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.

"Hello, Ted."

"Hello, 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 pushing 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 Coon 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 Coon Valley ahead of him?"

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

"Was Smoky afraid to go on?"

"Why should he have been afraid? Who expects to get shot?"

"Tell me exactly how he said he saw Dad shoot him."

"Smoky was near the three sycamores when he thought he saw something move. A second later, your dad rose from behind Glory Rock and shot him."

"Smoky's very sure of that? It was Dad that rose from behind the rock?"

"He told the same story at least a dozen times that I know of. It never varied."

"Dad didn't step out from beside the rock, or anything like that?"

"No, he rose from behind it."

"Loring, has it occurred to anybody, except me, that the back of Glory Rock is a sheer drop? Anyone who could rise from behind and shoot over it would have to be at least nine feet tall!"

"I—By gosh, you're right! I knew Al never bush-whacked him! He must have been standing in plain sight when Smoky came up the valley!"

"Smoky never saw who shot him."

"That's not the way he told it."

"Think!" Ted urged. "Think of the sort of man Smoky is. There was bad blood between him and Dad and had been for some time. You were there when Dad dressed him down for setting traps before fur was prime. There was, as you'll remember, talk of shooting even then. Smoky knew Dad had gone up Coon Valley ahead of him; probably he even thinks Dad shot him. He said he saw him because he wanted to be sure of revenge. Smoky would do that."

"Yes, he would. But it seems to me that you're doing a lot of guessing."

"Maybe. You brought Smoky's rifle out?"

"Yes."

"Had it been fired?"

"No, the bore was mirror slick."

"What would you do if you ran across Dad?"

"I'd bring him in, if I had to do it at gun point."

"Loring, I am going to do something that neither you nor I thought I would ever do. I am going to betray my dad into your hands."

"Then you do know where he is?"

"No, I haven't seen him since the night he left."

"Cut it out, Ted. We all know you've been taking him supplies and we've tried a dozen times to catch you at it. You do know where he is?"

"I don't, but Tammie does."

"So!" the warden exploded. "Callahan was right! He thought he saw Tammie leave your house that night with a pack on his back. But when you whistled him in, and he didn't have any pack, Callahan figured he'd made a mistake. How'd you manage that?"

"Dad was coming to see me and he saw Callahan, too. He met Tammie within yards of the house and took his pack off. Loring, if this is to be done, it's to be done my way."

"What's your way?"

"You do exactly as I say."

"I'm listening."

"Meet me at my house two hours after midnight. We'll cross the hills to Glory Rock; we won't be able to walk up Coon Valley. Then you're to hide behind or beside the rock, any place you can listen without being seen, until I say you can come out."

"Now look here, Ted, I like you and I like your dad, but I'm not sticking my neck out for anybody."

"I promise you won't, and I also promise that you will get a chance to bring Dad in."

The game warden pondered. Finally he agreed, "All right, Ted, it'll be your way. But if there are any tricks, somebody's going to get hurt."

"O.K. Meet me at two?"

"At two."

Ted drove happily to Nels Anderson's modest house and found his friend chopping wood. Nels greeted him with a broad smile.

"Hi, Ted! Come in an' have a cup of coffee?"

"I can't stay, Nels. How are you doing?"

"Goot, goot for now. Them deer hunters what stayed in your camp, they paid me nice an' I get another yob soon."

"Crestwood's changing hands and the new owners are taking over next week. You might go ask them for your old job back."

"Yah! I do that."

"If you don't get one there," Ted said recklessly, "I myself will be able to offer you something that'll tide you over until you get another job. I'm going to build more camps."

"Py golly, Ted, I yoost don't know how to thank you!"

"Will you do me a favor?"

"For you I do anything!"

"Then listen carefully. At seven o'clock tomorrow morning I want you to go to Crestwood and see Thornton; he'll be out of bed. Tell him that there's something near those three sycamores in Coon Valley that he'd better take care of."

Nels scratched his head and let the instructions sink in. "At seven tomorrow mornin' I see Thornton. I tell him, 'There's somethin' near them three sycamores in Coon Valley you better take care of.'"

