Double Challenge Part 20

Ted said cheerfully, "Guess we'll go home, Tammie. But we'll come back for the pack tonight, Mr. Callahan, or some of his friends, probably will be patroling here and there."

That night there were three more letters, two from deer hunters who wanted the camp the usual first two weeks of the season and one from a grouse hunter who wanted the first week. Ted advised them of the camp's present status, put his letters in the mailbox and lifted the red flag to let the carrier know there was mail to pick up. The next night there were five letters, two of which had been sent airmail. Ted opened the first.

Dear Mr. Harkness: Your letter intrigued us no end. We haven't seen a good flight of woodc.o.c.k for ten years and didn't think there was any such thing any more. Should they come in, by all means call me and reverse the charges. My business phone is TR 5-4397; my home is LA 2-0489. Call either place and we'll start an hour afterwards.

There'll be seven of us, and I enclose a ten-dollar check as deposit.

Cordially, George Beaulieu

The second airmail letter read:

Bless you, Ted! You've started me dreaming of Damon and/or Pythias.

One or the other will do, but nothing else, please! By your own invitation, you're stuck with me for the full twenty-one days.

I'll see you the day before the season opens.

Gratefully, John L. Wilson

There was a check for a hundred dollars enclosed and almost grimly Ted folded both checks in his wallet. He'd have to spend some money for food, but not a great deal. The freezer was almost full and much of the garden remained to be harvested. He stared at the far wall.

He had not planned it this way. He had looked forward to a happy venture, to enjoying and helping his guests, and if he made money in so doing, that would be fine. Had things turned out as he'd planned, there was already enough money in sight to build and equip another camp. But that was not to be. Al had to come out of the Mahela some time. When he did, they were in for a fight, and money would be a powerful weapon in that all-out battle. They must win, and anything else must be secondary.

The other three letters were from deer hunters who wanted the camp the first two weeks of the season.

Ted devoted the next fortnight to harvesting the garden. He dug the potatoes, emptied them in the cellar bin and stacked squash and pumpkins beside them. Bunches of carrots and turnips were stored in another bin, and sh.e.l.led beans were put in sacks.

Almost every mail brought more letters, and two out of three were from deer hunters. Ted rented his camp for the season's third week. Maybe n.o.body could make a living from deer hunters alone, but anybody who had enough camps, perhaps ten or twelve, could certainly earn a decent sum of money from just deer hunters.

The Mahela changed its green summer dress for autumn's gaudy raiment and the frosts came. Woodc.o.c.k continued to drift in, and two days before the season opened, they arrived in force. Where there had been one, there were thirty, and still they came. Ted drove into Lorton and called from the drugstore.

"Mr. Beaulieu?"

"Yes?"

"This is Ted Harkness, Mr. Beaulieu. The woodc.o.c.k are in."

"A big flight?"

"The biggest in years."

"We'll be there tomorrow," George Beaulieu said happily. "Hold the camp for us!"

"I'll do that, and anybody in Lorton can tell you where to find me."

"Thanks for calling. We'll be seeing you."

8

TROUBLE FOR NELS

In the beech forest, just beyond Tumbling Run, a buck so young that budding antlers did little more than part the coa.r.s.e hair on its head stamped a front hoof and snorted. Old enough to have a vast admiration for himself and his own powers, but too young to have any sense, the little buck snorted again and tried to sound as ferocious as possible.

Nosing about for any apples that might remain under the trees near Ted's camp, he had stood his ground gallantly when Ted and Tammie approached.

Not ten minutes before their arrival, he'd chased a rabbit away from the trees and he was so impressed by that feat that he thought he could chase anything. But when Ted and Tammie refused to run, he'd trotted into the forest to do his threatening from a safer place. He snorted again, more hopefully than angrily, and when he did not regain possession of the apple trees, he looked sad. Ted grinned at him.

"Junior's almost decided he can't bluff us, Tammie. Poor little guy!

He'd just about convinced himself that he's a real ripsnorter of a buck.

Oh, well, it's a hard world for everybody."

Ted continued to string clotheslines between the apple trees. He pulled them tight, tested their tension with an experimental finger and turned thoughtfully back to the camp. It might be a hard world for adolescent bucks, but if it weren't for the fact that his father was still laying out in the Mahela, right now it would be a pretty good one for Ted.

True to his promise, George Beaulieu and his six companions had arrived the day before woodc.o.c.k season opened. In his mid-fifties, Beaulieu was branch manager for an insurance company. Of the six men with him, only twenty-six-year-old George Junior, an insurance salesman who thought his father was the greatest man in the world and who wanted nothing more than to follow in his footsteps, had been less than middle-aged. The other five were a filling station owner, a dentist, a toolmaker, an electrical appliance dealer and a printer. Their party had been complemented by two dogs, an English setter and a springer spaniel.

