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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41671 ***
+
+                         DOUBLE CHALLENGE
+
+                         By Jim Kjelgaard
+
+
+    DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+    NEW YORK
+
+    1958
+
+    © 1957 by Jim Kjelgaard
+    All rights reserved
+
+    Second Printing
+
+    No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
+    without permission in writing from the publisher
+
+    Library or Congress Catalog Card Number: 57-5233
+
+    Printed in the United States of America
+    by The Cornwall Press, Inc., Cornwall, N.Y.
+
+
+    _For Patty Gallagher, and Linda, Pam, Larry and Craig Lewis_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       1. THE JOLT                               1
+
+       2. THE THREAT                            17
+
+       3. THE CAMP                              31
+
+       4. THE FUGITIVE                          47
+
+       5. COON VALLEY                           59
+
+       6. MESSENGER DOG                         75
+
+       7. A FLIGHT OF WOODCOCK                  91
+
+       8. TROUBLE FOR NELS                     107
+
+       9. A BLACK BEAR CHARGES                 121
+
+      10. DAMON                                137
+
+      11. PYTHIAS                              153
+
+      12. AL'S BETRAYAL                        167
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_The characters, incidents and situations in this book are imaginary and
+have no relation to any person or actual happening._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+DOUBLE CHALLENGE
+
+
+
+
+1
+
+THE JOLT
+
+
+When Ted Harkness reached the summit of Hawkbill, he hurried. He grinned
+a little smugly as he did so, for his had been a non-stop climb and most
+people who wanted to reach Hawkbill, the highest point in the Mahela and
+the only one that wasn't forested, had to rest at least twice. Some,
+starting out with firm determination to climb to the top, wavered en
+route and never did get there.
+
+The gorgeous, tricolored collie that had been pacing beside Ted ran a
+short ways, snuffled into some brush and disappeared. Presently he came
+wagging back, to fall in beside his master, and Ted let a hand rest on
+the dog's silken head. A little farther on, the collie pricked up its
+ears and Ted stopped in his tracks.
+
+Just ahead, a fallen tree lay at an angle down the slope. Either rooted
+in soft earth or shallowly rooted, it had toppled when its upper
+structure became too heavy for its root system to support, and it had
+fallen so recently that its leaves had not even started to shrivel.
+Sitting nervously on its trunk, suspecting danger was near but lacking
+the faintest idea as to where it was, were seven young bobtailed grouse.
+
+An imp of mischief danced in Ted's eyes. Ruffed grouse were one of the
+sportiest and one of the wisest of birds, but they weren't born wise and
+experienced. Like everything else, they had to learn and certainly these
+grouse weren't old enough to have learned much of anything. Ted said
+softly, "Get one, Tammie."
+
+Very slowly, knowing his game and stalking it as a cat would have
+stalked, Tammie slunk forward. Ted watched with great interest. Rarely
+could any dog catch a mature ruffed grouse unless it was injured, and it
+was questionable as to whether Tammie could take one of these
+comparative babies. But he might.
+
+Tammie neared the log, sprang, and six of the seven young grouse took
+fluttering wing. The seventh, clamped in Tammie's slender jaws,
+fluttered a moment and was still. Eyes proud, plumed tail waving, Tammie
+trotted back to Ted and placed the prize in his master's hand. Ted
+complimented him.
+
+"Good boy, Tammie!"
+
+He took the young grouse gently, feeling its thumping heart and
+understanding its terrified eyes. It wasn't hurt. When teaching Tammie
+to catch various birds and animals, Ted had taught him to be
+tender-mouthed. After a moment, he tossed his captive into the air and
+watched it fly out of sight.
+
+"Let's go, dog."
+
+They broke out of the beech woods onto the abutment that rose above.
+Almost solid rock, nothing grew here except lichens and, in the cracks,
+occasional strips of grass. Bent somewhat like a hawk's bill, it was a
+favorite playground for hawks that wanted to test their wings. The view
+was unsurpassed.
+
+Ted sat down on the very tip of Hawkbill and Tammie squatted
+companionably beside him. Ted looked at the Mahela.
+
+For as far as he could see in any direction, forested hills folded into
+one another. Spinning Creek sparkled like a silver ribbon that some
+giant hand had draped gracefully down a forested valley. The road to
+Lorton, from this distance, was a footpath beside the creek. Two miles
+down the valley, the green clearing in which lay Carl Thornton's
+Crestwood Resort, the only resort in the Mahela and Ted's place of
+employment, gleamed like a great emerald.
+
+Just below, almost at Ted's feet, was the snug log house in which he and
+his father lived, surrounded by two hundred acres of forest, except for
+small and scattered patches here and there. The Harknesses owned the
+last remaining private land in the Mahela. Its only clearings were those
+in which the cabin was built and one for a garden patch. Al Harkness
+didn't want or need much clearing. He preferred the beech woods to the
+cultivated fields, the trap line or woodsman's ax to the plow.
+
+Behind Hawkbill rose a mountain that, long ago, had been ravaged by
+fire. The fire had burned slowly in the lower reaches and the forest
+there remained green and virgin. But a little more than halfway up,
+probably fanned by sudden, fierce winds, the fire had become an inferno.
+Nearly all the trees had been killed and had long since fallen. The
+place had grown up into a tangle of blackberry canes, with a few patches
+of scrubby aspen here and there. As Ted watched, he saw what he'd hoped
+to see. It was only a wisp of motion, a mere flutter in the aspens, and
+as soon as Ted spotted it, he lost it. Presently he picked it up again.
+
+It was an immense deer, a great gray buck. Heavy-bodied, thick-necked,
+it would outweigh most big bucks by at least fifty pounds. Massive of
+beam, with four perfect points on either side, its antlers were a
+hunter's dream come true. It was feeding on something, probably patches
+of grass that grew among the briers. Ted's eyes glowed and he continued
+to search.
+
+Presently he saw the second buck, an exact twin of the first. It was
+standing quietly in the warm sun, a hundred feet up-slope.
+
+These were the bucks that were known throughout the Mahela, and far
+beyond it, as Damon and Pythias. All who'd seen them thought that either
+one, if bagged, would set a new record. But so far, both had carried
+their antlers safely through several hunting seasons and from the lazy
+way they posed on the mountainside, they might have been two gray steers
+in any farmer's pasture. The appearance was deceptive, though, and Ted
+knew it. Let anything at all excite either buck's suspicion and they'd
+prove their mettle. Ted rubbed Tammie's head reflectively.
+
+"There they are," he observed, "and one of these days I'm going to hang
+one of those heads over our fireplace."
+
+Tammie yawned and Ted laughed. "Okay, so I'm bragging again. But I'm
+still going to do it. Let's go, dog."
+
+Having seen what he had come to see, he struck back down the mountain,
+through the forest of massive, gray-trunked beeches that marched like
+rows of orderly soldiers in all directions. Forty-five minutes later he
+emerged into his father's clearing.
+
+No shanty or casual cabin, but a solid log structure built by a master
+craftsman, the house was set back against the line of trees. Artfully
+designed, it belonged exactly where it was and as it was. The Harkness
+house fitted the Mahela as well as did the big beeches against which,
+and of which, it was built. With a wing on each side and a covered porch
+that jutted forward, somehow the house itself seemed to hold out
+welcoming arms. A huge brick chimney told of the big fireplace within.
+
+To one side was a shed, half of which formed a home for the few chickens
+Al Harkness saw fit to keep. There were never fewer than six of these
+and never more than ten, just enough to furnish Ted and his father with
+the eggs they needed and to provide an occasional fowl for the pot. The
+other half of the shed was a storage place for tools.
+
+Behind the house was another, larger shed which sheltered a gasoline
+engine and buzz saw and provided a place for Al to take care of the
+furs, wild honey, herbs and other treasures that he brought in from the
+Mahela. In front stood the game rack, a cross pole mounted on two heavy
+timbers imbedded in the ground. Here hung the deer and occasional black
+bear that Al, Ted and their guests brought down.
+
+To one side lay the garden, big enough to provide all the vegetables the
+Harknesses needed but not big enough to make a glaring scar in the beech
+woods. As a protection against raiding deer, this garden was surrounded
+by an eight-foot fence. The road to Lorton ran about sixty yards in
+front of the house but was hidden from it by trees. Beside the road was
+the high line with its two wires stretching into the house. There was a
+rutted drive that served as an entrance and exit for the battered
+pickup truck which was all the car Al Harkness had ever thought he
+needed.
+
+When the boy and dog entered the clearing, Tammie raced ahead and
+streaked toward the work shed. Knowing his father would be there or
+Tammie wouldn't have gone, Ted strolled up and looked in at the open
+door. Sitting on a wooden chair with a broken back, Al Harkness was
+using his hunting knife to put the finishing touches on a board over
+which, when the time was right, a mink pelt would be stretched. He
+looked up and said, "Hi, fella."
+
+"Hi, Dad. I'm back."
+
+"Figgered that out all by myself, when your dog came in to say hello."
+Tammie was sitting near, watching Al work. For a moment, Ted watched,
+too.
+
+Perfectly-shaped, with exactly the right taper, the board upon which Al
+worked did not vary a hundredth of an inch from one side to the other.
+Al, who got more money for his furs than other trappers did because he
+took better care of them, sliced off another shaving and squinted down
+the board. A big man, he seemed as rugged as one of the giant beech
+trees. His brows jutted out like stone crags, while the eyes beneath
+them were gentle. But they were gentle in the manner of a soft wind that
+can become a fierce gale. There was something about him that was more
+than faintly akin to the grouse Ted had held in his hand, the rugged
+summit of Hawkbill, and the two immense bucks he had seen. Al Harkness
+would be out of place anywhere except in the Mahela.
+
+"What'd you see?" he asked.
+
+"Damon and Pythias," Ted answered happily. "Anybody who thinks they had
+a rack of horns last year should see them now!"
+
+"Where they hangin' out?"
+
+"Where they always are at this time of year, in the briers on Burned
+Mountain."
+
+"And where," Al asked, "will they be come huntin' season?"
+
+"I don't know, but I'm sure going to find out. One or the other of those
+heads will hang over our fireplace."
+
+"For sure now?" Al smiled faintly.
+
+"If it doesn't, it won't be for lack of trying on my part."
+
+"One, two, three, four," Al counted rapidly. "One thousand, two
+thousand, three thousand, four thousand--You'll have to get at the end
+of a long line of hunters who want those heads."
+
+"I know a lot of hunters have tried for them, but they can be had."
+
+"Anything can be had," Al observed sagely, "and one nice thing 'bout
+young 'uns is they think they can get it. Land either of those bucks and
+your picture'll be in every paper in the state. Maybe even in some out
+of state."
+
+"Sure," Ted grinned, "I'll be famous as a deer hunter before I ever am
+as a resort owner."
+
+Finally satisfied with his stretching board, Al laid it carefully in a
+corner. He took a blackened pipe from his shirt pocket and an
+exquisitely wrought tobacco pouch from his trousers. Made of home-tanned
+buckskin, even if the pouch had not borne the stamp of Al's
+craftsmanship, it would have been recognized as his. His name, A.
+HARKNESS, was stencilled on it. Al filled his pipe, lighted it and
+puffed lazy bursts of blue smoke into the air.
+
+Tammie, who, in common with most dogs, disliked the smell of tobacco,
+sneezed and moved farther away. For a moment Al did not speak. Finally
+he murmured, "So now you're goin' to be a famous resort owner?"
+
+"Why, didn't you know?" Ted asked gaily. "The Mahela Lodge will be known
+all the way from Lorton to Danzer."
+
+Al grinned faintly. "That's a real long ways, nigh onto six miles. You
+wouldn't change your mind?"
+
+"About what?"
+
+"You can still go to college this fall and learn to be a dentist,
+lawyer, or anything else you want."
+
+"Colleges cost money."
+
+"I have," Al said tartly, "been scarin' up a penny every now and again
+since I been changin' your didies. I can still scare up enough to send
+you through college, but I mistrust about startin' you in the resort
+business. Crestwood cost Carl Thornton more money than I've earned in my
+whole life."
+
+"I don't want to leave the Mahela."
+
+"Too much of your pappy in you," Al growled, "and not enough of your
+mother. I want you to be somethin' besides a woods runner."
+
+"It isn't that, Dad. I've tried to explain to you. It's the
+people--seeing them come in here all tired out, and seeing them go away
+rested and refreshed after we've shown them everything we have in the
+Mahela. I know college is valuable and I don't look down my nose at
+education. But this is my job."
+
+Al sighed. "I've tried to talk some sense into you. How are you and
+Thornton gettin' along?"
+
+"Dad, Thornton owns Crestwood. I just work there."
+
+"So that makes Thornton better'n you, huh? You're goin' to be a right
+smart passel of time, savin' enough to start your own resort on what
+Thornton pays you."
+
+"I'm getting experience, meeting people, learning how it's done. I'm
+really learning the business from the bottom up."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Nels Anderson and I have been working on the plumbing in Crestwood's
+basement," Ted grinned.
+
+Al frowned. "I'm not foolin'. This is a big job you've set up for
+yourself and I don't see how you'll ever get enough money to do it."
+
+Ted said confidently, "I'll work it out."
+
+"I wish," Al declared, "that I was eighteen 'stead of forty-nine. I'd be
+able to work things out, too. But it's you doin' it. Everybody's got to
+live the way they see fit."
+
+Al picked up another board and began shaping it. Ted took his
+pocketknife from his pocket.
+
+"I'll help you, huh?"
+
+"Reckon not." Al shook his head. "Sunday's your day off."
+
+"Let me help. It wouldn't really be work to me."
+
+"Nope. Even if I did want help, nobody but me can make my stretchin'
+boards."
+
+"Then I'll go get dinner."
+
+"That's a smart idea."
+
+With Tammie pacing beside him, Ted went into the house. Everything about
+it was solid, strong, heart-warming. The front door was made of oak
+boards an inch and a half thick, the windows were set ten inches back in
+the log walls, the ample fireplace was of native stone. Obviously it was
+the home of an outdoorsman. Two mounted bucks' heads stared from the
+same wall, and of the five rugs on the living room floor, three were
+bearskins and two were bobcats. Ted's and Al's rifles and shotguns hung
+on a rack and there was a glass-enclosed case for fishing tackle.
+
+But Al Harkness, child of the Mahela though he was, did not spurn modern
+conveniences. Electric lights hung from the ceiling. Bottled gas
+furnished fuel for the kitchen range and there was a hot water heater.
+Al had an electric refrigerator, a large freezer and a tiled sink with
+regulation hot and cold faucets.
+
+Tammie, knowing they'd been out and would go no more, curled up on one
+of the bearskin rugs. Ted took a chicken from the refrigerator and began
+to stuff it with a dressing made of bread dough, giblets, apples and
+seasoning. It was a task he'd done often, and his thoughts wandered.
+
+Al, who'd never gone beyond the sixth grade, had a near-worshipful
+regard for education and he'd insisted that his son be educated. After
+graduating with honors from Lorton High, Ted himself realized that
+college training would be valuable. But there were other factors
+involved.
+
+With no desire to become a trapper and woodsman like his father, Ted
+wanted to stay in the Mahela. It was worthy and wonderful. Wilderness
+would always be needed, and, deep inside him, Ted saw himself running a
+grand lodge to which guests could come and partake of the benefits
+Crestwood's clients certainly found. People who came back to the
+wilderness always seemed to be coming back to the source of things and
+finding spiritual values that lay only at the source.
+
+Ted had taken a flunkey's job at Crestwood two days after he graduated.
+It did not pay as much as he might have earned elsewhere, but it was
+what he wanted and he saved as much as possible. Meanwhile, his dream
+continued to grow. The couple of hundred dollars he had put aside was a
+mere drop in the bucket compared to the--Ted had never even dared let
+himself imagine how many--thousands he needed. But he knew he would find
+a way and, above all, he wished that he could make his father know it,
+too.
+
+Ted lighted the oven, put his chicken in to roast and scrubbed potatoes
+to be baked in their jackets. He mixed biscuit dough. Since neither he
+nor Al cared for dessert, he didn't prepare any. But he did take a
+package of carrots and peas from the freezer. He remembered whimsically
+that, before they had the freezer, his father used to can dozens of
+quarts of vegetables. Dreamily he went about setting the table. As he
+did so, he noticed a man in an expensive car driving up the Lorton Road.
+
+There was a squeal of brakes as he stopped suddenly and a shriek of
+tires as he turned up the Harkness drive. He was a short man, and fat,
+but his smile was nice, although his eyes were shrewd.
+
+"Do you own this land?" he demanded.
+
+Al and Ted told him that they owned it, whereupon the short, fat man
+declared breathlessly that a diamond mine had just been discovered in
+their back yard and that he, personally, would guarantee them a hundred
+thousand dollars for the mining rights! He would give fifty thousand at
+once, and it was all right with him if they built a great resort in
+front, as long as they didn't interfere with his mine.
+
+Ted grinned ruefully as his daydream faded and he went to call his
+father to dinner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, the rising sun was only halfway down Hawkbill when Ted
+walked to his job at Crestwood. His heart lifted, as it always did when
+he saw the place. He liked to imagine that he owned it.
+
+Semi-luxurious Crestwood, the only resort in the Mahela, had
+accommodations for sixty guests under normal conditions and perhaps
+ninety if they were crowded in. It was well patronized in fishing
+season, had a sprinkling of guests who wanted to do nothing save enjoy
+the out of doors when there was neither hunting nor fishing, filled up
+again when the small game season started and was packed in the deer
+season for which the Mahela was famous. While deer hunting was on,
+Thornton turned away twice as many guests as he could accommodate.
+Afterwards, Crestwood was closed until fishing season opened again.
+
+At the far end of a spacious clearing, set back against the beeches and
+blending very well with the background, Crestwood's main lodge was a big
+log building that contained a dining hall, a kitchen, a lounge, a game
+room, an office for Thornton, quarters for the help and rooms for guests
+who preferred to remain in the lodge. To one side were ten neat log
+cabins that accommodated four guests each in normal times and six during
+deer season. The utility rooms and outbuildings were behind the main
+lodge and hidden by it and the wide driveway was of crushed stone.
+
+"Hi, Ted!"
+
+Ted turned to wait for middle-aged Nels Anderson, his co-flunkey at
+Crestwood. Neither brilliant nor subtle, but always gentle, Nels had
+been taught by a lifetime of hard knocks to appreciate the good things
+that came his way, and, as far as Nels was concerned, the best thing
+that had ever come his way was his job at Crestwood. Always a hewer of
+wood and a drawer of water, the most Nels asked was to be paid with
+reasonable regularity for his hewing and drawing. He smiled a slow
+Scandinavian smile as Ted returned his greeting.
+
+"Good morning, Nels. How are you feeling?"
+
+"Goot. And you?"
+
+"First rate. Shall we start earning our wages?"
+
+"Yah. You go down? Or me?"
+
+"I'll go. You catch the pipe."
+
+They entered the lodge. Ted ducked into Crestwood's gloomy basement,
+turned on the light and caught up a length of pipe. He and Nels were
+running water to some of the upstairs rooms. He maneuvered the pipe
+through an already drilled hole and waited for his companion to catch it
+and stab it into an elbow.
+
+Nothing happened and Ted sighed resignedly. Nels was one of those rare
+people who know enough about many things to do a passable job. He could
+run water pipes and wires, build a stone wall, shingle a roof, tend a
+sick cow or horse, fell trees, construct a root cellar and do well any
+of a few dozen more things that might need doing. But he was apt to get
+sidetracked, in which event he needed a while to wake up. Obviously he
+was sidetracked now. Then the door opened and Nels stood behind Ted.
+
+"The boss, he wants to see you."
+
+"What's he want?"
+
+"He forgot to say."
+
+"Well--"
+
+"He say right now."
+
+"Will you take this pipe?"
+
+"Oh! Yah, I take it."
+
+Nels took the pipe and Ted went back into the lobby. He knocked on the
+office door, and Carl Thornton opened it.
+
+"Come on in, Ted."
+
+The boy stepped into the spacious office. The floor was covered with a
+thick carpet. At one side was a mahogany desk upon which stood a
+typewriter. Over it were hung bookshelves. There were four cushioned
+chairs and a satiny davenport upon which the owner usually slept. In a
+wall rack were Thornton's high-powered rifle and a belt full of his
+distinctive, brass-jacketed, hand-loaded shells. Ted turned to face his
+employer.
+
+In his late thirties, Thornton was not slightly built. But there was
+about him an air of slightness that was accentuated by his quick
+movements. Thinning blond hair was artfully combed to hide a bald spot.
+His eyes were pale blue, almost icy blue, behind gold-rimmed glasses.
+The ghost of a smile haunted his lips. He had a flair for conversation
+that always made it appear as though nothing anyone else could say was
+nearly as important as what he had to offer.
+
+"I've been watching your work, Ted, and I like it."
+
+"Thanks, Mr. Thornton."
+
+"There'll be a better job pretty soon; Crestwood's going to expand."
+
+Ted's heart leaped. This was what he'd always wanted. "Thank you."
+
+"A good man," Thornton said, "is not easily come by and I've learned the
+value of one. That's why I'm putting you on a special job right now."
+
+"You are?" Ted's voice quivered eagerly.
+
+"Yes. You're a pretty good deer hunter, aren't you?"
+
+"I--I guess so."
+
+"You know of those two bucks they call Damon and Pythias?"
+
+"Everyone does."
+
+Thornton said, "I want them."
+
+"You--?"
+
+"That's right. With those two heads on the wall--" Thornton shrugged.
+"Crestwood would be mentioned in every paper in the state. If they're
+really records, there probably would be national publicity. In any
+event, they'll help bring guests here."
+
+"But--Nobody has even managed to get near those two bucks in hunting
+season."
+
+Thornton looked shrewdly at him. "But before the season?"
+
+"You mean?"
+
+"That's just what I mean. Those two bucks don't go into hiding until
+after hunters take to the woods. I'm pretty sure that anyone who knew
+what he was doing could get both of them before the season opened. How
+about it?"
+
+Ted said reluctantly, "It might be done."
+
+"Good! Take all the time you need and I'll leave the details up to you.
+If you're caught, of course you'll keep your mouth shut and I'll pay the
+fine. But I think you'll know how to go about it without getting caught.
+Deliver both bucks to Crestwood--we'll arrange those details after you
+get them--and thereafter it's up to me. Good luck."
+
+Ted heard himself saying, "No, Mr. Thornton."
+
+Thornton looked puzzled. "I don't understand."
+
+"I can't do it."
+
+"I've already told you that I'll pay your fine if you're caught."
+
+"It isn't that."
+
+"Then what is it? Does it make any difference if those bucks are shot
+now or six weeks from now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Getting them now would be violating the law."
+
+"Who doesn't violate the law? Considering the mass of laws we have, few
+people can live a single day without, intentionally or otherwise,
+running afoul of them. Have you ever looked up some of the crackpot
+laws, such as the one which states that, on Sunday, in this state, no
+horse shall wear other than a plain black harness?"
+
+"It's not that."
+
+"Ted, do you know anyone at all in the Mahela who lives up to the full
+letter of the game laws? Do you know anyone who doesn't take what he
+wants when he wants it, in season or out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"My father and I."
+
+There was an ominous silence. Thornton broke it.
+
+"It seems that I've misjudged you."
+
+"It seems you have!" Ted's anger was rising. "I'll leave now!"
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+THE THREAT
+
+
+Tramping along the Lorton Road toward his father's house, Ted told
+himself that he had been a complete fool. With a start in the only
+business that interested him, he had sacrificed everything for what
+suddenly seemed a trivial reason.
+
+Carl Thornton had spoken the truth. Those who lived in the Mahela
+thought that just living there gave them a proprietary interest in the
+game and fish that shared the wilderness with them. But, except for
+Smoky Delbert, a notorious poacher who hunted and fished for the market,
+most dwellers in the Mahela confined their poaching to killing a deer
+when they felt like having venison or catching a mess of trout when they
+thought they needed some fish for dinner. They broke the law, but as far
+as Ted knew, their chances of going to Heaven when they died were fully
+as good as his. They weren't sinners.
+
+Half inclined to turn back and tell Thornton he'd reconsidered, still
+Ted went on. It wouldn't be easy, but definitely it would be possible to
+shoot both of the great bucks before the hunters who invaded the Mahela
+when the season opened sent them into hiding. If Ted got them, or even
+promised to try to get them, he would be back in Thornton's good graces.
+
+"If I was smart," he told himself, "I'd tell Thornton I was hunting
+those bucks and not get either."
+
+He played with the tempting thought, then put it behind him and walked
+on. Nobody who called himself a man took another man's pay for doing a
+job and then failed to do it. Ted asked himself questions and tried to
+provide his own answers.
+
+Was he afraid of Loring Blade, the game warden? He didn't think so. The
+Mahela was a big country and the warden could not be everywhere at once.
+The chances were very good that anyone who knew what he was doing could
+get both bucks safely to Crestwood, where they became Thornton's
+responsibility. Besides, Thornton had said he'd pay the fine if Ted were
+caught.
+
+Did he shrink from breaking the law? Yes, of course. At the same time he
+knew positively that if he and his father were in desperate straits, if
+they had no food and no other means of getting any, he'd shoot deer or
+any other edible game he could find, regardless of whether it was in
+season or out.
+
+There seemed to be something else involved and Ted could find no precise
+bracket in which it fitted. It concerned the grouse he'd held in his
+hand, the cool morning breeze, the view from Hawkbill, his
+father--everything Ted loved and held dear.
+
+His mind was a whirlpool in which nothing at all was clear except that
+he could not shoot the two bucks for Thornton. It would be as easy to
+shoot Tammie--his lips formed a sick grin at that thought! Yesterday his
+dreams had been bright as bubbles in the sun. Today all the bubbles
+were burst. There wasn't the faintest possibility of getting a job at
+another resort for the simple reason that there was no other resort.
+
+Of course, if he left the Mahela--But he couldn't do that either.
+
+Ted was a half mile from their house when he saw Al's tobacco pouch
+lying beside the road. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.
+Obviously his father had been here--probably he'd been scouting mink
+sign along Spinning Creek and had walked back up the road--and he was
+forever losing his pouch. But somehow somebody always found it and
+brought it back to him.
+
+Ted tried to put a spring in his step and a cheerful smile on his lips.
+A man faced up to his own troubles and did not inflict them on other
+people. He tried to whistle and succeeded only in hissing.
+
+He was a hundred yards from the house when Tammie, who'd caught his
+scent, hurried to meet him. Sleek fur rippling and short ears jiggling,
+he advanced at the collie's lope, which seems so restrained and is so
+incredibly fast. Tammie came to a graceful halt in front of Ted and
+looked at him with dancing eyes.
+
+"Hi, dog! Hi, Tammie!" Ted ruffled his head with a gentle hand as Tammie
+fell in beside him. Plucking the tobacco pouch from his pocket, he gave
+it to the collie. "Here. Take it to Al."
+
+The tobacco pouch dangling by its drawstrings, Tammie streaked up the
+road. Disdaining the drive leading into the house, he cut through the
+woods and disappeared. Ted squared his shoulders, tried again to
+whistle--and succeeded. His father must be home. When Ted was working
+and Al went out, Tammie always went with him.
+
+Ted turned up the drive and was halfway to the house when Tammie came
+flying back to meet him. They went to the shed in the rear; Al would be
+working. Ted peered through the open door and his father, shaping
+another stretching board, glanced up to greet him.
+
+"Hi, Ted!"
+
+"Hello, dad!"
+
+"No work today?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+Al bent his head to hide the question in his eyes. Something had
+happened and he knew it. His voice was a little too casual as he said,
+"Figgered when Tammie fetched my tobacco pouch that he'd made up his
+mind to go 'round pickin' up after me."
+
+"No, I found it beside the road and sent Tammie with it. You should put
+a string on that pouch and tie it to your britches."
+
+"Guess I'd ought. Tammie and me took a whirl down the crick to look for
+mink sign. Must of lost my pouch on the way back."
+
+"Find any sign?"
+
+"There'll be mink on the crick this year. I can take a string of pelts
+and leave enough so there'll also be mink next year."
+
+"Now that's just swell!" Ted bit his tongue. Wanting to keep his
+troubles to himself by appearing gay and careless, he'd leaned too far
+in that direction and been over-emphatic. Al raised his head and
+searched his son's face with wonderfully gentle eyes.
+
+"Want to tell me?"
+
+"Tell you what?"
+
+"What happened to you."
+
+"Oh," Ted forced what he tried to make a casual laugh, "Thornton fired
+me."
+
+Al remained calm. "He what?"
+
+"Thornton gave me the gate, the bounce act, ye olde heave-ho. He said,
+in short, that I was never to darken his kitchen towels again."
+
+Al said, "Come off it, Ted."
+
+Suddenly Ted's misery and heartbreak were too great a burden to bear
+alone. He fought to keep his voice from quavering and his lower lip from
+trembling.
+
+"That's right. I've been fired."
+
+"Want to tell me why?" Al did not raise his voice.
+
+"I--I wouldn't shoot Damon and Pythias for Thornton."
+
+Al arched surprised brows. "Why's he want those two bucks?"
+
+"He's going to expand Crestwood. He said that if he had one or both of
+those heads to put on the wall, it would be written up in every paper in
+the state. He said they'd help bring guests."
+
+"Boy, seems to me like you went off half-cocked."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Thornton's takin' a lot for granted to think that you, or anyone, could
+get either one of those bucks. But if you wanted to hunt 'em, and if you
+did get one, 'twould do no harm to give it to him. 'Twould save your job
+for you."
