Double Challenge Part 16

It hadn't worked out quite as he'd hoped it would, with the camp rented continuously throughout six weeks of small game hunting and three of deer. He figured with his pen on a discarded piece of paper. The camp was definitely rented for two weeks of grouse and one of bear hunting at forty-five dollars a week. That added up to a hundred and thirty-five dollars. It was certainly rented for two weeks of deer hunting at sixty a week, thus he would have a hundred and twenty dollars more.

Ted sighed wistfully. Two hundred and fifty-five dollars was by no means an insignificant return on their investment, even if they had put a price on their labor, and they could look forward to the next hunting and fis.h.i.+ng seasons. If Al were here, they'd be happy about it and eagerly planning more camps.

But Al wasn't here, and all that mattered now was that, by the end of deer season, Ted could be certain of having at least two hundred and fifty-five dollars in cash. If John Wilson came, stayed with Ted for twenty-one days, and paid him twelve dollars a day, that would be two hundred and fifty-two dollars more. If Mr. Wilson got a buck that satisfied him, and the buck's antlers had one tine nine inches long--

"Cut it out!" Ted advised himself. "Cut it out, Harkness! Count on what you know you'll have, and that's two hundred and fifty-five dollars."

Tammie, hearing Ted's voice and thinking he was called, came over to sit beside his master. He raised a dainty paw to Ted's hand and smiled with his eyes when the boy took it. Ted glanced at the clock.

"Great guns! Twenty past one! We'd better hit the hay!"

He shucked off his clothes, put on his pajamas and crawled into bed. But even though he was tired, sleep would not come because he was thinking of Al. How was his father spending this chilly night--and where? In some cave perhaps, or some thicket. Ted tried to put such thoughts behind him. Wherever Al might be, that outdoorsman was warm, dry and even comfortable. But Ted's mind insisted on seeking the gloomy side, and he was brought out of it only when Tammie whined.

Instantly Ted became alert. Taught to whine but never to bark when a stranger came near the house, Tammie was warning him now. The boy slipped out of bed, and, in the darkness, he felt for his shoes and pulled them on. He laced them so there would be no danger of tripping over the shoelaces and soft-footed across the floor to take a five-cell flashlight from its drawer and his twelve-gauge shotgun from its rack.

Out of the night came a sound that has been familiar since the first ancient man domesticated the first chickens. It was the sleepy squawk of a hen protesting removal from its warm roost. Ted opened the door softly, stabbed the darkness with his light and trapped within its beam a figure that ran from the chicken coop toward the forest.

"Get him, Tammie!"

Tammie rippled forward, and the light magnified his bobbing shadow twenty times over. He was not a dog but a monster, a nightmare from some antediluvian swamp, bearing down on the fleeing man. He rose into the air, struck the runner's back with his full weight, knocked him sprawling and snarled over him. It was what he'd been trained to do and it was all he'd do unless his captive tried too hard to get up. Then a little fang-work might be necessary, but this prisoner wasn't even moving.

Ted s.h.i.+ned his light into the terrified face of a young ne'er-do-well known to his parents as Sammy Allen Stacey, to himself and a few of his intimates as S.A., and to too many others as Silly a.s.s.

His captor asked sternly, "What are you doing here?"

"Uh--Nothin'."

"What's in the sack?"

"I--I just borrowed three of your hens!" Sammy started to sniffle. "I was goin' to bring 'em back tomorrow! Honest!"

"Guess I'll go back to the house," Ted said meaningfully. "When I hear you scream, I'll know Tammie's working on you."

"No! Don't! Please don't!"

"Think you can stay out of other people's chicken coops?"

"Yes! Yes!"

Ted ordered, "All right, Tammie." The collie moved back and Ted addressed the prostrate youth. "Get up and get out of here. If ever you come back again, I'll just turn you over to the dog."

Sammy rose and ran into the woods. Ted returned the three indignant hens to their roost and addressed Tammie, "I'll bet that, if ever he is found in another chicken coop, it won't be ours. You must have scared some sense into him."

Back in the house, Tammie sought his bearskin. Ted replaced the flashlight and shotgun, took his shoes off and went back to bed.

Tomorrow he must go to Lorton but it needn't be bright and early because, by Mahela standards, Lorton just didn't get up bright and early.

Ted slept until a quarter to seven. An hour later, with Tammie on the pickup's seat beside him, he started down the road.

He drove slowly because the business and professional offices in Lorton wouldn't open for another hour. Coming opposite Crestwood, he saw Nels Anderson, his former partner, working with a pick and shovel beside the driveway. Ted eased his truck over and stopped.

"h.e.l.lo, Nels."

"Py golly, Ted!" Nels' face could never reflect anything he did not feel. "Is goot to see you!"

"It's good to see you, too. How are things?"

"We must not holler. Yah?"

"Guess it never does any good. How's the boss?"

Nels smiled sadly. "Mad."

"What's he mad at?"

"Me. I go to fix the freezer and he say, 'Get out of there, you crazy Scandahoovian! From now on you work only outside and joost three days a week!"

"For Pete's sake! Why?"

"He's mad."

"Why don't you get a different job, Nels? One you can depend on?"

"Yah, I like to. I do not like Mr. Thornton no more."

"Why not?"

"He gets mad. You hear from your pa, Ted?"

"No."

"I'm awful sorry," Nels said gravely. "I do not believe your pa, he shoot this man like they say he did. If I could help him, I would."

"Thanks, Nels. Be seeing you."

"So long, Ted."

Ted drove on, wondering. He'd had only two personal contacts with Carl Thornton--the day he was hired and the day he was fired. He couldn't really say that Thornton was not an unpredictable individual, given to sudden rages, because he didn't know him that well. He had impressed Ted as somewhat cold and carefully calculating. The boy shrugged. Nels was a nice person. But an idea soaked into his head about as easily as sunbeams penetrate mud. Probably he'd broken some rule which he had not understood and still didn't understand, and Thornton was punis.h.i.+ng him.

But putting him on halftime, and Nels with five children to support, seemed like extreme punishment.

Ted drove on to Lorton, where, even though most of the town's residents were his friends, he could not help feeling self-conscious. Smoky Delbert's shooting had brought Lorton more fame, or notoriety, than it had known since its founding. The story had been in most of the State's papers and gained wide distribution through a couple of news services.

Parking in front of the First National Bank, Ted left Tammie in the truck, dropped his stamped letters in a mailbox and walked up the dimly lighted stairs that led to the law offices of John McLean. Edith Brewman, McLean's ageless secretary, had not yet come in but John McLean was rummaging through her desk.

He looked up and said, "Howdy, boy."

"Good morning, Mr. McLean."

Ted stood awkwardly, a little embarra.s.sed and a little lost. Just how did one approach an attorney and what did one say to him? John McLean continued to paw through the desk and Ted studied him covertly.

A huge, gaunt man in an ill-fitting suit, with unkempt gray hair and a black tie askew on his collar, John McLean looked like anything save the successful attorney he was. His dress and person were part of a clever act. Slouching into a courtroom, he was more apt to provoke snickers than admiration. But an opposing attorney who underrated him, and most did, literally fell into his clutches. There was a silver tongue behind John McLean's rather slack lips and a razor-sharp brain beneath his gray hair. He grinned loosely now.