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

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.