First Blood

1

Teasle did not have much time; he needed to get his men organized and into the woods before the state police. He swerved the cruiser off the wagon road onto the grassland, racing over the tracks the two police cars and the kid's motorcycle had made in the grass, toward the wood fence at the end of the field, toward the open gate. Next to him, Shingleton had his hands braced against the dashboard, the cruiser heaving and lurching across the field, potholes so deep that the car's heavy frame was crashing down past its springs onto the axles.

'The gate's too narrow,' Shingleton warned him. 'You'll never get through.'

'The others did.'

He braked suddenly, slowing through the gate, an inch to spare on his side, then speeding up the steep slope toward the two police cars that were parked a quarter-way from the top. They must have stalled there: when he reached them, the slope angled so high that his motor started missing. He wrenched the gearshift into first and floored the accelerator, feeling the rear wheels dig into the grass, the cruiser rocketing toward the summit.

The deputy Ward was up on the level, waiting, tinted red from the swollen sun that was already glaring halfway down the mountains to the left. His shoulders sloped forward, and he walked with his stomach a little forward, his gun belt high on his waist. He was over to the car before Teasle had it stopped.

'This way,' he said, pointing toward the draw inside the line of trees. 'Be careful of the stream. Lester already fell in.'

Crickets were sounding by the stream. Teasle was just out of the car when he heard a motor down near the wagon road. He looked quickly, hoping it wasn't the state police.

'Orval.'

An old Volkswagen van, it, too, flooded with red from the sun, was rumbling across the grassland at the bottom. It stopped at the base, not built to make the climb his own car had, and Orval got out, tall and thin, a policeman with him. Teasle became afraid the dogs were not in the van; he could not hear them yelping. He knew Orval had them trained so well that they only barked when they were supposed to. But he could not help worrying that they were silent now because Orval had not brought them.

Orval and the policeman were hurrying up the slope. The policeman was twenty-six, the youngest on Teasle's staff, his gunbelt the reverse of Ward's, slung low like an old-time gunfighter's. Orval passed him running up, his long legs stretching. The top of his head was shiny bald, white hair on both sides. He had on his glasses and a green nylon jacket, green denim pants, high-laced field boots.

The state police, Teasle thought again and glanced down at the wagon road, making sure they were not on their way. He glanced back at Orval, closer now. Before, he had only been able to see the thin, dark, weathered face, but now he saw the deep rivers and furrows in it, and the flabby skin down the front of his neck, and he was shocked by how much older the man looked since he had last seen him three months ago. Orval wasn't acting any older though. He was still managing to get up that slope, hardly winded, well before the young deputy.

'The dogs,' Teasle called. 'Did you bring the dogs?'

'Sure, but I don't see the use of sending that deputy to help rush them into the van,' Orval answered at the top, slowing. 'Look at that sun. It'll be dark in an hour.'

'Don't you think I know it.'

'I believe you do,' Orval said. 'I didn't mean to try and tell you anything.'

Teasle wished he had kept quiet. He could not afford to let it start again. This was too important. Orval was always treating him like he was still thirteen, telling him everything to do and how to do it, just as he had when Teasle lived with him as a boy. Teasle would be cleaning a gun or preparing a special cartridge load, and right away Orval would step in, giving his advice, taking over, and Teasle hated it, told him to butt out, that he could do things himself, often argued with him. He understood why he did not like advice: there were teachers he sometimes met who could not stop lecturing once they were out of class, and he was a little like them, so used to giving orders that he could not accept someone telling him what to do. He did not always refuse advice. If it was good, he often took it. But he could not let that be a habit; to do his job properly he had to rely on himself alone. If Orval had only on occasion tried to tell him what to do, he would not have minded. But not everytime they were together. And now they had almost started at each other again, and Teasle was going to have to keep himself quiet. Orval was the one man he needed right now, and Orval was just stubborn enough to take his dogs back home if they got into another argument.

Teasle did his best to smile. 'Hey, Orval, that's just me sounding miserable again. Don't pay attention. I'm glad to see you.' He reached to shake hands with him. It had been Orval who taught him how to shake hands when he was a boy. Long and firm, Orval had said. Make your handshake as good as your word. Long and firm. Now, as their hands met, Teasle felt his throat constrict. In spite of everything, he loved this old man, and he could not adjust to the new wrinkles in his face, the white hair at the sides of his head that had become thinner and wispy like spider strands.

