DEADLY WATERS

A MYSTERY IN EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK

GLORIA SKURZYNSKI AND ALANE FERGUSON

To Danny and Kathy,

who radiate grace and bring us joy.

Text copyright © 1999 Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson

Cover illustration copyright © 2007 Jeffrey Mangiat

All rights reserved.

Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents is prohibited without written permission from the National Geographic Society, 1145 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

Map by Carl Mehler, Director of Maps; Thomas L. Gray, Map Research; Michelle H. Picard, Martin S. Walz, Map Production

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to living persons or events other than descriptions of natural phenomena is purely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Skurzynski, Gloria

Deadly waters / Gloria Skurzynski and Alane Ferguson.

p. cm.—(National parks mystery: #3)

Summary: While visiting the Everglades National Park with their parents, the Landon children uncover the mystery of dying manatees and learn important lessons about the natural environment.

ISBN: 978-1-4263-0966-3

1. Everglades National Park (Fla.)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Everglades National Park (Fla.)—Fiction. 2. Manatees—Fiction. 3. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Ferguson, Alane. II. Title. III. Series.

PZ7.S6287De 1999

[Fic]—dc21 99-23985

Version: 2017-07-05

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are sincerely grateful to the experts who have helped with this book. Captain David S. Nolan of the real Pescadillo; Teri Rowles, Fishery Biologist of the National Marine Fishery Service; Sentiel Rommel, Research Scientist at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory; Tom Pitchford, Assistant Research Scientist at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory; John Tyminski, Shark Biologist at the Center for Shark Research, Mote Marine Laboratory; Captain Frank and Georgia Garrett of Majestic Everglades Excursions; and The Everglades City Sheriff’s Office Substation. In Everglades National Park, our sincere thanks to Jim Brown, Maureen McGee-Ballinger, and Rangers Kelly Bulyis and Carl Hilts. A very special thanks to Skip Snow.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PARK DATA

STATE: Florida

ESTABL ISHED: 1947

AREA: 1,506,539 acres

CLIMATE: Subtropical. Rainfall averages 60 inches each year. From mid-December to mid-April it is usually warm and dry; from mid-April to mid- December it is hot and humid, with lots of mosquitoes.

NATURAL FEATURES: Freshwater sawgrass marshes, pinelands, mangrove forests and islands, dense stands of tropical hardwood trees, extensive estuaries and open-water marine habitat.

The snake’s five-foot body stretched across a thick tree limb overhanging the Everglades waters. Its unblinking black eyes watched the man. For a brief instant, the man’s gaze locked onto the snake’s before he returned his attention to the object in his hands. “Good thing a snake doesn’t talk,” he told himself. “I’d have to kill it.” Mosquitoes whined around him, landing on his arms, but he didn’t bother to swat them off.

“Whatever it takes,” he told himself. “Almost done.” There was no room for mistakes, not on something like this. He had to be careful, careful….

And then he saw them, three figures huddled on the wooden dock, two boys and a girl. They were far away, a couple hundred yards, maybe, but they were staring in his direction. And one of them was pointing something. A camera!

The snake flicked its tongue before it slowly wound its way down the tree to disappear into the dark tangle of mangrove roots. Coolly, the man started up the engine of his boat and headed it toward the dock, toward those kids.

“Whatever it takes,” he told himself again.

CHAPTER ONE

Upstream, two round alligator eyes blinked just above water. The gator was middle-size: about five feet from its tail tip to its blunt nose. As it skimmed forward, it left behind a rippled wake that barely disturbed the canal’s surface. While Jack Landon fumbled for his camera, his sister Ashley pointed, following the path of the dark shape in the water. The gator was closing in fast.

“Look, Bridger, he’s after that duck, or whatever it is,” Ashley murmured to the boy standing beside her. “Should I yell to warn it?”

“Gator’s got to eat, too,” was all Bridger answered. A tall, lean, tow-headed 14-year-old wearing a Stetson hat, jeans, and cowboy boots, Bridger Conley had already proved himself to be a boy of few words. And strong opinions.

The three of them—Jack, Ashley, and Bridger—stood beside a canal in the Florida Everglades, watching the large bird that kept swimming underwater, with its whole body submerged. Every minute or so the bird’s small head and long, skinny neck would snake upward, breaking through the sun’s reflection on the water. Then back down it would go, gliding beneath the surface like a seal. It didn’t seem to notice the danger it was in.

“Hold it…hold it,” Jack muttered, twisting his lens to focus. Catching both animals in one picture would make a magnificent shot. Jack knew the bird didn’t have much of a chance, not with those quick jaws and razor-sharp teeth coming nearer and nearer as the alligator quietly shortened the distance between them.

“I don’t think I want to watch this…” Ashley began, her hands clutching the wooden railing.

