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Double Challenge

<h2>7</h2> <h3>A FLIGHT OF WOODCOCK</h3> The sheriff stood tall in the doorway, his face unreadable, while at the same time he seemed to strain forward like an eager hound on a hot scent. Disconcerted, showing it and aware that he showed it, Ted fought for self-possession. He said, "Well hello." "Hello, Ted." Callahan was not unfriendly. "How are things?" Ted tried to cover his confusion with a shrug. "Not much change." "You seem," Callahan was looking narrowly at him, "a bit nervous." "Is that strange?" "Guess not." Callahan was too casual. "It's probably a nerve-wracking business. Uh—thought I heard you talking?" "You might have. I was talking to Tammie." "Your dog, eh?" "That's right." "I don't see him around." "I just let him out the back door. He likes to go for a little run at night." "I'm darned," Callahan said, "if I didn't think I caught a glimpse of you letting him out. Tammie looked awful big." "He's a big dog." Just how much had Callahan seen? Definitely, a pack-laden collie was not going camping and Callahan would know where it was going. The sheriff dropped into a chair and crossed his right leg over his left knee. "I know he's big, I've seen him before. But he sure looked bigger than usual. That's a mighty good dog, Ted." "Yes, he is." "Highly-trained, too, isn't he? That dog will do almost anything you want him to, won't he?" "Oh, sure," Ted said sarcastically. "Every night he sets his own alarm for five o'clock. Then he lays and lights a fire so the house will be warm when I get out of bed." "Aw now, Ted!" Callahan said reproachfully. "You know darn' well what I mean! Why only the other night I found Silly Ass Stacey running down the road like a haunt was chasing him. 'Don't go up there!' he told me. 'Don't go up to Harknesses! They have a man-eating dog and it just ate me!'" Doubtless unintentionally, Callahan had given something away. The Harkness house was being closely watched or the sheriff wouldn't have been on the Lorton Road at the hour when Sammy ran down it. In full control of himself now, Ted did not let himself reveal what he had just learned. He said grimly, "Sammy was in our chicken coop." "Hm-m. Want me to pick him up for it?" "I doubt if he'll be as fond of chicken stealing from now on. Tammie knocked him down and did a little snarling over him. He didn't hurt him." Callahan grinned. "Figured that out all by myself; nobody who'd most been eaten could run as fast as Silly Ass was running. Hope it does teach him a lesson; if he gets rid of his oversized notions, he won't be anything except a harmless sort of nut. Jail might make him vicious. But that's what I mean about your dog. You've really got him trained." "I spend a lot of time training him." "You have to if you want results, but it's worth it. You have a dog you can really work." "There are limits." "Of course. Of course there are. A dog's a dog. But I'll bet," Callahan looked squarely at Ted, "that Tammie would even go find your father if you told him to." "You're sure?" "Well, who could be sure? But I admire trained dogs no end and yours is the best I ever saw. Call him back, will you? I'd like to see him again." "I—" Ted hesitated and hated himself because Callahan noticed his hesitation. "I don't know if I can. Tammie takes some pretty long rambles at night and he may be out of hearing." "You'll have Loring on your tail if he bothers game." "Tammie doesn't bother anything unless he's ordered to do it." Callahan said admiringly, "That's where training comes in. This could even be a story!" "What could?" "Why, your dad laying out in the Mahela. He doesn't have any grub except the load he cooked the night Loring and I were here—and wasn't I the dope not to see through that? He needs about everything. You can't take it to him because you could be followed. But you have a big, strong, well-trained dog. You, oh you might even make a pack for him. Then you load the pack and send it to your dad. Who's going to follow Tammie? Get it?" Ted looked at the floor. Coming at exactly the wrong second, Callahan had seen enough to rouse suspicion but not enough to be sure of anything. The boy conceded, "It's a story all right." "Could even be a true story, huh?" "You're doing the guessing." "Oh, well," Callahan shrugged, "I didn't come here to bother you. But I sure would like to see that dog of yours again and I haven't much time. Call him back, will you?" Both hands in front of him, fingers tightly locked, Ted walked to the back door. When Tammie took anything to Al, he usually ran. If he had run this time, and kept on running, he would be out of hearing. If he was not out of hearing, he would come back. Ted hoped Callahan didn't see him gulp. If Tammie returned with the pack, it would be all the evidence