Their handshake was awkward. Teasle had deliberately not seen Orval in three months, ever since he had walked yelling out of Orval's house because a simple remark he had made had turned into a long argument over which way to strap on a holster, pointed forward or back. Soon after, he had been embarrassed about leaving the house like that, and he was embarrassed now, trying to act natural and look Orval straight in the face, doing a poor job of it. 'Orval - about last time - I'm sorry. I mean it. Thanks for coming so quick when I need you.'

Orval just grinned; he was beautiful. 'Didn't I tell you never to talk to a man when you're shaking hands with him? Look him straight in the eyes. Don't jabber at him. I still think a holster should be pointed backward.' He winked at the other men. His voice was low and resonant. 'What about this kid? Where's he gone to?'

'Over here,' Ward said. He directed them across two loose rocks in the stream, over to the line of trees and up into the draw. It was gray and cool under the trees as they hiked up to where the cycle lay on its side over the fallen branches of a dead tree. The crickets were not sounding anymore. Then Teasle and the rest stopped walking through the grass, and the crickets started again.

Orval nodded at the blockade of rocks and upturned trees across the draw, at the underbrush on both sides. 'Yeah you can see where he scrambled up through the bushes on the right side.'

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 running, just walking fast now. He had travelled almost five miles he could tell, and the distance had tired him: he still was not as fit as he had been before he was captured in the war, he still had not got over his weeks in the hospital. All the same, he remembered every trick of getting along, and if he could not run much farther without trouble, he had done five miles very well.

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.

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.'

The boy's flashlight beam remained steady on Rambo a moment longer, as though the boy were deciding if he would go, or maybe saving face. Then the beam swung off Rambo into the bushes and the light clicked off and Rambo heard him set out brushing through the undergrowth. He had probably come and gone from home to this spring and back again so many times that he could do it with his eyes shut, let alone without a light.

'Thanks,' Rambo told the old man whose light remained shining on his face. Then the light went out. 'Thanks for that too,' Rambo said, the image of the light remaining on his eyes a few seconds, slowly fading.

'Just helping the batteries.'

Rambo heard him start to come forward through the underbrush. 'Better not come closer,' he said to the old man. 'We don't want to mix your scent with mine.'

'I wasn't about to. There's a log here I wanted to sit on is all.'

The old man lit a match and touched it to the bowl of a pipe. The match did not stay lit very long, but as the old man puffed on his pipe and the flame from the match got high and low, Rambo saw a tousled head of hair and a gristled face and the top half of a red-checkered shirt with suspenders over the shoulders.

'Do you have any of your stuff with you?' Rambo asked.

'Maybe.'

'It's cold like this. I wouldn't mind a swallow.'

The old man waited, then switched on his flashlight and heaved over a jug so that Rambo could see in the light to catch it. The jug weighed like a bowling ball, and in his surprise Rambo almost dropped it. The old man chuckled. Rambo pried out the cork, wet and squeaking, and in spite of the jug's weight he drank with one hand the way he knew the old man would respect, shoving a forefinger through the hook at the top, balancing the jug on the crook of his elbow. It tasted like two hundred proof, golden-strong and burning his tongue and throat, flooding hot every inch down to his stomach. He almost choked. When he lowered the jug, his eyes were watering.

'A little strong?' the old man asked.

'A little,' Rambo said, having trouble getting his voice to work. 'What is it?'

'Corn mash. But it's a little strong though, ain't it?'

'Yeah, I'd say it's a little strong,' Rambo repeated, his voice giving him more trouble.

The old man laughed. 'Yeah, it's a little strong all right.'

Rambo lifted the jug and drank again, gagging on the hot thick liquor, and the old man laughed one more quick burst.

3

The first songs of the morning birds wakened Teasle in the dark, and he lay there on the ground by the fire, huddled in the blanket he had brought from the cruiser, peering up at the late stars beyond the treetops. It had been years since he slept out in the woods. Over twenty years he realized, counting back to 1950. Not the end of 1950: sleeping in frozen foxholes in Korea hardly qualified. Hell no, the last time he had really camped out was that spring when he got his draft notice and decided to enlist in the Marines, and he and Orval hiked into the hills for the first weekend it was warm enough. Now he was stiff from sleeping on the rough ground, his clothes were damp from where the dew had soaked through the blanket, and even near the fire, he was bone-cold. But he had not felt this alive in years, excited to be in action again, eager to chase after the kid. There was no point though in rousing everybody until Shingleton came back with the supplies and the rest of the men, and for now, the only one awake, he loved being alone this way, so different from the nights he had been spending alone since Anna had left. He wrapped himself tighter in the blanket.

