Double Challenge Part 21

Your dad

Ted sighed wearily. He'd hoped that, with pa.s.sing time, the situation would clear itself or be cleared. If anything, it was worse.

Definitely out of danger, but due for a long convalescence in the Lorton hospital, Smoky Delbert had told everything. Starting from the Fordham Road, he had gone up c.o.o.n Valley with the intention of finding good places to set fox traps. He'd carried his rifle because there was always a chance of seeing a fox or bobcat, predators upon which there was a bounty. He'd known Al Harkness was ahead of him, for Al's distinctive boot marks had been left in the soft place where the spring overflowed the c.o.o.n Valley trail. Nearing the three sycamores, and without any warning at all, Al had risen from behind Glory Rock and shot.

It was a simple, straightforward story and one that bore out other known facts. By his own admission, Al had been in c.o.o.n Valley the same day. He did wear boots with soles of his own design, and therefore they were distinctive. Smoky Delbert, a woodsman of vast experience, might very well have seen these tracks, in spite of the fact that Loring Blade had missed them. Ted sighed again.

The papers had printed Smoky's story and most were sympathetic. There had even been a couple of resounding editorials demanding that Al be brought in--regardless of the cost and effort that might be expended to apprehend him--and face the justice he so richly deserved. But editors were not the only ones who had swung to Smoky's side.

Time, John McLean had a.s.serted, made people forget. Only, in this instance, it had made too many of them forget that Smoky Delbert was a vicious poacher. He had, instead, become the wronged innocent, and when Ted went into Lorton now there were those who averted their faces when they pa.s.sed him or even crossed to the other side of the street to avoid meeting him at all.

Carl Thornton had become something of a local hero. n.o.body knew how the news had leaked out, but everyone knew that Crestwood's owner was paying all of Smoky's extensive hospital bills. That puzzled Ted, for Thornton had never seemed the type to care about anyone's welfare save his own. But he would do anything that worked to his own advantage, and perhaps he thought it worth his while, at the price of Smoky's hospital expenses, to have Lorton solidly behind him. There could be no doubt that Lorton was there.

"Cut it out!" Ted urged himself. "You don't like Thornton, but give him credit, if credit's due."

Ted swung up the Harkness drive and parked. While Tammie went off on an inspection tour to a.s.sure himself that everything was as it should be, the boy took the basket of laundry inside. He grimaced. Modern in some respects, Al had by no means accepted the streamlined age as an unmixed blessing. He'd bought a freezer and refrigerator because their advantages were obvious. But he scorned was.h.i.+ng machines and was sure that, though clothes emerging from one might look clean, they couldn't possibly be as pure as those that were washed on a scrub-board.

Ted put the washtub on its stand, filled it with hot water, added soap and went to scrubbing. He rinsed the laundry, ran it through a hand wringer and hung it on a line stretched behind the house.

An hour before sundown, he went back to camp to replace the bedding and wind his clotheslines on a spool. He got his own supper, fed Tammie, washed the dishes and had just finished putting them where they belonged when the collie whined a warning. A car, followed by a second, came up the drive and, a moment later, there was an unnecessarily loud knock on the door.

Ted opened it to confront a rather plump man, who was probably in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in a gaudy wool s.h.i.+rt, hunting pants, ten-inch lace boots, and around his middle was belted a hunting knife almost long enough to be a small sword. His black hair was a little wild and so were his eyes, but his smile was pleasant and his outstretched hand was quite steady.

"Ted?"

"That's right."

"I'm Beamish," the other stated, a little thickly. "B'-gosh, we found you!"

"You certainly did!"

Ted smiled faintly. Hunters going into camp often did a little antic.i.p.atory celebrating and evidently Arthur Beamish had been overdoing it.

"This the camp?" he asked.

"No, the camp's farther up the road."

"Good!" Arthur Beamish said happily. "You go in the woods, you go in the woods! More woods, the better! That's what I always say! What do you always say?"

"Same thing." Ted grinned. "If you want to follow me, I'll show you the way up there."

"Ride with ya," Beamish declared. "Tha's just what I'll do."

"You're welcome."

Ordering Tammie to stay in the house, Ted guided his exuberant guest to the pickup and opened the door for him. Arthur Beamish bellowed, "Follow us, men! Ah, wilderness!"

He sat companionably close and draped a friendly arm across Ted's shoulder. "Lots of grouse?"

"Plenty. You like grouse hunting, eh?"

"Best darn' game there is!" Beamish exploded. "I rather get me one grouse than forty-nine deer! And I get 'em, too!"

"You do?"

"Didn't you ever hear about me?"

"I--" Ted hesitated. Obviously, he was supposed to know his guest. But he didn't, yet to say the wrong thing might mean to give offense, "Uh--aren't you--?"

"Tha's right!" Beamish said happily. "I'm Beamish, the trapshooter!

Traps in summer, grouse in season! Br-br-br! Up they go! Bang! Down they come! Every time!"

Ted twisted uneasily. Three grouse was the daily bag limit. n.o.body should need, or take, more than that. He calmed himself. As yet, n.o.body had taken more. He pulled in to the camp and stopped.

"Fine camp!" enthused Beamish, who could see only that part of it which was illuminated by the pickup's lights. "Best I ever did see! Great lil'

camp!"

The other two cars stopped and the rest of the hunters got out. Even in the night, there was that about them which at once set them apart from the quiet Beaulieu party. They were younger, more restless, and they fairly oozed that nervous sparkle which so often marks young executives.

They were also sensible--only Arthur Beamish and one other had been over-indulging themselves. Definitely, the drivers of the two cars were in full possession of all their faculties.

The three beautiful setters that had ridden in a pen in one of the car's trunks were as smartly turned out as the men. Obviously, they were hunting dogs, the best money could buy. But this crowd had money to spend.

"Come 'round!" Arthur Beamish bellowed. "Wan'sha to meet Ted!"

One by one, Ted was introduced to the rest of the party and as he met them, he liked them. If they were young and restless, they were also competent and talented and they had an air of belonging here in the wilderness. Probably this was not the first camp they'd ever seen.

"Let's go in," Ted suggested.

Arthur Beamish bubbled, "You get the best ideas!"

Ted let the men into the camp, watched closely as they inspected it and knew definitely that they'd been in such places before. Their glances were quick but all encompa.s.sing.

One of them, and although Ted did not remember all the names, he thought this one was Tom Strickland, turned with a smile. "This will do very well. Do you know where we can get a wet nurse?"

"A what?"

Strickland grinned, "A sort of combination cook, fire-builder, sweeper-upper, dishwasher; we'll want to spend our time hunting."

"I think I can find somebody. Is nine dollars a day all right?"

"Sure. Can you send him up tomorrow?"

"Send him tonight!" somebody yelled.

Strickland said scathingly, "I wouldn't inflict you wild hyenas on anyone tonight. I'll cook breakfast."

"Oh, my aching ptomaine!"

Ted grinned. "I'm sure I can send somebody tomorrow. Everything's O.K., eh?"