Callahan needed that the dog could find Al. But not to call him would serve only to convince the sheriff, anyhow, that Tammie was on his way to Al. Ted opened the back door and whistled. He waited a moment, whistled again and closed the door behind him. "He'll come if he heard." "And if he didn't," Callahan commented, "he's a long way back in the Mahela, huh?" "That's right." "Now that's strange," the sheriff mused. "I know a little about dogs. You take an airedale, for example. He'll make long tracks, if he gets a chance. But I always thought a collie was pretty much the home type. I never figured they'd get very far from their doorsteps. Unless, of course, maybe it's a trained collie that's sent away." "Dogs vary." "Of course, of course. There's no rule says two of any one breed have to be alike. Couple of years ago, over beyond Taylorville, we had to get a pack that was running wild and, believe it or not, there was a Boston bull with them. Now who'd think a Boston bull—What's that?" "I—I didn't hear anything." "Well, I did. Ah! There it is again!" A second time, and unmistakably, Tammie's distinctive whine sounded at the back door. Ted's heart plummeted to his toes and his throat went dry. He was about to rise and let Tammie in—the only thing he could do—but he was forestalled by Jack Callahan. "There he is. He heard you, all right. I'll let him in." He walked to the back door ... opened it. Ted hoped his gasp was not as loud as it seemed. Wearing no pack, Tammie came sedately in, greeted Callahan with a wag of his tail and tripped across the floor to sit down beside his master. The boy bent his head to conceal ecstatic eyes. Poker-faced Callahan showed nothing of what he must be feeling. "Just as handsome as I remember him!" he said admiringly. "That dog's a real credit to you, Ted!" "He has just one little flaw," Ted said gravely. "Sometimes he thinks he sees things he never saw at all." Callahan grinned engagingly. "Some people make that mistake, too. Especially when there's deep shadow. How are you making out, Ted?" "All right. My camp's rented for five weeks and I may rent it for woodcock season, if the flight comes in." "Loring told me there's flight birds at Taylorville. He said there's quite a few, and he thinks there'll be a big flight." "Hope it comes here!" Callahan said soberly, "If it'll help you, so do I. I'm sorry you're in trouble." "Trouble comes." "I know, but being the sheriff who makes it isn't the snap job it's cracked up to be. I've had to hurt a lot of people I'd rather not bother, but when I swore to uphold the law, I didn't make any exceptions and I'm not going to make any. I hope you don't hold that against me." "I don't." "Just so you understand. A lot of people who cuss peace officers would find out for themselves what a mess they'd be in if there weren't any." "I know that, too." "Then you know why I must bring your dad in. When I do, and I will, he'll get every break I'm able to offer. By the same token, Smoky Delbert may have some breaks coming. So long for now, Ted." "So long." Callahan left and Ted was alone with Tammie. He tickled the big dog's soft ears. "The Lord watches over idiots!" he murmured. "He sure enough does!" What had happened was obvious. Disliking the pack anyway, Tammie hadn't gone more than a couple of hundred feet before ridding himself of it. Only he knew how he'd unclasped the buckles, but he'd managed. Of course, when ordered to do so, he should have gone to Al. But he could be forgiven this time. "I'd best get to bed," Ted told him. "I don't know where you left that pack, but do know I'd better find it before Mr. Callahan comes back this way. That man has sixteen eyes, and don't ever let's think he's dumb! He came right close to tipping over our meat house tonight!" Ted was up an hour before dawn and had breakfasted by the time the first pale light of day began to lift night's shroud from the great beech trees. With Tammie at his side, he stepped out the back door and formed a plan of action. He didn't know exactly how much time had passed between his whistle and Tammie's appearance at the door, but it couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty seconds. Certainly the collie had needed some little time to rid himself of the pack. It couldn't possibly be far from the cabin. Ted petted the dog. "You lost it," he scolded gently. "Why don't you find it?" Tammie raced ahead twenty yards, whirled, came back to leap at and snap his jaws within a quarter inch of Ted's right hand, then flew away again. He continued running around and around, stopping at intervals to snap. But though he never missed very much, he never hit either. Ted walked slowly, on a course parallel to the cabin, and he turned his head from side to side as he walked. There were no thickets or windfalls