First Blood

As if his voice were a signal, something big up there rustled in the brush, and guessing there was a chance it was the kid, Teasle stepped back, instinctively drawing his pistol.

'Nobody around,' a man said up there, pebbles and loose dirt sliding, and it was Lester coming down off balance through the bushes. He was soaking wet from when he had fallen in the stream. His eyes usually bulged somewhat, and when he saw Teasle's gun, they enlarged even more. 'Hey now, it's only me. I was only checking if the kid might be close by.'

Orval scratched his chin. 'I wish you hadn't done that. You've maybe confused the scent. Will, do you have something from the kid to give my dogs a smell of?'

'In the trunk of the car. Underwear, pants, boots.'

'All we need then are food and a night's sleep. We get this organized right and we can start by sunup.'

'No. Tonight.'

'How's that?'

'We're starting now.'

'Didn't you just hear me say it'll be dark in an hour?

'There'll be no moon tonight. This big a gang, we'll separate and lose each other in the dark.'

Teasle had been expecting this; he had been certain that Orval would want to hold off until morning. That was the practical way. There was just one thing wrong with the practical way: he could not wait that long.

'Moon or not, we still have to go after him now,' he told Orval. 'We've chased him out of our jurisdiction, and the only way to keep after him is if we stay in pursuit. Once I wait till morning I have to turn the job over to the state police.'

'Then give it to them. It's a dirty job anyhow.'

'No.'

'What difference does it make? The state police will be out here in no time anyway — just as soon as the guy who owns this land calls them about all these cars driving across his fields. You'll have to turn this over to them no matter what.'

'Not if I'm in these woods before they get here.'

It would have been better for him to try convincing Orval without his men next to him listening. If he did not press Orval, then he would come off less to his men, but if he pressed too much, Orval would just throw up his hands and go home.

What Orval said next did not help any. 'No, Will, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you. I'll do a lot of things for you — but those hills are tough to get through even in the day, and I won't take my dogs up there at night to run them blind just because you want this show all to yourself.'

'I'm not asking you to run them blind. All I'm asking is that you bring your dogs in with me, and the minute you think it's gone too dark, we'll stop and camp. That's all it takes for me to stay in pursuit. Come on, we've camped out before, you and I. It'll be like when Dad was around.'

Orval let out a deep breath and looked around at the forest. It was darker, cooler. 'Don't you see how crazy this is? We don't have equipment to hunt him. We don't have rifles or food or —'

'Shingleton can stay behind to get whatever we need. We'll give him one of your dogs so in the morning he can track us to where we camped. I have enough deputies to keep charge of town so four of them can come in with Shingleton tomorrow. I have a friend at the county airport who says he'll lend his helicopter and fly us anything more we need and fly ahead to see if he can spot the kid. The only thing that can hold us up now is you. I'm asking you. Will you help?'

Orval was looking down at his feet, scuffling one boot back and forth in the dirt.

'I don't have much time, Orval. If we get up in there soon enough, the state police will have to let me stay in control. They'll back me up and have cruisers watching the main roads down out of the hills and leave us to chase him across the high ground. But I'm telling you, I might just as well forget about catching him if you don't chip in your dogs.'

Orval glanced up and slowly reached into his jacket for a tobacco pouch and cigarette paper. He was mulling it over as he carefully rolled a cigarette, and Teasle knew not to rush him. Finally, just before Orval struck a match: 'Could be, if I understood. What did this kid do to you, Will?'

'He sliced one deputy nearly in half and beat another maybe blind.'

'Yeah Will,' Orval said and struck the match, cupping it to light his cigarette. 'But you didn't answer me. What did this kid do to you?'

2

The country was high and wild, thickly wooded, slashed by ravines and draws and pocked with hollows. Just like the North Carolina hills in which he had been trained. Much like the hills he had escaped through in the war. His kind of land and his kind of fight and nobody had better push too close or he would push back — hard. Fighting to beat the fading light, he ran as far and as fast as he could, always up. His naked body was filmed with blood from the branches jabbing into him his bare feet were gashed and bloody from the sharp sticks lying across his trail, from the rocky slopes and cliff walls. He came up a rise where the skeleton of a hydro pylon straddled the top and a swath had been cut down through the trees to stop the electric tension wires from tangling in the treetops. The clear section was gravel and boulders and scrub brush, and he scrambled painfully up, high tension wires overhead. He needed to reach the tallest vantage point he could before it got dark; he needed to see what was on the other side of the rise and figure which way to go.

At the top beneath the pylon, the air was bright and clear, and hurrying up into it he was touched by the last of the setting sun far to the left. He paused, letting the faint warm light soak into him, luxuriating in the soft feel of the ground here beneath his feet. The next peak across from him was bright in the sun as well, but its slope was gray, and the hollow at its base was already dark. That was where he headed, away from the soft ground at the top, down more gravel and boulders, toward the hollow. If he did not find what he wanted there, he would have to angle up to the left toward a stream he had sighted, and then he would have to follow the stream. It would be easier going that way along the bank and what he was looking for would almost surely be near a stream. He came charging down the gravel toward the hollow, slipping, falling, sweat burning salty into his cuts. The hollow was no good when he got there, a swamp straight across, bog and murky water. But at least the earth was soft again, and he rounded the swamp to the left until he reached the stream that fed it, then started up along the stream, no longer ru

The stream twisted and turned, and he followed it. Soon there would be dogs after him he knew, but he did not bother wading in the stream to try to throw them off his scent. That would only slow him down, and since he would have to come out of the water sometime on one bank or the other, the man working the dogs would merely split the pack along both banks until they picked up the scent again, and he himself would just have wasted time.

It went dark faster than he expected. Climbing uphill he was catching the last gray light, and then the forest and underbrush merged into shadow. Soon only the biggest of trees and boulders were distinguishable in outline, and then it was black. There was the sound of the stream trickling over bedrocks and the sound of crickets and night birds and animals at home in the dark, and he started calling. For sure nobody he was looking for would let him know they were around if all he did was keep following the stream and holler for somebody. He had to make himself sound interesting. He had to make them want to see just who the hell this was. He called out in Vietnamese, in the little French he had learned in high school. He mocked a southern accent, a western one, a Negro one. He strung out long lists of the vilest obscenities he could conjure.