Seeming unconcerned, the bird ducked its head beneath the water and came up with a small fish speared on its beak. Immediately the bird’s rope-thin neck snapped like a whip. Momentum flipped the fish into the air before it fell back into the open beak. As the bird swallowed its catch, the alligator slid even closer, advancing through the grass-edged water, only inches from its prey. Closer, and….

With a splash, the alligator struck—too late! One split second before the big jaws snapped closed, the bird had exploded skyward, leaving the gator with nothing but a mouthful of air. If an alligator could look disappointed, this one did.

“Yes! My duck made it! It got away!” Ashley pumped her fist into the air as she gave a little half-bounce. “Did you see that, Jack?”

“Yes, I saw it,” he answered. “Only it isn’t a duck, it’s an anhinga.”

“How’d you know that?” Bridger asked.

“Read about it in the visitor center. Anhingas swim submerged. Look at it now, on top of that tree—it’s drying its feathers.” Silhouetted against the sky, the bird seemed to be posing for Jack’s camera, stretching out its wings to warm itself in the sun.

“Well, whatever it’s called, I’m glad the gator didn’t get it,” Ashley said. “I know you said everything in the food chain’s got to eat, Bridger, but I hate seeing an animal get killed. I don’t even like to see fish die, but I guess that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, since you said you like to go fishing.”

“Doesn’t bother me at all,” Bridger answered.

He was the latest in a series of foster children who’d lived short-term with the Landon family: Jack, Ashley, and their parents, Steven and Olivia. Bridger was unlike any of the other foster children the Landons had sheltered. He seemed friendly; he just didn’t talk much. For Ashley, who talked all the time, this made Bridger a real challenge.

“Still, don’t you feel sorry for fish when they flop all over, trying to get back in the water?” Ashley persisted.

“Nope. They’re just fish,” Bridger said evenly. “People are people, critters are critters.”

Jack slapped a mosquito off his arm. “Better not let Mom hear you say that. She’s brought us all the way to Florida to try and save the manatees, which I guess to you are just ‘critters.’”

When Bridger shrugged, Jack felt prickles of irritation. Everyone in his family, from his father to ten-year-old Ashley, loved animals, but Bridger seemed almost indifferent. How could anybody not care about the manatees? “You know, Bridger, all the park rangers are freaking out over the manatees getting sick. This is serious. They’re an endangered species.”

“Yeah, Mom was up all night, reading through stuff and trying to figure out what could be wrong,” Ashley added. “She says none of the other marine life in the Everglades is getting sick, but some of the manatees have started to die. Not all of them, though. Mom told me it’s the most mysterious case she’s ever been called on.”

Jack took a sip of bottled water and scanned the sky for another possible photo shot. Normally he wouldn’t try to keep a conversation going with a guy like Bridger, but since his dad encouraged him to reach out to the foster kids, Jack searched his mind for something else to say. That was one of the harder things about foster kids: Jack couldn’t just walk away from them without seeming rude. It was like they were guests in the Landon house. “Well, anyway, you might hook something major tomorrow, Bridger, when we go fishing. Dad says Frankie’s the best guide around here. And the Everglades has freshwater fish and saltwater fish. Lots of big ones.”

When Bridger nodded in reply, Jack recapped the bottle, then leaned over the wooden railing to get a better look at the water below.

A hundred feet away, downstream, stood the round building that housed the Shark Valley ranger office, where Jack’s mother and father were gathering as much information as they could about the temperature, rain cycles, and wildlife of the area. Here in Shark Valley, and in all the rest of Everglades National Park, lived birds and animals and marine life that Jack had never seen before. Strange, exotic breeds that, if photographed just right, could maybe make a picture good enough to get published in a magazine. Jack had saved his money for almost a year to buy a telephoto lens he’d dreamed of owning ever since he could remember, a lens powerful enough to bring distant objects into crystal-clear view.

“Bridger, did you know that Frankie’s taking us kids all the way toward the Gulf of Mexico tomorrow?” Ashley chattered. “Mom’s here to concentrate on the manatees, so Frankie’s going to keep us busy. Except I’ve decided I’m not going to fish, I’m just going to sit in the end of Frankie’s boat and watch for manatees.”

Jack was startled by a loud smack as Bridger smashed a mosquito on his neck. “Buggy here,” he said. He pushed his Stetson back on his head, then wiped the sweat from his pale eyebrows. All the Landons were in T-shirts, shorts, and sandals, but Bridger had insisted on wearing his usual Western clothes, in spite of the Florida heat and humidity. Squinting against the bright sun, he asked Jack, “So, are you gonna stick your pole in the water? Or are you afraid of hurting some fish’s feelings, like your sister is? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just…girls.” He smiled, shaking his head.

“Hey—what do you mean—‘just girls?”” Ashley stuttered, her cheeks suddenly bright.