+
+"That would have been different," Ted said wryly, "but that wasn't what
+he asked. He wants both bucks _before_ the season opens."
+
+"So?" Al was almost purring. "And you turned him down?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"You don't aim to change your mind?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not even to get your job back?"
+
+"Not even for that."
+
+"You're sure now?"
+
+"I'm sure."
+
+"That bein' the case," Al said, rising, "I think I'll go down to
+Crestwood and have a little talk with Mr. Thornton. You stay here with
+Tammie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Al Harkness climbed into his old pickup truck and pressed the
+starter, his thoughts went back thirty-six years. The Mahela had been
+young then, and he'd been young, and that, he'd told himself a thousand
+times since, was probably the reason why he'd also been blind. It was
+not that he'd lacked eyes, very keen eyes that could detect the skulking
+deer in its copse, the grouse in its thicket and the rabbit in its set.
+But he hadn't seen clearly what was right before his eyes.
+
+At that time, the road to Lorton had been a mud track in spring and
+fall, a dusty trace in summer and impassable in winter. Nobody had
+needed anything better. The only car even near the Mahela belonged to
+Judge Brimhall, of Lorton, and excitement ran at fever pitch when the
+respected judge drove his vehicle to Danzer, seven whole miles, without
+breaking down even once!
+
+Lorton and the Mahela itself had been almost as far apart as Lorton and
+New York were now. Even when the road was good, a traveler had needed a
+whole day to go the fifteen miles to town and back. Whoever had
+extensive business in Lorton might better figure on two days for the
+round trip. The dwellers in the woods had been inclined to sneer at the
+town folk as sissified and, in turn, were sneered at for being hicks.
+
+There'd been seven families in the wilderness; the Harknesses, the
+Delberts, two families of Staceys and three of Crawfords. All of them
+had gardens, a milk cow, a few chickens, a couple of pigs and a team of
+horses or mules. But all this was only secondary--the Mahela itself
+fulfilled most of their wants. It was a great, inexhaustible larder,
+provided by a benign Providence who had foreseen that men would rather
+hunt than work. Al remembered some of the hunts. His father, George
+Stacey and Tom Crawford had shot thirty-three deer in one day and sold
+them all in Lorton. Two days later, they shot twenty-nine more.
+
+There weren't that many deer when Al came of an age to hunt. His elders
+were at a loss to explain the scarcity, unless some mysterious plague
+had come among the animals. Never once did they think of themselves and
+their indiscriminate, year-round slaughter as the "plague." On Al's
+thirteenth birthday, he shot a buck and a doe. They were the last deer
+taken in the Mahela for the next thirteen years.
+
+It wasn't an inexhaustible larder at all, but just a place that could be
+depleted by always thoughtless and often vicious greed. Then had come
+the change.
+
+The Game Department, the Lorton paper announced, had purchased deer from
+a state that still had some. In the hope that they'd multiply and
+rebuild the vast herds that had once roamed there, twenty of them were
+to be released in the Mahela. There was to be no hunting at all until
+such time as there were sufficient deer to warrant a hunt, and game
+wardens were to enforce that regulation.
+
+It hadn't been easy. Bitterly jealous of what they considered their
+vested rights, the natives of the Mahela had resisted the game wardens.
+There had been quarrels and even a couple of shootings. But the wardens
+had won out and the deer had come back.
+
+There were as many as there'd ever been and perhaps more. Protected by
+strict and sane laws, they flourished. Seven families had all but
+exterminated the Mahela deer. Now four thousand properly regulated
+hunters a year couldn't do it, and this Al Harkness had seen.
+
+He thought of the families--still the Harknesses, the Delberts, the
+Crawfords and the Staceys, who lived in the Mahela. With the exception
+of Al and Ted, who observed the game laws to the letter, most of them
+took more than their share of the Mahela's wildlife. Smoky Delbert was
+an especially vicious poacher who belonged, and one day would land, in
+jail. But, with game wardens on constant patrol, even Smoky could no
+longer indulge in wholesale slaughter.
+
+There was, Al had always conceded, some excuse for the Crawfords and the
+Staceys. Al was the only Mahelaite who'd held on to the entire family
+acreage. Glad to raise money any way he could, the Staceys and Crawfords
+had sold theirs, all but a homesite and garden patch, and the proceeds
+were long since exhausted. Most of the men worked at day labor and their
+employment was never certain. Always struggling, there were times when
+they would have no meat at all if they did not shoot an occasional deer.
+That condition would not endure. Since all the younger people left the
+Mahela, preferably for some brightly lighted city, as soon as they
+possibly could, the Staceys and Crawfords who remained were not going to
+last forever.
+
+But if there was some excuse for them, there was none whatever for Carl
+Thornton. Comparatively wealthy, certainly he was in no danger of going
+hungry. Educated, he must understand what conservation meant. Supposedly
+intelligent, he must know that nobody at all could take what he wanted
+simply because he felt like taking it, or for his own advantage, and
+still hope to leave enough for others and for future generations. Al
+braked to a halt in Crestwood's drive and entered the lodge.
+
+Jules Crowley, Thornton's pale-faced clerk, stepped in front of him.
+"You can't come in here!"
+
+Al said, "Oh yes I can."
+
+He moved around Jules, jerked the office door open and closed it behind
+him. Thornton was sitting at his desk, going over some papers. He looked
+up. Al hesitated. Now that he was here, just what was he supposed to do?
+It would be silly to threaten Carl Thornton, and how could he report him
+to the game warden when he had broken no law? Al felt a little foolish
+and Thornton's voice was as cold as his eyes when he spoke.
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"You fired Ted?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Inefficiency."
+
+"Ted told me different. He told me you fired him because he wouldn't
+shoot those two big bucks for you."
+
+"He's a liar."
+
+Al stepped to the desk, twined his right hand in Thornton's lapel,
+lifted him to his feet and used his left hand to slap both Thornton's
+cheeks. Then he let the resort owner slump back into the chair and
+turned on his heel.
+
+"For callin' Ted a liar," he said.
+
+He stalked out, knowing as he did so that he had made a deadly enemy but
+not caring. Thornton owned Crestwood. But he was still a little man and
+sooner or later little men stumbled over big problems. As Al climbed
+back into the pickup, he almost forgot Thornton. He had something more
+important to occupy his thoughts.
+
+He had hoped mightily that, after he finished High School, Ted would go
+on to college. It didn't matter what he studied there as long as it was
+something; a Harkness would go out of the Mahela to become a man of
+parts. But Ted had not only wanted to stay in the Mahela, but also to
+start a resort there, and for almost the first time in his life Al faced
+a problem to which he saw no solution.
+
+An expert woodsman, he earned a comfortable income. Since his own wants
+were simple, there would certainly be enough left over to pay Ted's
+college expenses. But Al couldn't even imagine the vast sum of money
+needed to start a resort. He had told the truth when he said Crestwood
+cost Thornton more than he'd earned in his whole life.
+
+Al fell back on an idea that he himself had been mulling over. Hunters
+and fishermen were a varied breed, with varying tastes. Some preferred
+the comforts of Crestwood, but every season numbers of them hauled
+trailers into the Mahela or set up tents there and they did so because
+they liked that way of hunting or fishing. Not all of them wanted the
+same things and not all cared to be crowded.
+
+Driving back into his own yard, Al got out of the pickup and faced his
+son serenely. But seeing Ted's uncertain hand fall to Tammie's head, he
+grinned inwardly. The boy turned to Tammie whenever he was worried or at
+a loss.
+
+"Did you see Thornton?" Ted's voice was too casual.
+
+"I saw him."
+
+"Did--?"
+
+"No," Al told him gently. "I didn't. He's still alive and, as far as I'm
+concerned, he can stay that way. Ted, let's go up to Beech Bottom."
+
+"Swell!"
+
+Ted and Tammie got into the pickup and Al drove. He did not speak
+because he was thinking too busily to talk. A father, if he was worthy
+of being a father, showed his children the right path. But it was always
+better if he could guide them into doing their own thinking, instead of
+leading them along the path--and sometimes that called for subtle
+measures.
+
+Two miles up the road, Al came to a clearing. A little less than an
+acre, it was a jungle of yellow-topped golden rod. Here and there a
+milkweed raised its spear-shaft stem and showed its silk-filled pods to
+all who passed. In the center was an old building with all the windows
+broken and part of the roof fallen in. Sun, wind, rain and snow had
+exercised their own artistry on the unpainted boards and tinted them a
+delicate shade which no brush could possibly achieve. There was a little
+patch of summer apples and two small bucks, stretching their necks to
+get the wormy fruit, moved reluctantly away when the truck stopped.
+
+Al got out of the truck and Ted and Tammie alighted beside him. Al
+looked at the tumble-down building.
+
+"My gosh! It ain't possible!"
+
+"What isn't?"
+
+Al grinned ruefully, "Seems like yesterday I worked here."
+
+"You worked at the old Hawley logging camp?"
+
+"Yep. Chore boy. Got up at four every mornin' to feed and curry the
+horses so they'd be ready to go into the woods. You wouldn't think
+fifteen men, or fourteen men and a boy, ate and slept in that old house,
+would you?"
+
+"It's big enough."
+
+"By gosh! Seems like a person gets born, takes six breaths and gets old.
+That old house is still good, though. Those boards are really seasoned
+and I bet they last another hundred years."
+
+Ted asked without much interest, "What happened?"
+
+"Old Man Hawley sold everything 'cept that little patch when the state
+took over and made the Mahela into state forest. Jud, his son, was goin'
+to make a huntin' camp of it. But he never did and he never will. Bet
+you could buy the works for a hundred and fifty dollars."
+
+Ted almost yelled, "Dad!"
+
+"What's the matter? Bee sting you?"
+
+"No, but something else did! Dad, I'm going to buy it!"
+
+"That?" Al looked puzzled.
+
+"Don't you see?" Ted's eyes were shining and Al knew his heart was
+singing. "With more and more people coming into the Mahela every year,
+they must have more places to stay. I'm going to tear this house down
+and build a camp right here! Bet it'll rent five months out of the
+year!"
+
+"Well, I'll be jugged!" Al hoped Ted couldn't interpret his smile. "That
+_is_ an idea!"
+
+"We'll buy them all!" Ted bubbled, "with the money you were going to use
+to send me to college! There're plenty of these small plots in the
+Mahela and nobody else wants them! They can be had cheaply! Dad, it can
+be done that way!"
+
+"By gosh, Ted, it might! But it'll take a while."
+
+"I know but--What's Tammie barking at?"
+
+"One way to find out is to go see."
+
+Off in the goldenrod, Tammie barked again. They made their way to him
+and found him peering into a shallow little stream, Tumbling Run, that
+wound out of the beeches, crossed the clearing and hurried back into the
+beeches, on its way to meet Spinning Creek. In the middle of the run, a
+small gray raccoon with a trap on its left front paw did not even glance
+up. It had fought the trap fiercely and now was too spent and too weary
+to fight anything.
+
+Al's words were almost an explosion. "Smoky Delbert!"
+
+He jumped down into the creek, encircled the little raccoon's neck with
+an expert hand and used his free hand to depress the trap spring. Free,
+but not quite believing it, the little animal went exactly as far as the
+trap chain had previously let him go and then ventured two inches
+farther. Sure at last that the miracle had happened, he scuttled into
+the goldenrod. Al jerked the trap loose from its anchor.
+
+"Let's go, Ted."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"You want to buy this place. We'll go into Lorton and see Jud Hawley.
+But on the way, we'll have a little palaver with Smoky."
+
+A half hour later, Al drove his pickup into the Delbert yard, to find
+another truck there ahead of him. It belonged to Loring Blade, the
+warden, who was talking with Smoky. He turned to nod at Al and Ted.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+Al said, "I won't be but a minute, Lorin'." He held the steel trap out
+to Smoky Delbert. "This yours?"
+
+Smoky looked at him through insolent, half-closed eyes. "Nope."
+
+"You lie in your teeth! I've told you before not to set traps before
+furs are prime. I'm tellin' you again and this is the last time."
+
+"What goes on?" Blade demanded.
+
+"Nothin' you can help, Lorin'. Smoky, if I find you poachin' in the
+Mahela once more, I'm goin' to beat you within an inch of your life!"
+
+"You got any ideas along that line," Smoky remained insolent, "come
+shootin'."
+
+Al said, "I can do that, too!"
+
+
+
+
+3
+
+THE CAMP
+
+
+Sprawled on his favorite bearskin in the Harkness living room, Tammie
+dreamed a dog's good dreams and his paws twitched with excitement as he
+lived again some old adventure. Al, sitting in front of the fireplace,
+studied the bed of glowing coals within it as though they were as
+fascinating as the first coals he had ever seen. Sitting at the table
+with a pen in his hand, a pile of fresh paper on one side and a pile of
+crumpled sheets on the other, Ted was busy writing.
+
+He laid the pen down, picked up what he had just written and frowned
+over it. Making a motion to crumple this paper too, he thought better of
+it and called, "How's this, Dad? 'For Rent, furnished camp in the
+Mahela. Bunks for eight. Forty-five dollars a week in small game season,
+sixty in deer season. Available for season. Ted Harkness, R.D. 2,
+Lorton.'"
+
+Al shrugged. "Says 'bout everythin' you got to say."
+
+"I don't know." Ted's frown deepened. "'Bunks for eight,' it says. If a
+bunch of deer hunters take the place, they may bring twelve or sixteen.
+Do you think I should say, 'Bring extra cots for more than eight?'"
+
+"Mighty important point," Al said gravely, "but do you figure you got to
+throw out that much sign?
+
+"If I was readin' that and wanted to rent a camp and saw 'bunks for
+eight,' I'd calc'late that there wasn't bunks for ten or sixteen. I'd
+figger that, if I brought more than eight, I'd best bring somethin' for
+'em to sleep on."
+
+"If I say 'accommodations for eight,' and a bigger party wanted to take
+the camp, they might pass it up."
+
+"'Bunks' is the word," Al pronounced. "Why it's pra'tically liter-choor.
+City people are always gettin' accommodations. Might help rent your camp
+if they knew they was goin' to sleep on bunks."
+
+"That's a point," Ted agreed. He continued to frown thoughtfully. "Now
+this 'available for season,' do you think I should say at ten per cent
+discount?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+"But doesn't everybody do that?"
+
+"Everybody 'cept horse traders, and you can always do your horse tradin'
+when and if you have to. But I don't think you're goin' to rent for the
+season."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Al shrugged. "Figger it out by yourself. How many city people can take a
+whole season just to go huntin'? Most they get is a couple of weeks or
+so."
+
+"That's right, too. Do you think I should say, 'deer and small game
+abundant'?"
+
+"I wouldn't. Nobody'd come into the Mahela 'thout havin' some idea they
+could find game here and there's another point."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"You're tryin' to build up a business, and the more repeat business you
+can get, the less it'll cost to get it. Promise too much and you might
+drive business away. Some people, readin' about over-plenty game, might
+expect a flock of grouse behind every tree and a ten-point buck in every
+swale and be mad if they didn't find it. Let 'em do their own lookin'."
+
+"I was thinking of hiring out as a guide."
+
+"Wouldn't put that in either. Some people want guides and some don't.
+Anybody who rents your camp and wants a guide will ask you where to find
+one. Then you can dicker."
+
+"Do you think I'm asking too much money?"
+
+"Nope. Chances are that you won't get less than six in any party. Split
+the cost amongst 'em and it won't break any one. Your prices are fair."
+
+Ted lost himself in his literary effort. "It doesn't seem very
+forceful."
+
+"Land o'goshen!" Al's eyes glinted with amusement. "You're tryin' to get
+information across, not writin' a speech! How many papers you crumpled
+so far?"
+
+"Well," Ted looked at the pile of discarded papers beside him and
+grinned, "quite a few. You really think this is all right?"
+
+"A masterpiece," Al answered solemnly. "Mail it afore you change your
+mind again."
+
+Ted folded his paper, wrote a short letter to the effect that he wanted
+his ad to run in the classified section, wrote a check, put all three in
+an envelope and addressed it to a leading daily newspaper in a city from
+which the Mahela drew numerous hunters. Tammie trotted beside him as he
+ran down to the mailbox, put his letter in and raised the red flag to
+let Bill Parker, their rural carrier, know there was mail to pick up.
+He ran back to the house.
+
+_"Br-r!_ It's cold!"
+
+"The jackets in the closet," Al observed drily, "are not there because
+they look pretty."
+
+Ted said meekly, "Yes, Dad."
+
+He re-seated himself at the table and took up his pen. The first hunting
+season, for woodcock, opened next week. Two weeks later, squirrels,
+cottontails and ruffed grouse became legal game and the season ran for a
+month. During the last week of small game season, black bears could be
+shot. Then everything else was closed and hunting wound up with the
+three-week deer season.
+
+Ted calculated carefully. There were six weeks of the small game season.
+If he rented his camp throughout at forty-five dollars a week, it would
+give him a net return of two hundred and seventy dollars. Three weeks of
+deer season would add another hundred and eighty, or a total of four
+hundred and fifty. Ted consulted his expense records.
+
+Jud Hawley had sold them the land with the old building on it for a
+hundred and fifty dollars and Al and Ted had torn down the old building
+and rebuilt it. Just the same, expenses had mounted with incredible
+speed. Al had all the tools, but it was necessary to buy nails. The
+window casings Al had fashioned, but the glass that went into them cost
+money. They'd had to buy a secondhand cooking range and a heating stove
+and enough table and cooking ware to serve many people. Bedding had been
+an expensive item, and composition shingles for both the roof and outer
+walls had cost a great deal.
+
+Economizing as much as possible and hiring no labor, the camp had still
+cost six hundred and fifteen dollars. However, the old building had
+been a huge place and there was enough lumber left over to build
+another, smaller camp as soon as they acquired another building site.
+Ted nibbled the end of his pen.
+
+"We'll be in the clear on this one before next hunting season; then
+everything it brings in will be pure gravy."
+
+"How do you figger it?"
+
+"There's six weeks of small game hunting and three of deer season. If
+the camp is rented continuously, it will bring in four hundred and fifty
+dollars. Then, when fishing opens--"
+
+"If," Al broke in, "is a right fancy word. Might be a good idea to rent
+your camp 'fore you spend the rent money."
+
+"It might at that," Ted said meekly, "and I forgot to charge against it
+the fifteen dollars the ad's costing."
+
+"Charge it," Al advised, "and get this one thing straight. There's no
+such thing as 'pure gravy.' What a body gets, he works for. What he
+don't work for, he don't get. You started the ball rollin', but it will
+stop if you don't keep it rollin'."
+
+"What do you suggest I do?"
+
+"Just what you are doin', but don't get cocky about it. You've made a
+start, but it's a small start that stacks up against a big job. See how
+things work out. If they come 'round like I think they will, this camp
+will make money. But it won't be your money. It belongs to the job
+you've set yourself. Build another camp--and another and another, until
+you've got as many as you can handle. Go on from there."
+
+"Go on?"
+
+"You started out," Al reminded him, "to own a place like Crestwood."
+
+"That will take years!"
+
+"Did you expect to get it in a week?"
+
+"Well--No."
+
+"Good, on account you won't. You'll need years. Then, after you finally
+get what you want, or somethin' close to it, all the people who set
+'round on their hunkers while you worked will still be settin' 'round
+tellin' each other how lucky you are."
+
+Ted grinned, then yawned and stretched. "Gosh! All this heavy
+philosophy's making me tired!"
+
+"What do you think your bed's for?"
+
+"You get the best ideas!"
+
+"Oh, I'm the smart one!" Al smiled and filled his pipe. "Catch yourself
+some shut-eye. There's work to be done come mornin'."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, with Al driving and Tammie on the floor in front of
+Ted, they started back toward the camp they had built. The lazy sun,
+reluctant to get out of bed, made a splash of gold only on the very tip
+of Hawkbill. The rest of the wilderness was a deep-shadowed green, with
+overtones of gray. A doe danced across the road in front of them and
+stopped to look back over her shoulder at the passing pickup. They saw
+two more does, then a buck--and Al stepped suddenly on the gas.
+
+Spurting ahead, the old truck still missed by a wide margin a lean
+coyote that was running a scant twenty feet behind the buck. Tammie rose
+and bristled. Ted held him down. The collie was fast, but nothing except
+a greyhound was fast enough to catch a coyote. Visible for only fleeting
+seconds, this one disappeared in the forest. Failing to run the coyote
+down, Al stopped his truck.
+
+"Doggone! Of all times to be without a rifle!"
+
+"It looked to me as though he was chasing that buck," Ted observed.
+
+Al shook his head. "Just followin' it; one coyote couldn't kill a grown
+buck. But he can and will do a lot of damage 'mongst the small game.
+I'll have to nail that critter's scalp to the wall soon's I can. Let's
+have a look."
+
+They got out and examined the tracks in the dusty road. Al made careful
+observations of his own. He went a little ways into the forest and came
+back to the truck.
+
+"Looks like he's been crossin' here quite a few times. I'll fetch the
+rifle tomorrow mornin', on the chanst I'll nail him. If I don't, I'd
+best string some traps. Can't have coyotes in the Mahela."
+
+"We sure can't."
+
+Without completely understanding his father's bitter lesson--seeing his
+beloved wilderness all but denuded of game by thoughtless or greedy
+hunters and built back through sound conversation--Ted knew only that Al
+had an almost ferocious hatred for destructive elements wherever they
+were found. Therefore, the coyote could not be tolerated. Ted's eyes
+roved up Hawkbill, and the cool wind felt good on his face. When they
+mounted a hill, he strove for and caught a glimpse of the burned
+mountain behind Hawkbill. Al saw and interpreted his look.
+
+"They're there all right, and it's my bet they'll be there after deer
+season ends."
+
+"Not both of 'em," Ted asserted. "I'm going to nail one or the other."
+
+"Which one you aim to get? Damon? Or Pythias?"
+
+"Either will satisfy. How do you tell 'em apart?"
+
+"I imagine there'd be some small differences if a man was close. But on
+a far look, I can't tell which is which. They're alike as two peas in a
+pod. All I'm sure of is that I never saw bigger bucks."
+
+Ted said smugly, "Either should be as much advertising for the
+Harknesses as it could be for Crestwood."
+
+"Hadn't you ought to get it first?" Al asked wryly. "Well, here we are
+again."
+
+To the vast delight and relief of a colony of chipmunks that were snugly
+at home beneath it, the Harknesses had built their new camp on the site
+of the old. However, they had done so to save hauling lumber and because
+the old foundation was so solid; any benefits accruing to the chipmunks
+were merely incidental. The new camp was a one-story structure,
+twenty-six feet long by eighteen wide.
+
+The exterior, if less than magnificent, did promise comfort. The windows
+were small, consisting of four panes each, and set well back in their
+casings. Two tin chimneys, one for each stove, protruded well above the
+roof. The shingled walls and roof gave assurance that no cold winds
+could creep in and there was a covered porch. Probably not so much as
+one hunter would ever sit on it, but it did provide a place for storing
+wood and keeping it dry. The surrounding goldenrod had been crushed and
+scattered and the truck had made its own path in.
+
+Al drew up in front of the door and Tammie leaped out to sniff at the
+various cracks and crevices the chipmunks used in their comings and
+goings. Al and Ted went inside.
+
+In the center of the one room, not too close to the heating stove, was a
+long wooden table, with benches on either side. Convenient to it was a
+built-in cupboard, one end of which contained tableware and dishes.
+Running along the wall, the other half of the cupboard held skillets,
+pans and kettles. Nearby was the cooking stove, with cabinets for food
+storage and a sturdy table for the cook's use. At the other end of the
+building, as far as possible from both stoves, were the bunks. Scattered
+along the walls were two secondhand davenports and five chairs that had
+seen their best days but would still offer comfort to anyone who'd been
+hiking the hills all day.
+
+Al surveyed the place critically. "Not much like Crestwood."
+
+Ted teased, "It is kind of ramshackle."
+
+"Ramshackle!" Al bristled. "Why you young whipper-snapper! This is as
+good-built a camp as--"
+
+"There you are!" Ted grinned. "If you had a choice, would you stay here
+or at Crestwood?"
+
+"Why here," Al grumbled. "I never did go for that fancy stuff."
+
+"And neither do a lot of other hunters. When they go out, they'd as soon
+be in the woods. Besides, the prices here aren't much like Crestwood's,
+either. In deer season, Thornton's cheapest room is fifteen dollars a
+day. We could rent twenty camps like this if we had 'em."
+
+"And we won't even rent this'n 'thout we finish it. Now let's do some
+figgerin'."
+
+At the kitchen end of the camp, they had built a wooden stand and in it
+placed the tub from a large kitchen sink. There was an overflow pipe
+that led to a septic tank beneath the floor of the camp itself; thus it
+wouldn't freeze. Al scratched his head.
+
+"My figgerin's all done."
+
+"It is?"
+
+"Yup, and it figgers out the same's it always does. If we want water in
+here, we'll have to work to put it in. Get your boots on."
+
+"Yes, boss."
+
+Ted donned rubber boots and they went out. Tammie, who had been having
+an exciting time trying to catch a chipmunk that insisted on poking its
+nose out of a crevice, wagged his tail and ran to join them. A doe that
+had come to the apple trees stamped an apprehensive foot and drifted
+slowly into the forest. The two workers took a pick and shovel from the
+truck, and Al led the way to a little knoll.
+
+On the very top of the knoll was a seepage of water that sent a tricklet
+into Tumbling Run. Green grass, rather than goldenrod, lined its length
+and at no place was the runlet more than four inches wide or two deep.
+Never in Al's memory had it been more or less; the spring provided a
+constant flow. Even in coldest weather, the runlet never froze, and its
+banks were always free of snow. It was a favorite drinking place for
+deer that found other water icebound.
+
+Al asked, "Can you think of any more excuses for deep thinkin'?"
+
+"Not even one."
+
+"Me neither," Al said mournfully, "so I guess we can start the workin'
+part. Do you want the pick or the shovel?"
+
+"Is there a choice?"
+
+"Could be, but here's the shovel and you might as well dig."
+
+Ted sunk his shovel point deep into the wet earth and scooped out a
+chunk of soggy earth. Ice-cold, muddy water at once filled the hole and
+Ted scooped again. He made a wry face.
+
+"This is like shoveling glue!"
+
+"Case you ever get a job in a glue factory, you'll know how to shovel
+it," Al soothed. "We got to get down anyway three feet."
+
+"I'll persevere, but I know now why you wanted the pick.
+
+"Who's the brains of this outfit?"
+
+"Obviously you are."
+
+"There ain't any real need for a pick." Al grinned. "Wet ground don't
+have to be loosened. I'll go snake in some wood."
+
+Al left and Tammie frisked beside him. Both got into the truck, and Al
+drove across the clearing into the woods. Then there came the sound of
+his ax ringing on dead wood.... An hour later he was back. The pickup's
+box was filled with wood and Al dragged a log that he had chained to the
+truck. He left the wood beside the camp and, with Tammie sitting proudly
+in Ted's accustomed place, drove back for another load.
+
+Ted continued to deepen the spring. It was cold, dirty work, but it was
+a good idea and certainly it would make the camp more comfortable. The
+spring must be made deep enough to form a pool. Then its present
+overflow would be plugged, diverted into some secondhand pipe they'd
+already bought and led into the kitchen sink. Al thought there was
+sufficient fall so no pump would be necessary and the water would force
+itself through the pipe. Thus the cabin would be assured of a continuous
+flow of fresh, pure water. In winter, when the camp would have no
+occupants, it would be necessary only to pull the pipe or plug it and so
+send the overflow back into its original course.
+
+Al returned with a second load of wood, dumped it and came up to see how
+Ted was doing. Tammie sniffed at the muddy pool, then promptly jumped
+into it. He climbed out, shook himself and sent a roily spray flying in
+all directions.
+
+Ted ducked and sputtered, "For Pete's sake, dog!"
+
+Al grinned. "He thinks you need a bath."
+
+Ted glanced down at his mud-spattered boots and clothing. "Maybe I do.
+Is this deep enough?"
+
+"Let's have the shovel."
+
+Ted stood aside while Al took the implement. An old hand at this sort of
+thing, he probed expertly into corners that Ted had missed and lifted
+out shovelfuls of mud without splashing his clothes at all. Ten minutes
+later he leaned on the shovel and inspected the spring, which in its
+present stage of construction was a muddy pool, four feet square by a
+little more than three deep, with the overflow still going down its
+natural channel.
+
+"That'll do," Al decided. "Now for the plumbin'."
+
+He caught up a length of pipe, walked to the apple trees, inserted his
+pipe in a crotch and bent it into an 'L.' He bent it again, so that one
+end formed a gooseneck, and carried his pipe into the cabin. Al
+maneuvered one end through an already drilled hole in the floor, hung
+the gooseneck over the sink and used a metal clamp to fasten his pipe to
+the wall.
+
+Ted marveled. His father had measured nothing, but the bent pipe fitted
+perfectly and the straight half of the 'L' lay flat on the ground
+beneath the cabin.
+
+Ted asked,
+
+"What now?"
+
+"Let's eat."
+
+"Most sensible idea I've heard all day."
+
+They ate the sandwiches and drank the coffee they'd brought along while
+Tammie, sitting hopefully near, expertly caught and gobbled the crusts
+they tossed him. Then the two went back to work.
