Houndstooth gaped. “Oh, my God, Archie. No. He found sixteen of them.” A smile began to spread across his face. “But Hero made twenty. ‘Always have a backup plan.’ I told them we didn’t need a backup plan, but . . . they knew better. And they made twenty, and they put four of them on a separate . . . thing. Frequency. So they wouldn’t go off right away.” He was a little out of breath from pain and the explanation. “They made twenty. And those are the last four.”
Archie let out a whoop. “Twenty! Twenty, goddamn it, ’ero, twenty!” She laughed, full-throated and gleeful. “Come on, ’oundstooth, while the ferals are still fighting each other! If you ever want to thank ’ero in person we’ll ’ave to follow our Betsy and get out of this mess!”
Together, with Abigail tucked between them, Archie and Winslow struggled across the narrow, feral-infested passage. They dodged teeth and pushed past battling pairs of grey, bloodied hippos. Pressing forward, always forward, they finally scrambled up onto the land alongside the Gate.
“Inland?” Archie shouted over the rushing water and the bellowing ferals.
“No,” Houndstooth yelled back, wheeling Ruby around by her harness and pointing to where Betsy was waiting for them. “Upstream!”
They rode alongside the water, watching as more and more ferals swept past, carried by the current. They rode until they weren’t deafened by the ferals’ fighting anymore. Archie immediately dismounted and helped Houndstooth to slide off of Ruby. He sat on the ground, his hand pressed to his still-bleeding side.
“’Oundstooth, you’re so pale—how much blood ’ave you lost?” Archie said.
“Never mind, now, Archie. I’ll be fine. Where’s—” He gasped as a fresh wave of pain overtook him. “—where’s Abigail?”
Archie looked around. Betsy stood a ways off, farther inland, panting; there were a few new cuts marring her flank, fresh battle scars to join the old ones.
“Je suis désolé, ’oundstooth, I don’t know, she was right there between us, I don’t know ’ow she could ’ave slipped away.” She scanned the water, but it was a froth of feral hippos, and she knew there was no use—but then, there she was. Abigail, surging her way up the current toward them. She scrabbled up the slope toward them, slipped; Archie grabbed her harness and gave a mighty heave. Between the two of them, Abigail made it onto the bank. Ruby nosed at her, and the two hippos wandered toward Betsy, who had sprawled, exhausted, on the ground.
Archie gave Rosa a nudge. “Go on,” she said. The hippo snorted at her, unmoving; Archie rubbed her bristly nose and murmured to her. “You ’ave done so well, my Rosa. Go on. Go and rest. You ’ave earned it.”
Rosa lumbered off to join the other three hippos where they lay in the shade, exhausted from the battle. Archie settled herself next to Houndstooth on the muddy riverbank.
“Well,” she said. “We are trapped, mon ami. We cannot get overland with the ladies over there—the Gate extends too far inland for Rosa and Abigail to cover the distance, and I think Ruby might not be in good enough shape right now for the journey anyway. We cannot take them through the ruins of the dam, not safely—and we certainly cannot take them into that,” she said, gesturing to the roiling mass of furious ferals. “So. What do we do now? Smoke a cigar and call it quits?”
Houndstooth was still out of breath, his face very pale; but when Archie eased his shirt away from his side, she saw that he had nearly stopped bleeding. He gave a little laugh and considered her.
“Hero was too smart for me, you know. They had so many plans; so many contingencies. ‘Just in case,’ they kept saying; and I kept asking ‘in case of what?’”
Archie watched Houndstooth, frowning. “Are you alright, friend? You seem—”
“Ah, I’m fine,” he said, waving her off. “I’m telling you what we do next.” He patted at his vest, then reached to an inside pocket. He pulled out a little leather pouch, sealed with wax; then, he handed her his ivory-handled knife.
“Miracle I managed to hang on to both of these after that fall. But then, it’s a bit of a day for miracles. Be a love and open this, won’t you, Archie? My hands aren’t too steady.”
Archie slit open the wax and tipped the contents of the pouch into Houndstooth’s waiting hand.
“‘Just in case,’ they said. ‘Just in case.’” He held up the little black detonator. “Just in case the charges don’t blow, let’s have a backup, they said. Just a few buoys that could start the chain, in case things go wrong. But of course the first round of bombs worked perfectly,” he laughed thinly.
Archie looked from the detonator to the Gate; to the swarm of ferals that frothed against the Sturgess Queen, pressing the buoys right up against the riverboat. She looked up at the tower, where Travers leaned against the railing, watching the chaos below, still laughing with his hand pressed to his mangled face.
“Four buoys left undetonated, Archie,” he said with a weak smile. “How many sticks of dynamite is that equivalent to?”
Archie grinned. “I ’ave no idea, ’oundstooth.”
“Shall we find out?”
Archie put her hand over his. They pressed the button together, and sat back, side by side, as the four backup buoys exploded in a glorious display of fire and fury.
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