"That's it."

"Yah, Ted, I do it yoost that way."

Ted's alarm awakened him at a quarter past one. He reached down in the darkness to shut it off, and as he lay there he knew a cold foreboding. Until now, the day to put his plan into execution, he had been very sure he was right. But suppose he was wrong? Al would be in Loring Blade's hands, delivered there by his own son! Ted got up and almost grimly clothed himself. His father couldn't stay in the Mahela much longer anyhow, and Ted knew he was right. When he was dressed, he sat down and wrote a note:

Dad; Meet me at the three sycamores near Glory Rock and bring Tammie with you. It's very important. When you get there, hide in the beech scrub until you think it's time to come out. You'll know what it's about after you arrive.

Love,

Ted

He put the note in a pliofilm bag and was just on the point of handing it to Tammie when he hesitated. Timing was very important, and certainly Al Harkness was never going to show himself at the three sycamores if he saw Loring Blade anywhere near them. Ted put his doubts behind him. His note said plainly that something was stirring and his father wasn't going to show himself anyway until he knew what it was.

Ted opened the back door, gave the pliofilm bag to Tammie and said, "Take it to Al. Go find Al."

Tammie streaked away in the darkness and Ted turned back to the kitchen. He set coffee to perking, laid strips of bacon in a skillet and arranged half a dozen eggs nearby. At seven o'clock—and because he was who he was it would be exactly seven o'clock—Nels would go to Carl Thornton and deliver Ted's message. If Thornton was innocent, he'd probably think Nels had gone crazy.

But if Ted was right and he was guilty, Thornton would come up Coon Valley as soon as possible, to find and destroy any incriminating evidence that lay there. He would get the message at seven. Give him ten minutes to get ready, forty minutes—Crestwood was nearer than the Harkness house—to reach the mouth of Coon Valley and another twenty minutes to reach the sycamores. If he was not there by nine o'clock, he would not come.

There was a knock on the door and Ted opened it to admit Loring Blade.

"Hi!"

"Hi!" the warden grumped. "I've made all arrangements."

"For taking Dad to jail?"

"For having my head examined!" the warden snapped. "Who in his right mind would let himself in for this sort of thing?"

"In about three minutes," Ted promised, "I'll have hot coffee and bacon and eggs. You'll feel better then."

They ate, the warden maintaining a sour silence and Ted again filled with doubt. All he really knew was that Carl Thornton had killed Damon and wounded Pythias before the season opened. The wounded deer in the beech scrub could have been shot by anyone at all and—

No, they couldn't. Al and Smoky Delbert, as far as anyone knew, had been the only two people in Coon Valley that day. Al wouldn't shoot an illegal deer and Ted had Loring Blade's word for it that Smoky's rifle had never been fired. There had been a third party, and after Ted chased him out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, Pythias had cut through the beech scrub. Obviously, he knew the route and he wouldn't have remembered that, a couple of months ago, he had almost come to disaster on it. A deer's memory isn't that long.

When the two had finished eating, Ted asked, "Shall we go?"

"I'm ready. But if we're going to Glory Rock, why can't we drive to the mouth of Coon Valley?"

"You promised to do this my way."

There must be nothing to warn Carl Thornton away—if he came—and fresh tracks leading up Coon Valley might do just that.

Loring Blade said, "I suppose I might as well be a complete jackass as a partial one. We'll walk."

They went out into the cold night, while the north wind fanned their cheeks and trees sighed around them. A deer snorted and bounded away, and there came an angry hiss from a weasel that, having all but cornered the rabbit it was hunting, expressed its hatred for humans before it fled from them.

Ted asked, "You tired?"

"Lead on."

The wan, gray light of an overcast morning fell sadly on the wilderness when the pair came again to the three sycamores and Glory Rock. Ted's watch read seven-thirty. Carl Thornton had his message and, if he was guilty, even now he was on his way.

Loring Blade asked, "What now?"

"You'd better hide."

"Oh, for pete's sake—"

"Dad isn't going to walk into your open arms."

