There was a knock on the door and Ted opened it to admit Loring Blade.
"Hi!" the warden grumped. "I've made all arrangements."
"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?"
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.
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.
"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."