Then the smell reached him, and he looked, and Orval was sitting at the end of the fire, dragging on a thin self-rolled cigarette, the smoke drifting toward Teasle in the cool early breeze.

'I didn't know you were awake,' Teasle whispered, not to disturb the others. 'How long?'

'Before you.'

'But I've been awake over an hour.'

'I know it. I don't sleep much anymore. Not because I can't. I just begrudge the time spent.'

Clutching his blanket, Teasle shifted close to Orval and lit a cigarette off the glow of a stick from the fire. The flames were flicking low, and when Teasle churned the stick back into them, they rose warm, crackling. He had been right when he told Orval this would be like old times, although he had not believed it then, needing Orval to come along and disliking himself for using that kind of emotional argument on the man. But the feel of gathering firewood, tossing away stones and twigs to make the ground less rough, spreading his blanket, he had forgotten how solid and good that all was.

'So she left,' Orval said.

Teasle did not want to talk about it. She was the one who had left, not the other way around, and that made it look as though he was in the wrong. Maybe he was. But she was too. Still he could not bring himself to put blame on her just so Orval might not think poorly of him. He tried to explain it neutrally. 'She might come back. She's thinking about that. I haven't let on much, but for a while there, we were arguing quite a bit.'

'You're not an easy man to get along with.'

'Well, Christ, neither are you.'

'But I've lived with the same woman forty years, and as far as I can guess, Bea hasn't thought much about leaving. I know people must be asking you this a lot now, but considering what you and I are, I believe I have a right. What were the arguments about?'

He almost did not answer. Talking about very personal things always embarrassed him, especially this which he had not yet reasoned out - who was right, whether he was justified. 'Kids,' he said, and then since he had begun, he went on. 'I asked her for at least one. I don't care, boy or girl. It's just that I'd like someone to be to me like I was to you. I - I don't know how to explain it. I even feel stupid talking about it.'

'Don't you tell me that's stupid, buddy. Not when I tried so long to have a kid of my own.'

Teasle looked at him.

'Oh, you're like my own,' Orval said. 'Like my own. But I can't help wondering what sort of kid Bea and I would have made. If we had been able.'

It hurt - as if all these years he had been no more to Orval than the once needy child of a dead best friend. He could not accept that; it was more self-doubt from Anna leaving, and now that he was talking about her, he had to get it in the open, finished.

'Last Christmas,' he said, 'before we came to dinner at your place, we went over to Shingleton's for a drink, and watching his two kids, the look on their faces with their presents, I thought, maybe it would be good to have one. It certainly surprised me that at my age I wanted one, and it sure as hell surprised her. We talked about it, and she kept saying no, and after a while I suppose I made too big a thing of it. What happened, it's like she weighed me against the trouble she thought a baby would be. And left. The crazy thing is, as much as I can't sleep for wishing her to come back, in a way I'm glad she went, I'm on my own again, no more arguments, free to do what I want when I want, come home late without calling to explain I'm sorry to miss dinner, go out if I feel like it, screw around. Sometimes I even think the worst part about her leaving is how much the divorce will cost me. And at the same time I can't tell you how much I need her back with me.'

His breath came out in frost. The birds were gathered loudly. He watched Orval drag on the last of his cigarette close to his fingers, their joints gnarled and yellow from nicotine.

'And what about who we're after?' Orval said. 'Are you taking it all out on him?'

'No.'

'You sure?'

'You know I am. I don't act tougher than I have to. You know as well as I do that a town stays safe because of the little things kept in control. You can't do anything to prevent something big like a holdup or a murder. If some-body wants to do them bad enough, he will. But it's the little things that make a town what it is, that you can watch to make it safe. If I had just grinned and took what the kid was handing me, fairly soon I might have got used to the idea and let other kids hand it to me, and in a little while I would have been letting other things go by. It's me I was concerned about as much as the kid. I can't allow myself to loosen up. I can't keep order one time and not another.'

'You're still awfully eager to chase after him, even though your part of the job is ended. This is state police business now.'

'But it's my man he killed and it's my responsibility to bring him in. I want all my force to know I'll stop at nothing to get at anybody who hurts them.'

