Part 6

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.