Bridger shrugged. “No offense. Most females feel like you, worrying about animals same as if they were human. Guys are different. We’re natural-born hunters. Right, Jack?”

“Don’t ask me. I fish, but I don’t hunt. The only thing I shoot is pictures.” Snapping the lens cover back onto his camera, Jack tried to give his sister a look that would tell her not to let Bridger’s comments get under her skin. They already knew that Bridger had a different way of looking at things.

The first night Bridger had come into the Landons’ home he’d told Steven how great it was that he was a wildlife veterinarian.

“No, it’s not me, Bridger,” Steven had corrected him. “My wife, Olivia, is the veterinarian. I’m a photographer—well, when I’m not running the photo lab. My favorite job is to follow Olivia around, photographing the animals she’s working with.”

A look of confusion had spread across Bridger’s face. “You mean you work for your wife?” He’d said it as though it were the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

“Not really,” Olivia had answered. “Oh, I couldn’t do my job without Steven’s help, but he doesn’t work for me. See, Bridger, whenever an animal or certain species is in trouble, the National Park Service calls on me to investigate. Steven comes along to take photographs. Lots of times I miss things that I discover later when I examine Steven’s photos.”

Olivia seemed ready to say more about married people helping each other, but she caught herself. Before Bridger came to their home, a social worker had told the Landons about his background—that his parents were divorced and his mother lived far away in Australia, that she’d left him when Bridger was only five years old. “Tell us about your dad,” Olivia had said instead.

“My dad’s a bull rider. You’ve heard of him, right?” Bridger had looked from Olivia to Steven expectantly. “Skip Conley—the Rodeo King?”

Olivia shook her head no, explaining that even though the Landons lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in the heart of cowboy country, she’d never really seen a rodeo. “If I had, I’m sure I’d have heard of your father,” she apologized.

“He’s a star. Twelve-time finalist, eight-time bull-riding champ. Soon as he’s out of the hospital, me and him’ll be back on the rodeo circuit.”

“We heard your dad got gored by a bull, but he’ll be OK,” Steven said, his voice assuring.

Olivia nodded. “And we’re glad to have you stay here with us, Bridger, until your dad gets well.”

“Thanks, ma’am. Dad got slammed pretty bad on his last ride in Jackson Hole. Rest of the rodeo’s moved on, but Dad’s gonna be in that rehab place for a while longer. After he gets out, we’ll go back to the bulls and broncs on the circuit.” He could understand it, he’d told Olivia, that she didn’t know about his dad, her being a woman and all.

That’s when Jack had figured out that Bridger viewed the world differently, with girls on one side, guys on the other. And now, after being in Florida for less than a day, he’d announced to Jack that guys were hunters and girls weren’t, as if everything and everyone fit neatly into life’s spaces.

“Look!” Ashley exclaimed. “The alligator’s coming back again.”

The gator’s snout had broken through the upside-down tree reflections, making the branches ripple on the water’s surface. Once again the big jaws opened and snapped, and this time the gator caught his dinner—a red-bellied turtle.

“I can’t watch!” Ashley cried as the powerful jaws crunched right through the turtle’s shell. “It’s horrible!”

“Gator’s got to eat,” Bridger said again. “Right, Jack?”

Jack was so intent on capturing the scene that he didn’t answer. He fired off shots as if his camera were a machine gun spitting bullets. The pictures wouldn’t be pretty, but they’d be powerful.

With a final crushing bite, the gator flung back its neck and gulped down its prey, then slowly lowered itself into the murky water.

“Right, Jack?” Bridger asked again.

“Let’s go find Mom and Dad,” was all Jack answered.

CHAPTER TWO

“Spray me, Mom.” Ashley stretched out both arms as her mother took aim with the can of bug repellent. “Mosquitoes sure do love you, honey,” Olivia said, covering Ashley’s arms with a fine mist. “Turn around so I can get the backs of your legs. Maybe you should have worn jeans, like Bridger, instead of those shorts.”

“Jeans are too hot,” Ashley answered. “Anyway, it’s not fair. I get all chewed up, and Jack hardly has any mosquito bites at all.”

Their father, Steven, said, “It’s because you’re so sweet, Ashley.”

She started to giggle. “That must mean you’re sour, Jack.”

“Hey, I can handle personal rejection from mosquitoes,” Jack answered. “No problem! But I’ll put a few squirts of that stuff on me, too, just in case.” The bite of insect repellent filled his nose as Jack squirted his skin. “Here you go, Bridger,” he said, ready to toss the canister, except that Bridger held up his hands like a traffic cop.

“Don’t need it,” he said, which was probably true. Bridger was so covered up by his long-sleeved plaid shirt, blue jeans, boots, and Western hat that any mosquito would have had a hard time finding a place to land on him.

