "I s'pose you're gonna dig them turkeys out with picks an' shovels."
"Picks an' shovels?" I says kinda blank,
"Yeah," he snarls. "Picks an' shovels." And before I can reach him and put a new twist in his crooked jib, he slides around the corner and is gone again.
I finds Lucius at the chart table, swelled up like a sore bullfrog and latherin' at the mouth like a mad dog. Behind him against the bulkhead are two new shovels and a pick, something Lucius has to have on account of he's plum wore out the old ones. It don't take much thinkin' to see what's happened.
"So Shark-face McTigue seen you carryin' them implements, did he?"
"He did," Lucius grinds out. "An' that ain't all. How—how in the name of the blighted sin did that buzzard learn about what I am up to and where I'm gain'?"
“Elemental,” I answers. "He sneaks in and overhears me askin' the feller in Bray's about Gun Landin', an' he seen you with shovels. The rest—well, he's got buried money on the brain as bad as you, and a don't mean but one thing to 'im."
Lucius raves, and pours himself a stiff of swamp lightnin' from a jug. When he’s cut the edge off'n his exasperation, orders me to git the Diesels turnin' and for Sam to cast off the lines. Sam is our black nuisance, something we'd like do without, but never been able to. I start for the engine room, then stop. “Where," I ask, "are you figgerin' on this time of the evenin'?"
"To Spanish Landin', ye durned jass-axe!" Lucius bellows.
"Lissen," I says. "It's near black dark, and the river's terrible low. There ain't no moon tonight an' the channel winds a snake up in them swamps."
"We're pullin' out of here right now!" he bellows, knockin' over a chair with his hickory spar and nearly takin' down the doorframe as he barges into the wheel-house. "Ye ole goat, I'm countin' on a low river. We got a searchlight, ain't we? Think I'm gonna let that shark-faced buzzard McTigue git up there an' find the money ahead of me?"
"How the hell will he find it?" I snaps back. "He won't know where to look."
"Ye bat-headed lollapaloose!" cries Lucius. "Sure he'll know where to look. Ain't he got the best gold machine on the hull durn coast?"
THAT'S an argument there ain't no answer for. We starts out, me in the engine room, Sam for'ard with a boathook to watch out for deadheads, and Lucius wedged tight in the wheel-house which he's considerably outgrown since we bought the Mary Shackel. Every once in a while I go on deck to cool off and keep an eye on our position, because navigating these swamp channels at night is anything but a pickneck. There's a million and blacker and meaner'n anything I ever seen on the Amazon.
It's worse'n ever tonight, for when we git above tidewater and I see how low the river is, it fairly makes my flesh crawl to have the searchlight pickin up dead-heads and mud bars that are all over the place. And it don't do me no good to remember the Mary Shackel draws five feet—which is about four feet too much for a good river boat.
Now, to come back a minute to this here gold machine that McTigue has. Gold machines is something that's pretty common down here, what with all the money that's been buried along the coast at one time or another. I won’t go into that angle of it, for I never was a fool about buried money. It's just down here, and I'm willin' to let it stay where the other feller put it. But not so with Lucius and McTigue, and plenty more like 'em. Naturally, you see, there's bound to be a good traffic in gold machines.
Lucius has owned several, but the only thing he ever found with any of them was a tobacco can containin' a lead dollar and a nasty note from McTigue—which happened when him and McTigue was both tryin' to track down a box of money what was said to be hid on Dog Island. That's just one of the many reasons why Lucius froths at the mouth every time McTigue's name is mentioned.
These gold machines all look alike—a box containin' a few batteries and gadgets and a doohicky what rings a bell or lights a bulb when you git near the right spot. McTigue's contraption, I understand, has a needle what points right slap to the money, so all he has to do is take a bow-an'-beam bearin' and then start diggin'.
