Tramping along the Lorton Road toward his father's house, Ted told himself that he had been a complete fool. With a start in the only business that interested him, he had sacrificed everything for what suddenly seemed a trivial reason.

Carl Thornton had spoken the truth. Those who lived in the Mahela thought that just living there gave them a proprietary interest in the game and fish that shared the wilderness with them. But, except for Smoky Delbert, a notorious poacher who hunted and fished for the market, most dwellers in the Mahela confined their poaching to killing a deer when they felt like having venison or catching a mess of trout when they thought they needed some fish for dinner. They broke the law, but as far as Ted knew, their chances of going to Heaven when they died were fully as good as his. They weren't sinners.

Half inclined to turn back and tell Thornton he'd reconsidered, still Ted went on. It wouldn't be easy, but definitely it would be possible to shoot both of the great bucks before the hunters who invaded the Mahela when the season opened sent them into hiding. If Ted got them, or even promised to try to get them, he would be back in Thornton's good graces.

"If I was smart," he told himself, "I'd tell Thornton I was hunting those bucks and not get either."

He played with the tempting thought, then put it behind him and walked on. Nobody who called himself a man took another man's pay for doing a job and then failed to do it. Ted asked himself questions and tried to provide his own answers.

Was he afraid of Loring Blade, the game warden? He didn't think so. The Mahela was a big country and the warden could not be everywhere at once. The chances were very good that anyone who knew what he was doing could get both bucks safely to Crestwood, where they became Thornton's responsibility. Besides, Thornton had said he'd pay the fine if Ted were caught.

Did he shrink from breaking the law? Yes, of course. At the same time he knew positively that if he and his father were in desperate straits, if they had no food and no other means of getting any, he'd shoot deer or any other edible game he could find, regardless of whether it was in season or out.

There seemed to be something else involved and Ted could find no precise bracket in which it fitted. It concerned the grouse he'd held in his hand, the cool morning breeze, the view from Hawkbill, his father—everything Ted loved and held dear.

His mind was a whirlpool in which nothing at all was clear except that he could not shoot the two bucks for Thornton. It would be as easy to shoot Tammie—his lips formed a sick grin at that thought! Yesterday his dreams had been bright as bubbles in the sun. Today all the bubbles were burst. There wasn't the faintest possibility of getting a job at another resort for the simple reason that there was no other resort.

Of course, if he left the Mahela—But he couldn't do that either.

Ted was a half mile from their house when he saw Al's tobacco pouch lying beside the road. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. Obviously his father had been here—probably he'd been scouting mink sign along Spinning Creek and had walked back up the road—and he was forever losing his pouch. But somehow somebody always found it and brought it back to him.

Ted tried to put a spring in his step and a cheerful smile on his lips. A man faced up to his own troubles and did not inflict them on other people. He tried to whistle and succeeded only in hissing.

He was a hundred yards from the house when Tammie, who'd caught his scent, hurried to meet him. Sleek fur rippling and short ears jiggling, he advanced at the collie's lope, which seems so restrained and is so incredibly fast. Tammie came to a graceful halt in front of Ted and looked at him with dancing eyes.

"Hi, dog! Hi, Tammie!" Ted ruffled his head with a gentle hand as Tammie fell in beside him. Plucking the tobacco pouch from his pocket, he gave it to the collie. "Here. Take it to Al."

The tobacco pouch dangling by its drawstrings, Tammie streaked up the road. Disdaining the drive leading into the house, he cut through the woods and disappeared. Ted squared his shoulders, tried again to whistle—and succeeded. His father must be home. When Ted was working and Al went out, Tammie always went with him.

Ted turned up the drive and was halfway to the house when Tammie came flying back to meet him. They went to the shed in the rear; Al would be working. Ted peered through the open door and his father, shaping another stretching board, glanced up to greet him.

"Hi, Ted!"

"Hello, dad!"

"No work today?"

"That's right."

Al bent his head to hide the question in his eyes. Something had happened and he knew it. His voice was a little too casual as he said, "Figgered when Tammie fetched my tobacco pouch that he'd made up his mind to go 'round pickin' up after me."

"No, I found it beside the road and sent Tammie with it. You should put a string on that pouch and tie it to your britches."

"Guess I'd ought. Tammie and me took a whirl down the crick to look for mink sign. Must of lost my pouch on the way back."