The warden said grimly, "All right. But if he doesn't come, there'll be one Harkness hide tacked to the old barn door and it won't be your dad's."

He slipped in behind Glory Rock and it was as though he'd never been. Ted was left alone with the keening breeze, the murmuring trees and the Mahela. He looked across at the beech scrub where Al was supposed to hide, where he might even now be hiding, and saw nothing. He shivered slightly—and knew that he was lost if Thornton didn't come.

Then he was sure that Thornton was not coming ... but when he looked at his watch it was only five minutes to eight. There simply hadn't been time.... Mentally Ted ticked another hour off. However, his watch said that only seven minutes had passed and he stopped looking at it. Forty-eight hours later, which his faulty watch said was only forty-eight minutes, he looked down the valley and saw motion.

Ted stood very still in front of Glory Rock, and a prayer went up from his heart.... When the approaching man was very near he said, "Hello, Thornton."

Carl Thornton stopped, and for a moment shocked surprise ruled his face. But it was only for a moment. He replied coolly, "Hello, Harkness."

"I see," Ted observed, "that you got my message?"

"Message?"

"The one Nels Anderson gave you at seven o'clock this morning. The one that sent you up here."

"What are you talking about?"

"This—and I found it within six feet of where you're standing. Now do you think it could be the bullet that went through Smoky Delbert?"

Ted took from his pocket the bullet he had dug out of Pythias and held it up between thumb and forefinger. Again, but only for an almost imperceptible part of a second, Carl Thornton's composure deserted him. Then, once more, he was the master of Crestwood and as such he had no association with ordinary residents of the Mahela. He said scornfully, "Give me that bullet."

"Well now, I just don't think I will. The Sheriff, the State Police—and maybe others—will sure be interested as all get out. You'll have some explaining to do, Thornton, and can you explain?"

"I want that bullet!"

"Why do you want it, Thornton?"

"Give me that bullet!"

"Not so fast. I might sell it to you. What's it worth for you to have it?"

Carl Thornton's laugh carried an audible sneer. "You slob! You hill monkey! You're even lower than I thought! Sell the evidence that would clear your own father for money!"

"Then you did shoot Smoky!"

"I want that bullet!"

"Come take it."

"I'll do just that."

Ted balanced on the balls of his feet, a grin of sheerest delight on his face. Thornton was bigger than he—and heavier—and he was moving like a trained boxer. But because his back was turned, he did not see Tammie burst from the scrub beech and race him down. Tammie went into the air. His flying body struck squarely and Carl Thornton took two involuntary forward steps. He fell face downwards and rolled over to shield his throat with his right arm. Tammie's bared fangs gleamed an inch away and Thornton's voice was muffled.

"Call him off! I'll give you a thousand dollars for the bullet!"

"No, thanks," Ted said evenly, "and I wouldn't move if I were you. Anyway, I wouldn't move too far or fast. Tammie might get nervous." He raised his voice. "All right, Loring, I think he'll tell you the rest now."

Ted scarcely noticed when Loring Blade came out from behind Glory Rock because his whole attention was centered on the man who emerged from the beech scrub. Al Harkness was lean as a wolf. His ragged hair had been hacked as short as possible with a hunting knife and his beard was bushy. His tattered clothing was held together with strips of deerskin, fox pelt, wildcat fur and fishing line. But his step was lithe and his eyes were clear and happy.

"Hi, Ted!"

"Hello, Dad!"

They came very close and looked at each other, saying with their eyes all that which, for the moment, they could find no words to express.... Then Al asked, "How you been, Son?"

"Fine! Had a swell season! As soon as you get squared around again—and used to living like a civilized man—we can start two more camps."

"Right glad to hear it. You'll have your lodge yet."

"Might at that. How have you been?"

"Not too bad." Al grinned his old grin. "Not too bad at all."

"Hey!" Loring Blade called plaintively. "Call your dog, will you? I've told him six times to get away so I can start taking this guy to jail and all he does is growl louder!"

Ted turned and snapped his fingers.

"Come on, Tammie. Come on up here and join your family."