Double Challenge Part 19

"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 woodc.o.c.k 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 pa.s.sed 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 woodc.o.c.k out of it.

Their distinctive, twittering whistle, which Ted had always thought was made by wind rus.h.i.+ng through stiff flight feathers, sounded as they flew. The boy's eyes glowed with pleasure.

The ruffed grouse was a marvelous game bird and n.o.body 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 woodc.o.c.k in highest esteem. Swift-winged and sporty, the woodc.o.c.k 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 woodc.o.c.k'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 woodc.o.c.k 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 woodc.o.c.k 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 n.o.body could ever be sure of woodc.o.c.k. 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 woodc.o.c.k one day could be empty, or hold only a few birds, the next. During the night, every woodc.o.c.k 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, n.o.body'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 n.o.body 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 n.o.body, 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 n.o.body 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 woodc.o.c.k.

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 woodc.o.c.k from a spa.r.s.e 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 woodc.o.c.k 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 c.u.ming 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 wudc.o.k seson c.u.ming on. I've saw a mess of flite wudc.o.k. 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 woodc.o.c.k 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.