"Find any sign?"

"There'll be mink on the crick this year. I can take a string of pelts and leave enough so there'll also be mink next year."

"Now that's just swell!" Ted bit his tongue. Wanting to keep his troubles to himself by appearing gay and careless, he'd leaned too far in that direction and been over-emphatic. Al raised his head and searched his son's face with wonderfully gentle eyes.

"Want to tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What happened to you."

"Oh," Ted forced what he tried to make a casual laugh, "Thornton fired me."

Al remained calm. "He what?"

"Thornton gave me the gate, the bounce act, ye olde heave-ho. He said, in short, that I was never to darken his kitchen towels again."

Al said, "Come off it, Ted."

Suddenly Ted's misery and heartbreak were too great a burden to bear alone. He fought to keep his voice from quavering and his lower lip from trembling.

"That's right. I've been fired."

"Want to tell me why?" Al did not raise his voice.

"I—I wouldn't shoot Damon and Pythias for Thornton."

Al arched surprised brows. "Why's he want those two bucks?"

"He's going to expand Crestwood. He said that if he had one or both of those heads to put on the wall, it would be written up in every paper in the state. He said they'd help bring guests."

"Boy, seems to me like you went off half-cocked."

"What do you mean?"

"Thornton's takin' a lot for granted to think that you, or anyone, could get either one of those bucks. But if you wanted to hunt 'em, and if you did get one, 'twould do no harm to give it to him. 'Twould save your job for you."

"That would have been different," Ted said wryly, "but that wasn't what he asked. He wants both bucks before the season opens."

"So?" Al was almost purring. "And you turned him down?"

"That's right."

"You don't aim to change your mind?"

"No."

"Not even to get your job back?"

"Not even for that."

"You're sure now?"

"I'm sure."

"That bein' the case," Al said, rising, "I think I'll go down to Crestwood and have a little talk with Mr. Thornton. You stay here with Tammie."

When Al Harkness climbed into his old pickup truck and pressed the starter, his thoughts went back thirty-six years. The Mahela had been young then, and he'd been young, and that, he'd told himself a thousand times since, was probably the reason why he'd also been blind. It was not that he'd lacked eyes, very keen eyes that could detect the skulking deer in its copse, the grouse in its thicket and the rabbit in its set. But he hadn't seen clearly what was right before his eyes.

At that time, the road to Lorton had been a mud track in spring and fall, a dusty trace in summer and impassable in winter. Nobody had needed anything better. The only car even near the Mahela belonged to Judge Brimhall, of Lorton, and excitement ran at fever pitch when the respected judge drove his vehicle to Danzer, seven whole miles, without breaking down even once!

Lorton and the Mahela itself had been almost as far apart as Lorton and New York were now. Even when the road was good, a traveler had needed a whole day to go the fifteen miles to town and back. Whoever had extensive business in Lorton might better figure on two days for the round trip. The dwellers in the woods had been inclined to sneer at the town folk as sissified and, in turn, were sneered at for being hicks.

There'd been seven families in the wilderness; the Harknesses, the Delberts, two families of Staceys and three of Crawfords. All of them had gardens, a milk cow, a few chickens, a couple of pigs and a team of horses or mules. But all this was only secondary—the Mahela itself fulfilled most of their wants. It was a great, inexhaustible larder, provided by a benign Providence who had foreseen that men would rather hunt than work. Al remembered some of the hunts. His father, George Stacey and Tom Crawford had shot thirty-three deer in one day and sold them all in Lorton. Two days later, they shot twenty-nine more.

There weren't that many deer when Al came of an age to hunt. His elders were at a loss to explain the scarcity, unless some mysterious plague had come among the animals. Never once did they think of themselves and their indiscriminate, year-round slaughter as the "plague." On Al's thirteenth birthday, he shot a buck and a doe. They were the last deer taken in the Mahela for the next thirteen years.

It wasn't an inexhaustible larder at all, but just a place that could be depleted by always thoughtless and often vicious greed. Then had come the change.

The Game Department, the Lorton paper announced, had purchased deer from a state that still had some. In the hope that they'd multiply and rebuild the vast herds that had once roamed there, twenty of them were to be released in the Mahela. There was to be no hunting at all until such time as there were sufficient deer to warrant a hunt, and game wardens were to enforce that regulation.