Olivia raised her eyebrows. “You sure about that, Bridger? Try guessing how many different species of mosquitoes live in the Everglades.”

“Don’t know,” Bridger said.

“Twenty!” Ashley guessed.

“Nope. Forty-three. But only the females bite.”

Bridger asked, “So why don’t they get rid of the mosquitoes? You know, spray stuff from airplanes and kill them all?”

“Can’t do it,” Steven answered, scratching his wrist where an early-breakfasting mosquito had already sampled him. “Much as we don’t like mosquitoes, they’re part of the ecosystem.”

Bridger frowned. “Eco—what?”

“That means,” Olivia began, “that all the creatures in the Everglades are linked together. Mosquitoes lay eggs that hatch into something called wrigglers, and they get eaten by Gambusia. That’s the scientific name, but usually they’re called mosquitofish. Other fish eat the mosquitofish: snook, snapper, redfish—the ones you’ll be fishing for today, Bridger. And then, of course, birds eat the fish, and other animals eat the birds, all the way up to the biggest animals in the park. If you take out the mosquitoes, everything gets affected.”

“I get it,” Bridger said, nodding. “Chain reaction.”

“No spraying for bugs, huh?” Jack considered that. “So then it can’t be pesticides that are making the manatees sick.”

“Actually, the park people checked out another possibility, Jack, that herbicides used to kill weeds in the canals might have washed into the Everglades waters. But when they did the necropsies on the dead manatees—”

“What’re ‘necropsies,’ Mom?” Ashley interrupted.

“A necropsy is an autopsy on an animal. Anyway, the necropsies didn’t show any high level of herbicides in the manatees’ tissues. So it’s something else,” she told them, frowning. “And the biggest part of the puzzle is why only about 20 percent of the manatees are getting sick. The rest seem just fine. That’s the reason they brought me here: to find out what's happening with these sick sea cows.”

“Cows?” Bridger asked, his pale brows knitting together.

“Not your kind of cows,” Steven answered, laughing. “Sea cow is just another name for manatee, and not a very accurate name. Manatees are distant relatives of—get this!—of elephants.” Olivia put the half-empty can of bug spray into Jack’s camera bag as she added, “They call them cows because they graze on plants all day, just like dairy cows.”

“OK, everybody,” Steven called out, “time to get into the car. Frankie will be waiting at the dock.”

As the three kids jammed side by side in the car’s backseat, Ashley explained to Bridger, “Frankie was my grandmother’s friend even before my mom was born.”

“Hmmm,” Bridger murmured, peering out the car window. Not too far from them, the waters of the bay sparkled in the sunlight. As Steven maneuvered the car along a palm-lined two-lane road, past houses that looked like boxes with legs, Bridger asked, “How come all these houses are built up on stilts like that?”

“Hurricanes?” Jack suggested, and his father agreed, “Uh-huh. When hurricanes cause big waves to surge up over the land, houses built high on pilings don’t get damaged as much.”

“Looks like they could just get up and walk away,” Bridger murmured.

“Yeah, they do look like that. That’s a good one, Bridger,” Steven told him, grinning as they pulled over in front of a general store near the water.

Ashley shouted, “There’s Frankie, waiting for us.”

Scanning the sidewalk in front of the store, Bridger started to say, “I don’t see—” But by then Ashley had darted out of the car and into the arms of a short, wiry, white-haired woman.

“You’ve grown so big!” the woman was telling Ashley, as Olivia, Jack, and Steven caught up with them. “And Jack—look at you! Twelve years old and you’re almost as tall as a man.”

“Frankie, it’s great to see you again!” all the Landons exclaimed as they hugged her.

Half in disbelief, then in alarm, Bridger exclaimed, “Frankie is a woman?”

Taking his hand, Olivia pulled him forward and said, “Bridger, I’d like you to meet Captain Frankie Gardell, the best fishing guide in all of the Everglades.”

With his eyes narrowed to a squint, Bridger touched the brim of his cowboy hat and mumbled, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” At first he looked anything but pleased, but then his face lightened a bit as he said, “Guess you just own the boat, right? Who runs it for you?”

“Me!” When Frankie smiled, the skin around her mouth crinkled into dozens of wrinkles that connected to other dozens of wrinkles in her sun-browned cheeks.

She was small, barely over five feet two, and dressed in a red-and-white-striped shirt that hung over cutoff jeans. It seemed odd, even to Jack, for a 70-year-old woman to wear cutoffs, but somehow on Frankie it looked all right.

“To answer your question, Bridger,” Frankie went on, “when my husband, Gene, was alive, we made the fishing trips together. But Gene’s been gone for eight years now, rest his soul, and in that time I’ve run this business by myself.”

Bridger looked even more confused. “Your husband’s name was Jean?”