Orval looked at the pinched butt of the cigarette he was holding and nodded, flicking it into the fire.

The shadows were lifting, trees and bushes distinct. It was the false dawn, and before long the light would appear to dim again, and then the sun would show and everything would be clear. They could have been up and starting now, Teasle thought. Where was Shingleton with the men and supplies? He should have been back a half hour ago. Maybe something had gone wrong in town. Maybe the state police were stopping him from coming in. Teasle churned a stick in the low fire, raising flames. Where _was he?

Then he heard the first bark from the dog far off in the woods, and it stirred the dogs that were leashed to the tree nearest Orval. There were five of them here, and they had been awake, stomachs flat out on the ground, eyes intent on Orval. Now they were up, excited, barking in answer. 'Shush,' Orval said, and they looked at him and went quiet. Their withers were trembling.

Ward, Lester and the young deputy fidgeted in their sleep. They were down close to the other side of the fire, hugging their blankets. 'Uh,' Ward said.

'In a minute,' Lester said asleep.

The dog barked far off again, though sounding a little closer, and the dogs by Orval cocked their ears, barking excitedly in return.

'Shush,' Orval said stronger. 'Get down.'

Instead they jerked their heads toward another bark far off, their nostrils quivering.

'Get down,' Orval demanded, and slowly one by one they obeyed.

Ward squirmed on his side in the blanket, knees up near his chest. 'What's wrong? What's happening?'

'Just time to get up,' Teasle said.

'What?' Lester said and squirmed. 'God, it's cold.'

'Time to get up.'

'In a minute.'

'That's about how long they'll take to get here.'

People were crashing through the underbrush out there, breaking closer. Teasle lit another cigarette, his mouth and throat dry, and felt the energy building in him. It might be the state police, he all of a sudden realized, and stood hurriedly, drawing on his cigarette, straining to see into the forest in the direction of the cracking underbrush.

'God, it's cold.' Lester said. 'I hope Shingleton's bringing hot food.'

Teasle hoped it was just Shingleton and the deputies out there and not the state police. Abruptly five men were in sight, rushing between the trees and through the bushes in the pale cold light, but Teasle could not make out what color their uniforms were. They were talking to each other, one man tripped and swore, but Teasle could not identify the voices. If they were state police, he was trying to figure some way of keeping in charge.

Then they were close, hurrying out of the trees up this brief rise, and Teasle saw Shingleton stumbling after the dog that was straining on its leash, and he saw it was his own men behind, never so glad to see them before. They were carrying bulged-out burlap sacks, and rifles, and rope, and Shingleton had a field radio slung over his shoulder, the dog lurching him into camp.

'Hot food,' Lester was up asking him. 'Did you bring hot food?'

Shingleton apparently did not hear. He was out of breath, handing the dog over to Orval. Lester turned in a rush to the deputies. 'Did you bring hot food?'

'Ham and egg sandwiches,' a deputy said, chest heaving. 'Thermos of coffee.'

Lester reached for the sack the deputy carried.

'Not in there,' the deputy told him. 'Mitch. Behind me.'

Mitch was grinning, opening his sack, handing out wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches, and everybody grabbed, eating.

'You covered one hell of a distance last night in the dark,' Shingleton told Teasle, catching his breath, leaning against a tree. 'I figured to find you in less than half an hour, and here it took me twice that.'

'We couldn't move as fast as them last night, remember,' Mitch said. 'We had more to carry.'

'They covered one hell of a distance just the same.'

Teasle could not decide whether Shingleton was making excuses for being late, or whether he was really admiring.

Teasle bit into a sandwich, greasy and barely warm, but Christ, it was good. He took a paper cup that Mitch had poured full of steaming coffee; he blew on it and sipped, burning his upper lip and the roof of his mouth and his tongue, feeling the cold mulch of the egg and ham hot in his mouth. 'What's going on back there?'

Shingleton laughed. 'The state police had a fit over what you pulled.' He stopped to chew into a sandwich. 'Like you said, I waited in that field last night and they showed up ten minutes after you climbed into the woods. They were sweet Jesus mad over you taking advantage of the little daylight you had left so you could chase after the kid and stay in the game. It surprised me they figured it out so fast what you were up to.'

'But what's happened back there?'

