Double Challenge Part 14

"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 c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n Valley was traveled at all. The lush gra.s.s, beginning to wither because of lack of rain, formed its own hard cus.h.i.+on. 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, p.r.i.c.ked 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 gra.s.s 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 c.o.o.n 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 gra.s.s 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, n.o.body 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 a.s.sumed 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.