+
+Taking a bit of soap from his pocket, Al soaped the threads on another
+length of pipe; filling the threads, the soap would prevent leaks. The
+two "plumbers" then fitted this section into the pipe that protruded
+beneath the cabin and continued with additional lengths until they were
+within five feet of the spring.
+
+Al cut that five-foot length off with a hack saw. He plugged the cut end
+with a piece of wood, started at a point about a foot below the top of
+the knoll and used the flat of his ax to drive the plugged section of
+pipe through so that it emerged a foot below the surface of the spring.
+He screwed the short length into the already laid pipe and straightened.
+
+"Now we're diggin' where there's taters!" he said cheerfully.
+
+Catching up the shovel, he closed the spring's outlet with dirt and mud.
+Then he rolled up his right sleeve, reached into the water and pulled
+the wooden plug out. A second time he straightened, grinning. "If it
+don't work, it's a sign we did it wrong. Let's go see."
+
+They re-entered the cabin and stood expectantly near the sink. For a
+moment nothing happened. Then a series of choking gurgles and a rush of
+air came through the gooseneck. This was followed by a muddy trickle
+that subsided to a few drops. Then there was a violent surge of water
+that leveled off to a steady flow. Al and Ted looked triumphantly at
+each other.
+
+"It works!" Al said.
+
+"Running water yet!" Ted exulted, "Even if it is muddy!"
+
+"It'll clear itself in a few hours."
+
+"Don't you think we should have a faucet on this gooseneck?"
+
+Al shook his head. "Not in cold weather. It don't freeze 'cause it runs
+fast. Come spring, we may tie a faucet onto it."
+
+"What do we do now?"
+
+"Go home. It's quittin' time."
+
+Ted was surprised to find that long evening shadows were slanting across
+the valleys. They had worked hard, and perhaps that had made the day
+seem so short. Only when they climbed back into the pickup for the ride
+home did he realize that he was very tired. He tickled Tammie's silken
+ears.
+
+"Tomorrow's another day," he murmured.
+
+"Yep," Al agreed somberly, "and another day brings more work. Reckon
+I'll take after that coyote. He's got to be caught. You want to saw
+wood?"
+
+"Sure thing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Early the next morning, Al let Ted and Tammie off at the camp and turned
+back, with traps and rifle, to get on the trail of the marauding coyote.
+While the collie renewed his acquaintance with the chipmunks, Ted laid a
+chunk of wood in the sawbuck and sawed off a twelve-inch length. He
+sawed another ... and worked until noon. After lunch, he started
+splitting the wood he had sawed. It was the right way to do things. If
+hunters cut their own wood, they might injure valuable trees.
+
+Evening shadows were long again when Al came to pick him up. "Get your
+coyote?" Ted greeted his father.
+
+"No, but I will. I found where he's runnin' and I put traps in the right
+places. See you got a sizable pile of wood."
+
+"I haven't been loafing."
+
+"Not much anyhow."
+
+Ted said tiredly, "What a refreshing sense of humor my old pappy's got."
+
+They turned into the driveway of their own house, to see Loring Blade's
+pickup truck already there and the game warden waiting. With him was
+Jack Callahan, Sheriff of Mahela County.
+
+Al's voice was weighted with surprise as he welcomed them. "Hi, Lorin'.
+'Lo, Jack. Been waitin' long?"
+
+"Not very long," Loring Blade said. "We figured you'd be in about now.
+We have to ask you some questions, Al."
+
+"Well, come in and ask."
+
+They entered the house and Ted snapped on the lights in the living room.
+He started into the kitchen to prepare supper. Al swung to face their
+guests.
+
+"Ask away," he invited them.
+
+"We came to find out," said Jack Callahan, "what you can tell us about
+the shooting of Smoky Delbert."
+
+
+
+
+4
+
+THE FUGITIVE
+
+
+The words brought Ted to a shocked halt, just as he was entering the
+kitchen. He turned to stare in disbelief and Tammie, sensing that
+something was wrong, searched his master's face as though this would
+show him what he must do. Failing to find any guiding sign, the collie
+turned toward the two strangers. He did nothing and would do nothing
+until Ted or Al told him to. But he was ready for any part he must take.
+
+In his turn, Ted looked to his father for a clue and found none.
+Whatever Al might feel, he was successfully hiding it, and his voice was
+neither raised nor lowered when he spoke.
+
+"Somebody finally got him, huh?"
+
+Jack Callahan challenged, "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Where you been the past twenty or twenty-five years, Jack? Smoky's been
+askin' for it at least that long."
+
+Callahan's voice was hard as ice and as brittle. "You didn't answer my
+question."
+
+"So I didn't, but I will. I know nothin' 'bout who might've shot Smoky,
+but I can think of lots of reasons why."
+
+"Is this yours?"
+
+Callahan's hand dipped into his pocket and came up bearing Al's
+distinctive tobacco pouch. Ted gasped. His father was unmoved.
+
+"Yep. But I haven't seen it for two weeks or more."
+
+"That's true!" Ted asserted. "He hasn't had it for at least that long!"
+
+Al said quietly, "Stay out of this, boy."
+
+"You needn't stay out." Callahan swung toward Ted. "Was your father with
+you today?"
+
+"Well--no."
+
+"Where was he?"
+
+"He was out hunting a coyote."
+
+A note of triumph in his voice, Callahan turned again to Al. "By any
+chance, a two-legged coyote?"
+
+Al said disgustedly, "Don't be a fool!"
+
+"Did you have your rifle with you?"
+
+"What would you carry if you was huntin' a coyote? A pocketful of
+pebbles?"
+
+"Can you account for your actions of today?"
+
+"Yep. Crossed the nose of Hawkbill, went into Coon Valley, climbed that
+to its head, swung behind Burned Mountain, crossed the Fordham Road and
+come back by way of Fiddlefoot Crick."
+
+"Can you prove all this?"
+
+"Sure!" Al snorted. "I'll get you an affy-davit from a couple of crows
+that saw me."
+
+"That is your tobacco pouch?"
+
+"I've already said it is."
+
+"That pouch," and again Callahan's voice rose in triumph, "was found not
+six feet from where Smoky fell!"
+
+"So?"
+
+"Al, I'd hate to have to get tough with you."
+
+"Don't think you'd better try it."
+
+"Loring heard you threaten to shoot Delbert."
+
+"And I also," Loring Blade broke in, "heard Smoky threaten to shoot Al.
+There's more than one side to this, Jack, and suppose you simmer down?"
+
+"I'm in charge here!"
+
+"But you're getting nowhere. Al, will you talk to me?"
+
+"I'll tell you what I can, Lorin'."
+
+"If you had anything to do with this, tell your story now. I don't hold
+with shooting, but certainly I never held with Smoky Delbert. I, for
+one, am willing to believe that, no matter how it happened or who he
+met, Smoky raised his rifle first. I've known him a long while."
+
+"But you never jailed him."
+
+"Only because," the warden said, "I could never catch him. He was crafty
+as he was mean. But he's still a human being."
+
+"Could be some argument 'bout that," Al murmured. "Lorin', where was
+Smoky shot?"
+
+"Coon Valley," the warden answered reluctantly. "Almost beside those
+three big sycamores near Glory Rock."
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No, but he probably would be if he hadn't dragged himself to the
+Fordham Road. Bill Layton, passing in his logging truck, found him and
+took him into the hospital at Lorton."
+
+"Is he goin' to die?"
+
+"He's in a bad way."
+
+"Has he talked?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"How about the bullet?"
+
+"It went right through him; we couldn't find it."
+
+"How do you know he was shot near them three sycamores in Coon Valley?"
+
+"Bill told us where he picked him up. Jack and I went up there to see
+what we could find and," the warden shrugged, "the back trail wasn't
+hard to follow. Smoky was hit hard."
+
+"And you found my tobacco pouch?"
+
+"That's right, Al. It was within a few feet of where Smoky fell."
+
+"How do you know he fell there?"
+
+Loring Blade shrugged again. "He laid a while before he started to drag
+himself out. There was plenty of evidence."
+
+"Now here's a point, Lorin'. I've already said I was in Coon Valley
+today. Suppose I had my pouch, couldn't I have lost it when I passed the
+sycamores?"
+
+"You could have."
+
+"What time did you go up Coon Valley?" Jack Callahan broke in.
+
+"'Twas before eight. I started early."
+
+"Then you crossed back to the Fordham Road?"
+
+"Don't try to snarl my words up," Al warned. "I've already said that I
+went up Coon Valley to its head and crossed back of Burned Mountain to
+the Fordham Road."
+
+"But you heard no shooting?"
+
+Al seemed a little contemptuous. "You ever make that crossin'?"
+
+"I asked you a question."
+
+"And I asked you one. Did you ever cross that way?"
+
+"No." Put on the defensive, Callahan sulked.
+
+"Try it," Al advised shortly. "It's a right smart hop. There's places
+back in there where you couldn't hear a cannon fired in Coon Valley."
+
+"Look, Al," Loring Blade pleaded, "I'll ask you again to tell your
+straight story. I'm sure there has to be more to it than this. I know
+you too well to think you'd shoot Delbert or anyone else down in cold
+blood. Won't you help me to help you?"
+
+Al said doggedly, "I've told my story. Seems like there's an easy way to
+settle this whole works."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Delbert ain't dead. When he talks, he'll tell who shot him."
+
+"There's no guarantee that Delbert will ever talk."
+
+Jack Callahan said, "I'm afraid I'll have to take you in, Al."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"Suspicion. If Delbert lives, the charge will be assault with a deadly
+weapon. If he dies--" Callahan shrugged.
+
+Al looked aside, and the fierce storms that could rage in his usually
+gentle eyes were raging now. Ted shivered, and then Al calmed.
+
+"All right, Jack. If that's the way it must be."
+
+"You won't resist?"
+
+"I promise I won't raise a hand against you or Lorin'."
+
+Loring Blade said relievedly, "That's a help, Al. Thanks."
+
+"Is there any reason," Al asked, "why a body can't eat first? Ted and
+me've been out sinst early mornin' with only a snack in between."
+
+Loring Blade said agreeably, "No reason at all, Al." Callahan glared at
+the warden. Al smiled faintly.
+
+"Have a bite with us, Lorin'?"
+
+"I'll be glad to."
+
+"How about you, Jack?"
+
+"Look here, Al, if you try anything--"
+
+"I've give my word that I'll raise no hand to either of you."
+
+"See that you keep your word."
+
+"Leave that to me. Will you eat with us?"
+
+Callahan answered reluctantly, "I'll stay."
+
+"Then Ted and me'll be rustlin' a bite."
+
+Silent, but seething inwardly, Al joined Ted in the kitchen. Knowing
+something was amiss, but not what he could do about it, Tammie lay down
+woefully on his bearskin rug. Wanting to speak, but not knowing what to
+say, Ted looked dully at his father's face. It was unreadable.
+
+Finally Al said, "We'll all feel better when we've had a bite to eat,
+and I for one am hungry."
+
+He lighted a burner and stooped to take a kettle from beneath the sink.
+Ted stared his astonishment. Al had the huge kettle, the one they used
+when there were ten or more hunters staying with them. Half-filling it
+with water, he put it over the burner to heat and took an unopened peck
+of potatoes from their storage place. Industriously he began to peel
+them.
+
+Ted said, "Dad--"
+
+"We'll need plenty," Al broke in. "S'pose you get about four more
+parcels of pork chops out and start 'em cookin?"
+
+"But, Dad--"
+
+"Let's not," Al whirled almost savagely, "waste our time talkin'. Let's
+just do it."
+
+Sick with fear, Ted did as directed. He and Al froze pork chops six to a
+package, and three were all a hungry man wanted. Four more packages
+meant that they would cook thirty pork chops, and what were any four
+men--even four ravenous men--to do with them? Ted got four more packages
+out and began breaking them apart. He stole a sidewise glance at his
+father. Had this sudden, terrible accusation unseated Al's reason? Ted
+put the still frozen pork chops into two of their biggest skillets and
+began thawing them over burners. Loring Blade came into the kitchen.
+
+"Can I help?"
+
+Al said, "Reckon not, Lorin'."
+
+"My gosh! You're making enough for an army!"
+
+"Might's well have plenty. Ted, give me another sack of biscuit mix."
+
+Ted's head whirled. He licked dry lips and looked at the two pans of
+biscuits Al had already prepared. Loring Blade turned away and in that
+instant when they were unobserved, Al shook a warning head. Ted took
+another sack of biscuit mix from the cupboard while cold fear gnawed at
+him as a dog gnaws a bone. If there was some idea behind this madness,
+what could it possibly be? Al was preparing enough food for a dozen men.
+
+Ted turned to his skillets full of sputtering pork chops while Al tested
+the boiling potatoes with a fork.
+
+"Most done," he commented. "How you comin'?"
+
+"Another five minutes."
+
+"Guess I can drain the spuds."
+
+He drained them into the sink, shook them, and added a generous hand
+full of salt and a bit of pepper. He shook the kettle of potatoes again
+to mix the seasoning thoroughly. Then he put them on the table and
+pushed the hot coffee pot to a warming burner. While Ted took their
+biggest platter from the cupboard and began forking pork chops onto it,
+Al slipped in to set four places at the table.
+
+"Ready?"
+
+"All ready."
+
+"Guess we can eat, then."
+
+Leaving the potatoes in their huge kettle, he carried it in and put it
+in the center of the table. Ted brought the platter of pork chops and
+returned to the kitchen for coffee. Al passed him with two plates of
+biscuits.
+
+"Chow."
+
+Jack Callahan, who had been so grim and unrelenting and now seemed to
+regret it, smiled.
+
+"Whew! Are four of us going to eat that?"
+
+"If we can."
+
+"I'll do my darndest."
+
+"You're s'posed to."
+
+"Doggonit, Al," Callahan said plaintively, "don't blame me for this. I
+have a job and I intend to do it!"
+
+"I know."
+
+"There's nothing personal."
+
+"I know that, too."
+
+"Do you have to be so gloomy?"
+
+"What'd you do if you was on your way to jail? Turn handsprings?"
+
+Loring Blade grinned mirthlessly, speared two pork chops and added a
+generous helping of potatoes. He broke a hot biscuit and lathered it
+with butter. The game warden began to eat.
+
+"Seen Damon and Pythias lately?" he asked companionably.
+
+"Nope."
+
+Loring Blade looked down at his plate. Under ordinary circumstances they
+could have made easy conversation. But circumstances weren't ordinary;
+the shadow of one in trouble cast its pall over the other three. The
+game warden ate a pork chop and some of his potatoes. Then, unable to
+refrain from talking about that which loomed so largely, he burst out,
+"Al, for pete's sake! If you have anything to say, say it! If you shot
+in self-defense, I, for one, will buy the story. There's a way out if
+you'll take it!"
+
+"I've told my story, Lorin'."
+
+"You refuse to admit you shot Delbert?"
+
+"I didn't shoot him."
+
+Callahan said, "There's evidence to the contrary."
+
+"So?"
+
+Ted toyed with a single pork chop, one potato, and almost gagged. He
+took a drink of hot coffee and found it stimulating. Tammie, lying on
+the bearskin, looked questioningly at his master. Loring Blade pushed
+his plate back.
+
+"I'm full. Told you you cooked far too much."
+
+"No harm's done."
+
+"We'll help you clean up."
+
+"Right nice of you."
+
+Al put the uneaten pork chops, a great pile of them, in two covered
+dishes and placed them in the refrigerator. He covered the kettle of
+potatoes and left them on the table, and put the biscuits in the
+breadbox. Ted washed the dishes and Loring Blade dried them.
+
+While he worked Ted brought some order to his scattered thoughts. His
+father was in trouble, serious trouble, and nothing mattered now except
+getting him out. That meant the services of a skilled attorney and they
+had little money. But he could sell the camp for at least as much as it
+had cost and probably he could get a job in Lorton. Ted washed the last
+plate and Loring Blade dried it. There was an uneasy interval during
+which nobody did or said anything because nobody knew what to do or say.
+
+Finally Loring Blade asked, "Are you ready, Al?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Shall we go?"
+
+"Guess so."
+
+Ted said firmly, "I'm following you in. I'm going to see John McLean
+tonight. He's a good lawyer."
+
+There was a ring of command in Al's voice, "No, Ted!"
+
+"But--"
+
+"Don't come to Lorton tonight! Stay right here!"
+
+Ted said reluctantly, "If that's what you want--"
+
+"That's what I do want. This thing's too harebrained already. No use
+makin' it more so by actin' without thinkin'."
+
+"I'll come in in the morning."
+
+"If you think best. So long for now."
+
+The door opened and closed and they were gone. Ted heard Loring Blade
+start his pickup and watched the red taillight bobbing down their
+driveway. They reached the Lorton Road and Loring Blade gunned his
+motor.
+
+Ted sank dully into a chair and Tammie came to sit comfortingly beside
+him. The big dog shoved his slender muzzle into Ted's cupped hand, and,
+getting no response, he laid his sleek head on his master's knee. The
+measured ticking of the clock on the mantel seemed like the measured
+ringing of tiny bells. Ted fastened his gaze on it, and because he had
+to do something, he watched the clock's black hands creep slowly around.
+Like everything else, he thought, time was a relative thing. Fifteen
+minutes seemed no more than an eyewink when one was busy, but it was an
+age when you could do nothing except struggle with your own tortured
+thoughts.
+
+Another fifteen minutes passed, and another, and an exact hour had
+elapsed when Tammie sprang up and trotted to the door. He stood, head
+raised and tail wagging. Ted opened the door.
+
+"Dad!"
+
+"'Fraid I got to move, Ted. Help me pack all thet grub we cooked for
+supper, will you? Hills'll be full of posse men for the next few days
+and I can't be startin' any fires."
+
+"But--"
+
+"I kept my promise," Al assured him, "and all I promised was that I
+wouldn't raise a hand 'gainst Lorin' or Jack. Never did say I wouldn't
+jump out of the truck when it slowed for Dead Man's Curve."
+
+"They'll be on your trail!"
+
+"Not right away, they won't. I went into the woods when I took off and
+they're lookin' for me there." He grinned briefly. "Callahan found me.
+'Come out or I'll shoot!' he said. I didn't come out and he shot. Hope
+the beech tree he thought was me don't mind."
+
+"You could have run from here if you were going to run anyhow!"
+
+"When I run," Al Harkness said, "nobody 'cept me gets in the way of any
+bullets I might draw. Think I want 'em shootin' up you or Tammie?"
+
+Al laid a canvas pack sack on the kitchen table. While Ted wrapped the
+cooked pork chops in double thicknesses of waxed paper and the excess
+biscuits in single, his father spooned the potatoes into glass quart
+jars and mashed them down. He packed everything into the rucksack and
+added a package of coffee, one of tea, some salt and a few
+miscellaneous items. Donning his hunting jacket, he shouldered the pack.
+Filling two pockets with matches, he slid two unopened boxes of
+cartridges into another. Finally he strung a belt ax and hunting knife
+on a leather belt, strapped it around his middle and took his rifle from
+its rack.
+
+"Don't try to find me, Ted."
+
+"What shall I say if they come?" Ted whispered.
+
+"Tell the truth and say I was here. They'll find it out anyhow."
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Lay in the hills 'til somethin' turns up. Can't do nothin' else now."
+
+"Dad, don't go!" Ted pleaded. "Stay and face it out. It's the best way."
+
+"It might have been," Al agreed, "and I was most tempted to go clear in.
+But it ain't any more."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Lorin' had his radio on; listened on the way down. Smoky Delbert come
+to and talked. He named me as the man who shot him and said I shot from
+ambush! Be seein' you, Ted."
+
+
+
+
+5
+
+COON VALLEY
+
+
+Tammie whined uneasily and Ted woke with a start. He glanced at the
+clock on the mantel and saw that it read twenty minutes past five. The
+last time he had looked, he remembered, the clock had said half past
+two. Obviously he'd fallen asleep in the chair where he'd been waiting
+for someone to come or something to happen. No one had come, but they
+were coming now. On the Lorton Road, Ted heard the cars that Tammie had
+detected twenty seconds earlier.
+
+He got to his feet and looked out into the thin, gray mistiness of early
+dawn. With its lights glowing like a ghost's eyes in the wan dimness, a
+car churned up the Harkness drive and a second followed it. The boy
+shrank away. Last night's events now seemed like some horrible
+nightmare, but the tread of steps outside and the knock on the door
+proved that they were not.
+
+Ted opened the door to confront Loring Blade and Corporal Paul Hausler,
+of the State Police. He glanced beyond them at the men gathered beside
+the cars and saw that three of the nine were attired in State Police
+uniforms. The six volunteer posse men were Tom and Bud Delbert, Smoky's
+brothers; Enos, Alfred and Ernest Brill, his cousins; and Pete Tooms,
+who would go anywhere and do anything as long as it promised excitement
+and no monotonous labor.
+
+Loring Blade greeted Ted, "Good morning, Ted."
+
+The boy muttered, "Good morning."
+
+"You seen your dad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I mean, since we took him away last night?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did he come back here?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"What time?"
+
+Ted hesitated. He'd had his eyes fixed on the clock, but seconds and
+split seconds counted, too.
+
+"I don't know the _exact_ time."
+
+"Better tell the truth," Corporal Hausler warned bluntly. "It can go
+hard with you if you don't. Where's your father now?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Maybe a couple of slaps will jar your memory!"
+
+He took a step forward. Tammie, rippling in, placed himself in front of
+Ted. There was no growl in his throat or snarl on his lips, but his eyes
+were grim and his manner threatening. Hausler stopped.
+
+"I don't think you'd better let him bite me."
+
+Loring Blade said quietly, "Cut it out, Paul. There's enough trouble in
+this family without adding unnecessarily to it. Ted didn't do anything."
+
+"He can tell us where his father is."
+
+"I cannot!" Ted flared.
+
+"When did he leave here?"
+
+"Last night."
+
+"What time?"
+
+"I forgot to hold a stop watch on him."
+
+"Why didn't you stop him? Don't you know that failing to do so can make
+you liable to arrest as an accessory after the fact?"
+
+"A sheriff and a game warden couldn't stop him."
+
+"He's right," Loring Blade agreed. "We couldn't. Why don't you start
+your men into the hills?"
+
+"If he left this house," Hausler threatened, "we'll be on his track in
+two minutes."
+
+He turned and went out, and Ted laughed. Loring Blade swung to face him.
+
+"You feel pretty bitter, don't you?"
+
+"How would you feel?"
+
+"Not too happy," the warden admitted. "Why did you laugh?"
+
+Ted grinned faintly. "Does that trooper really think he, or anyone else,
+can track Dad?"
+
+"If he does have such ideas," Loring Blade conceded, "he'll soon have
+some different ones. Nobody can track Al Harkness."
+
+"Nor can they find him."
+
+"Perhaps not immediately, but sooner or later they will."
+
+"Yes?" Ted questioned. "Send a thousand men into the hills, send a
+thousand into any big thicket, and they wouldn't find him unless they
+happened to stumble right across him."
+
+"Al can't stay in the hills forever."
+
+"Maybe not, but he can stay there a long time. He knows every chipmunk
+den in the Mahela."
+
+"He won't be easy to find," the warden conceded, "but he will be found.
+What time did he come back last night?"
+
+"Just about an hour after you took him away."
+
+Loring Blade exclaimed, "Wow!"
+
+Ted looked quizzically at him and the warden continued, "We were on Dead
+Man's Curve, and he was between Jack and me, when suddenly he pushed the
+door open and just seemed to float out of it. We beat the brush around
+Dead Man's Curve until one o'clock this morning. About then I tumbled to
+the idea that he must have come back here."
+
+"Why didn't you come last night?"
+
+Loring Blade shrugged. "He slipped through our fingers once. It wasn't
+hard to figure that he wouldn't have done that only to let himself be
+picked up again. Besides, it did seem sort of useless to hunt him at
+night. He headed into the woods, and because he didn't make a sound that
+either Jack or I could hear, we thought he was holed up right close.
+Ted, do you think he shot Smoky?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He said he didn't."
+
+"Delbert said he did."
+
+"Just what did he say?"
+
+"That's all. He regained consciousness briefly. The officer with him
+asked who shot him and he said Al did from ambush. I doubt if he's
+talked since."
+
+"Do you believe Dad shot Smoky?"
+
+The warden frowned. "If he did, it wasn't from ambush. There's more to
+it than that. We could have brought it out, but it will be harder now.
+When Al ran, he made things look pretty bad."
+
+"Not to me."
+
+"But to a lot of other people. Do you think you can get him to come back
+and give himself up?"
+
+"I asked him last night to stay and face it out."
+
+"Why wouldn't he?"
+
+"Dad's part of the Mahela," Ted said quietly, "and the Mahela's code is
+the one he knows best. He would not go to jail for a crime he didn't
+commit, any more than a wild deer would voluntarily enter a cage."
+
+"Doggone, that sure complicates things. Do you have any bright ideas?"
+
+"What did you find in Coon Valley?"
+
+"Just what I told you, Smoky's back trail and your dad's tobacco pouch."
+
+"Nothing else?"
+
+"Smoky's rifle. We brought it in with us."
+
+"No sign of anything else?"
+
+Loring Blade answered wearily, "You know what it's like there. Unless
+it's a trail like Smoky's, and Smoky was bleeding hard, there's little
+in the way of sign that a human eye can detect."
+
+"Just the same, I think I'll go up there."
+
+"What do you expect to find?"
+
+"I don't know. Anything would be a help."
+
+"Guess it would at that. Good luck."
+
+"Are--are you going to join the hunt for Dad?"
+
+Loring Blade grinned wryly. "I'm not that optimistic. I agree with you
+that, if Al wants to lose himself in the Mahela, he won't be found. But
+sooner or later he'll show up. He can't spend the winter there."
+
+"I wouldn't bet on that."
+
+"Bet the way you please. Now I'm not saying that you will, but if you
+should run across Al up there in the hills, see if you can persuade him
+to give himself up. He still has a good case, in spite of Smoky's
+testimony. Too many people know Al too well to believe he'd shoot
+anybody from ambush; he has a lot of friends. The only ones who'd join
+the posse were Delberts and Pete Tooms, and I sure hope none of them
+stumble across Al. If they come in fighting, he's apt to fight right
+back, and one stove-in Delbert around here is enough. Good luck again,
+Ted."
+
+Ted lost his belligerence; the warden was his father's friend. "Stay and
+have breakfast with me."
+
+"Thanks, but we breakfasted in Lorton before we came here. I'll be
+seeing you around."
+
+"Do that."
+
+The warden left and Ted was alone except for Tammie. He dropped a hand
+to the collie's silken head and tried to think a way out of the
+bewildering maze in which he was trapped. He was sure of two things; Al
+had not shot Smoky Delbert and his father would stay in the hills until,
+as Loring Blade had said, winter forced him out. But it would have to be
+bitter, harsh winter. Al could make his way in anything else.
+
+Ted whispered, "What are we going to do, Tammie?"
+
+Tammie licked his fingers and Ted furrowed his brow. The situation, as
+it existed, was almost pitifully vague. A man had been shot in Coon
+Valley, and the only signs left were the hurt man's trail and an
+accusing finger to point at who had hurt him. There had to be more than
+that, but what? Loring Blade had found nothing and Loring was an expert
+woodsman. However, even though everything seemed hopeless, somebody had
+better do something to help Al and, except for Loring Blade, Ted was the
+only one who wanted to help him. Even though it was a slim one, finding
+something that the game warden had not found seemed the only chance.
+Ted decided to take it.
+
+"But we'll eat first," he promised Tammie.
+
+Ted prepared a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and fed Tammie. Then
+he fixed a lunch and, with Tammie beside him, got into Al's old pickup.
+He gulped. The seat had always seemed small enough when he and his
+father occupied it together. With Al gone, and despite the fact that
+Tammie sat beside him, the seat was huge. Ted gritted his teeth and
+started down the drive.
+
+He turned left on the Lorton Road, slowed for the dangerous, hairpin
+turn that was Dead Man's Curve, speeded up to climb a gentle rise,
+descended back into the valley and turned again on the Fordham Road. A
+well graded and not at all a dangerous highway, somehow the Fordham Road
+had never seemed a place for cars. It was as though it had always been
+here, a part of the Mahela, and had never been torn out of the beech
+forest with gargantuan bulldozers or ripped with blasting powder. For
+the most part, it was used by the trucks of a small logging outfit
+which, under State supervision, was cutting surplus timber and by
+hunters who wanted to drive their cars as close as possible to remote
+hunting country.
+
+Ted slowed up for five deer that drifted across the road in front of him
+and stopped for a fawn that stood with braced legs and wide eyes and
+regarded the truck in amazement. Only when Ted tooted the horn did the
+fawn come alive, scramble up an embankment and disappear. The boy smiled
+wearily. Had Al been with him, both would have enjoyed the startled fawn
+and they would have talked about it.
+
+An hour after leaving his house, Ted came to the mouth of Coon Valley.
+Long and shallow, the upper parts of both slopes were covered with
+beech forest. But if any trees had ever found a rooting in the floor of
+the valley or for about seventy yards up either side, they had died or
+been cut so long ago that even the stumps had disappeared. The usual
+little stream trickled down the valley.
+
+Ted pulled over to the side and stopped. He got out and put the truck's
+keys in his pocket. Tammie jumped to the ground beside him. The big
+collie bristled and walked warily around a dark stain in the road. Ted
+fought a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no doubt that
+some hurt thing had lain here, but unless someone had told him so, he
+never would have known that it was a man. Ted licked his lips, and
+Tammie stayed close beside him as they started up the valley.
