Double Challenge Part 30

Ted tore the last of his red cloth into strips, pulled his chair up to the table, took a sheet of paper and a pencil and drew a map. John Wilson leaned over his shoulder.

"This is the Fordham Road," Ted explained, "the first left-hand fork leading from the Lorton Road. Climb over the mountain and drop down the other side. The first valley you'll see, it's right here, is c.o.o.n Valley. You can't miss it, there's a turnout and hunters have been using it. Park the truck and walk up c.o.o.n Valley. In about half a mile, or right here, you'll come to three sycamores near a big boulder. On this slope," Ted indicated it with his pencil, "there's a thicket of beech scrub. You can see everything in it from the top of the boulder, Glory Rock. Climb it and wait."

"That's all? Just wait?"

"That's all. If I can put him out of the laurel, there's at least an even chance he'll cross the ridge and try to get back into the thickets at the head of c.o.o.n Valley. If he does, he'll come through the beech scrub."

"And if you can't?"

"He won't."

"What time do you want me there, Ted?"

"There's no great hurry. He isn't going to leave his thickets easily. It will take you about an hour to reach the mouth of c.o.o.n Valley and maybe another half hour or forty-five minutes to get set on Glory Rock. If you leave the house by half-past six, you should be there soon after eight.

That's time enough."

"How long should I wait?"

"Until I pick you up, and I will pick you up there. I may not come before dark. If I can put him past you, I will."

"As you say, General."

The tinny clatter of Ted's alarm clock awakened him at half-past three the next morning. He reached down to shut it off, reset it for half-past five and stole in to put it near the still sleeping John Wilson. Ted breakfasted, gave Tammie his food and a pat, donned his hunting jacket, put the strips of red cloth into the game pocket and stepped into the black morning.

He bent his head against the north wind and started climbing Burned Mountain. He knew as he climbed that he was pitting himself against a force as old as time.

The woodcraft of Pythias, or any deer, shamed that of the keenest human.

Deer could identify every tiny sound, every wind that blew and the many scents those winds carried. They knew everything there was to know about their wilderness and they were all masters of it. No human could hope to equal their senses.

But Pythias, the greatest and most cunning of all, was still a beast. He knew and could interpret the wilderness, but he couldn't possibly apply reason to that which was not of the wilderness. If his confidence could be shaken....

It was still black night when Ted reached the summit of Burned Mountain, but he had crossed and re-crossed it so many times in the past twenty days that he could do so in the darkness. Pythias was there, and possibly he already knew that Ted was back on the mountain. But he'd feel secure in the thicket where he was bedded and he would not go out until he was flushed.

Ted sought the aspen grown aisles between the thickets. He hung a strip of red cloth on a wind whipped branch, walked fifty yards and hung another. The night lifted and daylight came, and an hour later Ted tied his last strip of cloth to a twig. Carrying no rifle--but Pythias couldn't possibly know that--he put his hands in his pockets to warm them. Now he had to flush the big buck.

He and his guest had left the great animal in one of the larger thickets last night, but it was almost certain that he hadn't pa.s.sed the whole night there. Ted circled the thicket, found Pythias' unmistakable tracks and followed to where the big buck had nibbled tender young aspen shoots and pawed the snow to get at the dried gra.s.s beneath it. Thereafter Pythias had done considerable wandering. Ted worked out the trail and discovered where his quarry had gone to rest in another thicket.

He tracked him in, and he'd done this so many times that he knew almost exactly what to expect. The big buck would wait until he was sure someone was again on his trail, then he'd get up and sneak away. There would be nothing except tracks in the snow to mark his going. A man could not travel silently through the thickets, but a deer could.

Deep within the thicket, Ted found the bed, a depression melted in the snow, to which Pythias had retired when his wandering was done. The tracks leading away were fresh and sharp, no more than a couple of minutes old, but they were not the widely s.p.a.ced ones of a running buck.

Knowing very well what he was doing, aware of the fact that he could not be seen while there, Pythias always walked in the thickets.

However, when he decided to leave this thicket, he had leaped through the scrub aspen separating it from the next one. It could have taken him no more than a second or so. If a hunter had been watching, he would have had just a fleeting shot and only a lucky marksman would have connected. Ted followed fast. There were no cloth strips in these aspens.