The more I think on it, the more curious I git about what Lucius figgers on doin' at Spanish Landin'-for the simple reason that he sold his last gold machine as bein' no good and he ain't said nothin' about gittin' a new one. I know that little canvas bag ain't got a machine in it, because it ain't big enough to hold.
I am thinkin’ about this when Lucius signals for full speed ahead, and when I give our wheezy old Diesels all they got, he signals for more speed. So I run up to see if'n he's gone crazy and all he can do is sputter and point aft.
I hardly turn around when a searchlight cuts around the bend behind us and stabs me in the eyes. It don't take no guessin' to know that our dear friend McTigue has discovered our absence and has decided he'd better git to Spanish Landin' ahead of us. I pop back into the engine room and begin sweatin' over them Diesels for all I'm worth, though I know it ain't no use. Our Diesels is second-hand and we've had 'em a long time. Mister Amos Shark-face Buzzard McTigue's Diesels is brand new, with half again out horsepower.
So after a few minutes I just give up the battle and go on deck to cuss the varmint when he comes abeam. Lucius beats me to it. His voice explodes like a bull alligator, loud enough to wake the dead for ten miles around.
"Damn ye!" he bellows, when the Cajun's side is almost scrapin' our own. Ye stinkin' pusillanimous riprobatin' son of a plucked buzzard! Wait'll I catch ye! It'll be the last time ye ever stick that worm-eaten nose in another man's business!"
"Take my wash," McTigue yells back. "You peg-legged over-stuffed hop-toad!" And I see him lean from the Cajun's wheelhouse and sing out to a feller standin' in the stern: "Let 'em have it, Jpoe—right under the bow."
I DON'T git it for about three seconds, but that's time enough for the Cajun to swing square in front of us, and for the man in her stern to drop a big bundle into the water.
Our searchlight flickers across it and in that instant I see it's a tangled mass of old hawsers. Sam sees it, yells and makes a futile stab at it with his boat-hook.
I shouts to Lucius: "Hard to starboard and tumble down the engine room companion to cut the motors. I don't make it in time. Just before the Diesels stop there is a sudden chokin' thumpin' sound, and I know the worst has happened. Both our propellers has bit into that mass of snarled rope an’ now they is fouled so tight that all hell won't budge 'em.
I tear on deck again and have bare touched topside when the Mary Shackel gives a heave and a jolt that near knot me off my feet, and she comes to a stand-still.
"We's aground!" Sam bawls from tit bow, and Lucius lunges half through the wheel-house window in such a fit as I've never seen him in before.
He cusses and hollers and spits and yells at the Cajun vanishin' ahead, then gits so choked with bile that he just sputters like a fat stick of dynamite. And when he tries to pull himself back into the wheel-house he can't budge. He is stuck tight between the timbers, an' neither Sam nor me can move him an inch.
"Blast ye!" he bellows. "Do something! Git me out of here! I gotta ketch 'im an' tear out his eyes! The ug—blug—glump—r-r-r-r-r-r!"
It's a terrible racket he's makin', and suddenly I see lights flarin' on the near shore and hear men shoutin' and runnin'; and all at once skiffs are scrapin' against us and men are swarmin' over the side. I look around and realize for the first time that we're right by Flannigan's Cuttin's, and that it's Flannigan's timber crew comin' on board.
"What the hell's the matter?" someone yells. "You got an elephant stuck in the window yonder?"
"You sure that's an elephant?" laughs another. "Hit looks more like Peg-leg Shackel."
"Shut up, you dumb swamp angels," cries Flannigan. "That's Peg-leg Shackel an' he's stuck tighter'n a shoat in a corn crib. Git an ax—git crowbars. Git busy!"
So, for about an hour, there is a fine hullabaloo on board, and by the time we git Lucius free, the wheel-house is a total wreck. Lucius don't seem to be hurt none, but he's madder'n a hogshead of hornets. keeps shakin' his fists at the crowd tin' around him, and bellows for Ilanto loan him a boat of some kind so he can catch McTigue up at Gun Landin'. Flannigan says the only motor boat he owns has gone down the river and won't be back till mornin'. "You don't
want to go to Gun Landin' nohow," adds Flannigan. "That's an onhealthy place."