+
+Smoky Delbert's journey had indeed been a terrible one. Had he not been
+hardened by a lifetime of outdoor living, probably he never could have
+made it. In a way, Ted supposed, it was Smoky's atonement for his many
+vicious practices. Yet, the boy found it in his heart to admit that,
+whoever had shot the poacher and forced him to crawl, wounded and
+bleeding, to the Fordham Road, was even more vicious.
+
+Ted stirred uneasily, then calmed himself. Al had said it was no part of
+his doing. Therefore it was not. Who had done this dreadful thing?
+
+A spring trickling across the valley had left a soft spot. Here Ted
+stopped instantly. Very plain in the soft earth were the tracks of a
+single, unshod horse that had walked down Coon Valley and back up it, or
+up it and back down. Ted could not be sure, but his heart leaped. Loring
+Blade and Jack Callahan had said nothing about any horses. Who had taken
+a horse up the valley, and why? His interest quickening, Ted looked for
+more horse tracks.
+
+He found them farther on, where the trail became a stretch of sand from
+the little stream's overflow, but he still could not determine whether
+the horse had gone up or down the valley first. He knew definitely only
+that it had traveled both ways, and if he could find out why, he might
+also find a clue as to who had shot Smoky Delbert. Ted kept downcast
+eyes on the trail.
+
+Save for that unmistakable sign left by Smoky Delbert and an occasional
+path or little trail which anything at all might have used, for a long
+ways he found only scattered indications that Coon Valley was traveled
+at all. The lush grass, beginning to wither because of lack of rain,
+formed its own hard cushion. An Indian or bushman tracker might have
+been able to read the story of what had come this way. Ted could find
+little.
+
+Trotting a little ways ahead, Tammie stopped suddenly, pricked up his
+ears and looked interestedly at a small clearing that reached perhaps
+three hundred yards into the beech woods. Following his gaze, Ted saw
+two brown horses and a black one. Their heads were up and ears pricked
+forward as they studied the two on the trail. Ted sighed in resignation.
+
+The Crawfords and the Staceys, who lived in the Mahela, each kept
+several horses. Why they did, why they kept any at all, only they could
+explain, for neither had enough land to warrant keeping even one horse.
+Still they had them. The horses were usually left to forage for
+themselves from the time the first spring grass appeared until hunting
+season opened. Then sometimes they were pressed into service, to pack or
+pull the tents and gear of hunters who had a yen for some remote spot,
+or to pack out deer or bears that had been brought down a long ways from
+any road.
+
+At any rate, the horse tracks were explained. While it wasn't usual for
+one horse to break from its companions and go wandering, now and again
+one would do it. The black horse broke from the two browns, trotted down
+to Ted, arched its neck and extended a friendly muzzle. Ted petted him.
+
+"Lonesome for a human being, fella?"
+
+Ted went on and the black horse followed him a little ways before it
+turned back to join the other two.
+
+A half mile from the Fordham Road, Ted came to the three sycamores near
+Glory Rock.
+
+The sides of Coon Valley pitched sharply upwards here, and the beech
+forest came closer to the valley's floor. The three sycamores, a giant
+tree and two near-giants, rustled their leaves in the little breeze and
+remained aloof from everything else, as though they were the royalty in
+this place. Even Glory Rock, an elephant-backed, elephant-sized boulder
+whose ancient face wore a stubble of lichens, seemed demure in their
+presence. To the left, a raggle-taggle thicket of beech brush crawled to
+within twenty feet of the valley's floor.
+
+Ted looked down at the place where Smoky Delbert had fallen, and there
+could be no mistaking it. The boy stood still, searching everything near
+the spot, and as he did hope faded.
+
+The bullet, Loring Blade had said, had gone clear through Smoky. That,
+within itself, was unusual. With no exceptions of which Ted knew,
+everybody who came into the Mahela used soft-point hunting bullets that
+mushroomed on impact. But now and again, though very rarely, a faulty
+bullet didn't expand when it struck. Probably that was another factor
+that had saved Smoky's life. A mushrooming bullet did awful damage. In
+spite of the fact that some of it might escape the hunter, probably at
+least eighty per cent of anything hit with one died sooner or later.
+Smoky, Ted's experience told him, never would have moved from beside the
+sycamores if this bullet had mushroomed.
+
+Ted furrowed his brows. The bullet might prove a lot, but finding it was
+as hopeless as locating a pebble in the ocean. There was nothing except
+the sycamores and grass right here, and none of the sycamore trunks were
+bullet marked. Going through Smoky without expanding, the bullet had
+snicked into the ground the same way. Locating it might mean sifting
+tons, and perhaps dozens of tons, of earth. Even then, unless one were
+lucky, the bullet might elude him.
+
+Tammie, who was sitting beside Ted and staring into the beech brush,
+whined suddenly. In turn he lifted both white front paws and put them
+down again. He drank deeply of some scent that only he could detect. Ted
+looked keenly at him.
+
+"What have you got, Tammie?"
+
+Tammie ran a little ways toward the beech brush and turned to look back
+over his shoulder. Ted frowned. Loring Blade had reported correctly and
+in full everything that could be found in the valley, but Loring hadn't
+had a dog with him. Obviously, Tammie's nose had discovered something
+that any human being might well miss.
+
+Ted ordered, "Go ahead, Tammie."
+
+The dog started up-slope toward the brush and Ted followed. He ducked
+into the thicket, so dense that, once within it, visibility was limited
+to twenty feet or less and there were places where he had to crawl. In
+the center of the thicket, Tammie halted to look down and Ted came up
+beside him.
+
+In the center of the beech brush was a well-marked trail used by deer
+that knew perfectly well the advantages of staying in a thicket. Tammie
+was looking down at a splash of drying blood, obviously a deer had been
+badly wounded here and had fallen. Ted heaped lavish praise on his dog.
+
+"Good boy! Good boy, Tammie!"
+
+He set his jaw and his eyes glinted. Unless a hunter were within twenty
+feet of the trail, in which case it was highly improbable that any deer
+would have come down it, nobody within the beech brush could have
+wounded the deer. But how about the opposite slope?
+
+Ted retraced his steps and climbed to the top of Glory Rock. From that
+vantage point, where he could look across at it instead of trying to
+look through it, the beech thicket became more open. He couldn't see
+everything, but he could see very plainly the place where the deer had
+fallen. Moving to one side, Ted had the same view. The deer could have
+been shot from any of a dozen places on this slope.... What had taken
+place assumed definite shape in Ted's mind.
+
+Smoky Delbert, always the poacher, had known of the beech thicket and
+the trail through it. He had waited for a deer and shot one when it
+appeared. Somebody else, somebody who knew and took violent exception to
+Smoky and his antics--and there were at least thirty men who did--had
+either happened along or had witnessed the whole thing. Probably there
+had been an argument, followed by the shooting.
+
+No nearer a solution than he had been before, Ted nibbled his lip in
+frustration. He knew now why Smoky had been shot, but he still hadn't
+the faintest idea as to who had shot him. All he had were widely
+scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with too many pieces missing.
+However, first things came first and he'd better get the hurt deer, for
+it was both practical and merciful to do so. Badly wounded, it couldn't
+possibly travel far. If he found it still alive, the least he could do
+was put it out of its misery. If it was dead, he should save what could
+be salvaged of the venison. Al would have done the same had he been
+here.
+
+Ted said, "Come on, Tammie."
+
+They returned to the place where the deer had fallen and took up the
+trail. It was easy to follow, for the animal had been badly hurt.
+Straight down the trail it had run, and sixty yards farther on Ted found
+where it had fallen again and thrashed about. The beech brush blended
+back into beech forest and the trail Ted followed swerved to within
+twenty feet of the valley floor. He found a great puddle of blood where
+the deer had fallen a third time.
+
+He marveled. The deer had been down three times in a little more than
+three hundred yards and it never should have been able to get up and go
+on. But it had gone on and it had also nearly stopped bleeding. From
+this point there was only a spot here and there to mark the leaves. Ted
+shook his head. If he wasn't seeing this himself, he wouldn't have
+believed it. He remembered that a deer is an incredibly tough thing. It
+can still run after receiving wounds that would stop a man in his
+tracks.
+
+Overrunning the trail, the boy had to stop and circle until he picked
+it up again. It was necessary to do this so many times that, by
+midafternoon, he was scarcely a mile from the three sycamores. A half
+hour later he lost the trail completely; the deer had stopped bleeding.
+Ted made a wide circle in an effort to find the trail again, and when he
+failed, he made a wider circle. He stopped to think.
+
+He'd have sworn, knowing how hard the deer was hit, that it would never
+run five hundred yards. Obviously he had guessed wrong, and what now?
+Anything he did would be little better than a shot in the dark, but if
+he could help it, he would not leave an injured beast to a lingering,
+terrible death. Wounded wild things were apt to seek a haven in
+thickets. Perhaps, if he cast back and forth through brush tangles,
+Tammie would scent the deer again.
+
+Ted made his way to a grove of scrub hemlock, cut from there to a laurel
+thicket and pushed and crawled his way through half a dozen snarls of
+beech brush. He knew that he was not going to find the wounded deer and
+he sorrowed for the suffering animal. About to drop his hand to Tammie's
+head, he found that the collie was no longer beside him.
+
+He was about twenty feet back, dancing excitedly in the trail. His ears
+were alert, his eyes happy, and there was a doggy smile on his jaws. He
+had a scent, but it was not the scent of a wounded deer. Ted took his
+handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to the dog.
+
+"Take it to Al," he ordered quietly. "Take it to Al, Tammie."
+
+Carrying the handkerchief, Tammie streaked into the forest and
+disappeared. Ted walked down Coon Valley and waited at the truck. An
+hour and a quarter later, no longer carrying the handkerchief, Tammie
+joined him. Ted petted him and looked somberly at the forest. He didn't
+know where Al was hiding and he didn't want to know.
+
+But Tammie knew.
+
+
+
+
+6
+
+MESSENGER DOG
+
+
+In the gathering gloom of the beech woods, a silver-throated thrush sang
+its evening song. Then, starting where it had ended, the thrush repeated
+the same notes backwards. Ted paused to listen and Tammie halted beside
+him. The boy grinned faintly. Because it first seemed to wind itself up
+and then to unwind, Al had always insisted on calling this thrush the
+"winder bird." It was, Ted supposed, as good a name as any.
+
+Tammie sat down and turned a quizzical head to look at the harness he
+was wearing and, for excellent reasons, could wear only at night. Ted
+himself had made the harness from a discarded pack sack. It had a chest
+strap to keep it from sliding backwards, a belly strap to prevent it
+from falling off, and on either side was a spacious pocket with a flap
+that could be fastened. Right now, the pack was laden with thirty pounds
+of junk that Ted had picked up around the house.
+
+Tammie tried to scrape the harness off with his right hind paw. Ted
+stooped to pet and coax him.
+
+"Come on, Tammie. Come on. That's a good boy!"
+
+Tammie sighed and got to his feet. He didn't know why he was thus
+burdened and he had no aspirations whatever to become a pack dog. But if
+Ted wanted it, he would try to do it. He followed to the end of the
+drive and stood expectantly while Ted opened the mailbox.
+
+The metropolitan daily in which Ted had placed his ad, and that was
+always delivered to the Harknesses a day late, lay on top. Beneath were
+thirteen letters.
+
+Ted's heart began to pound. He'd watched the mail every day, but except
+for the paper, the usual hopeful bulletins addressed to "occupant," and
+a few miscellaneous items, there had been nothing interesting. Ted had
+almost despaired of getting anything, but he realized, as he stood with
+the letters in his hand, that he hadn't allowed hunters enough time to
+answer his ad.
+
+The thirteen letters represented more first-class mail than the
+Harknesses usually received in three months, and Ted held them as though
+they burned his fingers. They were important, perhaps the most important
+letters he had ever had or ever would have, for the future of the
+Harknesses could depend on what was in them.
+
+Ted ran back up the drive. Running with him, Tammie was too busy to pay
+attention to the obnoxious pack. Ted burst into the house, slammed the
+door behind him, laid the letters and papers on the table and knelt to
+take the pack from Tammie. He thrust it, still laden, into the darkest
+corner of a dark closet and turned excitedly back to the mail.
+
+Sighing with relief, Tammie curled up on his bearskin. Ted looked at the
+sheaf of letters. Except for two, they were addressed in longhand. He
+picked one up, made as though to open it then put it back down. If the
+news was good, it would be very good. If bad, it would be very bad. His
+eye fell on a box on the paper's front page.
+
+     GUNMAN STILL AT LARGE
+
+     After a week's intensive manhunt, Albert, "Al" Harkness is still at
+     large in the wild Mahela. Harkness, named by Clarence Delbert as
+     the man who shot him from ambush, escaped from two officers the
+     same night he was apprehended. Delbert, still in critical
+     condition, has supplied no additional details. Corporal Paul
+     Hausler, of the State Police, has expressed confidence that
+     Harkness will be captured.
+
+Ted pushed the paper aside and stared across the table. For three days
+the hunt had been pressed with unflagging zeal. Only Pete Tooms and the
+duly deputized Delberts had gone out for two days after that and now,
+Ted understood, even they were staying home. They had discovered for
+themselves what Ted and Loring Blade had known from the start: if Al
+chose to hide in the Mahela, he couldn't be found. But the item in the
+paper cast a shadow of things to come.
+
+Al could hide for a while, perhaps for a long while, but without proper
+equipment or a place to stay, even he couldn't live in the wilderness
+when winter struck with all its fury. Sooner or later, he would have to
+come out, and what happened when he came was so terribly dependent on
+what was in the letters! Ted slit the first one open and read,
+
+     Dear Mr. Harkness:
+
+     I saw your letter in the _Courier_ and we would like to rent your
+     camp for the first two weeks of deer season. Can you let me know at
+     once if it is available? There will be ten of us.
+
+Ted put the letter aside and picked up the next one. That likewise
+wanted the camp for the first two weeks of deer season. There would be
+eight in the party. But there was a very welcome, "I enclose an advance
+to hold our reservation," with a twenty-dollar check made out to Ted. He
+folded the note over the check and took up the third letter. That also
+wanted the camp for the first two weeks of deer season. Ted turned to
+Tammie.
+
+"Doesn't anybody hunt anything except deer?"
+
+But the fourth letter, containing a deposit of ten dollars, was from a
+party of grouse hunters who wanted the camp during the first two weeks
+of grouse season, and the fifth had been written by a man representing a
+group of hunters who obviously liked to do things the hard way. Scorning
+anything as easy as deer, grouse, squirrels, or cottontails, they wanted
+the camp for bear season. There was no deposit enclosed, but if they
+could be persuaded to send one, the camp would be rented for another
+week. The next five letters, two of which contained deposits of twenty
+dollars each, were all from deer hunters who wanted to come the first
+two weeks of the season and the one after that was from a confirmed
+grouse hunter who wished to come the first week. Ted picked up the last
+letter, one of two that were typewritten, and read:
+
+     Dear Ted Harkness:
+
+     For lo, these many years, my silent feet have carried me into the
+     haunts of big game and my unerring rifle has laid them low. I have
+     moose, elk, grizzlies, caribou, sheep and goats to my credit.
+     Honesty compels me to admit that I also have several head of big
+     game to my discredit, but that happened in the days of my callow
+     youth, when I thought hunting and killing were synonymous.
+
+     Presently, in my mellow old age, I still love to hunt. But I have
+     become--heaven help me!--a head hunter. In short, I want 'em big or
+     I don't want 'em. I do not have a whitetail buck to which I can
+     point with pride. Living in the Mahela, and I envy you your
+     dwelling place!, you must know the whereabouts of such a beastie.
+
+     The simplicity of your ad was most impressive and I always did
+     admire people who sign themselves "Ted" rather than "Theodore." I
+     do not want your camp, but do you want to guide a doddering old
+     man? Find me a room, any old room at all as long as it's warm and
+     dry, and I'm yours for three weeks. Find me a buck that satisfies
+     me and, in addition to your guiding fee, I'll give you a bonus of
+     twenty-five dollars for every inch in the longest tine on either
+     antler.
+
+     Humbly yours,
+     John L. Wilson
+
+Ted re-read the letter, so friendly and so obviously written by a hunter
+who had experience, time and--Ted tried not to think it and couldn't
+help himself because his need was desperate--money. The Harkness house
+was very large and, now that Al was not in it, very empty. There was no
+reason whatsoever why John L. Wilson, whoever he was, should not stay
+here. Twelve dollars a day was not too much to ask for board, room and
+guide services. As for the twenty-five dollars an inch--there were some
+big bucks in the Mahela!
+
+Ted sat down to write, "Dear Mr. Wilson: Thanks very much for your
+letter--" He crumpled the sheet of paper and started over, "Dear Mr.
+Wilson: There are some big bucks--" Then he crumpled that sheet and did
+the only thing he could do. "Dear Mr. Wilson: I am going to tell you
+about Damon and Pythias."
+
+Ted told, and he was scrupulously honest. His father, born in the Mahela
+almost fifty years ago, had never seen bigger bucks. Certainly they were
+the biggest Ted had ever seen. In their prime now, royal trophies, a
+couple of years would see them in their decline. Ted gave it as his
+personal opinion that both were at their best this year. Next season,
+they would not be quite as good and the year after, Ted thought, both
+would bear the misshapen antlers that are so often the marks of old
+bucks. But just getting a shot at either would involve more than a
+routine hunt. The two bucks were very wise; many hunters had tried for
+them and nobody had come near to getting either. It might very well take
+three weeks just to hunt them, and Ted could not guarantee success.
+However, though they were far and away the biggest, by no means were
+Damon and Pythias the only big bucks in the Mahela. He concluded by
+writing that Mr. Wilson could stay with him, and that his fee for board,
+room and guide service would be twelve dollars a day.
+
+Ted sealed the letter, addressed it, put two stamps on, marked it air
+mail and turned to the others. He shook a bewildered head. The way Carl
+Thornton ran Crestwood, catering to guests had always seemed the essence
+of simplicity. Obviously, it had its headaches.
+
+Of the dozen applicants for his camp, eight wanted it in deer season
+only and all wanted the first two weeks. Ted screened the letters again,
+then narrowed them down to the three who had sent advances. They'd
+offered earnest intent of coming, the rest might and might not appear.
+But which of the three should he accept?
+
+Ted solved it by consulting the postmarks on the letters. All had been
+mailed the same day, but one had been stamped at ten A.M. and the other
+two at two P.M. Ted wrote to the author of the letter with the earliest
+time mark, a Mr. Allen Thomas, and told him that the camp was his for
+the first two weeks of deer season. The other two checks--if only he had
+three camps!--he put in envelopes with letters saying that, he was very
+sorry, but the camp had already been reserved for the time they wanted.
+
+Then, in a flash of inspiration, he opened both letters and added a
+postscript, saying that the camp was still available for the last week
+of the season. He grinned ruefully as he did so and seemed to hear Al
+saying, "'Most missed a pelt there, Ted."
+
+Ted assured the other deer hunters that his camp was reserved for the
+first two weeks but open the third. He contemplated bringing his price
+down to forty-five dollars for that week. Then he reconsidered. Most
+hunters thought that hunting would be much better the first of the
+season than it ever could be the last, and, in part, they were right.
+Unmolested for almost a year, during the first days of the season game
+was apt to be less wary. As compensation, during the latter part of any
+season there were seldom as many hunters afield. Anyhow, deer hunters
+who really wanted a camp would not let an extra fifteen dollars stand in
+the way of getting one.
+
+Writing to the bear hunters, Ted accepted a tentative reservation that
+would be confirmed as soon as he received a deposit of ten dollars. Too
+many people made reservations with no deposit; then, if something arose
+that prevented their honoring their reservations, they simply didn't
+come. Anyone who paid money in advance would be there or cancel in
+plenty of time to get their money back.
+
+Ted told the grouse hunters who'd sent a ten-dollar deposit that the
+camp was theirs for the first two weeks of the season and he pondered
+over the other grouse hunter's letter.
+
+Nobody at all had applied for woodcock season because, Ted decided,
+woodcock are so uncertain. One of the finest of game birds, they are
+also migratory. A few nested in the Mahela, but they were too few to
+attract sportsmen. Depending on conditions, flight birds might and might
+not be in the Mahela during the season and some years they by-passed it
+completely. But when they came, they offered marvelous shooting.
+
+Ted wrote the second grouse hunter, a Mr. George Beaulieu, that the only
+vacancy he had left was for the third week of grouse season. But was he
+interested in woodcock? If he was, and if he would advise Ted to that
+effect, Ted would be happy to call him long distance in the event of a
+worthwhile flight.
+
+Tammie rose, yawned prodigiously and lay down to sleep on his other side
+for a while. Ted shuffled the pile of letters, which he needn't put in
+the mailbox because he was definitely going into Lorton in the morning,
+and pondered.
+
+It hadn't worked out quite as he'd hoped it would, with the camp rented
+continuously throughout six weeks of small game hunting and three of
+deer. He figured with his pen on a discarded piece of paper. The camp
+was definitely rented for two weeks of grouse and one of bear hunting at
+forty-five dollars a week. That added up to a hundred and thirty-five
+dollars. It was certainly rented for two weeks of deer hunting at sixty
+a week, thus he would have a hundred and twenty dollars more.
+
+Ted sighed wistfully. Two hundred and fifty-five dollars was by no means
+an insignificant return on their investment, even if they had put a
+price on their labor, and they could look forward to the next hunting
+and fishing seasons. If Al were here, they'd be happy about it and
+eagerly planning more camps.
+
+But Al wasn't here, and all that mattered now was that, by the end of
+deer season, Ted could be certain of having at least two hundred and
+fifty-five dollars in cash. If John Wilson came, stayed with Ted for
+twenty-one days, and paid him twelve dollars a day, that would be two
+hundred and fifty-two dollars more. If Mr. Wilson got a buck that
+satisfied him, and the buck's antlers had one tine nine inches long--
+
+"Cut it out!" Ted advised himself. "Cut it out, Harkness! Count on what
+you know you'll have, and that's two hundred and fifty-five dollars."
+
+Tammie, hearing Ted's voice and thinking he was called, came over to sit
+beside his master. He raised a dainty paw to Ted's hand and smiled with
+his eyes when the boy took it. Ted glanced at the clock.
+
+"Great guns! Twenty past one! We'd better hit the hay!"
+
+He shucked off his clothes, put on his pajamas and crawled into bed. But
+even though he was tired, sleep would not come because he was thinking
+of Al. How was his father spending this chilly night--and where? In some
+cave perhaps, or some thicket. Ted tried to put such thoughts behind
+him. Wherever Al might be, that outdoorsman was warm, dry and even
+comfortable. But Ted's mind insisted on seeking the gloomy side, and he
+was brought out of it only when Tammie whined.
+
+Instantly Ted became alert. Taught to whine but never to bark when a
+stranger came near the house, Tammie was warning him now. The boy
+slipped out of bed, and, in the darkness, he felt for his shoes and
+pulled them on. He laced them so there would be no danger of tripping
+over the shoelaces and soft-footed across the floor to take a five-cell
+flashlight from its drawer and his twelve-gauge shotgun from its rack.
+
+Out of the night came a sound that has been familiar since the first
+ancient man domesticated the first chickens. It was the sleepy squawk of
+a hen protesting removal from its warm roost. Ted opened the door
+softly, stabbed the darkness with his light and trapped within its beam
+a figure that ran from the chicken coop toward the forest.
+
+"Get him, Tammie!"
+
+Tammie rippled forward, and the light magnified his bobbing shadow
+twenty times over. He was not a dog but a monster, a nightmare from some
+antediluvian swamp, bearing down on the fleeing man. He rose into the
+air, struck the runner's back with his full weight, knocked him
+sprawling and snarled over him. It was what he'd been trained to do and
+it was all he'd do unless his captive tried too hard to get up. Then a
+little fang-work might be necessary, but this prisoner wasn't even
+moving.
+
+Ted shined his light into the terrified face of a young ne'er-do-well
+known to his parents as Sammy Allen Stacey, to himself and a few of his
+intimates as S.A., and to too many others as Silly Ass.
+
+His captor asked sternly, "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Uh--Nothin'."
+
+"What's in the sack?"
+
+"I--I just borrowed three of your hens!" Sammy started to sniffle. "I
+was goin' to bring 'em back tomorrow! Honest!"
+
+"Guess I'll go back to the house," Ted said meaningfully. "When I hear
+you scream, I'll know Tammie's working on you."
+
+"No! Don't! Please don't!"
+
+"Think you can stay out of other people's chicken coops?"
+
+"Yes! Yes!"
+
+Ted ordered, "All right, Tammie." The collie moved back and Ted
+addressed the prostrate youth. "Get up and get out of here. If ever you
+come back again, I'll just turn you over to the dog."
+
+Sammy rose and ran into the woods. Ted returned the three indignant hens
+to their roost and addressed Tammie, "I'll bet that, if ever he is found
+in another chicken coop, it won't be ours. You must have scared some
+sense into him."
+
+Back in the house, Tammie sought his bearskin. Ted replaced the
+flashlight and shotgun, took his shoes off and went back to bed.
+Tomorrow he must go to Lorton but it needn't be bright and early
+because, by Mahela standards, Lorton just didn't get up bright and
+early.
+
+Ted slept until a quarter to seven. An hour later, with Tammie on the
+pickup's seat beside him, he started down the road.
+
+He drove slowly because the business and professional offices in Lorton
+wouldn't open for another hour. Coming opposite Crestwood, he saw Nels
+Anderson, his former partner, working with a pick and shovel beside the
+driveway. Ted eased his truck over and stopped.
+
+"Hello, Nels."
+
+"Py golly, Ted!" Nels' face could never reflect anything he did not
+feel. "Is goot to see you!"
+
+"It's good to see you, too. How are things?"
+
+"We must not holler. Yah?"
+
+"Guess it never does any good. How's the boss?"
+
+Nels smiled sadly. "Mad."
+
+"What's he mad at?"
+
+"Me. I go to fix the freezer and he say, 'Get out of there, you crazy
+Scandahoovian! From now on you work only outside and joost three days a
+week!"
+
+"For Pete's sake! Why?"
+
+"He's mad."
+
+"Why don't you get a different job, Nels? One you can depend on?"
+
+"Yah, I like to. I do not like Mr. Thornton no more."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He gets mad. You hear from your pa, Ted?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I'm awful sorry," Nels said gravely. "I do not believe your pa, he
+shoot this man like they say he did. If I could help him, I would."
+
+"Thanks, Nels. Be seeing you."
+
+"So long, Ted."
+
+Ted drove on, wondering. He'd had only two personal contacts with Carl
+Thornton--the day he was hired and the day he was fired. He couldn't
+really say that Thornton was not an unpredictable individual, given to
+sudden rages, because he didn't know him that well. He had impressed Ted
+as somewhat cold and carefully calculating. The boy shrugged. Nels was a
+nice person. But an idea soaked into his head about as easily as
+sunbeams penetrate mud. Probably he'd broken some rule which he had not
+understood and still didn't understand, and Thornton was punishing him.
+But putting him on halftime, and Nels with five children to support,
+seemed like extreme punishment.
+
+Ted drove on to Lorton, where, even though most of the town's residents
+were his friends, he could not help feeling self-conscious. Smoky
+Delbert's shooting had brought Lorton more fame, or notoriety, than it
+had known since its founding. The story had been in most of the State's
+papers and gained wide distribution through a couple of news services.
+Parking in front of the First National Bank, Ted left Tammie in the
+truck, dropped his stamped letters in a mailbox and walked up the dimly
+lighted stairs that led to the law offices of John McLean. Edith
+Brewman, McLean's ageless secretary, had not yet come in but John McLean
+was rummaging through her desk.
+
+He looked up and said, "Howdy, boy."
+
+"Good morning, Mr. McLean."
+
+Ted stood awkwardly, a little embarrassed and a little lost. Just how
+did one approach an attorney and what did one say to him? John McLean
+continued to paw through the desk and Ted studied him covertly.
+
+A huge, gaunt man in an ill-fitting suit, with unkempt gray hair and a
+black tie askew on his collar, John McLean looked like anything save the
+successful attorney he was. His dress and person were part of a clever
+act. Slouching into a courtroom, he was more apt to provoke snickers
+than admiration. But an opposing attorney who underrated him, and most
+did, literally fell into his clutches. There was a silver tongue behind
+John McLean's rather slack lips and a razor-sharp brain beneath his gray
+hair. He grinned loosely now.
+
+"Edith's too darn' orderly. When she puts something away, I can never
+find it. What can I do for you?"
+
+"I'm Ted Harkness, Mr. McLean."
+
+"I know."
+
+"I want to find out if you'll take care of my father."
+
+"Judging from what I've read in the papers, your dad's taking pretty
+good care of himself."
+
+Ted said hesitantly, "He can't stay in the Mahela forever. Sooner or
+later, they'll get him."
+
+"Sooner or later," John McLean said, "they get everybody. Wish people
+would stop making a joke out of that old saw, 'Crime Doesn't Pay.' It
+doesn't."
+
+He resumed poking through the desk while Ted stood uncomfortably, not
+knowing whether or not he'd been dismissed. Two minutes later, John
+McLean whirled on him.
+
+"Is your dad guilty?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He said he isn't!"
+
+John McLean chuckled. "Simmer down. I don't want to fight you. Just
+wanted to find out if you had a good reason for thinking your dad
+innocent."
+
+"Is the reason good enough for you?"
