Double Challenge Part 12

The door opened and closed and they were gone. Ted heard Loring Blade start his pickup and watched the red taillight bobbing down their driveway. They reached the Lorton Road and Loring Blade gunned his motor.

Ted sank dully into a chair and Tammie came to sit comfortingly beside him. The big dog shoved his slender muzzle into Ted's cupped hand, and, getting no response, he laid his sleek head on his master's knee. The measured ticking of the clock on the mantel seemed like the measured ringing of tiny bells. Ted fastened his gaze on it, and because he had to do something, he watched the clock's black hands creep slowly around.

Like everything else, he thought, time was a relative thing. Fifteen minutes seemed no more than an eyewink when one was busy, but it was an age when you could do nothing except struggle with your own tortured thoughts.

Another fifteen minutes pa.s.sed, and another, and an exact hour had elapsed when Tammie sprang up and trotted to the door. He stood, head raised and tail wagging. Ted opened the door.

"Dad!"

"'Fraid I got to move, Ted. Help me pack all thet grub we cooked for supper, will you? Hills'll be full of posse men for the next few days and I can't be startin' any fires."

"But--"

"I kept my promise," Al a.s.sured him, "and all I promised was that I wouldn't raise a hand 'gainst Lorin' or Jack. Never did say I wouldn't jump out of the truck when it slowed for Dead Man's Curve."

"They'll be on your trail!"

"Not right away, they won't. I went into the woods when I took off and they're lookin' for me there." He grinned briefly. "Callahan found me.

'Come out or I'll shoot!' he said. I didn't come out and he shot. Hope the beech tree he thought was me don't mind."

"You could have run from here if you were going to run anyhow!"

"When I run," Al Harkness said, "n.o.body 'cept me gets in the way of any bullets I might draw. Think I want 'em shootin' up you or Tammie?"

Al laid a canvas pack sack on the kitchen table. While Ted wrapped the cooked pork chops in double thicknesses of waxed paper and the excess biscuits in single, his father spooned the potatoes into gla.s.s quart jars and mashed them down. He packed everything into the rucksack and added a package of coffee, one of tea, some salt and a few miscellaneous items. Donning his hunting jacket, he shouldered the pack.

Filling two pockets with matches, he slid two unopened boxes of cartridges into another. Finally he strung a belt ax and hunting knife on a leather belt, strapped it around his middle and took his rifle from its rack.

"Don't try to find me, Ted."

"What shall I say if they come?" Ted whispered.

"Tell the truth and say I was here. They'll find it out anyhow."

"What are you going to do?"

"Lay in the hills 'til somethin' turns up. Can't do nothin' else now."

"Dad, don't go!" Ted pleaded. "Stay and face it out. It's the best way."

"It might have been," Al agreed, "and I was most tempted to go clear in.

But it ain't any more."

"Why?"

"Lorin' had his radio on; listened on the way down. Smoky Delbert come to and talked. He named me as the man who shot him and said I shot from ambush! Be seein' you, Ted."

5

c.o.o.n VALLEY

Tammie whined uneasily and Ted woke with a start. He glanced at the clock on the mantel and saw that it read twenty minutes past five. The last time he had looked, he remembered, the clock had said half past two. Obviously he'd fallen asleep in the chair where he'd been waiting for someone to come or something to happen. No one had come, but they were coming now. On the Lorton Road, Ted heard the cars that Tammie had detected twenty seconds earlier.

He got to his feet and looked out into the thin, gray mistiness of early dawn. With its lights glowing like a ghost's eyes in the wan dimness, a car churned up the Harkness drive and a second followed it. The boy shrank away. Last night's events now seemed like some horrible nightmare, but the tread of steps outside and the knock on the door proved that they were not.

Ted opened the door to confront Loring Blade and Corporal Paul Hausler, of the State Police. He glanced beyond them at the men gathered beside the cars and saw that three of the nine were attired in State Police uniforms. The six volunteer posse men were Tom and Bud Delbert, Smoky's brothers; Enos, Alfred and Ernest Brill, his cousins; and Pete Tooms, who would go anywhere and do anything as long as it promised excitement and no monotonous labor.

Loring Blade greeted Ted, "Good morning, Ted."

The boy muttered, "Good morning."

"You seen your dad?"

"Yes."

"I mean, since we took him away last night?"

"Yes."

"Did he come back here?"

"That's right."

"What time?"

Ted hesitated. He'd had his eyes fixed on the clock, but seconds and split seconds counted, too.

"I don't know the _exact_ time."

"Better tell the truth," Corporal Hausler warned bluntly. "It can go hard with you if you don't. Where's your father now?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe a couple of slaps will jar your memory!"

He took a step forward. Tammie, rippling in, placed himself in front of Ted. There was no growl in his throat or snarl on his lips, but his eyes were grim and his manner threatening. Hausler stopped.

"I don't think you'd better let him bite me."

Loring Blade said quietly, "Cut it out, Paul. There's enough trouble in this family without adding unnecessarily to it. Ted didn't do anything."

"He can tell us where his father is."

"I cannot!" Ted flared.

"When did he leave here?"