Shingleton grinned proudly and bit another mouthful off the sandwich. 'I spent half the night at the station with them, and finally they agreed to play along with you. They're going to block the roads down out of the hills and stay out of here. It took some amount of convincing to get them not to come in, I'll tell you.'

'Thanks.' He knew Shingleton was waiting for that.

Shingleton nodded, chewing. 'What finally clinched things was I said you knew the kid better than they did and you'd know best what he might do.'

'Any word from them who he is or what else he might be wanted for?'

'They're working on it. They said keep reporting on this radio. The first sign of trouble they say they're coming in with everything they've got.'

'There won't be trouble. Somebody kick Balford there awake,' he said, pointing to the young deputy snuggled in his blanket by the fire. 'That guy will sleep through anything.'

Orval patted the dog Shingleton had given him; he brought it over to lick Balford's face, and the young deputy whipped up, angrily wiping saliva from his mouth. 'What the hell's going on?'

The men laughed, and in the middle stopped surprised. There was the drone of a motor. It was too far off for Teasle to guess what kind it was, but it was roaring more distinct all the time, and then deep and thunderous the helicopter loomed into view over the treetops, circling huge, sunlight glinting.

'What the-' Lester started.

'How'd it know where we were?'

The dogs got barking. Above the din of the motor, the lades shrieked through the air.

'Something new the state police gave me,' Shingleton aid, bringing out what looked like a dull gray cigarette case. 'It gives off a radio signal. They said they want to know where you are at all times and made me carry it and gave the other half to the guy you asked to lend his helicopter.'

Teasle bolted down the last of his sandwich. 'Who's our deputy up there with him?'

'Lang.'

'Does your radio connect up there?'

'You bet it does.'

The radio was where Shingleton had set it in the low crook of a tree. Teasle flipped a switch on the control panel, and peering up at where the helicopter circled close, sunlight glinting off the shrieking blades, he said loud into the microphone, 'Lang. Portis. All set up there?'

'Whenever you are, Chief.' The voice was flat and scratchy. It sounded like it came from miles away.

Teasle could barely hear it in the roar from the motor. He glanced around at his men. Orval was hurriedly gathering the paper cups and wax paper from the sandwiches, tossing them on the fire. The others were strapping on equipment, slinging on rifles. The cups and paper in ashes, Orval was kicking dirt on the flames. 'All right then,' Teasle said. 'Let's move it.'

He had trouble hooking the microphone back onto the radio he was so excited.

4

All the morning as he ran and walked and ran and walked, he heard a motor droning miles off and occasional muffled gunshots and a deep male voice murmuring through a loudspeaker. Then the motor was a few peaks over and he recognized the sound of the helicopters in the war and he started moving faster.

He had been dressed now for almost twelve hours, but after his climb naked into the hills in the cold night air, he was still enjoying the warm rough feel of clothes. He wore heavy old shoes that the son had brought around midnight to the hollow by the spring. At first the shoes had been too large, but he had stuffed leaves into the toes and that had made the shoes tight so his feet would not slide up and down inside and give him blisters. Even then, the leather was sharp and stiff against his bare feet, and he wished the son had remembered to bring socks. Maybe the son had forgotten them on purpose. The pants, though, were too tight, and guessing the son had brought them on purpose also, he had to laugh. Shoes too large, pants too tight, it was a good joke on him.

These looked like they were onetime dress pants that had been ripped in the seat and patched and now were work pants, light-colored, with dark oil and grease stains. The shin was white cotton, frayed at the cuffs and buttonholes and collar, and to go over top and keep him warm in the nights, the old man had even handed over his thick red-squared wool shirt. That had surprised him, the old man turning so friendly and generous toward the last. Maybe the whiskey had been what did it. After he and the old man had eaten the carrots and cold fried chicken the son had brought, they had heaved the jug of whiskey back and forth repeatedly, the son included, and finally the old man had gone as far as giving up his rifle plus a handkerchief tied full of cartridges.

'Had to hole up once in the hills a couple days myself,' the old man had said. 'Long time ago. When I wasn't much older than my boy.' He had not said why, and Rambo had been careful not to ask. 'Wasn't even a chance to go home and grab my rifle. Sure could've used it on them. You get out of this, you send me money for that rifle. I want your word. Not that it's the money I care about. The stuff I make, God knows I can afford another. But you get through this, I'd like to know how you made it, and I figure on the rifle reminding you to let me know. She's a good one.' And she was: a.30-30 lever action, the power to whack a bullet through a man a half-mile away as if close through a block of cheese. The old man had a thick pad of leather on the end of the stock to ease the recoil. He had a speck of luminous paint on the sight at the tip of the barrel to help aiming at night.