+
+As though forgetting Ted, the attorney opened another drawer and leafed
+through its contents.... He said suddenly, "I'll take the case."
+
+Ted sighed relievedly, "Oh, thank you!"
+
+"Better save that until after the trial."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Save your worries, too."
+
+"Then you can help him?"
+
+"We'll figure out something. Who did shoot this Delbert?"
+
+"I wish I knew."
+
+"So do I."
+
+Ted said uneasily, "I haven't any money right now, but I'll have at
+least two hundred and fifty-five dollars, and perhaps a great deal more,
+right after deer season."
+
+John McLean murmured, "It'll help. The price of justice is too often too
+blasted high."
+
+"Do--Do you want to talk with Dad soon?"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Laying out in the Mahela."
+
+"The Mahela's a big place."
+
+Ted said honestly, "I don't know where he is. I haven't seen him since
+he left but--I could get a message to him."
+
+"I won't ask you how. Does your dad mind laying out?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then leave him until the time's right. It would have been better if
+he'd given himself up right away; but staying out now will do more good
+than harm. People, even prosecuting attorneys, can forget quite a bit in
+a short time."
+
+"Is there anything else?"
+
+"When he comes in, or when you bring him in, I want to be the first to
+talk with him. Can you arrange that?"
+
+"I'm sure I can."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, back at the Harkness house, Ted took Tammie's harness from
+the closet and emptied it of junk. He replaced the junk with an equal
+weight of food, added a handful of matches, thrust a pad of paper and a
+pencil into one of the pockets and strapped the harness on Tammie. Ted
+took his dog to the back door and let him into the darkness.
+
+"Take it to Al," he ordered. "Go to Al, Tammie."
+
+Tammie, who hadn't been able to see any sense in the pack but who saw
+it now, raised his drooping ears and wagged his tail. He raced away in
+the darkness. Ted had scarcely closed the back door when there was an
+imperative knock at the front.
+
+He opened it to admit Jack Callahan.
+
+
+
+
+7
+
+A FLIGHT OF WOODCOCK
+
+
+The sheriff stood tall in the doorway, his face unreadable, while at the
+same time he seemed to strain forward like an eager hound on a hot
+scent.
+
+Disconcerted, showing it and aware that he showed it, Ted fought for
+self-possession. He said, "Well hello."
+
+"Hello, Ted." Callahan was not unfriendly. "How are things?"
+
+Ted tried to cover his confusion with a shrug. "Not much change."
+
+"You seem," Callahan was looking narrowly at him, "a bit nervous."
+
+"Is that strange?"
+
+"Guess not." Callahan was too casual. "It's probably a nerve-wracking
+business. Uh--thought I heard you talking?"
+
+"You might have. I was talking to Tammie."
+
+"Your dog, eh?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"I don't see him around."
+
+"I just let him out the back door. He likes to go for a little run at
+night."
+
+"I'm darned," Callahan said, "if I didn't think I caught a glimpse of
+you letting him out. Tammie looked awful big."
+
+"He's a big dog."
+
+Just how much had Callahan seen? Definitely, a pack-laden collie was not
+going camping and Callahan would know where it was going. The sheriff
+dropped into a chair and crossed his right leg over his left knee.
+
+"I know he's big, I've seen him before. But he sure looked bigger than
+usual. That's a mighty good dog, Ted."
+
+"Yes, he is."
+
+"Highly-trained, too, isn't he? That dog will do almost anything you
+want him to, won't he?"
+
+"Oh, sure," Ted said sarcastically. "Every night he sets his own alarm
+for five o'clock. Then he lays and lights a fire so the house will be
+warm when I get out of bed."
+
+"Aw now, Ted!" Callahan said reproachfully. "You know darn' well what I
+mean! Why only the other night I found Silly Ass Stacey running down the
+road like a haunt was chasing him. 'Don't go up there!' he told me.
+'Don't go up to Harknesses! They have a man-eating dog and it just ate
+me!'"
+
+Doubtless unintentionally, Callahan had given something away. The
+Harkness house was being closely watched or the sheriff wouldn't have
+been on the Lorton Road at the hour when Sammy ran down it. In full
+control of himself now, Ted did not let himself reveal what he had just
+learned. He said grimly, "Sammy was in our chicken coop."
+
+"_Hm-m._ Want me to pick him up for it?"
+
+"I doubt if he'll be as fond of chicken stealing from now on. Tammie
+knocked him down and did a little snarling over him. He didn't hurt
+him."
+
+Callahan grinned. "Figured that out all by myself; nobody who'd most
+been eaten could run as fast as Silly Ass was running. Hope it does
+teach him a lesson; if he gets rid of his oversized notions, he won't be
+anything except a harmless sort of nut. Jail might make him vicious. But
+that's what I mean about your dog. You've really got him trained."
+
+"I spend a lot of time training him."
+
+"You have to if you want results, but it's worth it. You have a dog you
+can really work."
+
+"There are limits."
+
+"Of course. Of course there are. A dog's a dog. But I'll bet," Callahan
+looked squarely at Ted, "that Tammie would even go find your father if
+you told him to."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"Well, who could be sure? But I admire trained dogs no end and yours is
+the best I ever saw. Call him back, will you? I'd like to see him
+again."
+
+"I--" Ted hesitated and hated himself because Callahan noticed his
+hesitation. "I don't know if I can. Tammie takes some pretty long
+rambles at night and he may be out of hearing."
+
+"You'll have Loring on your tail if he bothers game."
+
+"Tammie doesn't bother anything unless he's ordered to do it."
+
+Callahan said admiringly, "That's where training comes in. This could
+even be a story!"
+
+"What could?"
+
+"Why, your dad laying out in the Mahela. He doesn't have any grub except
+the load he cooked the night Loring and I were here--and wasn't I the
+dope not to see through that? He needs about everything. You can't take
+it to him because you could be followed. But you have a big, strong,
+well-trained dog. You, oh you might even make a pack for him. Then you
+load the pack and send it to your dad. Who's going to follow Tammie? Get
+it?"
+
+Ted looked at the floor. Coming at exactly the wrong second, Callahan
+had seen enough to rouse suspicion but not enough to be sure of
+anything. The boy conceded, "It's a story all right."
+
+"Could even be a _true_ story, huh?"
+
+"You're doing the guessing."
+
+"Oh, well," Callahan shrugged, "I didn't come here to bother you. But I
+sure would like to see that dog of yours again and I haven't much time.
+Call him back, will you?"
+
+Both hands in front of him, fingers tightly locked, Ted walked to the
+back door. When Tammie took anything to Al, he usually ran. If he had
+run this time, and kept on running, he would be out of hearing. If he
+was not out of hearing, he would come back. Ted hoped Callahan didn't
+see him gulp. If Tammie returned with the pack, it would be all the
+evidence Callahan needed that the dog could find Al. But not to call him
+would serve only to convince the sheriff, anyhow, that Tammie was on his
+way to Al.
+
+Ted opened the back door and whistled. He waited a moment, whistled
+again and closed the door behind him.
+
+"He'll come if he heard."
+
+"And if he didn't," Callahan commented, "he's a long way back in the
+Mahela, huh?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"Now that's strange," the sheriff mused. "I know a little about dogs.
+You take an airedale, for example. He'll make long tracks, if he gets a
+chance. But I always thought a collie was pretty much the home type. I
+never figured they'd get very far from their doorsteps. Unless, of
+course, maybe it's a trained collie that's sent away."
+
+"Dogs vary."
+
+"Of course, of course. There's no rule says two of any one breed have to
+be alike. Couple of years ago, over beyond Taylorville, we had to get a
+pack that was running wild and, believe it or not, there was a Boston
+bull with them. Now who'd think a Boston bull--What's that?"
+
+"I--I didn't hear anything."
+
+"Well, I did. Ah! There it is again!"
+
+A second time, and unmistakably, Tammie's distinctive whine sounded at
+the back door. Ted's heart plummeted to his toes and his throat went
+dry. He was about to rise and let Tammie in--the only thing he could
+do--but he was forestalled by Jack Callahan.
+
+"There he is. He heard you, all right. I'll let him in."
+
+He walked to the back door ... opened it. Ted hoped his gasp was not as
+loud as it seemed. Wearing no pack, Tammie came sedately in, greeted
+Callahan with a wag of his tail and tripped across the floor to sit down
+beside his master. The boy bent his head to conceal ecstatic eyes.
+Poker-faced Callahan showed nothing of what he must be feeling.
+
+"Just as handsome as I remember him!" he said admiringly. "That dog's a
+real credit to you, Ted!"
+
+"He has just one little flaw," Ted said gravely. "Sometimes he thinks he
+sees things he never saw at all."
+
+Callahan grinned engagingly. "Some people make that mistake, too.
+Especially when there's deep shadow. How are you making out, Ted?"
+
+"All right. My camp's rented for five weeks and I may rent it for
+woodcock season, if the flight comes in."
+
+"Loring told me there's flight birds at Taylorville. He said there's
+quite a few, and he thinks there'll be a big flight."
+
+"Hope it comes here!"
+
+Callahan said soberly, "If it'll help you, so do I. I'm sorry you're in
+trouble."
+
+"Trouble comes."
+
+"I know, but being the sheriff who makes it isn't the snap job it's
+cracked up to be. I've had to hurt a lot of people I'd rather not
+bother, but when I swore to uphold the law, I didn't make any exceptions
+and I'm not going to make any. I hope you don't hold that against me."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Just so you understand. A lot of people who cuss peace officers would
+find out for themselves what a mess they'd be in if there weren't any."
+
+"I know that, too."
+
+"Then you know why I must bring your dad in. When I do, and I will,
+he'll get every break I'm able to offer. By the same token, Smoky
+Delbert may have some breaks coming. So long for now, Ted."
+
+"So long."
+
+Callahan left and Ted was alone with Tammie. He tickled the big dog's
+soft ears.
+
+"The Lord watches over idiots!" he murmured. "He sure enough does!"
+
+What had happened was obvious. Disliking the pack anyway, Tammie hadn't
+gone more than a couple of hundred feet before ridding himself of it.
+Only he knew how he'd unclasped the buckles, but he'd managed. Of
+course, when ordered to do so, he should have gone to Al. But he could
+be forgiven this time.
+
+"I'd best get to bed," Ted told him. "I don't know where you left that
+pack, but do know I'd better find it before Mr. Callahan comes back this
+way. That man has sixteen eyes, and don't ever let's think he's dumb! He
+came right close to tipping over our meat house tonight!"
+
+Ted was up an hour before dawn and had breakfasted by the time the first
+pale light of day began to lift night's shroud from the great beech
+trees. With Tammie at his side, he stepped out the back door and formed
+a plan of action.
+
+He didn't know exactly how much time had passed between his whistle and
+Tammie's appearance at the door, but it couldn't have been more than
+fifteen or twenty seconds. Certainly the collie had needed some little
+time to rid himself of the pack. It couldn't possibly be far from the
+cabin. Ted petted the dog.
+
+"You lost it," he scolded gently. "Why don't you find it?"
+
+Tammie raced ahead twenty yards, whirled, came back to leap at and snap
+his jaws within a quarter inch of Ted's right hand, then flew away
+again. He continued running around and around, stopping at intervals to
+snap. But though he never missed very much, he never hit either.
+
+Ted walked slowly, on a course parallel to the cabin, and he turned his
+head from side to side as he walked. There were no thickets or windfalls
+here. There was nothing at all except the big beeches. Wherever Tammie
+had dropped it, the pack wouldn't be hard to see.
+
+Descending into a little swale, Ted flushed three woodcock out of it.
+Their distinctive, twittering whistle, which Ted had always thought was
+made by wind rushing through stiff flight feathers, sounded as they
+flew. The boy's eyes glowed with pleasure.
+
+The ruffed grouse was a marvelous game bird and nobody who knew him
+well, or even fairly well, would ever deny it. But there was a very
+special group--Ted himself belonged to it--who held the woodcock in
+highest esteem. Swift-winged and sporty, the woodcock had an air of
+mystery and romance possessed by few other wild things.
+
+Measuring eleven inches, from the tip of his bill to the end of his
+tail, the woodcock's plumage varied from black to gray, with different
+shades of brown predominant. So perfectly did they blend with their
+surroundings that, even though a hunter might watch a flying woodcock
+alight on the ground, he was often not able to see it afterwards. Their
+legs were short and their bills, with which they probed into soft earth
+for the various larvae and worms upon which they fed, were ridiculously
+long. But their eyes remained their outstanding characteristic.
+
+Placed near the top of the head, they were luminous and expressive, as
+though, somehow, they mirrored all of nature. They were very large in
+proportion to the bird's size. Whoever saw them would never forget them
+and who knew the woodcock knew one of the finest and most delightful of
+all wild creatures.
+
+Ted marked the trio down, but he did not approach them again. The season
+was not open, and nobody could ever be sure of woodcock. Perhaps these
+were stragglers. Maybe they marked the vanguard of a big flight that
+would be in the Mahela when the season opened and maybe they didn't.
+He'd have to wait and see and, even then, neither he nor anyone else
+could be sure. Cover that might be alive with woodcock one day could be
+empty, or hold only a few birds, the next. During the night, every
+woodcock had often picked up and moved on.
+
+When he'd gone as far as he thought he should, Ted moved twenty-five
+yards deeper into the woods and swung back on a course parallel to the
+one he'd followed. He began to worry.
+
+The pack couldn't possibly be far because Tammie hadn't had time to go
+far. It was good sized, so it should be easy to see. Ted made another
+swing about. Two hours after he had started hunting, he stopped. He was
+a half mile from the house, definitely the extreme limit Tammie might
+have reached. The boy went back to cover the same area more
+carefully.... He went through it a third time. By midday, he was wholly
+baffled.
+
+The pack was not here. Where was it? Had Jack Callahan, nobody's fool,
+seen more than he had admitted seeing? Had he slipped back after leaving
+Ted and found the pack himself? It seemed improbable. Recovery of the
+pack, so obviously for a dog and not for a man to wear, would be proof
+within itself that Ted had intended to send Tammie to Al. And if
+Callahan had the least reason to suppose that Tammie could really find
+Al, he'd be in the house right now, insisting that he do it. Ted petted
+the collie.
+
+"Why can't you talk?" he murmured. "Why can't you tell me what you did
+with it?"
+
+Tammie licked his master's fingers and wagged his tail. Ted sighed. He'd
+looked in all the places where the pack might be and hadn't found it. It
+stood to reason that nobody else was going to find it either, or at
+least, they wouldn't find it easily. Still worried, Ted went back to the
+house and fixed a lunch. He thought of looking for the pack some more
+and decided against it. There was no other place to look but there were
+things to do. He hadn't been at the camp since the night Al was accused
+of shooting Smoky. If he intended to rent it to hunters, he'd better go
+see how things were.
+
+Ted chose to walk, for he had been doing a great deal of serious
+thinking and had changed many of his ideas. Running a successful resort,
+or even a successful camp, involved a great deal more than just being a
+gracious host. In any city, or even any town, such a camp probably
+wouldn't rent at all because it was so radically different from what
+urban residents had come to expect in their dwellings. But it fitted the
+Mahela, and for a short time each year, it would be appreciated because
+it offered a refreshing change from conventional living. But there was
+still more involved.
+
+Few people wanted to get into the out-of-doors merely for the sake of
+being there. The place must offer something, and beyond any doubt the
+Mahela's prime attraction was its deer herds. But nobody, regardless of
+whether he was running Crestwood or renting camps, could hope to make a
+living just from the three-week deer season alone. He would also have to
+lure all the small game hunters and all the fishermen he could, and if
+he didn't lure them honestly, they'd never come back. It stood to reason
+that nobody who lived a couple of hundred miles from the Mahela could
+know what was taking place there. They must be kept informed, and Ted
+wished to walk now because he wanted to judge for himself whether or not
+there would be a worthwhile flight of woodcock.
+
+The birds might be anywhere at all. Ted had flushed them from the very
+summit of Hawkbill. But as a rule they avoided the thickest cover and
+haunted the streams, bogs and swamps because they found their food
+along stream beds and in swamps. With Tammie trailing happily beside
+him. Ted followed the course of Spinning Creek.
+
+He flushed two woodcock from a sparse growth of aspens and watched them
+wing away and settle on the other side of the creek. Then he put up a
+single and, farther on, a little flock of five. In the clearing, almost
+at the camp's door, another single whistled away and dropped near
+Tumbling Run. That made nine woodcock between the Harkness house and the
+camp. Definitely it was not a substantial flight and no hunter should be
+advised to come to the Mahela because of them. But there were more than
+there had been.
+
+A doe and two spring fawns were nosing about the apple trees. Bears had
+been climbing the same trees, leaving scarred trunks and broken branches
+in their wake. Black bears, of which there were a fair number in the
+Mahela, would come almost as far for apples as they would for honey. But
+they came only at night and did a lot of damage when they climbed the
+trees. However, these tough apple trees had been broken by bears every
+year they'd borne a crop and they'd always recovered. They'd recover
+again, and Ted supposed bears had as much right as anything else to the
+apples. He grinned. The fruit was gnarled and wormy, but it was a
+woodland delicacy and woodland dwellers competed for it as fiercely as a
+crowd of undisciplined children might compete for a rack of ice-cream
+cones.
+
+Ted walked all around the camp, saw nothing amiss and unlocked the door.
+He pulled the hasp back, went in--and saw Tammie's pack lying under the
+table. Momentarily alarmed, he stopped. Only one person could have left
+the pack! He picked it up and thrust his hand into a side pocket. He
+found and pulled out a page torn from the pad of paper he'd inserted in
+the pack and read the penciled note.
+
+     Dear Ted; I was cuming to see you last nite. Tammy met me a sniff
+     from the dor and I snuck up and saw Calhan. Gess he wants to see me
+     rite enuf but I don't want to see him!
+
+     Hope taking Tammy's pak don't throw you off.
+
+     I can get along a good spel with the stuf in the pak and wudcok
+     seson cuming on. I've saw a mess of flite wudcok. Don't send Tammy
+     agen without you know it's safe and send him after midnite. I won't
+     be so far away he can't get to me and bak. Watch Calhan. He's
+     sharp.
+
+     Your dad
+
+     P.S. I got the kyote.
+
+Ted heaved a mighty sigh of thanksgiving. Al had the pack's contents and
+there were three blankets missing from the camp. For the first time, the
+dark clouds that surged around the boy revealed their silver lining. Al
+was still a fugitive, but he had enough to eat and he was sleeping under
+blankets. It seemed a great deal.
+
+Ted read the note again and smiled over it. A hunted outlaw, Al was
+still abiding by the principles in which he believed. He might have been
+justified in killing game for food, but the reference to woodcock season
+indicated that he had done no such thing. Possibly--Ted remembered that
+he had his coyote traps--he had caught a bobcat or so. The season was
+never closed on bobcats and, if one could overcome natural
+squeamishness, they were really delicious eating. Ted lifted the stove
+lid, put the note within, applied a lighted match, waited until the
+paper burned to ashes, then used the lid lifter to pound the ashes to
+dust.
+
+He looked fondly at Tammie, who had been nowise derelict. Ordered to go
+to Al, he had done exactly that and it was none of Tammie's doing if Al
+had been within a "sniff" of his own back door.
+
+Ted said cheerfully, "Guess we'll go home, Tammie. But we'll come back
+for the pack tonight, Mr. Callahan, or some of his friends, probably
+will be patroling here and there."
+
+That night there were three more letters, two from deer hunters who
+wanted the camp the usual first two weeks of the season and one from a
+grouse hunter who wanted the first week. Ted advised them of the camp's
+present status, put his letters in the mailbox and lifted the red flag
+to let the carrier know there was mail to pick up. The next night there
+were five letters, two of which had been sent airmail. Ted opened the
+first.
+
+     Dear Mr. Harkness: Your letter intrigued us no end. We haven't seen
+     a good flight of woodcock for ten years and didn't think there was
+     any such thing any more. Should they come in, by all means call me
+     and reverse the charges. My business phone is TR 5-4397; my home is
+     LA 2-0489. Call either place and we'll start an hour afterwards.
+     There'll be seven of us, and I enclose a ten-dollar check as
+     deposit.
+
+     Cordially,
+     George Beaulieu
+
+The second airmail letter read:
+
+     Bless you, Ted! You've started me dreaming of Damon and/or Pythias.
+     One or the other will do, but nothing else, please! By your own
+     invitation, you're stuck with me for the full twenty-one days.
+     I'll see you the day before the season opens.
+
+     Gratefully,
+     John L. Wilson
+
+There was a check for a hundred dollars enclosed and almost grimly Ted
+folded both checks in his wallet. He'd have to spend some money for
+food, but not a great deal. The freezer was almost full and much of the
+garden remained to be harvested. He stared at the far wall.
+
+He had not planned it this way. He had looked forward to a happy
+venture, to enjoying and helping his guests, and if he made money in so
+doing, that would be fine. Had things turned out as he'd planned, there
+was already enough money in sight to build and equip another camp. But
+that was not to be. Al had to come out of the Mahela some time. When he
+did, they were in for a fight, and money would be a powerful weapon in
+that all-out battle. They must win, and anything else must be secondary.
+
+The other three letters were from deer hunters who wanted the camp the
+first two weeks of the season.
+
+Ted devoted the next fortnight to harvesting the garden. He dug the
+potatoes, emptied them in the cellar bin and stacked squash and pumpkins
+beside them. Bunches of carrots and turnips were stored in another bin,
+and shelled beans were put in sacks.
+
+Almost every mail brought more letters, and two out of three were from
+deer hunters. Ted rented his camp for the season's third week. Maybe
+nobody could make a living from deer hunters alone, but anybody who had
+enough camps, perhaps ten or twelve, could certainly earn a decent sum
+of money from just deer hunters.
+
+The Mahela changed its green summer dress for autumn's gaudy raiment and
+the frosts came. Woodcock continued to drift in, and two days before the
+season opened, they arrived in force. Where there had been one, there
+were thirty, and still they came. Ted drove into Lorton and called from
+the drugstore.
+
+"Mr. Beaulieu?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"This is Ted Harkness, Mr. Beaulieu. The woodcock are in."
+
+"A big flight?"
+
+"The biggest in years."
+
+"We'll be there tomorrow," George Beaulieu said happily. "Hold the camp
+for us!"
+
+"I'll do that, and anybody in Lorton can tell you where to find me."
+
+"Thanks for calling. We'll be seeing you."
+
+
+
+
+8
+
+TROUBLE FOR NELS
+
+
+In the beech forest, just beyond Tumbling Run, a buck so young that
+budding antlers did little more than part the coarse hair on its head
+stamped a front hoof and snorted. Old enough to have a vast admiration
+for himself and his own powers, but too young to have any sense, the
+little buck snorted again and tried to sound as ferocious as possible.
+Nosing about for any apples that might remain under the trees near Ted's
+camp, he had stood his ground gallantly when Ted and Tammie approached.
+
+Not ten minutes before their arrival, he'd chased a rabbit away from the
+trees and he was so impressed by that feat that he thought he could
+chase anything. But when Ted and Tammie refused to run, he'd trotted
+into the forest to do his threatening from a safer place. He snorted
+again, more hopefully than angrily, and when he did not regain
+possession of the apple trees, he looked sad. Ted grinned at him.
+
+"Junior's almost decided he can't bluff us, Tammie. Poor little guy!
+He'd just about convinced himself that he's a real ripsnorter of a buck.
+Oh, well, it's a hard world for everybody."
+
+Ted continued to string clotheslines between the apple trees. He pulled
+them tight, tested their tension with an experimental finger and turned
+thoughtfully back to the camp. It might be a hard world for adolescent
+bucks, but if it weren't for the fact that his father was still laying
+out in the Mahela, right now it would be a pretty good one for Ted.
+
+True to his promise, George Beaulieu and his six companions had arrived
+the day before woodcock season opened. In his mid-fifties, Beaulieu was
+branch manager for an insurance company. Of the six men with him, only
+twenty-six-year-old George Junior, an insurance salesman who thought his
+father was the greatest man in the world and who wanted nothing more
+than to follow in his footsteps, had been less than middle-aged. The
+other five were a filling station owner, a dentist, a toolmaker, an
+electrical appliance dealer and a printer. Their party had been
+complemented by two dogs, an English setter and a springer spaniel.
+
+There had been nothing sensational about any of them, including the
+dogs. Except for George Beaulieu, his son and the printer, none of the
+men had been even fair hunters. The three, far and away the best of the
+seven gunners, had averaged three shots for every woodcock brought down.
+The worst gunner, the electrical appliance dealer, who appropriately
+enough was named Joseph Watt, had fired at least fifteen times for every
+woodcock he put in his pocket. Yet Ted felt that the happy man had lived
+through an uplifting and a near-sensational experience.
+
+Although unpretentious, his guests had definitely not been meek or
+demure. Whoever missed an easy shot, which practically all of them did
+at least twice a day, was needled mercilessly by the others. Not one
+among them, under the best of conditions, could have made even a meager
+living as a professional hunter. Yet they represented the best type of
+present-day game seekers.
+
+They had come to shoot woodcock and they would have been disappointed
+not to shoot some. But they did not pursue their quarry with the
+calculating coldness of a Smoky Delbert or, for that matter, with the
+intense concentration of an Al Harkness, when Al was after a pelt he
+wanted. They were out for fun and they had fun, and although game
+mattered, meat did not. There were so many woodcock that everybody, even
+Joseph Watt, got some. But considering the shells they shot, the camp
+rental, food, transportation and licenses, their game probably cost them
+at least fifteen dollars a pound!
+
+After the first week ended and there seemed to be more woodcock than
+ever--the flight was still coming in--they had decided that another ten
+years might pass before they saw this again and stayed the second week.
+They'd left only this morning, promising to be back next year if there
+was another flight of woodcock, or for grouse if there was not.
+
+Ted hummed as he started toward the camp. The Beaulieu party had been
+wonderful guests and certainly they were welcome back. If the Mahela was
+good for them, they were just as good for the Mahela.
+
+Ted gathered up as much bedding as he could carry. He'd been a little
+worried about it because he'd provided neither sheets nor pillowcases.
+But lack of them hadn't seemed to worry the Beaulieu party in the
+slightest. Most people who hunted all day were too tired by night to
+care whether their beds were formal, or anything except comfortable.
+Next year--always supposing his father and he still had the camp, Ted
+thought that they would have to provide linens, too. Summer campers
+spent more time in camp than hunters did, and they were apt to be more
+particular.
+
+Ted hung the blankets and quilts on the lines he had strung and pinned
+them securely. If they aired all day long, they'd be fresh by night. The
+grouse hunters--Ted had corresponded with an Arthur Beamish--were due
+some time after supper and there would be ten in the party.
+
+The small buck, that had been lurking hopefully near and awaiting a
+chance to come back, snorted his astonishment when the bedding began to
+blow in the wind and ran away as fast as he could. The little fellow
+thought he was fully capable of dealing with anything natural, but
+wind-blown bedclothes smacked of the supernatural. Ted lost himself in
+thought.
+
+The camp was completely rented, except for the third week of small game
+season, and it would return a little more than four hundred dollars in
+rent. Added to that was the money he'd certainly get from John Wilson,
+and the total was more than it had cost to build and furnish the camp.
+Some of it would have to go for food and John Wilson probably would
+expect good things to eat, but he'd get them. Ted had six woodcock, a
+gourmet's delight, in the freezer, and he would add the legal two days'
+possession limit of six grouse. He'd need more than that, but even after
+buying whatever was necessary, he'd still have enough money to put up a
+hard legal battle for Al when his father finally had to surrender. There
+would be at least twice as much money as Ted had told John McLean he
+would have. If more was needed, and it probably would be, he'd sell the
+camp.
+
+Ted gathered up the dirty towels and wash and dish cloths, put them in a
+bushel basket brought along for that purpose and replaced them with
+fresh, clean laundry. The Beaulieu party, another proof of their
+sportsmanship, had left the camp in fine shape, with the dishes washed
+and stacked where they belonged and the floor clean. Tammie came in the
+open door and Ted grinned at him.
+
+"Guess we can go, Tammie, and you'd better rest a bit. You're going into
+the hills tonight."
+
+Tammie wagged an agreeable tail and trotted out to the pickup with his
+master; Ted eased the little truck onto the road.
+
+He'd sent Tammie, with a load of food, the night before the Beaulieu
+party arrived and everything had gone without a hitch. Tammie had left
+shortly after midnight and returned two and a half hours later. The pack
+was empty save for the note Al had thrust in it.
+
+     Dear Ted: Tammy cum al rite. This works good, huh? I got enuf to
+     last me anyhow 2 weeks mor. Don't send Tammy befor. The les you got
+     to send him, the beter it is. Good luk and thanks.
+
+     Your dad
+
+Ted sighed wearily. He'd hoped that, with passing time, the situation
+would clear itself or be cleared. If anything, it was worse.
+
+Definitely out of danger, but due for a long convalescence in the Lorton
+hospital, Smoky Delbert had told everything. Starting from the Fordham
+Road, he had gone up Coon Valley with the intention of finding good
+places to set fox traps. He'd carried his rifle because there was always
+a chance of seeing a fox or bobcat, predators upon which there was a
+bounty. He'd known Al Harkness was ahead of him, for Al's distinctive
+boot marks had been left in the soft place where the spring overflowed
+the Coon Valley trail. Nearing the three sycamores, and without any
+warning at all, Al had risen from behind Glory Rock and shot.