There had been nothing sensational about any of them, including the dogs. Except for George Beaulieu, his son and the printer, none of the men had been even fair hunters. The three, far and away the best of the seven gunners, had averaged three shots for every woodc.o.c.k brought down.

The worst gunner, the electrical appliance dealer, who appropriately enough was named Joseph Watt, had fired at least fifteen times for every woodc.o.c.k he put in his pocket. Yet Ted felt that the happy man had lived through an uplifting and a near-sensational experience.

Although unpretentious, his guests had definitely not been meek or demure. Whoever missed an easy shot, which practically all of them did at least twice a day, was needled mercilessly by the others. Not one among them, under the best of conditions, could have made even a meager living as a professional hunter. Yet they represented the best type of present-day game seekers.

They had come to shoot woodc.o.c.k and they would have been disappointed not to shoot some. But they did not pursue their quarry with the calculating coldness of a Smoky Delbert or, for that matter, with the intense concentration of an Al Harkness, when Al was after a pelt he wanted. They were out for fun and they had fun, and although game mattered, meat did not. There were so many woodc.o.c.k that everybody, even Joseph Watt, got some. But considering the sh.e.l.ls they shot, the camp rental, food, transportation and licenses, their game probably cost them at least fifteen dollars a pound!

After the first week ended and there seemed to be more woodc.o.c.k than ever--the flight was still coming in--they had decided that another ten years might pa.s.s before they saw this again and stayed the second week.

They'd left only this morning, promising to be back next year if there was another flight of woodc.o.c.k, or for grouse if there was not.

Ted hummed as he started toward the camp. The Beaulieu party had been wonderful guests and certainly they were welcome back. If the Mahela was good for them, they were just as good for the Mahela.

Ted gathered up as much bedding as he could carry. He'd been a little worried about it because he'd provided neither sheets nor pillowcases.

But lack of them hadn't seemed to worry the Beaulieu party in the slightest. Most people who hunted all day were too tired by night to care whether their beds were formal, or anything except comfortable.

Next year--always supposing his father and he still had the camp, Ted thought that they would have to provide linens, too. Summer campers spent more time in camp than hunters did, and they were apt to be more particular.

Ted hung the blankets and quilts on the lines he had strung and pinned them securely. If they aired all day long, they'd be fresh by night. The grouse hunters--Ted had corresponded with an Arthur Beamish--were due some time after supper and there would be ten in the party.

The small buck, that had been lurking hopefully near and awaiting a chance to come back, snorted his astonishment when the bedding began to blow in the wind and ran away as fast as he could. The little fellow thought he was fully capable of dealing with anything natural, but wind-blown bedclothes smacked of the supernatural. Ted lost himself in thought.

The camp was completely rented, except for the third week of small game season, and it would return a little more than four hundred dollars in rent. Added to that was the money he'd certainly get from John Wilson, and the total was more than it had cost to build and furnish the camp.

Some of it would have to go for food and John Wilson probably would expect good things to eat, but he'd get them. Ted had six woodc.o.c.k, a gourmet's delight, in the freezer, and he would add the legal two days'

possession limit of six grouse. He'd need more than that, but even after buying whatever was necessary, he'd still have enough money to put up a hard legal battle for Al when his father finally had to surrender. There would be at least twice as much money as Ted had told John McLean he would have. If more was needed, and it probably would be, he'd sell the camp.

Ted gathered up the dirty towels and wash and dish cloths, put them in a bushel basket brought along for that purpose and replaced them with fresh, clean laundry. The Beaulieu party, another proof of their sportsmans.h.i.+p, had left the camp in fine shape, with the dishes washed and stacked where they belonged and the floor clean. Tammie came in the open door and Ted grinned at him.

"Guess we can go, Tammie, and you'd better rest a bit. You're going into the hills tonight."

Tammie wagged an agreeable tail and trotted out to the pickup with his master; Ted eased the little truck onto the road.

He'd sent Tammie, with a load of food, the night before the Beaulieu party arrived and everything had gone without a hitch. Tammie had left shortly after midnight and returned two and a half hours later. The pack was empty save for the note Al had thrust in it.

Dear Ted: Tammy c.u.m al rite. This works good, huh? I got enuf to last me anyhow 2 weeks mor. Don't send Tammy befor. The les you got to send him, the beter it is. Good luk and thanks.