Tammie licked his fingers and Ted furrowed his brow. The situation, as
it existed, was almost pitifully vague. A man had been shot in Coon
Valley, and the only signs left were the hurt man's trail and an
accusing finger to point at who had hurt him. There had to be more than
that, but what? Loring Blade had found nothing and Loring was an expert
woodsman. However, even though everything seemed hopeless, somebody had
better do something to help Al and, except for Loring Blade, Ted was the
only one who wanted to help him. Even though it was a slim one, finding
something that the game warden had not found seemed the only chance.
Ted decided to take it.
"But we'll eat first," he promised Tammie.
Ted prepared a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and fed Tammie. Then
he fixed a lunch and, with Tammie beside him, got into Al's old pickup.
He gulped. The seat had always seemed small enough when he and his
father occupied it together. With Al gone, and despite the fact that
Tammie sat beside him, the seat was huge. Ted gritted his teeth and
started down the drive.
He turned left on the Lorton Road, slowed for the dangerous, hairpin
turn that was Dead Man's Curve, speeded up to climb a gentle rise,
descended back into the valley and turned again on the Fordham Road. A
well graded and not at all a dangerous highway, somehow the Fordham Road
had never seemed a place for cars. It was as though it had always been
here, a part of the Mahela, and had never been torn out of the beech
forest with gargantuan bulldozers or ripped with blasting powder. For
the most part, it was used by the trucks of a small logging outfit
which, under State supervision, was cutting surplus timber and by
hunters who wanted to drive their cars as close as possible to remote
hunting country.
Ted slowed up for five deer that drifted across the road in front of him
and stopped for a fawn that stood with braced legs and wide eyes and
regarded the truck in amazement. Only when Ted tooted the horn did the
fawn come alive, scramble up an embankment and disappear. The boy smiled
wearily. Had Al been with him, both would have enjoyed the startled fawn
and they would have talked about it.
An hour after leaving his house, Ted came to the mouth of Coon Valley.
Long and shallow, the upper parts of both slopes were covered with
beech forest. But if any trees had ever found a rooting in the floor of
the valley or for about seventy yards up either side, they had died or
been cut so long ago that even the stumps had disappeared. The usual
little stream trickled down the valley.
Ted pulled over to the side and stopped. He got out and put the truck's
keys in his pocket. Tammie jumped to the ground beside him. The big
collie bristled and walked warily around a dark stain in the road. Ted
fought a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no doubt that
some hurt thing had lain here, but unless someone had told him so, he
never would have known that it was a man. Ted licked his lips, and
Tammie stayed close beside him as they started up the valley.
Smoky Delbert's journey had indeed been a terrible one. Had he not been
hardened by a lifetime of outdoor living, probably he never could have
made it. In a way, Ted supposed, it was Smoky's atonement for his many
vicious practices. Yet, the boy found it in his heart to admit that,
whoever had shot the poacher and forced him to crawl, wounded and
bleeding, to the Fordham Road, was even more vicious.
Ted stirred uneasily, then calmed himself. Al had said it was no part of
his doing. Therefore it was not. Who had done this dreadful thing?
A spring trickling across the valley had left a soft spot. Here Ted
stopped instantly. Very plain in the soft earth were the tracks of a
single, unshod horse that had walked down Coon Valley and back up it, or
up it and back down. Ted could not be sure, but his heart leaped. Loring
Blade and Jack Callahan had said nothing about any horses. Who had taken
a horse up the valley, and why? His interest quickening, Ted looked for
more horse tracks.
He found them farther on, where the trail became a stretch of sand from
the little stream's overflow, but he still could not determine whether
the horse had gone up or down the valley first. He knew definitely only
that it had traveled both ways, and if he could find out why, he might
also find a clue as to who had shot Smoky Delbert. Ted kept downcast
eyes on the trail.
Save for that unmistakable sign left by Smoky Delbert and an occasional
path or little trail which anything at all might have used, for a long
ways he found only scattered indications that Coon Valley was traveled
at all. The lush grass, beginning to wither because of lack of rain,
formed its own hard cushion. An Indian or bushman tracker might have
been able to read the story of what had come this way. Ted could find
little.
Trotting a little ways ahead, Tammie stopped suddenly, pricked up his
ears and looked interestedly at a small clearing that reached perhaps
three hundred yards into the beech woods. Following his gaze, Ted saw
two brown horses and a black one. Their heads were up and ears pricked
forward as they studied the two on the trail. Ted sighed in resignation.
The Crawfords and the Staceys, who lived in the Mahela, each kept
several horses. Why they did, why they kept any at all, only they could
explain, for neither had enough land to warrant keeping even one horse.
Still they had them. The horses were usually left to forage for
themselves from the time the first spring grass appeared until hunting
season opened. Then sometimes they were pressed into service, to pack or
pull the tents and gear of hunters who had a yen for some remote spot,
or to pack out deer or bears that had been brought down a long ways from
any road.
At any rate, the horse tracks were explained. While it wasn't usual for
one horse to break from its companions and go wandering, now and again
one would do it. The black horse broke from the two browns, trotted down
to Ted, arched its neck and extended a friendly muzzle. Ted petted him.
"Lonesome for a human being, fella?"
Ted went on and the black horse followed him a little ways before it
turned back to join the other two.
A half mile from the Fordham Road, Ted came to the three sycamores near
Glory Rock.
The sides of Coon Valley pitched sharply upwards here, and the beech
forest came closer to the valley's floor. The three sycamores, a giant
tree and two near-giants, rustled their leaves in the little breeze and
remained aloof from everything else, as though they were the royalty in
this place. Even Glory Rock, an elephant-backed, elephant-sized boulder
whose ancient face wore a stubble of lichens, seemed demure in their
presence. To the left, a raggle-taggle thicket of beech brush crawled to
within twenty feet of the valley's floor.
Ted looked down at the place where Smoky Delbert had fallen, and there
could be no mistaking it. The boy stood still, searching everything near
the spot, and as he did hope faded.
The bullet, Loring Blade had said, had gone clear through Smoky. That,
within itself, was unusual. With no exceptions of which Ted knew,
everybody who came into the Mahela used soft-point hunting bullets that
mushroomed on impact. But now and again, though very rarely, a faulty
bullet didn't expand when it struck. Probably that was another factor
that had saved Smoky's life. A mushrooming bullet did awful damage. In
spite of the fact that some of it might escape the hunter, probably at
least eighty per cent of anything hit with one died sooner or later.
Smoky, Ted's experience told him, never would have moved from beside the
sycamores if this bullet had mushroomed.
Ted furrowed his brows. The bullet might prove a lot, but finding it was
as hopeless as locating a pebble in the ocean. There was nothing except
the sycamores and grass right here, and none of the sycamore trunks were
bullet marked. Going through Smoky without expanding, the bullet had
snicked into the ground the same way. Locating it might mean sifting
tons, and perhaps dozens of tons, of earth. Even then, unless one were
lucky, the bullet might elude him.
Tammie, who was sitting beside Ted and staring into the beech brush,
whined suddenly. In turn he lifted both white front paws and put them
down again. He drank deeply of some scent that only he could detect. Ted
looked keenly at him.
"What have you got, Tammie?"
Tammie ran a little ways toward the beech brush and turned to look back
over his shoulder. Ted frowned. Loring Blade had reported correctly and
in full everything that could be found in the valley, but Loring hadn't
had a dog with him. Obviously, Tammie's nose had discovered something
that any human being might well miss.