But when he came to where Pythias had intended to leave the next thicket, he discovered where the big buck had set himself for the first leap then wheeled to slip back into the laurel. Ten feet to one side, the strip of cloth that had turned him still whipped in the wind.

Pythias had tried again to leave the thicket, been turned a second time by another fluttering cloth and leaped wildly out at a place where Ted had hung no ribbons.

The buck's pattern changed completely. He was safe in the thickets, knew it, and had never deigned to run while sheltered by friendly brush. Now he was running, either in great leaps that placed his bunched feet six yards apart or at a nervous trot. Ted began to have hopes.

Pythias had the acute senses of a wild thing plus the cunning of a wise creature that had eluded every danger for years. But the wilderness he knew changed only with the changing seasons. What did the fluttering cloths mean? Where had they come from? What peril did they indicate?

Pythias' tracks showed that he was becoming more nervous.

Ted pushed him hard. The buck could not reason, but if he pa.s.sed enough of them safely and discovered for himself that there was no danger in the red ribbons, he would pay no more attention to them. An hour and a half after taking the track Ted knew that, at least in part, he had succeeded.

Unable to decide for himself what the fluttering cloths meant, Pythias swung away from the thickets into beech forest. Now he ran continuously.

In the thickets, knowing very well that he could not be seen, he had walked until the fluttering cloths introduced an unknown and possibly dangerous element. This was beech forest, with visibility of anywhere from fifty up to as much as two hundred and fifty yards. A hunter might be anywhere and well the buck knew it. He was going to offer no one a standing shot.

Ted followed swiftly, for now the hunt had a definite pattern. A young buck, chased out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, might linger in the beeches. A wise old one would hurry as fast as possible into the thickets at the head of c.o.o.n Valley, and the nearest route lay through the scrub beech at Glory Rock. Ted was still a quarter of a mile away when he heard the single, sharp crack of a rifle.

He left the trail and cut directly toward Glory Rock. A volley was very picturesque and sounded inspiring, but whoever ripped off half a dozen shots in quick succession was merely shooting, without much regard to aiming. Ted murmured an old hunter's adage as he ran, "One shot, one deer. Two shots, maybe one deer. Three shots, no deer."

He ran down the slope into c.o.o.n Valley and found John Wilson standing over Pythias. The hunter's delighted eyes met Ted's, but mingled with his delight was a little sadness, too.

"I now," John Wilson said, "have lived."

"You got him!"

"I got him, poor fellow!"

"He'll never be a better trophy than he is right now."

It was true. At the height of his powers, Pythias faced a certain decline. Soon he would be old, and the wilderness is not kind to the old and infirm that dwell within it.

John Wilson laughed. "I know it. Look at him! Just look at him! I'll bet his base tine is thirteen inches long!"

Ted said, "Ten inches."

"Are you trying to beat yourself out of seventy-five dollars? I did promise you twenty-five dollars for every inch in its longest tine, if I got a head that satisfied me! This is surely the one!"

Ted grinned. "I'll dress it for you," he offered.

He turned the buck over, made a slit with his hunting knife and pulled the viscera out. At once it became evident that John Wilson was the second hunter of whom Pythias had run afoul, for he had been wounded before. Ted probed interestedly. Entering the flank, the bullet had missed the spine by two inches and any vital organs by a half inch. It had lodged in the thick loin, and nature had built a healing scab of tissue around it.

Ted probed it out with his knife and almost dropped the missile. In his hand lay one of Carl Thornton's distinctive, unmistakable, hand-loaded bullets.

John Wilson asked, "He's been wounded before, eh?"

"Yes!"

"Ted, I swear that you're more excited than I am!"

_Ted scarcely heard. He was here, beside Glory Rock, the day after Smoky Delbert was shot. Damon and Pythias, always together, and a deer so badly wounded that it couldn't possibly go on. Damon hadn't gone on.

Only Pythias had. Hurt but not mortally, he had left enough blood on the leaves to convince Ted that there'd been only one deer._

"When do you suppose he picked that one up?" John Wilson asked.

"I don't know."