Then Rambo had done what he promised, backtracking down the stream away from where the old man might have his boiler and coils and jugs; soon he had pushed west, still planning eventually to turn south for Mexico. He did not fool himself that reaching there would be easy. Since he was not about to risk giving himself away by stealing a car, he would have to travel for months on foot through the back country, living off the land. All the same, he could not think of any place closer where he would be safe, and far as the border was, at least for the time being it gave him some direction. When he had gone a few miles, forced to move slow because of the dark, he slept in a tree, wakened with the sun and breakfasted on more carrots and chicken that he had saved from the old man to take with him. Now the sun high and glaring, he was miles off, rushing through trees up a long wide draw. The shots were louder, the voice from the loudspeaker more defined, and he knew before long the helicopter would be checking this draw along with the rest. He broke from the woods to run across an open reach of grass and fern, and one quarter across he heard the flapping roar almost onto him and swung in panicked search of cover. Alone in the grass, its trunk shattered by what must have been lightning, the fallen pine tree was all there was, no time to charge back to the woods. He ran and dove beneath its thick smothering branches, scraping his back as he sprawled under, and then, staring through the pine needles, he saw the thing appear down the draw. It grew magnified. Its landing props were close to skimming the topmost branches of the forest.

'This is the police,' the man's voice boomed from the copter's loudspeaker. 'You don't have a chance, give up. Anyone in these woods. A dangerous fugitive may be near you. Show yourselves. Wave if you've seen one young man alone.' The voice stopped, then started awkwardly, as if the words were being read from a card. This is the police. You don't have a chance, give up. Anyone in these woods. A dangerous fugitive may be near you.'

And on it went, and then it stopped and started again, and Rambo lay beneath the branches perfectly still, knowing the maze of needles hid him from the land, not sure he was covered from the air, watching the copter sweep over the trees toward the grass. It was near enough for him to see up into the glass-fronted cockpit. There were two men staring out the open windows on each side, a civilian pilot and a policeman, his uniform the gray of Teasle's men, and out his window he was aiming a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight. Ca-rack! the shot echoed, aimed at a tangle of rock and bush at the edge of the forest the copter had just flown over.

God, Teasle really wanted him bad, telling his man to shoot at likely hiding places, unafraid of hitting anyone innocent because most people would obey the announce-ment and come out to show themselves. From Teasle's point of view, why not? As far as Teasle was concerned, he was a cop-killer and could not be allowed to get away, had to be made an example so nobody else would think to kill a cop. Even so, Teasle was too good a policeman to condone gunning him down without first giving him a chance to give up. That was why the announcement, and the idea of shooting at spots where he might hide was probably to scare him out more than to hit him. But the odds were too great that he might be hit anyhow, so it did not matter if the shots were to scare him or not.

Ca-rack! at another clump of brush at the edge of the trees, and now they were flying over the grass and they would be on top of him in seconds, almost certain to fire. He aimed his rifle through the branches, centering on the gunman's face as he flew nearer, ready to blast him to hell the instant he lowered his eyes to the gunsight. He did not want to kill anymore, but he had no alternative. Worse, if he did shoot this man, then the pilot would duck down to the floor of the copter out of his aim and fly away damn fast to radio for help, and everybody would know where he was. Unless he stopped the pilot by exploding the helicopter gas tanks, which he knew was foolish to think about. For sure he could hit them. But explode them? It was only in dreams that a man without phosphorus-tipped ammunition ever managed that trick. He lay rigid waiting, his heartbeat sickening, as the helicopter roared onto him. Immediately the gunman dipped his face to the telescope on his rifle, and he himself was just squeezing on the trigger when he saw what the gunman was after, and thanking Christ he had seen in time, eased off. Fifty yards to the left there was a wall of boulders and brush near a pool of water. He had almost hidden there when he first heard the copter coming up the draw, but it had been too far to reach. Now the copter was swooping toward it - Ca-rack! - and he could not believe it, he thought his eyes were playing on him. The bushes were moving. He blinked, and the bushes heaved, and then he knew it was not his eyes, as the bushes burst wide apart and a great, huge-antlered, massive-shouldered deer stumbled up clambering over the boulders. It fell, it rose up, leaping across the grassland toward the woods on the other side, the helicopter after it. There was a stream of deep rich blood glistening down the deer's one hip, but that did not seem to matter, not the way it was charging in those magnificent long bounding strides toward the trees, the helicopter after it. His heart pounded wildly.