It hadn't been easy. Bitterly jealous of what they considered their vested rights, the natives of the Mahela had resisted the game wardens. There had been quarrels and even a couple of shootings. But the wardens had won out and the deer had come back.

There were as many as there'd ever been and perhaps more. Protected by strict and sane laws, they flourished. Seven families had all but exterminated the Mahela deer. Now four thousand properly regulated hunters a year couldn't do it, and this Al Harkness had seen.

He thought of the families—still the Harknesses, the Delberts, the Crawfords and the Staceys, who lived in the Mahela. With the exception of Al and Ted, who observed the game laws to the letter, most of them took more than their share of the Mahela's wildlife. Smoky Delbert was an especially vicious poacher who belonged, and one day would land, in jail. But, with game wardens on constant patrol, even Smoky could no longer indulge in wholesale slaughter.

There was, Al had always conceded, some excuse for the Crawfords and the Staceys. Al was the only Mahelaite who'd held on to the entire family acreage. Glad to raise money any way he could, the Staceys and Crawfords had sold theirs, all but a homesite and garden patch, and the proceeds were long since exhausted. Most of the men worked at day labor and their employment was never certain. Always struggling, there were times when they would have no meat at all if they did not shoot an occasional deer. That condition would not endure. Since all the younger people left the Mahela, preferably for some brightly lighted city, as soon as they possibly could, the Staceys and Crawfords who remained were not going to last forever.

But if there was some excuse for them, there was none whatever for Carl Thornton. Comparatively wealthy, certainly he was in no danger of going hungry. Educated, he must understand what conservation meant. Supposedly intelligent, he must know that nobody at all could take what he wanted simply because he felt like taking it, or for his own advantage, and still hope to leave enough for others and for future generations. Al braked to a halt in Crestwood's drive and entered the lodge.

Jules Crowley, Thornton's pale-faced clerk, stepped in front of him. "You can't come in here!"

Al said, "Oh yes I can."

He moved around Jules, jerked the office door open and closed it behind him. Thornton was sitting at his desk, going over some papers. He looked up. Al hesitated. Now that he was here, just what was he supposed to do? It would be silly to threaten Carl Thornton, and how could he report him to the game warden when he had broken no law? Al felt a little foolish and Thornton's voice was as cold as his eyes when he spoke.

"What do you want?"

"You fired Ted?"

"That's right."

"What for?"

"Inefficiency."

"Ted told me different. He told me you fired him because he wouldn't shoot those two big bucks for you."

"He's a liar."

Al stepped to the desk, twined his right hand in Thornton's lapel, lifted him to his feet and used his left hand to slap both Thornton's cheeks. Then he let the resort owner slump back into the chair and turned on his heel.

"For callin' Ted a liar," he said.

He stalked out, knowing as he did so that he had made a deadly enemy but not caring. Thornton owned Crestwood. But he was still a little man and sooner or later little men stumbled over big problems. As Al climbed back into the pickup, he almost forgot Thornton. He had something more important to occupy his thoughts.

He had hoped mightily that, after he finished High School, Ted would go on to college. It didn't matter what he studied there as long as it was something; a Harkness would go out of the Mahela to become a man of parts. But Ted had not only wanted to stay in the Mahela, but also to start a resort there, and for almost the first time in his life Al faced a problem to which he saw no solution.

An expert woodsman, he earned a comfortable income. Since his own wants were simple, there would certainly be enough left over to pay Ted's college expenses. But Al couldn't even imagine the vast sum of money needed to start a resort. He had told the truth when he said Crestwood cost Thornton more than he'd earned in his whole life.

Al fell back on an idea that he himself had been mulling over. Hunters and fishermen were a varied breed, with varying tastes. Some preferred the comforts of Crestwood, but every season numbers of them hauled trailers into the Mahela or set up tents there and they did so because they liked that way of hunting or fishing. Not all of them wanted the same things and not all cared to be crowded.

Driving back into his own yard, Al got out of the pickup and faced his son serenely. But seeing Ted's uncertain hand fall to Tammie's head, he grinned inwardly. The boy turned to Tammie whenever he was worried or at a loss.

"Did you see Thornton?" Ted's voice was too casual.

"I saw him."

"Did—?"

"No," Al told him gently. "I didn't. He's still alive and, as far as I'm concerned, he can stay that way. Ted, let's go up to Beech Bottom."