Chuckling, Frankie answered, “Spelled G-E-N-E. Short for Eugene. And I’m Frankie, short for Francesca. And yonder’s the Pescadillo.”

Thoroughly flustered, Bridger burst out, “What the heck is a pescadillo?”

“It’s my boat! The name is kind of a combination of ‘pesce,’ which is Italian for ‘fish,’ and ‘peccadillo,’ which means—well, I’ll tell you later, Bridger. We need to get moving.”

“Good idea,” Olivia said, glancing at her watch. “I have a meeting in 20 minutes. Lots of people coming: park rangers, researchers—everyone with information on the manatees. I feel as if I’ve got a thousand pieces of a big puzzle, Frankie, and no picture on the box to guide me. So do you mind if Steven and I leave now and don’t see you off?”

“Go, go!” Frankie urged them, shooing Steven and Olivia with sun-browned hands. “My new shipmates and I will be just fine. Won’t we, Ashley?”

“You bet!”

Steven said, “Then we’ll see you tonight. Get busy out there, guys—if you make a good catch, the restaurant will cook it for us.”

From the end of the dock, the four of them waved, watching Steven and Olivia pull away in the car. Once they’d disappeared, Frankie placed her hands on her hips and surveyed the kids. Jack wondered if she could tell that Bridger was unhappy about her being a woman, but if she knew, she didn’t let on. Instead, she began to bark out orders like a real ship’s captain.

Pointing briskly, she went down the line. “Jack, you load up the rest of the gear that’s right by your feet. Bridger, you take that cooler on board and stow it between the captain’s chair and the gunwale. Ashley, you’re going to get the line off the piling, and when

I tell you, throw it onto the boat deck and then jump in after it. Don’t wait too long, or the boat’ll get away from you and you’ll end up with an Everglades bath.”

“I’ll untie the boat for her,” Bridger offered.

“Nonsense. Ashley’s as agile as a monkey. You handle the cooler, and Ashley will take care of the rest. But first, Bridger, take off those boots!”

For a moment, Bridger stood stock still, his face reddening slightly to match the red in his plaid cotton shirt. “Why?” he asked.

“No boots on board! They’ll gouge the deck. If you don’t have any boat shoes with you, like Jack and Ashley are wearing, then you can just stay in your sock feet.”

Bridger got even redder. Finally, touching the brim of his hat, he said, “Yes, ma’am,” so softly that Jack was sure Frankie hadn’t heard, except that she sent another smile in Bridger’s direction. He sat down to take off his boots.

Jack jumped down into the Pescadillo. From there he reached up to the dock to pick up the gear, one box at a time, transferring it into the boat. Bridger, still on the dock, lifted the cooler and set the boots on top of it, intending to hold everything while he lowered himself into the boat.

“Maybe you ought to…” Jack began as Bridger put one foot on the boat’s edge, which Frankie had called the gunwale. But Bridger shook his head. He wobbled a little—the cooler was heavy, the boat moved from the dock under the pressure of his foot, and his socks must have felt pretty slippery on the teakwood gunwale.

Jack halfway reached out to help, but Bridger frowned in concentration, as though this were some kind of athletic competition, and by sheer willpower he could figure out how to balance himself and his heavy load on the narrow rim. And he did. After sizing it all up, he took one more step and then jumped, landing flatfooted in the boat, with his balance and the cooler intact. He didn’t grin in satisfaction, but just gave a short, sharp nod to no one in particular, stowed the cooler beside the captain’s chair, and set his boots alongside a white vinyl bench.

Out of the corner of her eye, Frankie had watched the whole episode. All she said was, “Hop to it, Ashley. All aboard that’s goin’ aboard.” Ashley undid the line from the cleat on the piling, threw it into the boat, then scrambled quickly after it.

“All right, crew, line up and get your life jackets,” Frankie ordered. “One per customer—pull them out of the box there.”

“What about you, Frankie?” Ashley asked. “You need to wear one too, don’t you?”

“Um…ah…” Frankie hedged, and then said, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Watch me and you can see how to buckle these things.” After they’d all slipped their arms through the pillowy orange life jackets and fastened the straps, Frankie said, “Now let’s shove off and see what we can find out there in the land of Ten Thousand Islands.” In an instant the diesel engine caught and roared. Jack could feel the vibrations under his feet.

“Sticking close to shore the way we are now, I’ve got to go slow,” Frankie told them. “The water’s no more than four feet deep here, which makes it easy to run over manatees, something we definitely don’t want to do.”

Even their slow passage stirred up a nice breeze, enough to whip Frankie’s hair into short white spikes that looked like peaks of meringue. Surely, deftly, she handled the steering wheel as though she and the boat were lifelong friends. After a while, Frankie told them, “The trick to maneuvering through these mangrove islands is to know where the channels are. We’ve passed the town of Chokoloskee now, so I’ll let her out a little.” She pushed the throttle forward on the starboard side of the helm.

