Double Challenge Part 4

"So?" Al was almost purring. "And you turned him down?"

"That's right."

"You don't aim to change your mind?"

"No."

"Not even to get your job back?"

"Not even for that."

"You're sure now?"

"I'm sure."

"That bein' the case," Al said, rising, "I think I'll go down to Crestwood and have a little talk with Mr. Thornton. You stay here with Tammie."

When Al Harkness climbed into his old pickup truck and pressed the starter, his thoughts went back thirty-six years. The Mahela had been young then, and he'd been young, and that, he'd told himself a thousand times since, was probably the reason why he'd also been blind. It was not that he'd lacked eyes, very keen eyes that could detect the skulking deer in its copse, the grouse in its thicket and the rabbit in its set.

But he hadn't seen clearly what was right before his eyes.

At that time, the road to Lorton had been a mud track in spring and fall, a dusty trace in summer and impa.s.sable in winter. n.o.body had needed anything better. The only car even near the Mahela belonged to Judge Brimhall, of Lorton, and excitement ran at fever pitch when the respected judge drove his vehicle to Danzer, seven whole miles, without breaking down even once!

Lorton and the Mahela itself had been almost as far apart as Lorton and New York were now. Even when the road was good, a traveler had needed a whole day to go the fifteen miles to town and back. Whoever had extensive business in Lorton might better figure on two days for the round trip. The dwellers in the woods had been inclined to sneer at the town folk as sissified and, in turn, were sneered at for being hicks.

There'd been seven families in the wilderness; the Harknesses, the Delberts, two families of Staceys and three of Crawfords. All of them had gardens, a milk cow, a few chickens, a couple of pigs and a team of horses or mules. But all this was only secondary--the Mahela itself fulfilled most of their wants. It was a great, inexhaustible larder, provided by a benign Providence who had foreseen that men would rather hunt than work. Al remembered some of the hunts. His father, George Stacey and Tom Crawford had shot thirty-three deer in one day and sold them all in Lorton. Two days later, they shot twenty-nine more.

There weren't that many deer when Al came of an age to hunt. His elders were at a loss to explain the scarcity, unless some mysterious plague had come among the animals. Never once did they think of themselves and their indiscriminate, year-round slaughter as the "plague." On Al's thirteenth birthday, he shot a buck and a doe. They were the last deer taken in the Mahela for the next thirteen years.

It wasn't an inexhaustible larder at all, but just a place that could be depleted by always thoughtless and often vicious greed. Then had come the change.

The Game Department, the Lorton paper announced, had purchased deer from a state that still had some. In the hope that they'd multiply and rebuild the vast herds that had once roamed there, twenty of them were to be released in the Mahela. There was to be no hunting at all until such time as there were sufficient deer to warrant a hunt, and game wardens were to enforce that regulation.

It hadn't been easy. Bitterly jealous of what they considered their vested rights, the natives of the Mahela had resisted the game wardens.

There had been quarrels and even a couple of shootings. But the wardens had won out and the deer had come back.

There were as many as there'd ever been and perhaps more. Protected by strict and sane laws, they flourished. Seven families had all but exterminated the Mahela deer. Now four thousand properly regulated hunters a year couldn't do it, and this Al Harkness had seen.

He thought of the families--still the Harknesses, the Delberts, the Crawfords and the Staceys, who lived in the Mahela. With the exception of Al and Ted, who observed the game laws to the letter, most of them took more than their share of the Mahela's wildlife. Smoky Delbert was an especially vicious poacher who belonged, and one day would land, in jail. But, with game wardens on constant patrol, even Smoky could no longer indulge in wholesale slaughter.

There was, Al had always conceded, some excuse for the Crawfords and the Staceys. Al was the only Mahelaite who'd held on to the entire family acreage. Glad to raise money any way he could, the Staceys and Crawfords had sold theirs, all but a homesite and garden patch, and the proceeds were long since exhausted. Most of the men worked at day labor and their employment was never certain. Always struggling, there were times when they would have no meat at all if they did not shoot an occasional deer.