"It's gonna be a durn sight more onhealthy when I git there!~' cries Lucius. “Ain't there no way I kin make it by land?”
"Sure," says Flannigan. "There's a timber trail of sorts leadin' in that gin'ral direction. If'n you want to risk it, I'll let you have a mule an' wagon."
SO that's how come Lucius, Sam and me happen to try navigatin' the doggonedest craft that man ever invented. I grab a lantern and the Mary Shackel's compass just to be on the safe side, and Sam and Lucius come on board with a bag of grub and the picks and shovels.
Before we leave Flannigan asks us what in the devil we're takin' them shovels along for. The question nonplusses me, because it does look kinda queer, Lucius insistin on takin' them farmin' implements all the way through the swamp to Gun Landin'.
But Lucius settles the matter as quick as a wink. "Why," he roars, "what the blue blazes d'ye think I'm takin' 'em along for, ye old mud-dobber! It's so I kin dig Amos McTigue's grave with 'em, of course.”
We shove off, the hull camp laughin' behind us, and in a little while we are bouncin' along slow through the thickest, blackest stand of swamp timber I ever did see. Now I ain't used to the woods and there's something about the thickness and the blackness of this ornery-lookin' place what makes me feel peculiar. Ordinarily I don't mind it as long as I'm lookin' at it from the water, but I got the wrong kind of deck under me tonight.
Lucius don't pay no attention to it, as he's got other things worryin' him now. "That hellion Flannigan bothers me," he keeps sayin'. "When his launch comes back in the mornin', I'm just afraid he'll git curious an' bring his crowd up to Gun Landin' to see the fun. I got troubles enough without him."
"We ain't got to Gun Landin' yet," I says, tryin' to read the compass by the lantern. "And if you don't make that mule step lively, we ain't never goin' to git there."
"Now lissen, Minnego. I'm the skipper an' I'm willin' to do my part about pilotin' this here craft, but by the seven-tailed sin' ye're the engineer an' it's your job to make the durned thing run."
"By glory," I tells him, "I ain't no mule engineer! A mule is a job for a nigger. Sam, can't you-"
"B-boss, I'se a salt water nigger; I-I don’t know nothin' 'bout a mule varmint."
"Aw hell!" growls Lucius and slaps the mule with the rope's end. "Full speed ahead, ye lop-eared porpoise! Starboard, damn ye! Hard to starboard!"
But that crazy animal don't know starboard from port, and the only speeds he's got is slow ahead and reverse—when he ain't stoppin' dead in the channel. Furthermore, there ain't no rudder or tiller of any description on the hull crazy craft, except mebbe a couple of lines leadin' for'ard which corresponds in a way to the jib sheets on a little sloop. An' who the hell ever heard of steerin' a vessel by the jib sheets?
The mule he has taken a notion to go to port and when I git out an' sorta kedge him over to the main channel, he just stops. It is then that our little black monkey Sam gits the idea of lightin' a fire under the mile's stern post to give him some incentive.
So he finds him a pine knot, lights it and starts applyin' it as he sees fit. It works. It works so doggone well that the first thing I know 'we are tearin' along like a wild harricane has caught us with all sail set, and the best we can do is fall back into the cockpit an' hang on to the gunnels.
Why our craft don't bust up and spill us all over the swamp is something I never will know. With branches an' vines scrapin' the deck we don't dare raise up to see if'n we're keepin' to the course, and the motion is so rough I can't even watch the compass. But there is one thing Lucius keeps remarkkin' on.
"Look," he says, pointin' aft to where the lantern light flickers on the boles of the trees. "See the water-line? The swamp's near dry."
"What the hell difference do it make?" I growls.
