The Mammoth Murders

CHAPTER 5 - The Voyageurs

VIDEO ABOVE: Canoeing on Fisheating Creek, which is just a short distance southwest of the Pig River in our story. Pig River looks much the same, but it is wider and deeper in spots. Our story has the picnic lunch take place on shore, but the in-canoe lunch from this video looks scrumptious. Maybe we should've gone with them instead?

AUTHOR NOTE: Shep has promised Miranda a canoe trip -- her first. They may not get married by the canoe outfitter, but they will encounter some people whom they'll never see again. Our couple has no idea what impact coming events will have on their lives.  Enjoy chapter 5 of The Mammoth Murders. 

~o~~o~~o~

And so, Saturday morning found Shep and Miranda, Carlo, and neighbor Martha Cleary (an avid Audubon Society member of long standing) waiting outside the canoe outfitter's shop in the nearby town of Turtle Springs.

Shep and Carlo each wore a backpack with water bottles clamped to the sides.

Miranda wore a floppy sunhat, long-sleeved tee shirt, thrift-store jeans and her oldest sneakers. Mrs. Cleary had warned Miranda that walking in waist-deep water -- or knee-deep mud -- would probably ruin whatever pants and shoes she wore that day.

Martha Cleary wore camouflage khakis that looked like they had survived WWII's Bataan Death March; either that or the scrappy old lady had worn them on a hundred really dicey jungle canoe trips.

Miranda noted that Mrs. Cleary carried no visible weapons, only her long-lens bird-watching camera.

Miranda, thinking herself extremely clever, had sealed her cellphone in a Ziplock sandwich bag and hoped to be able to keep the phone dry and also snap some pictures.

If she happened to take a thousand photos of her massive companion in the mirrored sunglasses, but only a dozen pictures of the flora and fauna of Sho-ke-okee River, who cared? Who would even know, since she didn't plan to share her pictures with anyone?

Also waiting in the outfitter's parking lot was a group of ten other paddlers, a professor from the University of Florida, and two grad-school students who served as teaching assistants to the professor.

Two employees of the outfitter shop loaded the canoes (some rented, some personal, like Shep's) onto a specially designed, multi-level trailer. One of the employees would drive a van full of passengers, towing the canoes. The other drove a second van, carrying passengers only.

The vans would drive north to a put-in point about five miles upriver. From there, the canoeists could paddle with the current southward, in a leisurely manner, to a take-out point, where the vans and trailer would be waiting.

The entire trip would take about four hours, including a halfway stop for whatever lunch or snacks the paddlers had brought along.

When the canoes had been secured on their trailer and the paddlers secured in their vans, the small convoy set off down narrow, winding roads through forests and pine barrens.

In the lead van, a bald, sun-leathered man with a white goatee and a micro-paunch stood up behind the driver and faced the passengers.

"Good morning," he said with a smile. He nodded when the passengers spoke a ragged group greeting. "Thank you all for coming and for being here bright and early and ready for adventure. I'm Doctor Erwin Clarkson. I teach an interdisciplinary approach to socio-cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology — quite a mouthful, I know — at the University of Florida in Gainesville. But today, I'm not Doctor Clarkson. Today, I'm just your volunteer tour guide and docent on behalf of the Audubon Society, and you can call me Win."