"Swell!"

Ted and Tammie got into the pickup and Al drove. He did not speak because he was thinking too busily to talk. A father, if he was worthy of being a father, showed his children the right path. But it was always better if he could guide them into doing their own thinking, instead of leading them along the path—and sometimes that called for subtle measures.

Two miles up the road, Al came to a clearing. A little less than an acre, it was a jungle of yellow-topped golden rod. Here and there a milkweed raised its spear-shaft stem and showed its silk-filled pods to all who passed. In the center was an old building with all the windows broken and part of the roof fallen in. Sun, wind, rain and snow had exercised their own artistry on the unpainted boards and tinted them a delicate shade which no brush could possibly achieve. There was a little patch of summer apples and two small bucks, stretching their necks to get the wormy fruit, moved reluctantly away when the truck stopped.

Al got out of the truck and Ted and Tammie alighted beside him. Al looked at the tumble-down building.

"My gosh! It ain't possible!"

"What isn't?"

Al grinned ruefully, "Seems like yesterday I worked here."

"You worked at the old Hawley logging camp?"

"Yep. Chore boy. Got up at four every mornin' to feed and curry the horses so they'd be ready to go into the woods. You wouldn't think fifteen men, or fourteen men and a boy, ate and slept in that old house, would you?"

"It's big enough."

"By gosh! Seems like a person gets born, takes six breaths and gets old. That old house is still good, though. Those boards are really seasoned and I bet they last another hundred years."

Ted asked without much interest, "What happened?"

"Old Man Hawley sold everything 'cept that little patch when the state took over and made the Mahela into state forest. Jud, his son, was goin' to make a huntin' camp of it. But he never did and he never will. Bet you could buy the works for a hundred and fifty dollars."

Ted almost yelled, "Dad!"

"What's the matter? Bee sting you?"

"No, but something else did! Dad, I'm going to buy it!"

"That?" Al looked puzzled.

"Don't you see?" Ted's eyes were shining and Al knew his heart was singing. "With more and more people coming into the Mahela every year, they must have more places to stay. I'm going to tear this house down and build a camp right here! Bet it'll rent five months out of the year!"

"Well, I'll be jugged!" Al hoped Ted couldn't interpret his smile. "That is an idea!"

"We'll buy them all!" Ted bubbled, "with the money you were going to use to send me to college! There're plenty of these small plots in the Mahela and nobody else wants them! They can be had cheaply! Dad, it can be done that way!"

"By gosh, Ted, it might! But it'll take a while."

"I know but—What's Tammie barking at?"

"One way to find out is to go see."

Off in the goldenrod, Tammie barked again. They made their way to him and found him peering into a shallow little stream, Tumbling Run, that wound out of the beeches, crossed the clearing and hurried back into the beeches, on its way to meet Spinning Creek. In the middle of the run, a small gray raccoon with a trap on its left front paw did not even glance up. It had fought the trap fiercely and now was too spent and too weary to fight anything.

Al's words were almost an explosion. "Smoky Delbert!"

He jumped down into the creek, encircled the little raccoon's neck with an expert hand and used his free hand to depress the trap spring. Free, but not quite believing it, the little animal went exactly as far as the trap chain had previously let him go and then ventured two inches farther. Sure at last that the miracle had happened, he scuttled into the goldenrod. Al jerked the trap loose from its anchor.

"Let's go, Ted."

"Where?"

"You want to buy this place. We'll go into Lorton and see Jud Hawley. But on the way, we'll have a little palaver with Smoky."

A half hour later, Al drove his pickup into the Delbert yard, to find another truck there ahead of him. It belonged to Loring Blade, the warden, who was talking with Smoky. He turned to nod at Al and Ted.

"Hi!"

Al said, "I won't be but a minute, Lorin'." He held the steel trap out to Smoky Delbert. "This yours?"

Smoky looked at him through insolent, half-closed eyes. "Nope."

"You lie in your teeth! I've told you before not to set traps before furs are prime. I'm tellin' you again and this is the last time."

"What goes on?" Blade demanded.

"Nothin' you can help, Lorin'. Smoky, if I find you poachin' in the Mahela once more, I'm goin' to beat you within an inch of your life!"

"You got any ideas along that line," Smoky remained insolent, "come shootin'."

Al said, "I can do that, too!"