It would not stop pounding. They would be back. The deer was just a toy. As soon as it leapt into the trees out of sight, they would be back. Since there had been something hidden in those bushes by the pool, then there might be something underneath this fallen tree. He had to get out fast.

But he had to wait until the copter's tail was pointed toward him, the men watching straight ahead at the deer they were chasing. He strained waiting, and finally he could wait no more, rolling out from under the branches, racing where the grass was shortest and would not leave a trail. He was nearing the bushes and rocks. Too soon the noise of the copter changed, roaring higher. The deer had made it to the woods. The copter was circling back. Frantic, he ran stooped toward the cover of the boulders, tumbling under the bushes, bracing himself to shoot if they had seen him make his run.

Ca-rack! Ca-rack! the first shot as the copter came upon the fallen pine tree, the second as it hovered over, lingering, slowly pivoting to continue up the draw. Leaving him. 'This is the police,' the voice was booming again. 'You don't have a chance, give up. Anyone in these woods. A dangerous fugitive may be near you. Show yourselves. Wave if you've seen one young man alone.' A mouthful of undigested carrots and chicken bolted sourly up from his stomach, and he spat it on the grass, the bitterness soaking into his tongue. This was the narrow end of the draw. Cliffs on both sides closed in farther up, and weak from having vomited, be watched through the bushes as the copter swept over the trees that way and then rose up, skirted the top of a cliff, and settled into the next draw, its roar slowly dying away, the voice from the loudspeaker going muffled.

He could not stand, his legs were trembling too much. Because he was trembling, he trembled even more: the helicopter should not have frightened him so. In the war he had been through action far worse than this, and had come out of it badly shaken, but never so extreme that he could not make his body work. His skin was clammy, and he needed to drink, but the pool among the bushes was green and stagnant, and it would make him sicker than he was.

You've been away from fighting too long, that's all, he told himself. You're out of condition is all. You'll get used to it in a while.

Sure, he thought. That has to be the answer.

Gripping a boulder, he forced himself to stand, slowly, and head above the bushes, he turned to see if anyone was near. Satisfied, he leaned against the boulder, his legs yet unsteady, and brushed pine needles from the firing mechanism of his rifle. Regardless of anything, he had to keep his weapon in repair. The smell of the kerosene he had doused on his clothes was gone, in its place the faint acrid smell of turpentine that the pine tree had left on him. It mixed with the bitterness in his mouth, and be thought he might be sick again.

At first he was not sure he heard correctly: a wind blew up and dispersed the sound. Then the air was still and he definitely heard them, the first dim echoes of dogs barking behind him down at the wide end of the draw. A new tremor swept through his legs. He swung to his right where the grass sloped up to rocks and scattered trees and after that a cliff, and bracing his leg muscles, he ran.

5

The kid did not have much headstart, Teasle was figuring, as he and his men pressed forward through the trees and underbrush after the dogs. The kid had broken out of jail at six-thirty, it had got dark at eight-thirty, and he could not have gone far in these hills at night, an hour, possibly two all told. He would have started with the sun, the same as themselves, so that made him altogether just four hours ahead. But other things considered, he was probably only two, and maybe even less: he was naked and that would slow him down; he didn't know this country, so he would now and then head up steep gullies and into hollows that did not have an exit, and that would lose him more time coming out to find another way. Plus he had no food, and that would tire him, slow him more, narrow the distance.

'Less than two hours ahead of us for certain,' Orval said, running. 'He can't be more than one. Look at these dogs. His scent is so fresh they don't even have to nose the ground.'

Orval was in front of Teasle and the others, racing with the dogs, his arm taut like an extension of their master leash he held, and Teasle was climbing, scrambling through bushes, trying to keep up with him. In a way, it was funny, a seventy-two-year-old man setting the pace, running them all into the ground. But then Orval jogged five miles each morning, smoked only four cigarettes a day and never drank, while he himself smoked a pack and a half of cigarettes, drank beer by the six-pack and had not exercised in years. It was something just to be able to keep pace with Orval as much as he was. He was breathing so deeply and rapidly that his lungs were burning, he had the stab of shinsplints in his legs, but at least he was not running as awkwardly as at the start. He had been a boxer in the Marines, and they had taught him how to run to train. His body was long out of practice though, and he was having to learn over again a smooth quick comfortable stride, leaning a little forward, letting the pull of his body force his legs to push him on so he would not fall. Gradually he was getting it, running faster, easier, his pain diminishing, a pleasure of exertion swelling up inside him.

