First Blood

The stream dipped into a brief hollow on the side of the slope. Nobody there. The stream climbed and dipped into another hollow and climbed and dipped, and still nobody, and still he called. If he did not soon find someone, he would be so far up the hillside that the stream would maybe reach its source and he would have no bearing to follow. Which happened. His sweat chilling in the night air, he came to where the stream turned into a little marsh and a spring that he could hear bubbling up.

So much for that. He called once more, letting his obscene words echo up and down the darkened hill, waited, then set off upward. If he kept going straight up slopes and down, he figured eventually to reach another stream and follow it. He was thirty feet past the spring when the two flashlights opened bright on him from left and right, and he stopped absolutely still.

Under any other circumstance he would have leapt free from the glare of the flashlights and crawled off into the darkness. It was worth a man's life to wander around these hills at night, poking where he had no business -how many men had been shot in the head for what he was about, dumped in a shallow grave to let the night animals dig them up.

The flashlights blazed directly on him, one on his face, the other on his naked body. He still did not move, just stood there, head up, staring calmly ahead between the lights as if he belonged there and did this every night of his life. Insects were flying aglitter in and out of the flashlight beams. A bird took off fluttering out of a tree.

'Yeah, best you drop that gun and razor,' an old man said on the right, his throat raspy.

Rambo breathed easier: they weren't going to kill him, at least not right away, he had made them curious enough. Just the same, keeping the handgun and the razor had been a gamble. Once these people had seen them, they might have felt threatened and shot him. But he could not let himself walk these woods at night without something to fight with if he had to.

'Yes sir,' Rambo said evenly and let the gun and razor plop onto the ground. 'No need to worry. The gun's not loaded.'

'Course it isn't.'

With an old man on the right, the one on the left would be young, Rambo thought. Father and son maybe. Or uncle and nephew. That was how these outfits were run, always in the family, an old man to give the orders and one or more juniors to do the work. Rambo could feel these two behind their flashlights sizing him up. The old man was keeping quiet now, and Rambo was not about to say anything more until he was asked to. An intruder, he had just better keep his mouth shut.

'Yeah, all that filth and crud you been hollering,' the old man said. 'You been calling us, or who you been calling cocksuckers?'

'Pa, ask him what he's walking around buck-naked with his doings dangling for,' the one on the left said. He sounded much younger than Rambo had expected.

'You shut up,' the old man ordered the boy. 'I told you not a peep from you.'

Rambo heard a gun being cocked where the old man was. 'Wait a minute,' he said fast. 'I'm alone. I need help. Don't shoot till you hear me out.'

The old man did not answer.

'I mean. I'm not here for trouble. It doesn't make any difference if I know that you're not two men, that one of you is just a boy. I won't be hurting anybody just because I know that.'

It was a wild guess. Sure the old man might only have lost his curiosity and decided to shoot. But Rambo was guessing that naked and bloody, he looked dangerous to the old man, that the old man was not taking any chances now that Rambo knew they were just one man and a boy.

'I'm on the run from the police. They took my clothes. I killed one of them. I've been calling to get someone to help me.'

'Yeah, you need help,' the old man said. 'Question is, from who?'

'They'll bring dogs after me. They'll find the still if we don't work to stop them.'

Now was the touchy part. If they were going to kill him, now was the time.

'Still?' the old man said. 'Who told you there's a still up here? You think I got a still up here?'

'We're pitch dark in a hollow near a spring. What else would bring you here? You must have it damn well-covered. Even knowing it's here, I can't make out the flames from your furnace.'

'You expect if I knew a still was around I'd he wasting time with you instead of hustling over to it? Hell, I'm a coon hunter.'

'With no dogs? We don't have time for this. We have to fix things before those real dogs get here tomorrow.'

The old man was swearing to himself.

'You're in a mess all right,' Rambo said. 'I'm sorry about getting you into it, but I don't have any choice. I need food and clothes and a rifle, and I'm not letting you out of this until I get them.'

'Let's just shoot him, Pa,' the boy said on the left. 'He's going to pull some trick.'

The old man did not answer, and Rambo kept quiet too. He had to give the old man time to think. If he tried to rush this business the old man might feel cornered and shoot.

On his left Rambo heard the boy cocking a gun.

'You lower that shotgun, Matthew,' the old man said.

'But he's pulling some trick. Don't you see it? Don't you see he's some government man likely?'

'I'll see that shotgun wrapped around your ears if you don't lower it like I said.' The old man chuckled then.

'Government man. Bushwah. Look at him, where the hell would he hide his badge?'

'Better listen to your dad,' Rambo said. 'He understands the bind. If you kill me, those police who find me in the morning will want to know who did it. They'll set the dogs on your trail next. It won't matter where you bury me or how you try to hide the scent; they'll—'

'Quicklime,' the boy said smartly.

'Sure quicklime will help to cover my scent. But the smell of it will be all over you, and they'll set the dogs tracking that.'

He paused, peering at each flashlight, giving them time to think.

'The trouble is, if you don't give me food and clothes and a rifle, then I'm not leaving here until I find that still of yours and in the morning the police will follow my track through there. It won't matter if you take the thing apart tonight and hide it. I'll come after you to where the parts are hid.'

'We'd wait for dawn to take it apart,' the old man said. 'You can't afford to stay here that long.'

'With bare feet I can't go much farther anyway. No. Believe me. The way I am, they have a good chance of bringing me down, and I might just as well take the two of you down with me.'

After a moment the old man was swearing again.

'But if you help me, if you give me what I need, then I'll swing around away from here, and the police won't come anywhere close to your still.'

That was the simplest Rambo could make it. The idea sounded convincing to him. If they wanted to protect their outfit they would have to help. Of course they might get angry at how he was forcing them and take a chance on killing him. Or they might be an inbred family, not intelligent enough to see the logic he was using.

It was colder, and Rambo couldn't stop himself from shivering. Now that everybody was silent, the crickets seemed extra loud.

Finally the old man spoke. 'Matthew. I suppose you better run up to the house and bring back what he says.' His voice was not very happy.

'And bring a can of kerosene,' Rambo said. 'Since you're helping, let's make sure you don't get hurt for it. I'll douse the clothes with the kerosene and let them dry before I put them on. The kerosene won't stop the dogs from trailing me, but it will keep them from picking up your scent on the clothes and following it to see who helped me.'

The boy's flashlight beam glared steady on Rambo. 'I'll do what my pa says, not you.'

'Go on do what he wants,' the old man said. 'I don't like him either, but he sure knows what the hell he's got us into.'