“We were in Chokoloskee last night—” Jack had started to say, but before he could get it out, the Pescadillo leaped forward and his words were sucked back into his throat.

“Wow! This is great!” Ashley cried loudly, so she could be heard above the motor and the sudden rush of wind. “Feels like someone just turned on the air conditioning.” She stood at the helm, next to Frankie, who effortlessly steered through the tea-colored water.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Jack called, “How fast can this boat go?”

“Seventeen knots when we’re in the Gulf.” The boat’s bow pushed toward turquoise sky as Jack and Bridger settled back onto the white vinyl bench.

Bridger kept reaching up to hold onto his hat, until a gust of wind almost whipped it off his head into the boat’s wake. Grudgingly, he pushed his Stetson underneath the bench. Jack noticed a white band of skin that stretched from Bridger’s eyebrows into his pale hair, as though his forehead had never seen sunlight.

Jerking his chin toward the front of the boat, Bridger said, “That Frankie’s kinda bossy, isn’t she?”

“Maybe. But I like her,” Jack answered.

It seemed Bridger was about to say more, but he stopped when Ashley turned, wide-eyed, to yell, “Jack, Bridger—look over the right side of the boat!”

“Starboard,” Frankie corrected. “Seems like we’ve got ourselves an escort. There’s another one portside, too.”

Jack leaned over the side as far as he could reach. Water sprayed his face in a cool mist, and the teakwood gunwale felt wet beneath his fingers. He had to strain forward until he saw them. Next to the boat’s bow, leaping into the air like silver streaks of light, were two dolphins. For once, Jack didn’t reach for his camera. He didn’t want to pull his eyes away for even a second; magically, the dolphins disappeared into the water, only to reappear like the flash of needles through satin. “They love the waves the boat makes,” Frankie called over her shoulder. “They’re playing with us.”

Over and over again, the dolphins shot up through the bow waves, turned on their sides, and slapped the white, foaming water. Once, when Bridger leaned out too far, one of the dolphins clapped its tail hard enough to splash him in an amber shower.

“Hey—watch it!” he shouted.

“They’re rascals,” Frankie laughed. “Don’t feel bad, Bridger, they’ve gotten me many a time, too. Dolphins are some of the smartest animals on this planet. Sometimes I think they’ve got us humans beat.”

Scowling, Bridger bent down to lift his Stetson from beneath his seat. Water dripped off its rim in a tiny rivulet. “Dang!” he muttered. “Soaked. My socks, too.”

“Say good-bye to the dolphins, kiddos. We’ve got to slow down again, and they’ll only play with us if there’s a wake to jump in.” When Frankie pulled back on the throttle, the waves died to a ripple. As if on cue, the dolphins glided away and disappeared from sight. Only then did Jack realize that he’d let them get away without taking a single picture.

Even though the boat rocked beneath her, Frankie seemed rooted to the deck floor. With one arm outstretched, she pointed to a narrow passage that sliced between two islands of mangrove trees.

“Down that way—see where I’m pointing? Some of the best fishing in the Everglades is in there. If you’re not afraid, I’ll take you to fish near a special spot called the Watson Place.”

“What do you mean, ‘afraid?’” Bridger asked. He shook his Stetson, trying to get the wet drops off the hat.

Frankie’s eyes, clear and blue, glinted like jewels against leather. “Before I take you all the way down to the Watson Place, I need to know if you kids have heard any of the—stories—about what happened there. I myself pay them no mind, but if any of you is skittish, we can head to another fishing area.”

“If it’s got the best fishing, then let’s go,” Bridger announced. “Jack, are you with me?”

The answer was easy for Jack, since he’d never even heard of the Watson Place, but when he looked at Ashley, he could tell she knew something. Her eyes had widened, and she bit her lower lip. “I—don’t know,” she stammered.

“Ahh, you’ve heard about Watson’s landing, have you?” Frankie gave Ashley a knowing smile, then patted her shoulder. “Well, now, don’t go believing everything you hear, although I myself have seen some strange things happen around that island.”

Bridger shook his head and muttered, “Girls! Now we’ll miss the best fishing.” He aimed the comment at Jack as though he didn’t want Ashley to overhear. Then, louder, Bridger said to Frankie, “OK, ma’am, you take us wherever you think’s best.”

But Frankie wasn’t listening. She peered ahead intently, somewhere off the starboard bow. Slowing the boat to a crawl, she shaded her eyes with her hand to get a better look.

“Over there…” she began, pointing.

“What?” Ashley leaned forward, shadowing Frankie, trying to see. Jack, too, jumped to his feet, staring over the glassy surface.

“In the direction of the Watson Place. I’ll try to get closer. I can’t tell what it is for sure, but there’s something strange floating in the water.”

