The Outcasts by Kathleen Kent

and learn.”
    The dog had not swum ten yards before the water under the reeds started to boil, and the logs that had rested against the bank, bobbing gently with the current, began to move purposefully toward the center of the river. The captain whistled again and the dog turned and began paddling back to the barge.
    The once-featureless logs resolved themselves into leviathans with churning legs and tails, three of them swimming rapidly to where the dog, his narrow-snouted head showing above the glassy surface of the river, was treading water in a way that seemed to Lucinda too languid for safety.
    The passengers, men and women, came to stand at the railing to watch the dog’s progress, the near-naked boy forgotten. The alligators had closed the gap between themselves and the dog by a good twenty feet when the captain took aim with his rifle and fired. The bullet struck the first gator in the broad space between the eyes. The impact of the bullet on the skull made a sound like a mallet against a watermelon, and the creature sank without a struggle.
    The ship’s fireman, his face and arms blackened from stoking the engine’s furnace, joined the group, and he swung open the boarding gate and hunkered down, readying himself to pull up the dog once he breasted the hull.
    The remaining two gators had closed the distance farther and Lucinda quickly calculated the amount of time left before the precise meeting of the surging bodies. The dog had, at most, only a few minutes. All eyes were on the captain, who stood poised with the stock of the rifle against his shoulder.
    The dog was within a few feet of the boat, the gators perhaps the same distance behind, when the captain finally discharged the rifle, striking the closest creature midback. The wound, at first as white and dense as a man’s thigh, soon bubbled blood like a fountain, and the gator’s companion, without hesitation, turned and began to tear at the exposed flesh.
    The dog swam abreast of the deck, and the fireman reached down, grabbed the long, wet fur with both hands, plucked the animal out of the water, and put him on the deck. The dog shook himself mightily and went to lie down, unperturbed by the events, in the shadow of the passenger cabin.
    The men, and a few women, continued to watch as the remaining alligator ferried the carcass across to the far side of the river.
    The boy had collapsed onto the deck, and the captain leaned over him and said, “Here ends the lesson.” The captain climbed back up to the steering cabin, and the boy gathered up his clothes and was helped inside by two of the older women.
    Lucinda watched the dead gator float for a moment in the shallows and then saw it pulled under, with barely a resulting ripple, the persimmon tree on higher ground yet glorious and unmolested.
    By midafternoon, the last of the passengers had stepped off onto the landing at Lynchburg, and she was alone, apart from the captain and fireman, for the last leg of the journey to Morgan’s Point at the true beginning of Galveston Bay. From there, she would be met by a cart sent to fetch her overland to Middle Bayou.
    After the boat docked at the old Confederate pier, the captain handed her off the barge, along with her bag, and she stood in the shade of some abandoned barracks for a while, watching the road for an approaching rig. There was not another being in sight across the grasslands to the west and the marshlands extending far to the south.
    Bored with waiting, she walked onto the pier and looked out across the greater bay. A cooling breeze whipped at her skirts, and she watched the sky haze over with mackerel clouds tinged pink with a late sun. A coral snake, disturbed by her footsteps on the wooden planks, swam into the deeper channel, and she wondered what form of gnawing, rending, stinging death would claim her if she were to jump into the water.
    The clapper in the old kitchen bell stirred with the breeze, a resonant sound that put Lucinda in mind of