Double Challenge Part 3

"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. n.o.body 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!"

"h.e.l.lo, 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-c.o.c.ked."

"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."