here. There was nothing at all except the big beeches. Wherever Tammie had dropped it, the pack wouldn't be hard to see. Descending into a little swale, Ted flushed three woodcock out of it. Their distinctive, twittering whistle, which Ted had always thought was made by wind rushing through stiff flight feathers, sounded as they flew. The boy's eyes glowed with pleasure. The ruffed grouse was a marvelous game bird and nobody who knew him well, or even fairly well, would ever deny it. But there was a very special group—Ted himself belonged to it—who held the woodcock in highest esteem. Swift-winged and sporty, the woodcock had an air of mystery and romance possessed by few other wild things. Measuring eleven inches, from the tip of his bill to the end of his tail, the woodcock's plumage varied from black to gray, with different shades of brown predominant. So perfectly did they blend with their surroundings that, even though a hunter might watch a flying woodcock alight on the ground, he was often not able to see it afterwards. Their legs were short and their bills, with which they probed into soft earth for the various larvae and worms upon which they fed, were ridiculously long. But their eyes remained their outstanding characteristic. Placed near the top of the head, they were luminous and expressive, as though, somehow, they mirrored all of nature. They were very large in proportion to the bird's size. Whoever saw them would never forget them and who knew the woodcock knew one of the finest and most delightful of all wild creatures. Ted marked the trio down, but he did not approach them again. The season was not open, and nobody could ever be sure of woodcock. Perhaps these were stragglers. Maybe they marked the vanguard of a big flight that would be in the Mahela when the season opened and maybe they didn't. He'd have to wait and see and, even then, neither he nor anyone else could be sure. Cover that might be alive with woodcock one day could be empty, or hold only a few birds, the next. During the night, every woodcock had often picked up and moved on. When he'd gone as far as he thought he should, Ted moved twenty-five yards deeper into the woods and swung back on a course parallel to the one he'd followed. He began to worry. The pack couldn't possibly be far because Tammie hadn't had time to go far. It was good sized, so it should be easy to see. Ted made another swing about. Two hours after he had started hunting, he stopped. He was a half mile from the house, definitely the extreme limit Tammie might have reached. The boy went back to cover the same area more carefully.... He went through it a third time. By midday, he was wholly baffled. The pack was not here. Where was it? Had Jack Callahan, nobody's fool, seen more than he had admitted seeing? Had he slipped back after leaving Ted and found the pack himself? It seemed improbable. Recovery of the pack, so obviously for a dog and not for a man to wear, would be proof within itself that Ted had intended to send Tammie to Al. And if Callahan had the least reason to suppose that Tammie could really find Al, he'd be in the house right now, insisting that he do it. Ted petted the collie. "Why can't you talk?" he murmured. "Why can't you tell me what you did with it?" Tammie licked his master's fingers and wagged his tail. Ted sighed. He'd looked in all the places where the pack might be and hadn't found it. It stood to reason that nobody else was going to find it either, or at least, they wouldn't find it easily. Still worried, Ted went back to the house and fixed a lunch. He thought of looking for the pack some more and decided against it. There was no other place to look but there were things to do. He hadn't been at the camp since the night Al was accused of shooting Smoky. If he intended to rent it to hunters, he'd better go see how things were. Ted chose to walk, for he had been doing a great deal of serious thinking and had changed many of his ideas. Running a successful resort, or even a successful camp, involved a great deal more than just being a gracious host. In any city, or even any town, such a camp probably wouldn't rent at all because it was so radically different from what urban residents had come to expect in their dwellings. But it fitted the Mahela, and for a short time each year, it would be appreciated because it offered a refreshing change from conventional living. But there was still more involved. Few people wanted to get into the out-of-doors merely for the sake of being there. The place must offer something, and beyond any doubt the Mahela's prime attraction was its deer herds. But nobody, regardless of whether he was running Crestwood or renting camps, could hope to make a living just from the three-week deer season alone. He would also have to lure all the small game