CHAPTER THREE

Jack thought his own vision was sharp, but Frankie had noticed the mound floating in the water long before any of the three kids could make it out. She maneuvered the boat closer, and closer, until….

“It’s a pelican,” she announced, her voice tight with worry. “All tangled up in a fishing line someone dropped into the water. I get so angry when this happens—that line’s going to kill it!”

When Jack and Ashley hung over the side of the boat to get a look, the big bird frantically tried to flap out of the way. Its bright yellow eyes watched them like a beacon light. Only one of its wings could move at all; the other wing was held awkwardly against its body by the nearly invisible fishing cord. “We can cut it loose, can’t we?” Jack asked. “Then it’ll be OK.”

“If we can get it without hurting it. That’ll be harder to do than you might think.”

No one had been paying much attention to Bridger, who was standing behind them. “How deep is the water right here?” he asked.

“No more than six feet,” Frankie answered.

Jack turned to see Bridger pulling off his left sock; the right one already lay on the boat’s deck. Before Jack realized what he was going to do, Bridger eased himself over the side, so there wouldn’t be a loud splash.

“Good boy, Bridger,” Frankie said. “He can’t peck at you—his bill is tied tight against his neck. Just watch out for the loose wing so you don’t break it. That’s the way—come around behind him. I’ll get my big net.”

Bridger’s orange life jacket floated up from his chest, held by the straps. The drenching had plastered his blond hair against his forehead. He shook his head to get the drops out of his eyes, then quietly treaded water, slowly coming closer to the panic-stricken bird. His lips were moving; he seemed to be talking to it. Then, with a big splash, he threw his arms around the pelican’s body.

“Gently, gently,” Frankie cautioned. Holding the net by its long handle, she slipped it into the water. “Try to get him in headfirst,” she told Bridger. “That’s it. Good! Jack, as I raise the net, you reach over and grab the frame. Great! That’s the way. Ashley, you give Bridger a hand.”

Ashley clung to the gunwale as Bridger took her hand and half leaped to haul himself into the boat, grabbing the gunwale with his free hand. Rivulets of tea-colored water dripped from his shirt and his jeans.

“We won’t take the pelican out of the net,” Frankie was saying, “or we might hurt it more. Look, there’s an even worse problem—that fishhook’s torn a big hole in its throat pouch. Oh! That’s bad, really bad. If that wound isn’t treated with antibiotics, the pelican will get an infection and die. It’s happened before.”

“Poor thing’s scared to death,” Bridger muttered “Look at its eyes.” The round, glassy eyes rolled in their sockets as the bird struggled futilely to free itself.

Fingers flying, Bridger unbuttoned his long-sleeved plaid shirt. Beneath it was a white T-shirt, dripping wet like the rest of his clothes. Without saying anything, he wrapped his plaid shirt around the pelican’s head, right over the net. For a long moment he held his hands steady on the bird’s body. That seemed to calm it.

“Gotta think what to do,” Frankie murmured. “I should get this bird to the animal rescue people right away, but I don’t want to spoil our day….”

For a moment Frankie stayed silent as Jack and Ashley exchanged looks. Then, looking up suddenly, Frankie asked, “Bridger, how old are you?”

“Fifteen in three more months.”

Frankie studied Bridger, who was struggling to pull off his wet T-shirt so he could wring it out. “I think you’re a boy who takes a hard look before he leaps,” she said. “But you also react fast in emergencies. That’s good. So here’s what I’m considering. I’ll take you kids over to the Watson Place—”

Ashley gave a sharp little gasp. No one except Jack noticed it. “It’s not too far from here. There’s a picnic table where you can spread out the lunch I brought, and then you can fish from the dock while I take this pelican back to Everglades City. If I go like blazes, I can get there and be back in an hour and 40 minutes, two hours at the outside. While I’m gone, Bridger will be in charge.”

Jack felt a pang of resentment. “Why Bridger? Anyway, Ashley and I don’t need a baby-sitter, Frankie.”

“I’m the skipper here,” Frankie declared, her voice stern, “and I say Bridger’s the first mate while I’m gone. Got it?”

Reluctantly, Jack nodded, resisting the urge to say “aye, aye” and salute.

“Now, Bridger,” Frankie went on, “I’m going to move the boat fast, so I think it’ll be good if you hold your hands on the pelican like you did before, to calm it as much as possible. The engine noise is going to scare it something awful.”

As the boat picked up speed, Frankie shouted to be heard over the sound. “Couple of rules, here, kids. Stay in the clearing around the Watson Place. Don’t—repeat, don’t—go into the mangrove forest. These mangrove forests grow so dense that even folks who are used to these parts get lost in ’em.”