+
+It was a simple, straightforward story and one that bore out other known
+facts. By his own admission, Al had been in Coon Valley the same day. He
+did wear boots with soles of his own design, and therefore they were
+distinctive. Smoky Delbert, a woodsman of vast experience, might very
+well have seen these tracks, in spite of the fact that Loring Blade had
+missed them. Ted sighed again.
+
+The papers had printed Smoky's story and most were sympathetic. There
+had even been a couple of resounding editorials demanding that Al be
+brought in--regardless of the cost and effort that might be expended to
+apprehend him--and face the justice he so richly deserved. But editors
+were not the only ones who had swung to Smoky's side.
+
+Time, John McLean had asserted, made people forget. Only, in this
+instance, it had made too many of them forget that Smoky Delbert was a
+vicious poacher. He had, instead, become the wronged innocent, and when
+Ted went into Lorton now there were those who averted their faces when
+they passed him or even crossed to the other side of the street to avoid
+meeting him at all.
+
+Carl Thornton had become something of a local hero. Nobody knew how the
+news had leaked out, but everyone knew that Crestwood's owner was
+paying all of Smoky's extensive hospital bills. That puzzled Ted, for
+Thornton had never seemed the type to care about anyone's welfare save
+his own. But he would do anything that worked to his own advantage, and
+perhaps he thought it worth his while, at the price of Smoky's hospital
+expenses, to have Lorton solidly behind him. There could be no doubt
+that Lorton was there.
+
+"Cut it out!" Ted urged himself. "You don't like Thornton, but give him
+credit, if credit's due."
+
+Ted swung up the Harkness drive and parked. While Tammie went off on an
+inspection tour to assure himself that everything was as it should be,
+the boy took the basket of laundry inside. He grimaced. Modern in some
+respects, Al had by no means accepted the streamlined age as an unmixed
+blessing. He'd bought a freezer and refrigerator because their
+advantages were obvious. But he scorned washing machines and was sure
+that, though clothes emerging from one might look clean, they couldn't
+possibly be as pure as those that were washed on a scrub-board.
+
+Ted put the washtub on its stand, filled it with hot water, added soap
+and went to scrubbing. He rinsed the laundry, ran it through a hand
+wringer and hung it on a line stretched behind the house.
+
+An hour before sundown, he went back to camp to replace the bedding and
+wind his clotheslines on a spool. He got his own supper, fed Tammie,
+washed the dishes and had just finished putting them where they belonged
+when the collie whined a warning. A car, followed by a second, came up
+the drive and, a moment later, there was an unnecessarily loud knock on
+the door.
+
+Ted opened it to confront a rather plump man, who was probably in his
+mid-thirties. He was dressed in a gaudy wool shirt, hunting pants,
+ten-inch lace boots, and around his middle was belted a hunting knife
+almost long enough to be a small sword. His black hair was a little wild
+and so were his eyes, but his smile was pleasant and his outstretched
+hand was quite steady.
+
+"Ted?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"I'm Beamish," the other stated, a little thickly. "B'-gosh, we found
+you!"
+
+"You certainly did!"
+
+Ted smiled faintly. Hunters going into camp often did a little
+anticipatory celebrating and evidently Arthur Beamish had been overdoing
+it.
+
+"This the camp?" he asked.
+
+"No, the camp's farther up the road."
+
+"Good!" Arthur Beamish said happily. "You go in the woods, you go in the
+woods! More woods, the better! That's what I always say! What do you
+always say?"
+
+"Same thing." Ted grinned. "If you want to follow me, I'll show you the
+way up there."
+
+"Ride with ya," Beamish declared. "Tha's just what I'll do."
+
+"You're welcome."
+
+Ordering Tammie to stay in the house, Ted guided his exuberant guest to
+the pickup and opened the door for him. Arthur Beamish bellowed, "Follow
+us, men! Ah, wilderness!"
+
+He sat companionably close and draped a friendly arm across Ted's
+shoulder. "Lots of grouse?"
+
+"Plenty. You like grouse hunting, eh?"
+
+"Best darn' game there is!" Beamish exploded. "I rather get me one
+grouse than forty-nine deer! And I get 'em, too!"
+
+"You do?"
+
+"Didn't you ever hear about me?"
+
+"I--" Ted hesitated. Obviously, he was supposed to know his guest. But
+he didn't, yet to say the wrong thing might mean to give offense,
+"Uh--aren't you--?"
+
+"Tha's right!" Beamish said happily. "I'm Beamish, the trapshooter!
+Traps in summer, grouse in season! Br-br-br! Up they go! Bang! Down they
+come! Every time!"
+
+Ted twisted uneasily. Three grouse was the daily bag limit. Nobody
+should need, or take, more than that. He calmed himself. As yet, nobody
+had taken more. He pulled in to the camp and stopped.
+
+"Fine camp!" enthused Beamish, who could see only that part of it which
+was illuminated by the pickup's lights. "Best I ever did see! Great lil'
+camp!"
+
+The other two cars stopped and the rest of the hunters got out. Even in
+the night, there was that about them which at once set them apart from
+the quiet Beaulieu party. They were younger, more restless, and they
+fairly oozed that nervous sparkle which so often marks young executives.
+They were also sensible--only Arthur Beamish and one other had been
+over-indulging themselves. Definitely, the drivers of the two cars were
+in full possession of all their faculties.
+
+The three beautiful setters that had ridden in a pen in one of the car's
+trunks were as smartly turned out as the men. Obviously, they were
+hunting dogs, the best money could buy. But this crowd had money to
+spend.
+
+"Come 'round!" Arthur Beamish bellowed. "Wan'sha to meet Ted!"
+
+One by one, Ted was introduced to the rest of the party and as he met
+them, he liked them. If they were young and restless, they were also
+competent and talented and they had an air of belonging here in the
+wilderness. Probably this was not the first camp they'd ever seen.
+
+"Let's go in," Ted suggested.
+
+Arthur Beamish bubbled, "You get the best ideas!"
+
+Ted let the men into the camp, watched closely as they inspected it and
+knew definitely that they'd been in such places before. Their glances
+were quick but all encompassing.
+
+One of them, and although Ted did not remember all the names, he thought
+this one was Tom Strickland, turned with a smile. "This will do very
+well. Do you know where we can get a wet nurse?"
+
+"A what?"
+
+Strickland grinned, "A sort of combination cook, fire-builder,
+sweeper-upper, dishwasher; we'll want to spend our time hunting."
+
+"I think I can find somebody. Is nine dollars a day all right?"
+
+"Sure. Can you send him up tomorrow?"
+
+"Send him tonight!" somebody yelled.
+
+Strickland said scathingly, "I wouldn't inflict you wild hyenas on
+anyone tonight. I'll cook breakfast."
+
+"Oh, my aching ptomaine!"
+
+Ted grinned. "I'm sure I can send somebody tomorrow. Everything's O.K.,
+eh?"
+
+"Right as rain."
+
+Ted got grimly back into the pickup and started down the road. Nine
+dollars a day for fourteen days meant another hundred and twenty-six
+dollars that probably would be sorely needed when Al had his inevitable
+day in court, but Ted hadn't wanted to accept the job tonight because,
+somehow, doing so would have seemed grasping. But he'd swallow his pride
+and take it tomorrow. He must think of nothing except clearing his
+father's name.
+
+Back at the house, Ted loaded Tammie's pack very carefully. Laying out
+in the Mahela, Al would not expect and did not need luxuries. Ted packed
+cornmeal and oatmeal, desiccated soup, a parcel of dried apricots,
+powdered milk, sugar, tea, flour. But when everything else was in, there
+was room for a parcel of frozen pork chops. Ted added them and a note.
+
+     Dad: Everything's fine. There are grouse hunters in camp now and
+     there will be bear hunters next. Take care of yourself and let me
+     know what you need.
+
+     Love,
+     Ted
+
+At five minutes past midnight, he strapped the pack on Tammie, took him
+to the back door and let him out. Just as he did, there was an almost
+timid knock on the front door. He jumped nervously.
+
+"Go to Al!" he urged. "Take it to Al, Tammie! And please run!"
+
+He shut the back door and perspiration broke on his brow as he stood
+anxiously near it. Callahan, whose suspicions should have been
+effectively lulled, was not lulled at all. He'd merely bided his time,
+struck at the right hour and Ted was trapped.
+
+He crossed the floor on shaky legs and opened the front door to come
+face to face with Nels Anderson. Ted gasped.
+
+His one-time working partner was pale and looked ill. Weariness had
+left its impression in great blue patches beneath both eyes, but it was
+not entirely physical weariness. Nels had suffered some terrible
+shock--and in his extremity he had come to his friend.
+
+"Nels! What's wrong?"
+
+"I," Nels forced the shadow of his former smile, "am all right."
+
+"Come on in!"
+
+"I--I do not want to bother you. But I saw your light and--"
+
+"What on earth have you been doing?"
+
+"Walkin'. Yoost walkin'."
+
+"All night?"
+
+"I--" Nels looked at the floor. "I did not want to see Hilda. I--I lose
+my yob."
+
+"How come?"
+
+Nels smiled again, but it was a sickly smile. "Mrs. Martin, she's
+helpin' in the kitchen while huntin' season's on, she says, 'Nels,' she
+says, 'the door on the walk-in cooler is stuck. I can't open it. Can
+you?' I say I open it and Thornton comes. 'Told you to stay out of
+here!' he yells. He was awful mad. 'Now get out and stay out!' So, no
+more yob."
+
+"You'll get another one."
+
+"Oh sure. I get another one easy. You--You know where?"
+
+Ted said recklessly, "I know where you can work for the next two weeks.
+There's a bunch of hunters in my camp and they're looking for somebody
+to do their cooking and odd jobs. Get up there tomorrow morning and say
+I sent you. The pay is nine dollars a day."
+
+Stars shone in Nels' woebegone eyes. "You mean it?"
+
+"Sure I mean it."
+
+"Yah! I go tell Hilda!"
+
+Nels had shuffled in the door but he seemed to float out of it. Ted
+stared grimly at the black window. He needed the money himself, but Nels
+had a wife and five children and whether or not they ate regularly
+depended on whether Nels worked steadily. Ted paced back and forth, then
+sank into a chair.
+
+Weariness overcame him and he dozed.... He awakened suddenly, sure he'd
+heard something. Then Tammie whined for admittance and Ted got up to let
+him in. He took off the pack and looked for the note he knew he would
+find.
+
+     Dear Ted: Tammy cum agen, as you know. I'm set rite nise now. There
+     is no need to send Tammy agen for a cuple weeks. Tel your bear
+     hunters that a lot of bears hang out in Carter Valley.
+
+     Your dad
+
+
+
+
+9
+
+A BLACK BEAR CHARGES
+
+
+Ted had had an awakening.
+
+Four days after he sent Nels to work for the Beamish party, Nels had
+come back singing their praises in the loftiest tones. They were all
+gentlemen of the highest order. Nobody cared what he cooked as long as
+there was plenty of whatever it was. Driving Nels into Lorton, Mr.
+Strickland had asked him to order groceries and had paid the rather
+large bill without a murmur. That night they'd voted him the best camp
+cook they ever saw and given him a ten-dollar tip.
+
+Of course, they were a little bit queer. He'd told them his name at
+least a dozen times, but everybody insisted on calling him Hjalmar. They
+pronounced it exactly as it was spelled, too. Nels didn't mind because
+Hjalmar was certainly a fine old name. But it had taken him almost a day
+to get used to it.
+
+They were wonderful hunters, especially that Mr. Beamish. The first day
+he'd shot five grouse, the second seven, and on the two succeeding days
+he'd shot five and seven. That made twenty-three grouse in four days
+and he'd used just thirty-two shells. It must be some kind of record or
+something, Nels didn't know. However, each day everyone else in the
+party had paid Mr. Beamish money. Nels understood if Mr. Beamish scored
+too many misses, he'd have to pay all the others. Still singing the
+praises of the Beamish party, Nels hurried off to resume his duties with
+them.
+
+Ted was left to ponder a problem that he had hoped he would never have
+to face.
+
+Too many people--who were too often intelligent people--took game laws
+far too lightly. They shot what they wished when they wished to, and few
+of them ever thought that they were doing any wrong. Actually, in every
+sense of the word, they were thieves. Bag and possession limits, insofar
+as it was humanly possible to apportion wild game justly, were provided
+so everyone might have a share and still leave some behind. Who took
+more than his share, took from all the others.
+
+Beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was the duty of anyone who knew of game
+law violations to report the violator to the nearest warden so the
+proper action could be taken. But how could Ted report Arthur Beamish's
+when Beamish was his guest? The boy still hadn't made a decision when,
+the next day, Loring Blade came in.
+
+The warden said quietly, "I've been watching the grouse hunters in your
+camp."
+
+"You have?"
+
+"Yes, and I arrested one of them this morning, a man named Beamish. He's
+killed nineteen grouse that I know of, seven over anything he should
+have had, in four days."
+
+Ted said reluctantly, "He's killed twenty-three."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Nels told me."
+
+"Wish I'd known that, but I think he'll toe the mark now."
+
+"What'd you do to him?"
+
+"Took him before Justice McAfee. Mac fined him fifty dollars and a
+positive revocation of his license if he violates any more."
+
+"But--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"There's a twenty-five dollar fine for every illegal grouse. As long as
+you were taking him in, you should have had him fined a hundred and
+seventy-five dollars."
+
+"Not him," Loring Blade declared. "You can't hurt him too much by
+hitting him in the pocketbook. His hunting privileges are what he holds
+dear."
+
+It was, Ted decided after the warden had left, a smart way to do things.
+The penalty for breaking game laws should be harsh, but fining Arthur
+Beamish a hundred and seventy-five dollars would bother him less than a
+ten-dollar fine might inconvenience a Stacey or a Crawford. However,
+Beamish's hunting privileges really meant something to him.
+
+At any rate, the warden's method worked. Nels, who lost none of his
+admiration for the grouse hunters, gave Ted a complete report at
+intervals. Nobody in the camp took more than the limit after Beamish was
+fined--and there was still another angle. Ted had always known that he
+and his father were in the minority--sometimes it seemed that nobody
+except he and Al cared what happened to the Mahela. But now the boy was
+assured that others worked for its best interests, too.
+
+The grouse hunters had gone home and for a whole week there would be
+nobody in the camp. There was nothing to worry about in the immediate
+future. Al, as his last note indicated, was doing all right. The Beamish
+party, who'd really liked Nels, had expressed their satisfaction in more
+lavish tips and for the first time in three years, Nels' family could
+get by for a while, even if he did not work. However, he could certainly
+work all through deer season. The Andersons might face a bleak New Year,
+but they would have a happy Christmas.
+
+Ted had decided to seize the week's interlude as a fine time to go over
+the camp from top to bottom, but there was little to do. Nels would
+never write a learned dissertation about Shakespeare, or come up with a
+startling new aspect of the nuclear fission theory, but whoever hired
+him got all they paid for, plus a substantial bonus. Working by the day,
+in Nels' opinion, meant working twenty-four hours, if that were
+necessary. The cabin was spotless. Even the blankets had been aired.
+
+With time heavy on his hands, Ted fretted. He collected the six grouse
+to which he was entitled and put them in the freezer. For lack of
+something else to do, he went twice more to the three sycamores near
+Glory Rock, the scene of Smoky Delbert's shooting. He didn't find
+anything, but he hadn't really expected to discover any new evidence or
+clues. Looking for them had helped kill time while he waited anxiously
+for the bear hunters.
+
+Deer were not especially hard to get, if all one wanted was venison;
+there were does and young deer that wouldn't even run from hunters. But
+the big old bucks with acceptable racks of antlers got big because they
+were wary and they were difficult to bring down. Woodcock were sporting
+and who hunted grouse successfully had every right to call himself a
+hunter. Squirrels were fun, providing one hunted them with a rifle
+instead of a shotgun. But unless one used dogs to bring them to
+bay--and it was against the law to use dogs on any big game in the
+Mahela--black bears were far and away the most difficult game of all.
+
+Keen-nosed and sharp-eared, they almost always knew when hunters were
+about. Wise, they were well aware of the best ways to preserve their own
+hides. As circumstances prescribed, they could slink like ghosts or run
+like horses and they laid some heartbreaking trails. Fifty miles was no
+unusual distance for a black bear to cover in a day and they were full
+of tricks. Ted himself had followed black bears on snow and come to
+where the trail ended abruptly. The bears had walked backwards, stepping
+exactly in the tracks they had made running forward, and made a long
+sidewise jump that always delayed their pursuer and sometimes baffled
+him.
+
+Some men who'd spent their lives in black bear country had yet to see
+their first one. It took hunters of the highest caliber to get them, and
+thus Ted looked forward to those who would occupy his camp. But while he
+waited there was little else to do and he spent some of his time in
+Lorton.
+
+Just another sleepy little town for forty-nine weeks of the year, Lorton
+was almost feverishly preparing for its moment of glory. If it was not
+exactly the center of all eyes, due to its geographical position as the
+town nearest the Mahela, it was the center of deer hunting. Every room
+in its two hotels and three motels had long since been reserved and any
+householder with a room to rent could have a choice of at least ten
+hunters. In the next few weeks, Lorton would see at least twice as many
+deer hunters as it had permanent residents. Its normally quiet streets
+would have bumper-to-bumper traffic. Parking space would be at a
+premium; there'd be crowds waiting in every eating place; stores would
+sell more merchandise than they did at any other time of the year; and
+any Lortonite who knew anything at all about the Mahela, even if his
+knowledge was limited to how to get into it and out of it again, could
+have a job guiding deer hunters, if he wanted it.
+
+In addition, every camping ground in the Mahela would have its quota of
+trailers, tents and hardy souls who either slept in cars or made their
+beds on the ground. Sometimes, in the event of heavy storms, these
+venturesome ones got into trouble and were trapped until snowplows or
+rescue parties reached them. But this fall the weather had been mild,
+almost springlike, and there was every indication that it would continue
+to be so.
+
+Twice, just after the grouse hunters left and again four days later, Ted
+sent Tammie to Al. He would send him again just before deer season
+opened, for that was an uncertain time. There would be hunters
+everywhere and no assurance as to what they would do. Horses, cattle,
+sheep, leaves fluttering in the wind and men had all been mistaken for
+bucks with nice racks of antlers and punctured accordingly with
+high-powered ammunition. If Tammie should be delayed and have to come
+back in daylight, there was no guarantee whatever that some
+trigger-happy hunter would not consider him a choice black and white
+deer. Stocking Al with plenty of everything he needed meant that Tammie
+would not have to go out again until deer season ended.
+
+Ted spent the two days prior to the opening of bear season cutting more
+wood for the camp. On the afternoon before, he built and banked a fire
+in the heating stove so that the camp would be reasonably warm and dry
+when the hunters arrived. Then he prepared his supper and Tammie's and
+was ready for the knock on his door when it sounded. He opened the door
+and blinked in astonishment.
+
+The man who stood before him was young, not much older than Ted himself,
+and very grave. He wore hunting clothes and hunting boots, but perhaps
+because they were new, they seemed somewhat ill-fitting. Strapped around
+his middle were two belts, one containing a knife with a blade at least
+a foot long and the other supporting two enormous 45 caliber revolvers.
+He was making every effort to appear nonchalant, but it was an effort so
+strained that the effect was a little ludicrous. His eyes brimmed with a
+lilting excitement and a vast anticipation.
+
+"Mr. Harkness?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm Alex Jackson."
+
+"Oh, yes." Ted extended his hand. "Glad to see you, Mr. Jackson."
+
+"As you can see," Alex Jackson indicated the two revolvers, "I'm ready
+for them."
+
+"Uh--are you going bear hunting with revolvers?"
+
+"Oh, no! Definitely not. I have my rifle, too. It's just that one must
+be prepared when the beasts charge."
+
+"Ah--What'd you say?"
+
+"I said--Oh, before I overlook it."
+
+Alex Jackson took out his wallet and counted out the thirty-five dollars
+still due on the camp rental. Ted tried to collect his spinning
+thoughts. Expecting a seasoned, experienced hunter, he'd met instead a
+youngster who talked seriously about black bears charging. Or hadn't Ted
+heard correctly? He slipped the money into his pocket and looked
+sidewise at his guest.
+
+"If you'll follow me, I'll take you to the camp."
+
+"Would you have a little time to talk?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"May I bring the fellows in?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+The man turned to beckon, and somebody shut off the car's idling motor
+and flicked off its lights. Five more hunters came into the house, and
+Ted was introduced as they came. None were older than Alex Jackson. Two,
+Alex's brother Paul and a youngster named Philip Tarbox, looked as
+though they should be behind their high-school desks, rather than in a
+hunting camp. Alex Jackson turned with a smile.
+
+"Now you know us. How do you like us?"
+
+"Fine," Ted murmured. "Uh--how much bear hunting have any of you done?"
+
+Alex Jackson's eyes were full of dreams. "None of us have ever hunted
+any big game, but I've read all about it."
+
+"You've never hunted?"
+
+"Not big game," Alex Jackson said modestly. "You see, I just came of age
+last month and thus was able to handle my own affairs. But I've always
+wanted to hunt big game, especially bears."
+
+"Do--do your folks know you're here?"
+
+"Paul and I haven't any, and I am now Paul's guardian. But the other
+fellows' parents do. Yes, of course, and they were glad to have them in
+my charge. I've been counsellor for three summers at Camp Monawami. You
+needn't worry about our ability to handle firearms. We've all hunted
+rabbits. But I would like to ask your advice."
+
+"Sure." Ted felt weak.
+
+"Philip, Steve, Arnold and Wilson are armed with nothing but shotguns.
+Do you think I should return to the town through which we just passed
+and buy them rifles and revolvers?"
+
+"Gosh no!"
+
+"I'm worried," Alex Jackson said seriously. "Grimshaw, in his _Bears of
+the North_, says that when the beasts charge--"
+
+"Grimshaw was writing about grizzlies. These are black bears."
+
+"Oh!" Alex Jackson elevated his brows. "You can say definitely that they
+will not charge?"
+
+"Nobody can say that. They're wild animals."
+
+"I thought so!" Alex Jackson seemed vastly relieved. "Will a shotgun
+halt them when they charge?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+Ted wished he could sink through the floor. Expecting hunters, he had
+his hands full of what, very literally, were babes in the woods. But
+they had a great dream and a great hope, and regardless of who told them
+that not once in 1000 times will even a wounded black bear charge a
+hunter, they wouldn't believe it because they did not care to believe
+it. They had come bear hunting to live dangerously!
+
+Alex Jackson nodded happily. "Thank you very much. Now will you please
+show us the camp?"
+
+"Follow me."
+
+As he drove up the Lorton Road, Ted gave himself over to his own grim
+thoughts. Obviously, there was much more to building and renting camps
+than met the casual eye. One never knew who was coming or what they'd
+do. Now he was certain only that this crew of naive hopefuls should not
+venture into the Mahela alone. He wasn't even sure that they should be
+permitted to stay in camp without supervision, but he'd risk that much
+for at least one night. He parked in front of the camp, waited for his
+guests and admitted them.
+
+"Just what I'd hoped for!" Alex Jackson exclaimed. "Semi-primitive
+surroundings! Delightful!"
+
+Ted asked, "Can you handle the stoves and everything?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Oh, indeed yes! But perhaps you will tell us where we have the
+best chance of encountering bears?"
+
+"I'll do better than that. I'll show you."
+
+"That's good of you. Would you care to start at daylight?"
+
+"I'll be here."
+
+"We'll be ready."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On arriving at the camp a half hour before daylight the next morning,
+Ted saw that it was not burned down and that his young guests had made
+no obvious blunders. Rather, with breakfast eaten and the dishes stacked
+away, they seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves. But, even
+though they knew what to do around a camp, the fact remained that none
+of them had ever hunted big game.
+
+Ted exchanged greetings and looked out of the window. Renting hunting
+camps might be a nice way to earn a living, but there must be easier
+ones! The very fact that he'd rented his camp to them implied an
+obligation. Six hunters who knew exactly what to do had little enough
+chance of getting a bear. These youngsters had one in a thousand. But if
+there was any way to do it, Ted still had to offer them their money's
+worth and he considered himself responsible for them. Sending them into
+the Mahela alone probably, and at the least, meant that they would get
+lost.
+
+"Ready?" he asked.
+
+"Let's go!" Alex Jackson said happily.
+
+Ted led the six into the lightening morning. Since there was no snow, it
+was futile even to think of tracking a bear. Without any experience,
+these youngsters had no hope whatever of staging a successful drive, or
+putting four of their number in favorable shooting positions while the
+rest beat through the forest and tried to drive a bear past them. Only
+Alex Jackson and his brother were armed with rifles, therefore they were
+the only two who had even a slight chance of getting a bear, should one
+be sighted at long range. But the possibilities of even seeing a bear
+were so slim anyway that Ted had not wanted Alex to buy rifles for the
+other four.
+
+There was just one faint hope.... This was the season of the Great
+Harvest. Frost had opened the pods on the beech trees and beech nuts had
+fallen like rain into the forest litter below. Tiny things, they were in
+vast quantity. Deer, bears, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, foxes,
+practically every creature in the Mahela was spending almost full time
+filling itself with beech nuts or storing them away. Winter, that would
+bring hunger and lean bellies, was just ahead and well the wild things
+knew it.
+
+If Ted posted his crew at favorable places among the beech trees and if
+they sat absolutely quiet, one or more of them might at least see a
+bear. Very definitely there was not much of a chance, but there was none
+at all if they did anything else.
+
+Al had told of a lot of bears in Carter Valley and Ted took his hunters
+there. He left them in various strategic places where scraped and pawed
+leaves told their own story of being turned aside so that hungry
+creatures might partake of the beech nuts hidden beneath. Lacking snow,
+there was no foolproof way to tell just what had been scraping or
+pawing, but something had and it might be bears.
+
+After the rest had been posted, Ted took Alex Jackson out to the rim of
+Carter Valley. The slope pitched sharply downwards and rose just as
+sharply on the other side, but here the valley was shallow, with perhaps
+a hundred yards to its floor. It was possibly another hundred yards from
+rim to rim, and the opposite rim was almost treeless. About a half mile
+away across the treeless slope was a crumbling slag pile. Years ago a
+vein of coal had been discovered here and mined as long as it paid off.
+But it had ceased to pay and had been abandoned long before Ted was
+born. Only the tunnel and the slag pile were left.
+
+The opposite slope was covered with beech brush that would be jungle
+thick to anyone within it. But from this vantage point, eyes could
+penetrate the brush. Any bear going up or down the valley, and one might
+do just that, would certainly travel through the beech brush and any
+hunter posted here would surely have some good shooting. Ted turned to
+Alex Jackson.
+
+"You stay here."
+
+"Here?"
+
+"Yes. Move as little as possible and make no noise. Watch the beech
+brush across there. Sooner or later a bear's going through it. I'll pick
+you up tonight."
+
+"Right-o."
+
+That night, the bear hunters were still reasonably happy. All had seen
+squirrels and feeding grouse. Four had seen deer and three had watched
+turkeys feeding. Paul Jackson had thought he'd seen a bear, but it
+turned out to be a black squirrel running on the opposite side of a
+fallen tree, with only its bobbing back appearing now and then.
+
+For the next few days, the sextette stayed quite happy. Then deer,
+squirrels and turkeys began to pall. They were proud bear hunters, and
+so far they hadn't seen even a bear's track. The last day,
+disappointment was in full reign. They'd not only told their friends
+they were going to get a bear but, Ted suspected, Alex Jackson had done
+considerable talking about the way bears charged hunters.
+
+Nevertheless, they all followed Ted back into Carter Valley and the five
+younger hunters took the places assigned them. It was the best way.
+They'd occupied these same stands for six days without seeing any bears,
+but sooner or later the law of averages would send one along.
+
+With Alex Jackson in tow, Ted started back toward the valley's rim. Alex
+Jackson touched his arm.
+
+"I say, would you mind if I just wandered about on my own?"
+
+"Not if that's the way you want it."
+
+Alex Jackson had arrived so full of dreams and spirit and now he seemed
+so despondent. "I won't get lost--and I may find something," he said
+quietly.
+
+"Good luck," Ted replied gently.
+
+Ted wandered gloomily out to the rim of the valley and sat down in the
+place Alex Jackson had been occupying. Not every hunter can leave the
+woods with a full bag of game, but Ted felt that, somehow, he had failed
+this eager young group. His guests might at least have _seen_ a bear.
+Carrying no rifle--he was the guide--and with nothing special to do,
+Ted basked in the warm sunshine.
+
+An hour later, his eye was caught by motion down the valley. Coming out
+of the semi-doze into which he had fallen, he looked sharply at it and
+gasped. A bear, not a monstrous creature but no cub--it weighed perhaps
+250 pounds--was coming through the beech brush. It was about two hundred
+yards down the valley and halfway up the other slope, and it was not in
+the slightest hurry. It stopped to sniff at some interesting thing it
+discovered and turned to retrace its steps a few yards. Then it came on.
+
+Ted groaned inwardly. A rifleman posted here could have an easy
+shot--and Alex Jackson had sat here idly for six days! The bear came on
+for another sixty yards, lay down beside a huge boulder and prepared
+itself for a nap.
+
+Ted crawled away. Bears have a remarkable sense of scent and good
+hearing, but very weak eyes. This one couldn't see him. If it smelled
+him, it certainly would not be where it was. If he was very careful, it
+might not hear him. As soon as Ted thought he was far enough from the
+valley's rim, he rose and ran back to where he'd left Paul Jackson.