hunters and all the fishermen he could, and if he didn't lure them honestly, they'd never come back. It stood to reason that nobody who lived a couple of hundred miles from the Mahela could know what was taking place there. They must be kept informed, and Ted wished to walk now because he wanted to judge for himself whether or not there would be a worthwhile flight of woodcock. The birds might be anywhere at all. Ted had flushed them from the very summit of Hawkbill. But as a rule they avoided the thickest cover and haunted the streams, bogs and swamps because they found their food along stream beds and in swamps. With Tammie trailing happily beside him. Ted followed the course of Spinning Creek. He flushed two woodcock from a sparse growth of aspens and watched them wing away and settle on the other side of the creek. Then he put up a single and, farther on, a little flock of five. In the clearing, almost at the camp's door, another single whistled away and dropped near Tumbling Run. That made nine woodcock between the Harkness house and the camp. Definitely it was not a substantial flight and no hunter should be advised to come to the Mahela because of them. But there were more than there had been. A doe and two spring fawns were nosing about the apple trees. Bears had been climbing the same trees, leaving scarred trunks and broken branches in their wake. Black bears, of which there were a fair number in the Mahela, would come almost as far for apples as they would for honey. But they came only at night and did a lot of damage when they climbed the trees. However, these tough apple trees had been broken by bears every year they'd borne a crop and they'd always recovered. They'd recover again, and Ted supposed bears had as much right as anything else to the apples. He grinned. The fruit was gnarled and wormy, but it was a woodland delicacy and woodland dwellers competed for it as fiercely as a crowd of undisciplined children might compete for a rack of ice-cream cones. Ted walked all around the camp, saw nothing amiss and unlocked the door. He pulled the hasp back, went in—and saw Tammie's pack lying under the table. Momentarily alarmed, he stopped. Only one person could have left the pack! He picked it up and thrust his hand into a side pocket. He found and pulled out a page torn from the pad of paper he'd inserted in the pack and read the penciled note. <blockquote>Dear Ted; I was cuming to see you last nite. Tammy met me a sniff from the dor and I snuck up and saw Calhan. Gess he wants to see me rite enuf but I don't want to see him! Hope taking Tammy's pak don't throw you off. I can get along a good spel with the stuf in the pak and wudcok seson cuming on. I've saw a mess of flite wudcok. Don't send Tammy agen without you know it's safe and send him after midnite. I won't be so far away he can't get to me and bak. Watch Calhan. He's sharp. Your dad P.S. I got the kyote. </blockquote> Ted heaved a mighty sigh of thanksgiving. Al had the pack's contents and there were three blankets missing from the camp. For the first time, the dark clouds that surged around the boy revealed their silver lining. Al was still a fugitive, but he had enough to eat and he was sleeping under blankets. It seemed a great deal. Ted read the note again and smiled over it. A hunted outlaw, Al was still abiding by the principles in which he believed. He might have been justified in killing game for food, but the reference to woodcock season indicated that he had done no such thing. Possibly—Ted remembered that he had his coyote traps—he had caught a bobcat or so. The season was never closed on bobcats and, if one could overcome natural squeamishness, they were really delicious eating. Ted lifted the stove lid, put the note within, applied a lighted match, waited until the paper burned to ashes, then used the lid lifter to pound the ashes to dust. He looked fondly at Tammie, who had been nowise derelict. Ordered to go to Al, he had done exactly that and it was none of Tammie's doing if Al had been within a "sniff" of his own back door. 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. <blockquote>Dear Mr. Harkness: Your letter intrigued us no end. We haven't seen a good flight of woodcock 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 </blockquote> The second airmail letter read: <blockquote>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 </blockquote> 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 shelled 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 nobody 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. Woodcock 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 woodcock 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." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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