“That was a cottonmouth,” Mr. Grady said.
Even she knew they were extremely poisonous.
Mr. Grady said, “Next time, call one of us.”
But Cay didn’t call anyone for her next snake, nor the next. But she did consult the books T.C. had in his trunk, and she made drawings of the most poisonous snakes and memorized them.
At the end of the second week, she borrowed a big jar from Eli and filled it with little, nonpoisonous snakes, and one night she dumped them all at the foot of Tim’s blanket bed. He wasn’t used to Cay retaliating, so he didn’t find them until they were crawling up his legs. When she heard his shouts as she lay in the tent beside Alex, she smiled, and he asked her what she’d done to “poor Tim.” “Played his own game,” she said and began kissing Alex before he could ask more questions.
After that, it was as if a war had been declared. When she saw an alligator head in the water, its body missing, she lugged it up the hill, hid it in the bushes, and the next morning before daylight, she slipped it partially under the tent Tim shared with Eli. When Alex awoke to screams from Tim, he looked at Cay lying peacefully beside him. “What have you done to that poor boy now?”
She just smiled.
Tim started to be more cautious in the tricks he played on her. He’d learned that there would be retribution for whatever he did to her.
For Cay, what balanced her dislike of Tim was her growing affection for Eli. They were days into the trip before she realized that she’d unjustl
y made some assumptions about him that were far from true. She’d thought he was a man who’d spent his life cooking for people, but no, as a young man he’d studied to be a lawyer.
“When I was an attorney, I had to deal with too much hatred,” he told Cay one evening. “Everybody was screaming and full of hate, so when a client of mine, young Mr. Grady here, said he wanted to go exploring, I shut up my law office and went with him. I’ve never looked back.”
Cay knew that if Eli had worked for the Armitage family he must have been a very good attorney. “So you didn’t want a home and family, then?” She saw the light leave his eyes before he looked away and said nothing more.
Later, Cay asked Mr. Grady what that was about.
“He wouldn’t like to know I’d told you, but he had a wife and child, but they died of smallpox. He never remarried.”
After that, Cay looked at Eli differently, and when she saw him reading a copy of Cicero, she smiled broadly. She knew someone who wanted a husband.
In the third week, they pulled the flatboat half out of the water and began a trek inland to see some ruins that Mr. Grady had heard about. He and Alex carried survey equipment, and Cay put drawing paper and pencils into a bag, while Tim and Eli carried the cooking pots. Alex always kept up with his duty of providing food, so Tim had to carry the big turkey Alex had shot.
Cay couldn’t resist telling Tim that the feathers would make a good hat for him. Her hint was that it would be a woman’s hat.
When they got to the old fort that Mr. Grady wanted to map, Cay sat down to one side and began to sketch. The fortress had been built by the Spanish, and even though it was now in ruins, one tower still had thirty-foot-tall walls. After Cay had made several drawings, she and Alex walked around and looked at the old fort.
“I’d like to make love to you here and now,” he whispered. But as he bent to kiss her, a big rock fell from the top of the old wall and landed just inches away from Cay. Alex looked up just in time to see a flash of white, which he knew was Tim’s shirt. He took off running, and minutes later, the forest echoed with Alex’s shouting. “It’s one thing to play tricks and another to try to kill someone,” they heard him tell the boy.
Cay, back at her drawing pad, glanced at Mr. Grady, but he wouldn’t look at her. It was his responsibility to bawl out Tim for doing something so dangerous, but Grady was leaving it all to Alex.
For three days after that, Tim was set to cleaning pots and gathering firewood.
In the evenings, over dinner, Eli, who’d been down into Florida many times, would tell them stories from his other visits and ones that he’d heard. One story was about a tribe of Indians that had extremely beautiful women. “Better than anyone has ever seen,” he said. “Their hair, their eyes, their bodies were all the most beautiful ever put on this earth. And the women were as kind and as nice as they were heavenly to look at.”
He went on to tell about the first explorers who’d stumbled on them. The men had been hunting, got lost, and were on the point of perishing when they saw the women, whom they called the Daughters of the Sun. The women gave the hunters provisions and let them rest, but at sundown, they said the men had to leave. The women said their husbands were fierce warriors and would kill them if they were found. But the men didn’t want to leave, so they followed the women back toward their village, which they could see in the distance. But try as they might, the hunters couldn’t reach the village. As soon as they thought they were near it, it would reappear in the distance. At long last, the hunters left and went back to their own trading post and told their story.
“Over the years,” Eli said, “many men have tried to find the village of the Daughters of the Sun, but no one has.”
When Eli finished his story, Cay handed him a drawing of an incredibly beautiful woman. “Do you think the women looked like this?”
Eli puzzled at the drawing with wide eyes. “I would think that they did. Is this anyone you know, or did you make her up?”
“She’s my mother,” Cay said and there was longing in her voice. She liked where she was, but she missed her home and her family.
The next day they stopped early and Mr. Grady led them to a small Indian village. Cay didn’t know what she’d expected, but the clean, orderly little settlement was not it. The children ran to them, and Cay wished she had some candy to give them. There was a big house at one end where the chief and his family lived and where they held meetings. Alex, Mr. Grady, and Eli were welcome inside, but Tim and she were told to stay outside.
The first thing Cay realized was that the Indians knew she was a girl. They had no preconceived ideas based on the clothing rituals of the white man, so they weren’t prejudiced by Cay’s male apparel. Laughing, the woman pulled her inside a small house with them, but they wouldn’t let Tim in. They fed her corn cakes and a bowl of fresh milk. One old woman who could speak a bit of English asked her who her husband was. Cay said, “Alex,” without even thinking about it. They nodded approval, but one woman said something and made a motion that imitated Alex’s beard.
The first woman said, “She thinks he’s a very ugly man and that you’d be better off with the other one. Much more handsome.”