Double Challenge Part 31

_Carl Thornton, who got what he wanted, had decided to get Damon and Pythias himself._

"He's darn' near as big as a horse," Wilson said.

"Sure is."

_A horse, a friendly, easily caught horse, that had gone down c.o.o.n Valley that night with Damon on its back, then been released to go back up it._

"You certainly know how to field-dress a buck."

"I've done it before."

_Smoky Delbert, happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thornton couldn't afford to be found out. Smoky would blackmail him._

_Thornton paying Delbert's hospital bills._

"Did I hit him square?"

"A good neck shot."

_Factory-loaded ammunition that almost never failed to mushroom.

Hand-loaded cartridges that might fail._

John Wilson fumbled in his pocket. "Doggone, I seem to have lost my pipe."

_Al, forever losing his tobacco pouch, had gone to see Carl Thornton the day Thornton fired Ted._

Ted wiped his knife blade on the snow, stood up and sheathed his knife.

He looped a length of rope around the great buck's antlers.

"He'll be easy to get out of here," he said.

12

AL'S BETRAYAL

Deer season was ended and the village of Lorton brooded moodily between the snowclad hills that flanked it. From now until arriving fishermen brought new excitement, Lorton would know only that which arose from within itself. Ted, who had put John Wilson and his great buck on yesterday's outgoing train, steered his pickup down the street with its plow-thrown heaps of snow on either side and drew up in front of Loring Blade's house. He said, "Stay here, Tammie."

The collie settled back into the seat. Ted walked to the front door, knocked and was admitted by the game warden's attractive wife.

"h.e.l.lo, Ted."

"h.e.l.lo, Helen. Is Loring home?"

"Yes, he is. Come on in."

She escorted the boy into the living room, where, pajama-clad and with a pile of magazines beside him, Loring Blade lay on a davenport and sipped lazily from a cup of coffee. He looked up and grimaced.

"Whatever you want, I'm ag'in' it. I aim to stay here for the next nineteen years."

Ted grinned. "Have they been pus.h.i.+ng you pretty hard, Loring?"

"I've been on the go forty-seven hours a day and, at a conservative estimate, I've walked nine million miles since deer season opened."

"Was it bad?"

"No worse than usual. Most of the hunters who came in were a pretty decent lot. But there always is--and I suppose always will be--the wise guy who thinks he can get away with anything. I caught one joker with nine deer."

"Wow!"

"He was fined," Loring said happily, "a hundred dollars for each one and suspension of hunting privileges for five years."

"Smoky Delbert give you any trouble?"

"You know better than that. Smoky can't walk a hundred yards from his house and won't be able to for a long while to come."

"I feel kind of sorry for the poor cuss," Ted murmured.

Loring Blade looked at him sharply. "You didn't come here to ask me about Smoky."

"Oh, yes I did. Who talked with him after he was shot?"

"I did, for one. Why?"

"What did he tell you?"

The warden shrugged. "You know that as well as I do. Smoky was walking up c.o.o.n Valley when your dad rose from behind Glory Rock and shot him."

"Can you tell me the exact story?"

Loring Blade looked puzzled. "What do you want to know, Ted?"

"Did Smoky hear any shooting?"

"Come to think of it, a half minute or so before he got to Glory Rock he heard two shots."

Ted's heart pounded excitedly. The two shots had been for Damon and Pythias. Smoky wouldn't have heard the one that got him. Ted continued his questioning.

"Did Smoky have any idea as to who was shooting at what?"

"He thought your dad was banging away at a varmint."

"Then he did know Dad had gone up c.o.o.n Valley ahead of him?"

"Why yes, he saw his boot track in the mud. But you knew that."