Part 4

"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.