"Plenty," says Lucius. "I was figgerin' on low water to help us find the Devil's Jaw."
"Right now," I tells him, "I wish you was crammed neck-deep in the Devil's Jaw an' that there wasn't no way to git you out." An' those are words I soon had cause to regret.
III
TO MAKE a long an' terrible ride short, our mule starts sloshin' in mud, and all of a sudden he comes to a violent and terrific stop, the wagon tiltin' high on a log and hangin' there. The jolt throws me clean out, and Lucius rolls over the stern an' falls on top of me—whichh is tantamount to bein' mauled by a whale. Sam helps us up and cleans the mud off'n us, but for awhile I am so befuddled r don't know where I'm at.
Then Sam starts pokin' around with the lantern, finally returnin' and announcin' in an oneasy voice that there is a deep slough of water dead ahead and bog on both sides, and that the only way to go is to turn around an' go back.
‘Then let's go back," I says fervently. "We ain't goin' no place," says Lucius, "till we git this critter an' contraption off'n that log. Then ye kin go back—but I'm goin’ to find Amos McTigue and the Devil’s Jaw.”
"You're the skipper," I says, and we start heavin' on the wagon. It won't move on account of the mule has to move and he won't. Sam tries the fire system but every time he gits close with the knot in his hands, the fool beast starts rarin'. It threatens to tear up the wagon or turn it clean over, and we can't afford to be marooned up here with no way out.. So there we are, unable to budge the wagon off'n the log without pickin' up the mule and movin' him too.
It is a hell of a predicament. We hold a conference on it, an' decide the only thing to do is camp till mornin', and mebbe by that time the mule will have made up his mind what he wants to do. Sam fixes us a fire an' a bit of grub, an' as the mosquitoes is eatin' us alive, we just sit there in the smoke tryin' to git a little shut-eye between slaps.
I'm sittin' there, snoozin' and slappin', when daylight comes with a bang. Two bangs in fact.
The sound of it snaps me right up on my feet with my pistol in my hand.
"Naw ye don't!” whispers Lucius, takin' my pistol and slidin' it in his pocket. "We got to proceed with finesse from now on Minnego. I'm thinkin' that what we hyeared is not McTigue shootin', but McTigue bein' shot at."
"Shot at!” I gulp.
"Of course, Minnego. Fiannigan said this was an onhealthy place."
We stand there in the early dawn and I see for the first time that we re near the edge of a creek, with the jungle crowdin' thick an' black on the other side. Moored to the opposite bank is a skiff. Lucius eyes the skiff, then squints at our mule which ain't moved an inch all night.
"Sam," says Lucius. "Swim over yonder an' git that boat for me. There's a feller in them woods I got to dicker with."
"C—Cap'n," answers Sam, who ordinarily would fight a buck shark with his hands tied.. "I-I wouldn't swim dis creek if'n there was a milliun on de other side!"
“Ye bat headed monkey!" cries Lucius, “There may be more'n a milliun dollars the other side. You go git-" And abruptly he stops, starin' straight across e creek, his mouth workin' like it can't find the right words.
We all see it at the same time. The long moss on the other bank parts a trifle, and the mornin' light gleams on the muzzle of a double-barrel shotgun. "You all got two minnits to git a-goin'!" snarls a voice, and it is the toughest an' most ornery voice I ever heard in my life.
I have mixed up a bit with tough hombres, but this voice just oozes murder. It takes the skin right off my ears an' drives icicles through my brain.
Sam evaporates in a flash and I make a dive for the nearest tree. But Lucius stays put—mainly because his hickory spar has slid down in the mud and he can't git it out. When he flounders about an' see's our stubborn mule eyeing him, he starts gittin' mad.
“Damn ye!" he bellows, shaking his fist at the shotgun. "How d'ye expect a man to leave this place when his mule an' wagon's been stuck in it all night an' no power on earth kin move it?"
"lf'n ye bain't got enough sense ter try unhitchin’ ...
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