That condition would not endure. Since all the younger people left the Mahela, preferably for some brightly lighted city, as soon as they possibly could, the Staceys and Crawfords who remained were not going to last forever.

But if there was some excuse for them, there was none whatever for Carl Thornton. Comparatively wealthy, certainly he was in no danger of going hungry. Educated, he must understand what conservation meant. Supposedly intelligent, he must know that n.o.body at all could take what he wanted simply because he felt like taking it, or for his own advantage, and still hope to leave enough for others and for future generations. Al braked to a halt in Crestwood's drive and entered the lodge.

Jules Crowley, Thornton's pale-faced clerk, stepped in front of him.

"You can't come in here!"

Al said, "Oh yes I can."

He moved around Jules, jerked the office door open and closed it behind him. Thornton was sitting at his desk, going over some papers. He looked up. Al hesitated. Now that he was here, just what was he supposed to do?

It would be silly to threaten Carl Thornton, and how could he report him to the game warden when he had broken no law? Al felt a little foolish and Thornton's voice was as cold as his eyes when he spoke.

"What do you want?"

"You fired Ted?"

"That's right."

"What for?"

"Inefficiency."

"Ted told me different. He told me you fired him because he wouldn't shoot those two big bucks for you."

"He's a liar."

Al stepped to the desk, twined his right hand in Thornton's lapel, lifted him to his feet and used his left hand to slap both Thornton's cheeks. Then he let the resort owner slump back into the chair and turned on his heel.

"For callin' Ted a liar," he said.

He stalked out, knowing as he did so that he had made a deadly enemy but not caring. Thornton owned Crestwood. But he was still a little man and sooner or later little men stumbled over big problems. As Al climbed back into the pickup, he almost forgot Thornton. He had something more important to occupy his thoughts.

He had hoped mightily that, after he finished High School, Ted would go on to college. It didn't matter what he studied there as long as it was something; a Harkness would go out of the Mahela to become a man of parts. But Ted had not only wanted to stay in the Mahela, but also to start a resort there, and for almost the first time in his life Al faced a problem to which he saw no solution.

An expert woodsman, he earned a comfortable income. Since his own wants were simple, there would certainly be enough left over to pay Ted's college expenses. But Al couldn't even imagine the vast sum of money needed to start a resort. He had told the truth when he said Crestwood cost Thornton more than he'd earned in his whole life.

Al fell back on an idea that he himself had been mulling over. Hunters and fishermen were a varied breed, with varying tastes. Some preferred the comforts of Crestwood, but every season numbers of them hauled trailers into the Mahela or set up tents there and they did so because they liked that way of hunting or fis.h.i.+ng. Not all of them wanted the same things and not all cared to be crowded.

Driving back into his own yard, Al got out of the pickup and faced his son serenely. But seeing Ted's uncertain hand fall to Tammie's head, he grinned inwardly. The boy turned to Tammie whenever he was worried or at a loss.

"Did you see Thornton?" Ted's voice was too casual.

"I saw him."

"Did--?"

"No," Al told him gently. "I didn't. He's still alive and, as far as I'm concerned, he can stay that way. Ted, let's go up to Beech Bottom."

"Swell!"

Ted and Tammie got into the pickup and Al drove. He did not speak because he was thinking too busily to talk. A father, if he was worthy of being a father, showed his children the right path. But it was always better if he could guide them into doing their own thinking, instead of leading them along the path--and sometimes that called for subtle measures.

Two miles up the road, Al came to a clearing. A little less than an acre, it was a jungle of yellow-topped golden rod. Here and there a milkweed raised its spear-shaft stem and showed its silk-filled pods to all who pa.s.sed. In the center was an old building with all the windows broken and part of the roof fallen in. Sun, wind, rain and snow had exercised their own artistry on the unpainted boards and tinted them a delicate shade which no brush could possibly achieve. There was a little patch of summer apples and two small bucks, stretching their necks to get the wormy fruit, moved reluctantly away when the truck stopped.

Al got out of the truck and Ted and Tammie alighted beside him. Al looked at the tumble-down building.

"My gos.h.!.+ It ain't possible!"