"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-cocked."
"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."
"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 impassable in winter. Nobody 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 nobody 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!"