Frankie took one hand off the steering wheel to wave at the masses of trees growing on each side of the waterway passage, forests so impenetrable they looked like the tufts of a plush green carpet. Above the waterline, tangles of roots wove together like wicker cages, reaching down into water turned brown by tannic acid from the trees.

“One more reason to stay out of the mangroves—that’s where the mosquitoes are really bad. They can suck you dry.”

Frankie stayed silent for a moment, slowing the boat so that it was easier to hear her. “Bridger, I said I’d tell you what ‘peccadillo’ means. It means ‘foolish mistake.’ Gene and I sometimes wondered if we were foolish to work here where mistakes can be deadly. Tropical storms, snakebites, mosquitoes that swarm so thickly after dark they can suffocate you—out here, if you guess wrong, bad things happen. But in spite of the risks, we decided it was worth it. This is where we wanted to be.”

Bridger nodded. “I understand, ma’am. My dad would understand, too.”

“So I’m trusting you,” she went on, “to make good decisions. Now look, over there on the right, up ahead. That’s the Watson Place.”

They’d been moving fast enough that the breeze, plus the heat, had nearly dried Bridger’s T-shirt. His arms were already starting to turn red from the sun, but he refused the sunscreen Ashley offered him. Why did Frankie think Bridger was so responsible, Jack wondered, when he did dumb things such as letting himself fry?

They eased the boat next to a rickety dock made of weathered planks; the dock stretched into a walkway that butted against a narrow shore of silty mud. Beyond that, Jack saw a clearing, filled with grass and ringed in a thicket of mangrove trees. Two picnic tables hunkered near the shoreline. Near them, on a pole, was a brown sign that said “Watson Place,” and beneath that, a warning: “No Campfires,” with a red circle and a line through it. The sign reflected upside down in the glassy water.

“OK, Jack, hop out and pull ’er close to the dock. Bridger, you’ll need that cooler in case you get hungry or thirsty while I’m gone. Ashley, you start unloading the fishing gear. I’m going to try and secure this pelican.”

The four didn’t talk as they busied themselves with their jobs. Frankie managed to knot one of the shirt sleeves to the pedestal at the base of the pilot’s chair, which kept the pelican tethered. On the dock, the gear was lined up in a neat row alongside the stacked-up life jackets; the green cooler sat next to them. Jack’s muscles strained to keep the boat wedged against the dock until Frankie gave the signal for him to throw in the line.

A moment later, as the Pescadillo accelerated, Frankie turned and cupped her hands to shout, “I’ll be back in an hour and 40 or so. Stay put.”

“We will, Captain,” Bridger called back.

The three of them waved until the boat disappeared around a mangrove bend. Then Ashley glanced nervously over her shoulder, her lips pressed into a tight line.

Bridger smoothed the rim of his cowboy hat before pushing it firmly on his head. He’d already pulled on his socks and boots, and except for the missing plaid shirt, he looked exactly as he’d looked earlier. “I want to scout around the Watson Place before I start to fish,” he announced. “Want to come, Jack?”

“Sure.”

“Hey, wait, I’m not staying here on this dock by myself,” Ashley protested.

Bridger rolled back on the heels of his boots. “I figured you wouldn’t want to check the island out, seeing as how jumpy you are.”

“That’s because…you don’t know….”

“Don’t know what?” Bridger pressed.

“Nothing,” Ashley muttered, setting her jaw in a way that meant she wasn’t going to talk anymore. From experience, Jack knew that if something was bothering her it would come out sooner or later. It was best to let Ashley settle things in her own mind. Whatever it was, she’d reveal it soon enough.

After they stepped off the dock and onto the shore, they headed for the ring of trees huddled around the edge of the clearing. Some of the trees were different from the ever-present mangroves, and Jack guessed someone must have planted other varieties to break up the monotony of the mangroves’ black, gnarled limbs and webbed roots. Or maybe these were exotic trees, as he’d heard them called, that didn’t belong there, that had washed in from the Gulf and threatened to take over the native trees.

As they walked, tall grass brushed against Jack’s bare shins like thousands of fingers. He tried not to let himself think that snakes might be crawling in the dense underbrush. Bridger didn’t seem bothered by the thought of bugs or reptiles; maybe it was because his boots would protect him from almost anything that could bite at an ankle.

The cleared space was cut in the shape of a half-circle whose edges touched the water. Jack saw grass crushed into flat circles and rectangle shapes. Campers must have stayed here. Even though the sign said “No Campfires,” charred tree limbs and a couple of burned spots told him someone had disobeyed the warning.

It didn’t take them long to explore the open field. “What’s that thing over there?” Jack asked. “Looks like a big pot with a bunch of bricks around it.”

“It’s for making syrup,” Ashley answered.

Before Jack could ask her how she knew such a thing, Bridger broke in with, “There’s some concrete over there that a house must have stood on once, but nothin’s left.”

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