+
+That alert youngster heard him coming and had his rifle ready, but its
+muzzle was pointed at the ground. Paul Jackson lacked experience, but
+not sense. He wasn't going to shoot at anything until he knew what was
+in front of his rifle.
+
+Ted came close and whispered, "Come on! I've got one spotted!"
+
+"You have?"
+
+"Take it easy and quiet! He won't be there if you don't!"
+
+Nearing the valley's rim, Ted dropped back to a crawl. He peered at the
+boulder and breathed easily again; the bear had not moved. He put his
+mouth very close to Paul Jackson's ear.
+
+"There he is!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Just to the right of that big boulder!"
+
+"I see him!"
+
+Paul Jackson knelt, rested his right elbow on his right knee, raised his
+rifle--and Ted groaned silently. The youngster's stance was perfect, but
+so was his buck fever. The rifle shook like an aspen leaf in a high
+wind. It blasted, and Ted saw the bullet kick up leaves twenty feet to
+one side of the sleeping bear.
+
+The bear sprang up as though launched from a catapult and kept on
+springing. Straight up the slope he went, and across the nearly treeless
+summit.
+
+Ted shouted, "Shoot!"
+
+"Did you say shoot?"
+
+Paul Jackson was still in a daze, bewildered by this thing that could
+not be but was. The bear was four hundred yards away when he raised his
+rifle a second time, shot and succeeded only in speeding the running
+beast on its way. He lowered his rifle and muttered, "I guess I'm not a
+very good hunter."
+
+"Nobody connects every time."
+
+The bear was running full speed toward the old mine tunnel. Surprised,
+its first thought had been to put distance between the hunter and
+itself, but now it was planning very well. The old tunnel had one outlet
+that led into a dense thicket of laurel. Certainly the bear knew all
+about this and he would go into the thicket. Definitely, he was lost to
+the young hunter.
+
+Then, within the mouth of the old tunnel itself, another rifle cracked
+spitefully. The running bear swapped ends, rolled over and lay still.
+Alex Jackson emerged from the tunnel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Twenty minutes later, when Paul and Ted reached him, he was sitting
+quietly beside his trophy and looking at it with unbelieving eyes. But
+they were wonderfully happy eyes. Long ago he had dreamed his dream.
+Now--and probably it never had been before and never would be again in
+hunting annals--he had seen it come true. He looked dreamily up at Ted
+and Paul and his voice was proof that, whether it's bringing down a
+bear, shooting a hole-in-one, or playing a perfect game of chess, any
+dream can be as bright as the dreamer makes it.
+
+"It charged," he said.
+
+
+
+
+10
+
+DAMON
+
+
+In the parking lot beside Lorton's little railway station, Ted sprawled
+wearily in his pickup truck.
+
+It had taken much of the day to bring Alex Jackson's bear out of Carter
+Valley. The animal might have been skinned where it fell, cut up and
+brought out piece by piece, but not one of the young hunters would hear
+of such a thing. They had come a long way and worked hard for this
+trophy; they would take it with them intact. It had been necessary to do
+things the hard way.
+
+Dragging it would have injured the fine pelt, so Ted had lashed its feet
+to a long pole and put a man on each end. The start had been easy, but
+game carried in such a fashion has an astonishing way of adding weight.
+By the time they'd traveled a quarter of a mile, instead of a mere 250,
+the bear weighed at least 2500 pounds, and the panting carriers were
+relieving each other every fifty paces.
+
+Finally, they'd reached an old tote road up which Ted could drive with
+his pickup and the rest had been easy. They'd lashed the bear on Alex
+Jackson's car and six exhausted but happy youngsters had piled in to
+begin their long journey homewards.
+
+Ted grinned to himself. He'd spent a week with the Jackson party solely
+because he'd thought they would get into trouble if he did not. No
+guide's fee had been expected or asked, but, just the same, it might
+have been good business. The fathers of three of the youngsters were
+ardent hunters themselves. Ted had been assured over and over again that
+they'd hear about the Mahela and be directed to Ted, far and away the
+world's best guide. The youngsters were certainly coming back for
+fishing season and to spend part of their summer in the Mahela and
+they'd want the cabin.
+
+Ted's grin faded. Next year there might not be any cabin to rent. He
+stretched wearily in the darkness and yawned.
+
+He'd reached home just in time to pack Tammie and send him on what must
+be his last visit to Al until deer season ended. Sending him so early
+might have been taking a chance, but when Ted next returned home he'd
+have a guest with him, and letting anyone else see the packed Tammie
+would surely be taking more of a chance. Ted had fixed a meal for
+himself, taken two woodcock from the freezer and put them in cold water
+to thaw. Then he had driven in to meet John Wilson.
+
+The little station's windows looked as though they hadn't been washed
+for the past nine months and probably they hadn't. Lights glowed dully
+behind them, and the clicking of the telegrapher's key sounded
+intermittently. Ted looked about.
+
+The parking lot was full, and the night before deer season opened was
+the only time throughout the whole year when it ever was. Though by far
+most of the deer hunters came by car, some traveled by train from
+wherever they lived to the city of Dartsburg, sixty miles away. Then
+they came to Lorton on what some of the local wags described as the
+"tri-weekly"--it went down one week and tried to come back the next.
+Actually, it was a daily train, and in spite of a superfluity of jokes
+and near-jokes about it, it kept a tight schedule.
+
+When Ted's watch read ten past seven, he left the pickup and went to
+stand in the shadows on the waiting platform. The drivers of other cars
+joined him, and here and there a little group of men engaged in
+conversation. Then the train's whistle announced its approach and every
+eye turned down the tracks.
+
+Ordinarily, the train pulled a combined baggage and mail car and one
+coach, but on this eventful night a second coach had been resurrected
+from somewhere and every window gleamed. The train hissed to a halt and
+hunters started piling off. Without exception, they were dressed in
+hunting gear; red coats, red caps and whatever they fancied in the way
+of trousers and footwear. They lugged everything from suitcases to
+rucksacks and, invariably, either strapped to the luggage or carried in
+a free hand, rifles were in evidence.
+
+The men waiting on the platform went forward to greet hunters they knew
+and bundled them off to cars. Jimmy Deeks, Lorton's only taxi driver,
+called his "Taxi!" just once and was stampeded by a dozen hunters who
+wanted to go to a hotel or motel. There was some little argument and,
+after promising to return for the rest, Jimmy went off with as many
+hunters as his cab would hold.
+
+The arriving crowd thinned rapidly and Ted looked with some
+bewilderment on those who were left. He'd never seen John Wilson and
+hadn't the faintest idea as to the sort of man he must look for.
+Certainly he'd be alone, and the only hunters left were in groups of
+three or more. Then Dan Taylor, the station agent, passed and saw Ted.
+
+"Hi, Ted."
+
+"Hi, Dan."
+
+"Waitin' for somebody?"
+
+"Yup."
+
+"Well if he ain't on this train, he's sure walkin'!"
+
+The station agent guffawed at his own not very subtle humor and moved
+on. A second later, a man detached himself from one of the groups and
+approached Ted. He was not tall, even in hunting boots he lacked five
+and a half inches of Ted's six feet. He wore a red-plaid jacket, a
+red-checked cap and black wool trousers that tucked into his boots. In
+his right hand was a leather suitcase and in his left he carried a cased
+rifle. Despite the gray hair that escaped from beneath his cap, he
+walked with a light and firm tread and humor glinted in his eyes.
+
+He asked, "Are you Ted Harkness?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+The man put his suitcase down and thrust out his right hand. "I'm John
+Wilson."
+
+Ted shook the proffered hand. "I--I thought you'd be different."
+
+"Don't let my grotesque appearance frighten you. I'm harmless."
+
+Ted blurted out, "You said in your letter that you're a doddering _old_
+man."
+
+"Ten years older than Methuselah." John Wilson laughed and the sound
+was good to hear. "I'm glad to know you, Ted."
+
+"And I you. Shall we get out to the house?"
+
+"If you don't mind, I'd like to grab a bite to eat. The dining car on
+the Limited was crowded and I couldn't get in."
+
+"The cafes will be crowded and we'll have to wait. I'll fix you
+something, if you want to come along now."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+Ted picked up the suitcase, escorted John Wilson to the pickup and put
+the luggage in the rear. About to open the door for his guest, he was
+forestalled when John Wilson opened it himself and climbed in. Ted
+settled in the driver's seat.
+
+"Mind if I smoke?" John Wilson asked.
+
+"Not at all."
+
+He lighted a pipe and sat puffing on it while Ted steered expertly
+through Lorton's hunting season traffic. A happy warmth enveloped him.
+He liked most people, but very few times in his life had he been drawn
+so close to one on such short acquaintance. John Wilson was probably ten
+years older than Al, but far from doddering. He was that rare person
+whom age has made mellow rather than caustic.
+
+Then they were on the Lorton Road and started into the Mahela. John
+Wilson spoke for the first time since leaving the station.
+
+"They crowd in."
+
+"For deer season they do," Ted agreed. "The day after it ends, you could
+shoot a cannon down Main Street and never hit a person."
+
+They passed a tent set up beside the road, and a gasoline lantern
+burning inside gave its walls a ghostly translucence. There was a neat
+pile of wood beside it and wood smoke drifted from a tin pipe that
+curled through the wall. The car in which the campers had come was
+backed off the road. It was a good camp and as they passed Ted was aware
+that John Wilson knew it was good. But he said nothing, and Ted had the
+impression that he did not talk unless he had something worthwhile to
+say.
+
+A quarter mile beyond the camp, the truck's probing lights reflected
+from the startlingly bright eyes of a deer. Ted slowed. Deer were always
+running back and forth across the road and, since bright lights dazzled
+them, they would not always get out of the way. They came closer and the
+lights revealed very clearly a magnificent buck.
+
+So alert that every muscle was tense, he stood broadside. One rear leg
+was a bit ahead of the other, the animal was poised for instant flight.
+His antlers were big and branching, and in the car lights they looked
+perfectly symmetrical. It was a splendid creature, one that would
+command attention anywhere. After ten seconds, it leaped into the forest
+and disappeared.
+
+John Wilson said, "A nice head."
+
+He spoke as though the buck had delighted and warmed him, but there was
+in his voice none of the babbling enthusiasm which some hunters, upon
+seeing such a buck, might express. Obviously, he had seen big bucks
+before.
+
+Ted commented, "He was a darn' big buck."
+
+"As big," and a smile lurked in John Wilson's voice, "as your Damon and
+Pythias?"
+
+Ted answered firmly, "No sir. He was not."
+
+"Then I am in the right place?"
+
+"I hope so, Mr. Wilson."
+
+"It'd be just as simple to call me John."
+
+Ted grinned. "All right, John."
+
+They passed more tents and trailers, swerved to miss a wild-eyed doe
+that almost jumped into the truck. Finally, Ted drove thankfully up the
+Harkness driveway. The house was stocked with everything they needed,
+and as far as he was concerned, he was willing to stay there until deer
+season ended. At any rate, he hoped he'd have to do no more night
+driving.
+
+He escorted his guest in, snapped the light on and waited for what he
+thought was coming next. It came. John Wilson glanced about and he
+needed no more than a glance. It was enough to tell him what was here
+and his voice said he liked it.
+
+"You do all right for yourself."
+
+"Glad you like it. If you'll make yourself at home, I'll have something
+to eat rustled up in a little while."
+
+"Let me help you."
+
+"It's a one-man job."
+
+John Wilson reclined in an easy chair while Ted went into the kitchen.
+He put a great slab of butter in a skillet, let it brown, seasoned the
+brace of woodcock, put them into the pan, covered it and turned the
+flame lower. He prepared a fresh pot of coffee, biscuits, potatoes and a
+vegetable. All the while, he waited nervously for Tammie to whine at the
+door. There'd have to be some nice timing when the collie returned. Ted
+must slip out, strip the harness off and let the dog in without letting
+John Wilson know he'd worn a harness.
+
+When the meal was ready and Tammie still had not come, Ted's nervousness
+mounted. The dog was a half hour late already. What could have happened
+out in the Mahela? Ted put the dinner on the table and tried to sound
+casual as he announced, "Chow's ready."
+
+"This is 'chow'?" John Wilson chided him. "Butter-browned woodcock is
+deserving of a better name. Let me at it!"
+
+He cut a slice of the dark breast and began to eat it. "_Mm-m!_ That's
+good! Something wrong, Ted?"
+
+"Yes--uh--That is, no."
+
+"You're nervous as a wet cat."
+
+"My dog's out and I'm a little worried about--There he is now! Go right
+ahead and eat."
+
+Tammie's whine sounded again and Ted slipped out the back door. Hastily
+he knelt to strip the harness off and take Al's note from the pocket.
+Then he threw the harness aside--he'd get it in the early
+morning--tucked the note in his pocket and, with Tammie beside him, went
+into the house. John Wilson stopped eating to admire.
+
+"That's a beautiful collie. What's his name?"
+
+"Tammie, and he's just as good as he looks."
+
+Tammie sniffed delicately at their guest, received a pat on the head and
+went to stretch out on his bearskin. John Wilson glanced at him again.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to let him run?"
+
+"After tomorrow, poor Tammie will be confined to quarters until deer
+season ends."
+
+John Wilson nodded. "That's wise, some hunters will shoot at anything.
+What time do you plan to get out in the morning?"
+
+"Whenever you care to leave."
+
+"Isn't it traditional for hunters to be in the woods at dawn?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"Then let's not violate revered custom. Where do these two big bucks
+hang out?"
+
+"They've been on Burned Mountain for a long while. Hunters may put them
+off there and then again they may not."
+
+"Where do they lurk during deer season?"
+
+"Nobody knows exactly," Ted admitted. "They've been seen in a dozen
+parts of the Mahela. Sometimes they've been 'seen' in a dozen different
+places at the same hour on the same day. We'll just have to plan as we
+go along."
+
+"That suits me. I'll help with the dishes."
+
+"I'll do them."
+
+"You'll spoil me!"
+
+"Take it easy while you can. You're in for some rough days."
+
+John Wilson resumed sitting in the easy chair. Before Ted washed the
+dishes, he stole a glance at Al's note.
+
+     Ted; I got enuf. Don't send Tammy agen til deer seson ends. I wish
+     your sport luk. I saw one of the big buks on burned mountin today.
+     Gess you'll find both.
+
+     Your dad
+
+Ted nodded, satisfied. If Damon and Pythias were still on Burned
+Mountain, he knew exactly where to go. He touched the note to the flame,
+waited until it burned to ashes, swept them into a wastebasket and
+joined his guest.
+
+John Wilson, looking at the dying embers in the fireplace, asked
+quietly, "Got your campaign mapped, General?"
+
+"Only the first skirmish. I know--That is, I'm pretty sure that Damon
+and Pythias are still on Burned Mountain."
+
+"Then at least we'll know where to find them."
+
+"I believe so. Do you mind if I carry a rifle?"
+
+"Why, I hope you do."
+
+"I won't shoot either Damon or Pythias, even if I should get a shot,"
+Ted promised. "But I would like to get a buck. It helps a lot on the
+meat bills."
+
+"By all means get one. Pretty warm for this time of year, isn't it?"
+
+"Too warm. Some snow would be a great help."
+
+They exchanged more hunting talk, then went to bed.
+
+An hour before dawn the next morning, after ordering Tammie to stay in
+the house, Ted closed the back door behind him and started up Hawkbill
+with his guest. He walked slowly, for Hawkbill was a hard climb for a
+young man, even in daylight. Though John Wilson was by no means
+doddering, neither was he young. Ted stopped to rest at judicious
+intervals.
+
+The darkness lifted slowly, but it was still a thick curtain of gray
+when, in the distance, a fusillade of shots rang out. Ted grimaced. Some
+fool, who couldn't possibly see what he was shooting at, had shot
+anyhow. That was one way hunters managed to kill each other instead of
+game.
+
+As daylight became stronger, shots were more frequent. Some quite near
+and some far-off, the sounds were a ragged discord, with now four or
+five hunters shooting at the same time, then a single shot or succession
+of shots, then a lull with no shooting. Hunters were seeing deer and
+shooting, but definitely not all of them were connecting. As Ted knew,
+many a deer, many a herd of deer, had emerged unhurt after a hundred or
+more shots were fired at them.
+
+Ted mounted the crest of Hawkbill and turned to offer a hand to his
+panting guest. John Wilson wiped his moist brow.
+
+"Whew! Why didn't you tell me we were going to climb the Matterhorn?"
+
+Ted grinned sympathetically. "You're up it now, and we can see what
+there is to be seen."
+
+Ted buttoned his jacket. The weather was unseasonably warm, but here on
+Hawkbill's summit, little fingers of cold that probed at his exposed
+nose and throat told of chillier things to come. While the temperature
+made no difference, snow would increase their chances a hundred per
+cent. He studied Burned Mountain.
+
+Spread out in a thin skirmish line, a party of red-clad hunters were
+about halfway up it. A deer fled before one of them and the man stopped
+to raise his rifle. There sounded the weapon's sharp bark, but the deer
+ran on and disappeared in some brush.
+
+John Wilson said, "He should have had that one with a slingshot."
+
+"Wonder if he could tell whether it was a buck or doe. I--There he is!"
+
+"There who is?"
+
+"One of those big bucks! See him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A quarter of the way below the summit. Look a hundred yards to the
+right of that light-colored patch of ground and thirty yards down
+slope."
+
+"I still don't--Oh, my gosh!"
+
+He uncased his binoculars, put them to his eyes, focused and stared for
+a full three minutes. When he took the glasses down, there was a gleam
+of purest ecstasy in his eyes and at the same time a little awe.
+
+"There isn't a buck that big!" he murmured breathlessly.
+
+"Look again," Ted invited. "Wonder where the dickens the other one is."
+
+He searched the briers, a little puzzled. Damon and Pythias were known
+as such because, except during the rutting season, they were never far
+apart. But definitely only one of the two huge deer was on Burned
+Mountain now. It was very unusual.
+
+Ted shrugged. There was no unchangeable rule that said the two big bucks
+must always be together. Maybe the sound of shooting or the hunters
+going into the woods had caused them to separate, or perhaps they had
+parted for reasons of their own.
+
+The shooting continued spasmodically, and not too far away came the
+outlandish cacophony of shrieks and shouts that meant a hunting party
+was staging a deer drive. A thin voice screamed, "He's coming your way,
+Harvey!"
+
+As Ted continued to watch the big buck, John Wilson became restless.
+
+"Let's go after him."
+
+"Wait a bit," Ted advised. "It isn't going to be that easy."
+
+The climbing hunters, about a hundred and fifty yards apart, broke out
+of the forest and into the briers. Two of them were so placed that,
+unless he moved, they would pass the big buck at almost equal distances.
+But the buck let them pass without so much as flicking an ear. He knew
+very well exactly where both hunters were, but he was no fawn to panic
+because men were in the woods. The buck had a good hiding place, knew
+it, and he had eluded hunters this time merely by doing nothing.
+
+"He's smart, all right." John Wilson had appreciated the strategy, too.
+"What do you suggest, Ted?"
+
+"I'm going over to flush him out. You stay here and let me know what he
+does."
+
+"But--What good will that do?"
+
+"Deer are pretty much creatures of habit. He's in that bed now because
+he likes it. If he doesn't become too frightened today, the chances are
+good, both that he'll go into the same bed tonight and that he'll do the
+same thing when he's flushed out of it tomorrow. Only you'll be waiting
+for him."
+
+John Wilson nodded. "That listens all right."
+
+"Wave your red hat when he goes," Ted directed. "I'll see that and wait
+for you, and we can figure our next move afterwards."
+
+Unencumbered by an older companion, Ted half-ran down the opposite slope
+of Hawkbill and started swiftly up Burned Mountain. He had no hope of
+seeing the buck, but just going to the bed where it had been lying was
+within itself no easy task. Viewed from the summit of Hawkbill, various
+parts of Burned Mountain had various distinguishing characteristics. But
+once on the mountain itself, everything looked alike. Ted emerged from
+the forest into the briers, crashed a way through them, and when he
+thought he was very near the place where the buck had bedded, he turned
+to see John Wilson waving his hat.
+
+Ted sat down for what he was sure would be a long wait. He had climbed
+to this place in twenty-five minutes, but he was eighteen years old.
+
+An hour later, he heard John Wilson's, "Hall-oo!"
+
+"Here!" Ted yelled.
+
+Carrying his hat, streaming perspiration, but entirely happy, John
+Wilson panted up to join him.
+
+"He went out," he said cheerfully, "and I'll swear he flushed no more
+than twenty yards ahead of you! Thought sure you'd see him."
+
+"Where'd he go?"
+
+"Quartered up the mountain and crossed the summit just a little to the
+right of some white birches."
+
+Ted nodded. The course described by John Wilson had kept the big buck in
+thick cover all the way. It was the route he might have been expected to
+take, except that there were a dozen others with brush just as thick.
+However, there was every chance that he would go the same way a second
+time and tomorrow morning John Wilson would be posted in the birches
+while Ted tried to drive the buck through.
+
+"What's it like on top?" John Wilson asked.
+
+"Patches of laurel and rhododendron. We'll go see what we can do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night, tired and hungry, the pair made their way down Burned
+Mountain. They hadn't seen the monster buck again, but were in no wise
+disheartened. There were twenty days of the season left and John Wilson
+had had, and failed to take, a chance at a very good eight-point buck.
+Obviously, he'd meant it when he said he wanted only the biggest.
+
+Ted prepared supper and washed the dishes afterwards.... The two hunters
+were sprawled in the living room when Tammie whined to announce that
+someone was coming. A minute later there was a knock at the door and Ted
+opened it to confront George Stacey.
+
+"Come on in, George."
+
+"Cain't. Gotta git home. Thought I'd stop an' tell ya that Thornton,
+down to Crestwood, fetched in one of them big bucks today."
+
+"He did?"
+
+"Sure did, an' hit's big enough for ary two bucks. Go see hit. Hit's
+a'hangin' on the game pole."
+
+"Thanks, George."
+
+"Yer welcome. Go see hit."
+
+"Want to go?" Ted asked his guest.
+
+"Sure thing!"
+
+The night air had a distinct bite, and a definite promise of freezing
+cold to be. Ted turned the heater on, and after they'd gone a mile or
+so, the pickup's cab filled with welcome warmth.
+
+As soon as they came in sight of Crestwood it was evident that something
+unusual had occurred at that resort. Carl Thornton provided parking
+space for his guests. Now all the available area was filled and parked
+cars lined both sides of the driveway. Ted backed into one of the few
+empty spaces. He and John Wilson got out to join the crowd at the game
+rack.
+
+Crestwood's hunters had brought in seven other bucks this opening day
+and three of them were big deer. But the biggest seemed puny beside the
+monster that the crowd was eyeing. Its antlers were laced close to the
+game pole, but its outstretched hoofs nearly touched the ground. If this
+buck did not set a new record, it would come very close to so doing.
+
+John Wilson murmured, "Gad, what a buck! Is the other as big?"
+
+"They're twins."
+
+Ted went up for a closer look. He put his hand on the hanging buck and
+set it to swinging gently. He gasped. As unobtrusively as possible,
+hoping none had noticed his outburst, he drew back into the crowd.
+
+But several matters that had been very cloudy had become very clear.
+
+
+
+
+11
+
+PYTHIAS
+
+
+Ted lingered on the fringes of the crowd, and in his mind's eye he
+conjured up an image of Nels Anderson. Nels always earned his pay plus a
+little bit more, and Ted wondered why Carl Thornton had fired him. But
+he wondered no more.
+
+The great buck hung on Crestwood's game rack and bore Carl Thornton's
+deer tag, but it had never been killed today. The weather, though
+colder, still had not dipped to the freezing point and the big buck was
+frozen solidly. The others hung limp and pliable.
+
+Failing to persuade Ted to hunt the big bucks for him, obviously
+Thornton had hired someone else and Ted's thoughts swung naturally to
+Smoky Delbert. Smoky would do anything for money and he knew how to
+bargain. If he'd hired Smoky, Thornton must have paid a stiff price and
+the rest was simple.
+
+Crestwood's walk-in refrigerator had a freezing compartment that would
+accommodate a side of beef. It had been necessary only to bring the buck
+to Crestwood--no impossible or even difficult feat--hang it in the
+freezer, and on this, the first day of the season, bring it out again.
+Nels, of course, had been fired solely to keep him from discovering what
+was in the freezer. It would hurt both Thornton and Crestwood if it were
+known that Thornton had bought his buck. The favorable publicity for
+which he'd hoped, and which he'd certainly get unless Ted exposed him,
+would turn to scathing condemnation.
+
+Alan Russell, Crestwood's part-time bookkeeper, broke from the crowd and
+came to Ted's side.
+
+"Hello, Ted."
+
+"Hi, Alan."
+
+"Some buck, eh?"
+
+"Sure is," Ted said wryly. "I can imagine Thornton telling his adoring
+guests just what a Daniel Boone he had to be to get it."
+
+"After this season he won't be telling 'em at Crestwood."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Thornton's sold out."
+
+"Sold out!"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"When did all this happen?"
+
+"It's been hanging fire for a couple of months, but the prospective
+buyers met Thornton's price only three days ago. It was a stiff price."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I'm handling the book work."
+
+Ted said happily, "Alan, I love you!"
+
+The other looked suspiciously at him. "Do you feel all right?"
+
+"I never felt better!"
+
+Ted's heart sang. Game laws were game laws, and they applied to Carl
+Thornton as well as to everyone else. But Crestwood was important to the
+economy of the Mahela. One did not jeopardize the livelihood of those
+who worked there, or the sorely needed money Crestwood's guests spent in
+the Mahela, because of a single illegally killed buck or half a dozen of
+them. But now Ted was free to act. He sought and found John Wilson.
+
+"Shall we go?"
+
+"Guess we might as well. Looking holes right through this buck won't
+bring the other one in range. Wonder how the lucky cuss got it?"
+
+"I have an idea."
+
+"I expect you have. _Br-r!_ It's getting cold."
+
+"It will be colder. We have to hurry."
+
+John Wilson looked at him curiously. "What's up?"
+
+"I'll tell you in a minute."
+
+They got into the pickup. Ted started the motor that had not yet had
+time to cool completely, and a trickle of warmth came from the heater.
+John Wilson looked sharply at Ted.
+
+"All right. Give."
+
+"Did you notice anything unusual about that buck?"
+
+"Only that it's the biggest I ever saw."
+
+"It's also frozen solid."
+
+"I--I don't understand."
+
+"The weather hasn't been cold enough to freeze deer. Thornton never
+killed that buck today."
+
+"Then he--?"
+
+"That's it exactly."
+
+There was a short silence. John Wilson broke it with a quiet, "Is there
+a story behind it?"
+
+"There is."
+
+"Want to tell me?"
+
+Ted told of his love for the Mahela, and of a heart-rooted desire to
+dedicate his life to helping people enjoy it. He spoke of his work at
+Crestwood, and of his great dream to have a similar place, one day. He
+related as much as he knew, which was as much as anyone knew, of the
+story of Damon and Pythias. He told of Carl Thornton's commissioning him
+to get both bucks before the season opened, of his refusal to do so and
+the consequent loss of his job.
+
+He described the camp, and how and why it was built. Then the bombshell;
+Smoky Delbert's shooting and Al a fugitive in the Mahela. He spoke of
+his father's near-passionate interest in true conservation, and of his
+near-hatred for those who violated the sportsman's code. However, aware
+of Crestwood's importance to the Mahela, knowing that this violation
+would hurt and perhaps ruin Thornton, Al himself would not have reported
+it. But now that Thornton was leaving, was there any reason why he
+should be shielded?
+
+There was another brief silence before John Wilson said quietly, "Don't
+do it, Ted."
+
+"You mean let him get away with it?"
+
+"Under any other circumstances," John Wilson said, "I'd say drive into
+Lorton and report him to the game warden. As things are with you now, if
+you do, you'll hate yourself. How are you going to decide exactly
+whether you turned him in to settle a grudge or because you're a
+believer in conservation? I agree that he should be arrested and fined.
+But arresting him won't return the buck to Burned Mountain. It won't do
+anything at all except bring Thornton a hundred-dollar fine, and he can
+spare the money. Yes, I'd say let him go and good riddance."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You asked my advice and you got it. If you turn him in, you'll hurt
+yourself more than you will him. By all means report law violators, but
+never let even a suspicion of personal prejudice influence your report.
+It won't work."
+
+"I guess you're right."
+
+"I hope I am."
+
+That night the temperature fell to zero, and every buck on every game
+rack in the Mahela froze solid. There was no longer any evidence
+whatever to prove that Damon, as Ted thought of the great buck on
+Crestwood's game rack, had been taken by other than legal means.
+
+Even if Ted wanted to do something now, his chance was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For twenty days, always leaving the Harkness house before dawn and never
+getting back until after dark, Ted and his guest had hunted Pythias.
+
+They had seen deer, dozens of them, and Ted had dropped a nice
+eight-point so close to his house that they had needed only fifteen
+minutes to dress it out, slide it in over the six inches of crisp snow
+that now lay in the Mahela and hang it on the game rack. John Wilson had
+had his choice of several bucks, and at least four of them had been fine
+trophies. But he had come to hunt the big buck that still lurked on
+Burned Mountain and he was determined to get that one or none.
+
+It looked as though it would be none, Ted reflected as he sat in front
+of the blazing fire, tearing a bolt of red cloth into strips. Pythias,
+who had sucked in his woodcraft with his mother's milk, had only
+contempt for any mere human who coveted his royal rack of antlers.
