Double Challenge Part 13

"Last night."

"What time?"

"I forgot to hold a stop watch on him."

"Why didn't you stop him? Don't you know that failing to do so can make you liable to arrest as an accessory after the fact?"

"A sheriff and a game warden couldn't stop him."

"He's right," Loring Blade agreed. "We couldn't. Why don't you start your men into the hills?"

"If he left this house," Hausler threatened, "we'll be on his track in two minutes."

He turned and went out, and Ted laughed. Loring Blade swung to face him.

"You feel pretty bitter, don't you?"

"How would you feel?"

"Not too happy," the warden admitted. "Why did you laugh?"

Ted grinned faintly. "Does that trooper really think he, or anyone else, can track Dad?"

"If he does have such ideas," Loring Blade conceded, "he'll soon have some different ones. n.o.body can track Al Harkness."

"Nor can they find him."

"Perhaps not immediately, but sooner or later they will."

"Yes?" Ted questioned. "Send a thousand men into the hills, send a thousand into any big thicket, and they wouldn't find him unless they happened to stumble right across him."

"Al can't stay in the hills forever."

"Maybe not, but he can stay there a long time. He knows every chipmunk den in the Mahela."

"He won't be easy to find," the warden conceded, "but he will be found.

What time did he come back last night?"

"Just about an hour after you took him away."

Loring Blade exclaimed, "Wow!"

Ted looked quizzically at him and the warden continued, "We were on Dead Man's Curve, and he was between Jack and me, when suddenly he pushed the door open and just seemed to float out of it. We beat the brush around Dead Man's Curve until one o'clock this morning. About then I tumbled to the idea that he must have come back here."

"Why didn't you come last night?"

Loring Blade shrugged. "He slipped through our fingers once. It wasn't hard to figure that he wouldn't have done that only to let himself be picked up again. Besides, it did seem sort of useless to hunt him at night. He headed into the woods, and because he didn't make a sound that either Jack or I could hear, we thought he was holed up right close.

Ted, do you think he shot Smoky?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"He said he didn't."

"Delbert said he did."

"Just what did he say?"

"That's all. He regained consciousness briefly. The officer with him asked who shot him and he said Al did from ambush. I doubt if he's talked since."

"Do you believe Dad shot Smoky?"

The warden frowned. "If he did, it wasn't from ambush. There's more to it than that. We could have brought it out, but it will be harder now.

When Al ran, he made things look pretty bad."

"Not to me."

"But to a lot of other people. Do you think you can get him to come back and give himself up?"

"I asked him last night to stay and face it out."

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Dad's part of the Mahela," Ted said quietly, "and the Mahela's code is the one he knows best. He would not go to jail for a crime he didn't commit, any more than a wild deer would voluntarily enter a cage."

"Doggone, that sure complicates things. Do you have any bright ideas?"

"What did you find in c.o.o.n Valley?"

"Just what I told you, Smoky's back trail and your dad's tobacco pouch."

"Nothing else?"

"Smoky's rifle. We brought it in with us."

"No sign of anything else?"

Loring Blade answered wearily, "You know what it's like there. Unless it's a trail like Smoky's, and Smoky was bleeding hard, there's little in the way of sign that a human eye can detect."

"Just the same, I think I'll go up there."

"What do you expect to find?"

"I don't know. Anything would be a help."

"Guess it would at that. Good luck."