+
+The second day of the season, giving John Wilson ample time to post
+himself in the white birches, Ted had gone to the bed in which they'd
+seen Pythias on the first day. A small buck and two does had gone
+through, but Pythias had not. Most deer have favorite runways, or paths,
+that are as familiar to them as sidewalks are to humans. Pythias seldom
+used one, and he never took the same route twice in succession.
+
+Hunted hard every day, he hadn't let himself be chased from the top of
+Burned Mountain. Staying there, he knew what he was doing. Sparsely
+forested, the top of the mountain was given over to a devil's tangle of
+twining laurel and snarled rhododendron. Some of the stems from which
+the latter evergreen grew were thick as tree trunks, and some of the
+winding, snaking branches were thirty feet long. It was heartbreaking
+work just to go through one, and impossible for a man to do so without
+making as much noise as a running horse. Once within the laurel or
+rhododendron, and some thickets were a combination of both, it was
+seldom possible to see seven yards in any direction. Often, visibility
+was restricted to seven feet.
+
+Pythias haunted those thickets that varied from an eighth of an acre to
+perhaps eighty acres. Chased out of one, he entered another, flitting
+like a gray ghost through the scrub aspen that separated them. Then he
+lingered until the hunters came and entered another thicket. Only when
+going through the aspens, where he knew very well he could be seen, did
+he run. In the thickets he walked or slunk, and he never made a foolish
+move.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every day there'd been snow--and John Wilson and Ted had had tracking
+snow for seventeen of the twenty days--they'd found Pythias' bed and
+his fresh tracks. His hoofmarks were big and round, and they indicated
+him as surely as a robe of ermine or a scepter marks a king. But except
+for the first day, when he'd been hopelessly out of range, the two
+hunters hadn't seen him even once. Pythias could never conceal the fact
+that he had walked in the snow. But he could hide himself.
+
+Methodically, Ted continued to tear strips from his bolt of red cloth
+and lay them on the table. Tammie, grown fat and lazy during the three
+weeks he'd been confined to the house--even though Ted had let him out
+for a run every night--raised his head and blinked solemnly at the
+fireplace. Bone tired, John Wilson turned in his chair and grinned.
+
+"You have enough of those red ribbons so you could fasten one on half
+the deer in the Mahela. Think they'll work?"
+
+"I don't know of anything else. We've tried everything."
+
+"It's been a good hunt," John Wilson said contentedly, "and a most
+instructive one. I don't have to have a buck."
+
+"But you'd like one?"
+
+"Not unless it's Pythias."
+
+"We have one more day and I have plans. Here, let me show you."
+
+Ted tore the last of his red cloth into strips, pulled his chair up to
+the table, took a sheet of paper and a pencil and drew a map. John
+Wilson leaned over his shoulder.
+
+"This is the Fordham Road," Ted explained, "the first left-hand fork
+leading from the Lorton Road. Climb over the mountain and drop down the
+other side. The first valley you'll see, it's right here, is Coon
+Valley. You can't miss it, there's a turnout and hunters have been using
+it. Park the truck and walk up Coon Valley. In about half a mile, or
+right here, you'll come to three sycamores near a big boulder. On this
+slope," Ted indicated it with his pencil, "there's a thicket of beech
+scrub. You can see everything in it from the top of the boulder, Glory
+Rock. Climb it and wait."
+
+"That's all? Just wait?"
+
+"That's all. If I can put him out of the laurel, there's at least an
+even chance he'll cross the ridge and try to get back into the thickets
+at the head of Coon Valley. If he does, he'll come through the beech
+scrub."
+
+"And if you can't?"
+
+"He won't."
+
+"What time do you want me there, Ted?"
+
+"There's no great hurry. He isn't going to leave his thickets easily. It
+will take you about an hour to reach the mouth of Coon Valley and maybe
+another half hour or forty-five minutes to get set on Glory Rock. If you
+leave the house by half-past six, you should be there soon after eight.
+That's time enough."
+
+"How long should I wait?"
+
+"Until I pick you up, and I will pick you up there. I may not come
+before dark. If I can put him past you, I will."
+
+"As you say, General."
+
+The tinny clatter of Ted's alarm clock awakened him at half-past three
+the next morning. He reached down to shut it off, reset it for half-past
+five and stole in to put it near the still sleeping John Wilson. Ted
+breakfasted, gave Tammie his food and a pat, donned his hunting jacket,
+put the strips of red cloth into the game pocket and stepped into the
+black morning.
+
+He bent his head against the north wind and started climbing Burned
+Mountain. He knew as he climbed that he was pitting himself against a
+force as old as time.
+
+The woodcraft of Pythias, or any deer, shamed that of the keenest human.
+Deer could identify every tiny sound, every wind that blew and the many
+scents those winds carried. They knew everything there was to know about
+their wilderness and they were all masters of it. No human could hope to
+equal their senses.
+
+But Pythias, the greatest and most cunning of all, was still a beast. He
+knew and could interpret the wilderness, but he couldn't possibly apply
+reason to that which was not of the wilderness. If his confidence could
+be shaken....
+
+It was still black night when Ted reached the summit of Burned Mountain,
+but he had crossed and re-crossed it so many times in the past twenty
+days that he could do so in the darkness. Pythias was there, and
+possibly he already knew that Ted was back on the mountain. But he'd
+feel secure in the thicket where he was bedded and he would not go out
+until he was flushed.
+
+Ted sought the aspen grown aisles between the thickets. He hung a strip
+of red cloth on a wind whipped branch, walked fifty yards and hung
+another. The night lifted and daylight came, and an hour later Ted tied
+his last strip of cloth to a twig. Carrying no rifle--but Pythias
+couldn't possibly know that--he put his hands in his pockets to warm
+them. Now he had to flush the big buck.
+
+He and his guest had left the great animal in one of the larger thickets
+last night, but it was almost certain that he hadn't passed the whole
+night there. Ted circled the thicket, found Pythias' unmistakable tracks
+and followed to where the big buck had nibbled tender young aspen shoots
+and pawed the snow to get at the dried grass beneath it. Thereafter
+Pythias had done considerable wandering. Ted worked out the trail and
+discovered where his quarry had gone to rest in another thicket.
+
+He tracked him in, and he'd done this so many times that he knew almost
+exactly what to expect. The big buck would wait until he was sure
+someone was again on his trail, then he'd get up and sneak away. There
+would be nothing except tracks in the snow to mark his going. A man
+could not travel silently through the thickets, but a deer could.
+
+Deep within the thicket, Ted found the bed, a depression melted in the
+snow, to which Pythias had retired when his wandering was done. The
+tracks leading away were fresh and sharp, no more than a couple of
+minutes old, but they were not the widely spaced ones of a running buck.
+Knowing very well what he was doing, aware of the fact that he could not
+be seen while there, Pythias always walked in the thickets.
+
+However, when he decided to leave this thicket, he had leaped through
+the scrub aspen separating it from the next one. It could have taken him
+no more than a second or so. If a hunter had been watching, he would
+have had just a fleeting shot and only a lucky marksman would have
+connected. Ted followed fast. There were no cloth strips in these
+aspens.
+
+But when he came to where Pythias had intended to leave the next
+thicket, he discovered where the big buck had set himself for the first
+leap then wheeled to slip back into the laurel. Ten feet to one side,
+the strip of cloth that had turned him still whipped in the wind.
+Pythias had tried again to leave the thicket, been turned a second time
+by another fluttering cloth and leaped wildly out at a place where Ted
+had hung no ribbons.
+
+The buck's pattern changed completely. He was safe in the thickets, knew
+it, and had never deigned to run while sheltered by friendly brush. Now
+he was running, either in great leaps that placed his bunched feet six
+yards apart or at a nervous trot. Ted began to have hopes.
+
+Pythias had the acute senses of a wild thing plus the cunning of a wise
+creature that had eluded every danger for years. But the wilderness he
+knew changed only with the changing seasons. What did the fluttering
+cloths mean? Where had they come from? What peril did they indicate?
+Pythias' tracks showed that he was becoming more nervous.
+
+Ted pushed him hard. The buck could not reason, but if he passed enough
+of them safely and discovered for himself that there was no danger in
+the red ribbons, he would pay no more attention to them. An hour and a
+half after taking the track Ted knew that, at least in part, he had
+succeeded.
+
+Unable to decide for himself what the fluttering cloths meant, Pythias
+swung away from the thickets into beech forest. Now he ran continuously.
+In the thickets, knowing very well that he could not be seen, he had
+walked until the fluttering cloths introduced an unknown and possibly
+dangerous element. This was beech forest, with visibility of anywhere
+from fifty up to as much as two hundred and fifty yards. A hunter might
+be anywhere and well the buck knew it. He was going to offer no one a
+standing shot.
+
+Ted followed swiftly, for now the hunt had a definite pattern. A young
+buck, chased out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, might linger in the
+beeches. A wise old one would hurry as fast as possible into the
+thickets at the head of Coon Valley, and the nearest route lay through
+the scrub beech at Glory Rock. Ted was still a quarter of a mile away
+when he heard the single, sharp crack of a rifle.
+
+He left the trail and cut directly toward Glory Rock. A volley was very
+picturesque and sounded inspiring, but whoever ripped off half a dozen
+shots in quick succession was merely shooting, without much regard to
+aiming. Ted murmured an old hunter's adage as he ran, "One shot, one
+deer. Two shots, maybe one deer. Three shots, no deer."
+
+He ran down the slope into Coon Valley and found John Wilson standing
+over Pythias. The hunter's delighted eyes met Ted's, but mingled with
+his delight was a little sadness, too.
+
+"I now," John Wilson said, "have lived."
+
+"You got him!"
+
+"I got him, poor fellow!"
+
+"He'll never be a better trophy than he is right now."
+
+It was true. At the height of his powers, Pythias faced a certain
+decline. Soon he would be old, and the wilderness is not kind to the old
+and infirm that dwell within it.
+
+John Wilson laughed. "I know it. Look at him! Just look at him! I'll bet
+his base tine is thirteen inches long!"
+
+Ted said, "Ten inches."
+
+"Are you trying to beat yourself out of seventy-five dollars? I did
+promise you twenty-five dollars for every inch in its longest tine, if I
+got a head that satisfied me! This is surely the one!"
+
+Ted grinned. "I'll dress it for you," he offered.
+
+He turned the buck over, made a slit with his hunting knife and pulled
+the viscera out. At once it became evident that John Wilson was the
+second hunter of whom Pythias had run afoul, for he had been wounded
+before. Ted probed interestedly. Entering the flank, the bullet had
+missed the spine by two inches and any vital organs by a half inch. It
+had lodged in the thick loin, and nature had built a healing scab of
+tissue around it.
+
+Ted probed it out with his knife and almost dropped the missile. In his
+hand lay one of Carl Thornton's distinctive, unmistakable, hand-loaded
+bullets.
+
+John Wilson asked, "He's been wounded before, eh?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Ted, I swear that you're more excited than I am!"
+
+_Ted scarcely heard. He was here, beside Glory Rock, the day after Smoky
+Delbert was shot. Damon and Pythias, always together, and a deer so
+badly wounded that it couldn't possibly go on. Damon hadn't gone on.
+Only Pythias had. Hurt but not mortally, he had left enough blood on the
+leaves to convince Ted that there'd been only one deer._
+
+"When do you suppose he picked that one up?" John Wilson asked.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+_Carl Thornton, who got what he wanted, had decided to get Damon and
+Pythias himself._
+
+"He's darn' near as big as a horse," Wilson said.
+
+"Sure is."
+
+_A horse, a friendly, easily caught horse, that had gone down Coon
+Valley that night with Damon on its back, then been released to go back
+up it._
+
+"You certainly know how to field-dress a buck."
+
+"I've done it before."
+
+_Smoky Delbert, happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
+Thornton couldn't afford to be found out. Smoky would blackmail him._
+
+_Thornton paying Delbert's hospital bills._
+
+"Did I hit him square?"
+
+"A good neck shot."
+
+_Factory-loaded ammunition that almost never failed to mushroom.
+Hand-loaded cartridges that might fail._
+
+John Wilson fumbled in his pocket. "Doggone, I seem to have lost my
+pipe."
+
+_Al, forever losing his tobacco pouch, had gone to see Carl Thornton the
+day Thornton fired Ted._
+
+Ted wiped his knife blade on the snow, stood up and sheathed his knife.
+He looped a length of rope around the great buck's antlers.
+
+"He'll be easy to get out of here," he said.
+
+
+
+
+12
+
+AL'S BETRAYAL
+
+
+Deer season was ended and the village of Lorton brooded moodily between
+the snowclad hills that flanked it. From now until arriving fishermen
+brought new excitement, Lorton would know only that which arose from
+within itself. Ted, who had put John Wilson and his great buck on
+yesterday's outgoing train, steered his pickup down the street with its
+plow-thrown heaps of snow on either side and drew up in front of Loring
+Blade's house. He said, "Stay here, Tammie."
+
+The collie settled back into the seat. Ted walked to the front door,
+knocked and was admitted by the game warden's attractive wife.
+
+"Hello, Ted."
+
+"Hello, Helen. Is Loring home?"
+
+"Yes, he is. Come on in."
+
+She escorted the boy into the living room, where, pajama-clad and with a
+pile of magazines beside him, Loring Blade lay on a davenport and sipped
+lazily from a cup of coffee. He looked up and grimaced.
+
+"Whatever you want, I'm ag'in' it. I aim to stay here for the next
+nineteen years."
+
+Ted grinned. "Have they been pushing you pretty hard, Loring?"
+
+"I've been on the go forty-seven hours a day and, at a conservative
+estimate, I've walked nine million miles since deer season opened."
+
+"Was it bad?"
+
+"No worse than usual. Most of the hunters who came in were a pretty
+decent lot. But there always is--and I suppose always will be--the wise
+guy who thinks he can get away with anything. I caught one joker with
+nine deer."
+
+"Wow!"
+
+"He was fined," Loring said happily, "a hundred dollars for each one and
+suspension of hunting privileges for five years."
+
+"Smoky Delbert give you any trouble?"
+
+"You know better than that. Smoky can't walk a hundred yards from his
+house and won't be able to for a long while to come."
+
+"I feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss," Ted murmured.
+
+Loring Blade looked at him sharply. "You didn't come here to ask me
+about Smoky."
+
+"Oh, yes I did. Who talked with him after he was shot?"
+
+"I did, for one. Why?"
+
+"What did he tell you?"
+
+The warden shrugged. "You know that as well as I do. Smoky was walking
+up Coon Valley when your dad rose from behind Glory Rock and shot him."
+
+"Can you tell me the exact story?"
+
+Loring Blade looked puzzled. "What do you want to know, Ted?"
+
+"Did Smoky hear any shooting?"
+
+"Come to think of it, a half minute or so before he got to Glory Rock he
+heard two shots."
+
+Ted's heart pounded excitedly. The two shots had been for Damon and
+Pythias. Smoky wouldn't have heard the one that got him. Ted continued
+his questioning.
+
+"Did Smoky have any idea as to who was shooting at what?"
+
+"He thought your dad was banging away at a varmint."
+
+"Then he did know Dad had gone up Coon Valley ahead of him?"
+
+"Why yes, he saw his boot track in the mud. But you knew that."
+
+"Was Smoky afraid to go on?"
+
+"Why should he have been afraid? Who expects to get shot?"
+
+"Tell me exactly how he said he saw Dad shoot him."
+
+"Smoky was near the three sycamores when he thought he saw something
+move. A second later, your dad rose from behind Glory Rock and shot
+him."
+
+"Smoky's very sure of that? It was Dad that rose from behind the rock?"
+
+"He told the same story at least a dozen times that I know of. It never
+varied."
+
+"Dad didn't step out from beside the rock, or anything like that?"
+
+"No, he rose from behind it."
+
+"Loring, has it occurred to anybody, except me, that the back of Glory
+Rock is a sheer drop? Anyone who could rise from _behind_ and shoot over
+it would have to be at least nine feet tall!"
+
+"I--By gosh, you're right! I knew Al never bush-whacked him! He must
+have been standing in plain sight when Smoky came up the valley!"
+
+"Smoky never saw who shot him."
+
+"That's not the way he told it."
+
+"Think!" Ted urged. "Think of the sort of man Smoky is. There was bad
+blood between him and Dad and had been for some time. You were there
+when Dad dressed him down for setting traps before fur was prime. There
+was, as you'll remember, talk of shooting even then. Smoky knew Dad had
+gone up Coon Valley ahead of him; probably he even _thinks_ Dad shot
+him. He said he saw him because he wanted to be sure of revenge. Smoky
+would do that."
+
+"Yes, he would. But it seems to me that you're doing a lot of guessing."
+
+"Maybe. You brought Smoky's rifle out?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Had it been fired?"
+
+"No, the bore was mirror slick."
+
+"What would you do if you ran across Dad?"
+
+"I'd bring him in, if I had to do it at gun point."
+
+"Loring, I am going to do something that neither you nor I thought I
+would ever do. I am going to betray my dad into your hands."
+
+"Then you do know where he is?"
+
+"No, I haven't seen him since the night he left."
+
+"Cut it out, Ted. We all know you've been taking him supplies and we've
+tried a dozen times to catch you at it. You do know where he is?"
+
+"I don't, but Tammie does."
+
+"So!" the warden exploded. "Callahan was right! He thought he saw Tammie
+leave your house that night with a pack on his back. But when you
+whistled him in, and he didn't have any pack, Callahan figured he'd made
+a mistake. How'd you manage that?"
+
+"Dad was coming to see me and he saw Callahan, too. He met Tammie within
+yards of the house and took his pack off. Loring, if this is to be done,
+it's to be done my way."
+
+"What's your way?"
+
+"You do exactly as I say."
+
+"I'm listening."
+
+"Meet me at my house two hours after midnight. We'll cross the hills to
+Glory Rock; we won't be able to walk up Coon Valley. Then you're to hide
+behind or beside the rock, any place you can listen without being seen,
+until I say you can come out."
+
+"Now look here, Ted, I like you and I like your dad, but I'm not
+sticking my neck out for anybody."
+
+"I promise you won't, and I also promise that you will get a chance to
+bring Dad in."
+
+The game warden pondered. Finally he agreed, "All right, Ted, it'll be
+your way. But if there are any tricks, somebody's going to get hurt."
+
+"O.K. Meet me at two?"
+
+"At two."
+
+Ted drove happily to Nels Anderson's modest house and found his friend
+chopping wood. Nels greeted him with a broad smile.
+
+"Hi, Ted! Come in an' have a cup of coffee?"
+
+"I can't stay, Nels. How are you doing?"
+
+"Goot, goot for now. Them deer hunters what stayed in your camp, they
+paid me nice an' I get another yob soon."
+
+"Crestwood's changing hands and the new owners are taking over next
+week. You might go ask them for your old job back."
+
+"Yah! I do that."
+
+"If you don't get one there," Ted said recklessly, "I myself will be
+able to offer you something that'll tide you over until you get another
+job. I'm going to build more camps."
+
+"Py golly, Ted, I yoost don't know how to thank you!"
+
+"Will you do me a favor?"
+
+"For you I do anything!"
+
+"Then listen carefully. At seven o'clock tomorrow morning I want you to
+go to Crestwood and see Thornton; he'll be out of bed. Tell him that
+there's something near those three sycamores in Coon Valley that he'd
+better take care of."
+
+Nels scratched his head and let the instructions sink in. "At seven
+tomorrow mornin' I see Thornton. I tell him, 'There's somethin' near
+them three sycamores in Coon Valley you better take care of.'"
+
+"That's it."
+
+"Yah, Ted, I do it yoost that way."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ted's alarm awakened him at a quarter past one. He reached down in the
+darkness to shut it off, and as he lay there he knew a cold foreboding.
+Until now, the day to put his plan into execution, he had been very sure
+he was right. But suppose he was wrong? Al would be in Loring Blade's
+hands, delivered there by his own son! Ted got up and almost grimly
+clothed himself. His father couldn't stay in the Mahela much longer
+anyhow, and Ted knew he was right. When he was dressed, he sat down and
+wrote a note:
+
+     Dad; Meet me at the three sycamores near Glory Rock and bring
+     Tammie with you. It's very important. When you get there, hide in
+     the beech scrub until you think it's time to come out. You'll know
+     what it's about after you arrive.
+
+     Love,
+     Ted
+
+He put the note in a pliofilm bag and was just on the point of handing
+it to Tammie when he hesitated. Timing was very important, and certainly
+Al Harkness was never going to show himself at the three sycamores if he
+saw Loring Blade anywhere near them. Ted put his doubts behind him. His
+note said plainly that something was stirring and his father wasn't
+going to show himself anyway until he knew what it was.
+
+Ted opened the back door, gave the pliofilm bag to Tammie and said,
+"Take it to Al. Go find Al."
+
+Tammie streaked away in the darkness and Ted turned back to the kitchen.
+He set coffee to perking, laid strips of bacon in a skillet and arranged
+half a dozen eggs nearby. At seven o'clock--and because he was who he
+was it would be exactly seven o'clock--Nels would go to Carl Thornton
+and deliver Ted's message. If Thornton was innocent, he'd probably think
+Nels had gone crazy.
+
+But if Ted was right and he was guilty, Thornton would come up Coon
+Valley as soon as possible, to find and destroy any incriminating
+evidence that lay there. He would get the message at seven. Give him ten
+minutes to get ready, forty minutes--Crestwood was nearer than the
+Harkness house--to reach the mouth of Coon Valley and another twenty
+minutes to reach the sycamores. If he was not there by nine o'clock, he
+would not come.
+
+There was a knock on the door and Ted opened it to admit Loring Blade.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+"Hi!" the warden grumped. "I've made all arrangements."
+
+"For taking Dad to jail?"
+
+"For having my head examined!" the warden snapped. "Who in his right
+mind would let himself in for this sort of thing?"
+
+"In about three minutes," Ted promised, "I'll have hot coffee and bacon
+and eggs. You'll feel better then."
+
+They ate, the warden maintaining a sour silence and Ted again filled
+with doubt. All he really knew was that Carl Thornton had killed Damon
+and wounded Pythias before the season opened. The wounded deer in the
+beech scrub could have been shot by anyone at all and--
+
+No, they couldn't. Al and Smoky Delbert, as far as anyone knew, had been
+the only two people in Coon Valley that day. Al wouldn't shoot an
+illegal deer and Ted had Loring Blade's word for it that Smoky's rifle
+had never been fired. There had been a third party, and after Ted chased
+him out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, Pythias had cut through the
+beech scrub. Obviously, he knew the route and he wouldn't have
+remembered that, a couple of months ago, he had almost come to disaster
+on it. A deer's memory isn't that long.
+
+When the two had finished eating, Ted asked, "Shall we go?"
+
+"I'm ready. But if we're going to Glory Rock, why can't we drive to the
+mouth of Coon Valley?"
+
+"You promised to do this my way."
+
+There must be nothing to warn Carl Thornton away--if he came--and fresh
+tracks leading up Coon Valley might do just that.
+
+Loring Blade said, "I suppose I might as well be a complete jackass as a
+partial one. We'll walk."
+
+They went out into the cold night, while the north wind fanned their
+cheeks and trees sighed around them. A deer snorted and bounded away,
+and there came an angry hiss from a weasel that, having all but cornered
+the rabbit it was hunting, expressed its hatred for humans before it
+fled from them.
+
+Ted asked, "You tired?"
+
+"Lead on."
+
+The wan, gray light of an overcast morning fell sadly on the wilderness
+when the pair came again to the three sycamores and Glory Rock. Ted's
+watch read seven-thirty. Carl Thornton had his message and, if he was
+guilty, even now he was on his way.
+
+Loring Blade asked, "What now?"
+
+"You'd better hide."
+
+"Oh, for pete's sake--"
+
+"Dad isn't going to walk into your open arms."
+
+The warden said grimly, "All right. But if he doesn't come, there'll be
+one Harkness hide tacked to the old barn door and it won't be your
+dad's."
+
+He slipped in behind Glory Rock and it was as though he'd never been.
+Ted was left alone with the keening breeze, the murmuring trees and the
+Mahela. He looked across at the beech scrub where Al was supposed to
+hide, where he might even now be hiding, and saw nothing. He shivered
+slightly--and knew that he was lost if Thornton didn't come.
+
+Then he was sure that Thornton was not coming ... but when he looked at
+his watch it was only five minutes to eight. There simply hadn't been
+time.... Mentally Ted ticked another hour off. However, his watch said
+that only seven minutes had passed and he stopped looking at it.
+Forty-eight hours later, which his faulty watch said was only
+forty-eight minutes, he looked down the valley and saw motion.
+
+Ted stood very still in front of Glory Rock, and a prayer went up from
+his heart.... When the approaching man was very near he said, "Hello,
+Thornton."
+
+Carl Thornton stopped, and for a moment shocked surprise ruled his face.
+But it was only for a moment. He replied coolly, "Hello, Harkness."
+
+"I see," Ted observed, "that you got my message?"
+
+"Message?"
+
+"The one Nels Anderson gave you at seven o'clock this morning. The one
+that sent you up here."
+
+"What are you talking about?"
+
+"This--and I found it within six feet of where you're standing. Now do
+you think it could be the bullet that went through Smoky Delbert?"
+
+Ted took from his pocket the bullet he had dug out of Pythias and held
+it up between thumb and forefinger. Again, but only for an almost
+imperceptible part of a second, Carl Thornton's composure deserted him.
+Then, once more, he was the master of Crestwood and as such he had no
+association with ordinary residents of the Mahela. He said scornfully,
+"Give me that bullet."
+
+"Well now, I just don't think I will. The Sheriff, the State Police--and
+maybe others--will sure be interested as all get out. You'll have some
+explaining to do, Thornton, and _can you explain_?"
+
+"I want that bullet!"
+
+"Why do you want it, Thornton?"
+
+"Give me that bullet!"
+
+"Not so fast. I might _sell_ it to you. What's it worth for you to have
+it?"
+
+Carl Thornton's laugh carried an audible sneer. "You slob! You hill
+monkey! You're even lower than I thought! Sell the evidence that would
+clear your own father for money!"
+
+"Then you _did_ shoot Smoky!"
+
+"I want that bullet!"
+
+"Come take it."
+
+"I'll do just that."
+
+Ted balanced on the balls of his feet, a grin of sheerest delight on his
+face. Thornton was bigger than he--and heavier--and he was moving like a
+trained boxer. But because his back was turned, he did not see Tammie
+burst from the scrub beech and race him down. Tammie went into the air.
+His flying body struck squarely and Carl Thornton took two involuntary
+forward steps. He fell face downwards and rolled over to shield his
+throat with his right arm. Tammie's bared fangs gleamed an inch away and
+Thornton's voice was muffled.
+
+"Call him off! I'll give you a thousand dollars for the bullet!"
+
+"No, thanks," Ted said evenly, "and I wouldn't move if I were you.
+Anyway, I wouldn't move too far or fast. Tammie might get nervous." He
+raised his voice. "All right, Loring, I think he'll tell you the rest
+now."
+
+Ted scarcely noticed when Loring Blade came out from behind Glory Rock
+because his whole attention was centered on the man who emerged from the
+beech scrub. Al Harkness was lean as a wolf. His ragged hair had been
+hacked as short as possible with a hunting knife and his beard was
+bushy. His tattered clothing was held together with strips of deerskin,
+fox pelt, wildcat fur and fishing line. But his step was lithe and his
+eyes were clear and happy.
+
+"Hi, Ted!"
+
+"Hello, Dad!"
+
+They came very close and looked at each other, saying with their eyes
+all that which, for the moment, they could find no words to express....
+Then Al asked, "How you been, Son?"
+
+"Fine! Had a swell season! As soon as you get squared around again--and
+used to living like a civilized man--we can start two more camps."
+
+"Right glad to hear it. You'll have your lodge yet."
+
+"Might at that. How have you been?"
+
+"Not too bad." Al grinned his old grin. "Not too bad at all."
+
+"Hey!" Loring Blade called plaintively. "Call your dog, will you? I've
+told him six times to get away so I can start taking this guy to jail
+and all he does is growl louder!"
+
+Ted turned and snapped his fingers.
+
+"Come on, Tammie. Come on up here and join your family."
+
+
+
+
+JIM KJELGAARD
+
+
+was born in New York City. Happily enough, he was still in the
+pre-school age when his father decided to move the family to the
+Pennsylvania mountains. There young Jim grew up among some of the best
+hunting and fishing in the United States. He says: "If I had pursued my
+scholastic duties as diligently as I did deer, trout, grouse, squirrels,
+etc., I might have had better report cards!"
+
+Jim Kjelgaard has worked at various jobs--trapper, teamster, guide,
+surveyor, factory worker and laborer. When he was in the late twenties
+he decided to become a full-time writer. He has succeeded in his wish.
+He has published several hundred short stories and articles and quite a
+few books for young people.
+
+His hobbies are hunting, fishing, dogs, and questing for new stories. He
+tells us: "Story hunts have led me from the Atlantic to the Pacific and
+from the Arctic Circle to Mexico City. Stories, like gold, are where you
+find them. You may discover one three thousand miles from home or, as in
+_The Spell of the White Sturgeon_, right on your own doorstep." And he
+adds: "I am married to a very beautiful girl and have a teen-age
+daughter. Both of them order me around in a shameful fashion, but I can
+still boss the dog! We live in Phoenix, Arizona."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Double Challenge, by James Arthur Kjelgaard
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41671 ***