He had last felt like this five years ago, when he came back from Louisville as Madison's new police chief. The town had not changed much, yet it had all looked different. The old brick house he had grown up in, the tree in his backyard where his father had rigged a swing, the gravestones of his parents - in the years he had been away, his memory of them had gone flat and colorless as in black and white photographs. But now they had length and depth, and they were green and brown and red, and the tombstones purple marble. He had not believed seeing the graves again would depress his return that greatly. The baby girl, a fetus really, in a plastic bag by his mother's feet in her coffin. Both bodies long since corrupted into dust. All because she was a Catholic. The fetus had been poisoning her, the Church had refused an abortion, so of course she had obeyed and died and the baby with her. That had been when he was ten, and he had not understood why his father had stopped going to church after that. His father, trying to be a mother as well then, showing him about guns and fish, how to darn his own socks and cook for himself, how to clean house and wash clothes, making him independent, almost as if the man had foreseen his gunshot death in the woods three years later. Then Orval to raise him, then Korea, and Louisville, and then at age thirty-five, he was home again.

Except that it was no more home, just the place where he had grown up, and that first day back, touring the once familiar places only made him realize that he had already lived close to half his life. He was sorry he had come, almost phoned Louisville to see if he could return to work there. Finally just before it closed, he went to a real estate office, and that night he and an agent set out to look at places for sale or rent. But all the houses and apartments he saw were still being lived in, and he could not see himself alone in any of them. The agent gave him a book of listings with photographs to study before he slept, and flipping through it in his small hotel room, he came upon the place he needed: a summer camphouse in the hills near town, with a stream in front, a wooden bridge, and a thick slope of trees in back. The windows were smashed; the roof sagged and the front porch was collapsed; the paint was chipped and peeling; the shutters were split and dangling.

The next morning it was his, and in the days and nights and weeks to come, he was never busier. From eight to five he organized his force, interviewing the men already on the job, firing those who did not want to go nights to the shooting range or the state police night school, hiring men who did not mind extra duty, throwing out obsolete equipment and buying new, streamlining the cluttered operation that his predecessor had left when he died on the front steps of a heart attack. Then from five until he dropped to sleep, he worked on the house, roofing it, putting new glass in the windows and caulking them, building a new porch, painting it all rust color to blend with the green of the trees. The bad wood that he stripped from the roof and the porch he used for a fire in the yard every night, and he sat by it, cooking, eating chili con carne, steak and baked potatoes or hamburgers. Food had never tasted better, nor had he slept sounder or his body felt greater, the calluses on his hands making him proud, the stiffness in his legs and arms turning to strength and smooth-moving ease. For three months he was like that, and then the job on the house was done, and for a time he found small things to fix, but then there were nights with nothing to do, and he went out for a beer or else he stayed longer at the shooting range or else he went home to watch television and drink beer. Then he got married and now that was ended, and racing through the trees out into the grass, breath rasping, sweat stinging, he felt so good that he wondered why he had ever stopped taking care of himself.

The dogs were yelping ahead, and Orval's long legs were stretching to stay with them. The deputies were trying to keep up with Teasle and he was straining to keep up with Orval, and there was a moment as he raced across the grass, the sun bright and hot on him, his arms and legs in swift steady rhythm, when he felt he could go on forever. Abruptly Orval surged farther ahead, and Teasle could not match his speed anymore. His legs grew heavy. The good feeling drained from him.

'Slow down, Orval!'

But Orval stayed right on going with the dogs.

6

When he reached the line of trees and rocks he had to slow, placing his shoes carefully so he would not slip on the rocks and maybe break a leg. At the base of the cliff he hurried along, seeking an easy way to the top, and found a crack in the cliff that went in three feet and rose straight to the top, and climbed. Near the top the jutting stones that he used for handholds were wide apart and he had to claw and boost himself, but then the climbing got better again until shortly he was out of the crack onto level stone.

The yapping from the dogs echoed loudly on top. He crouched to see if the helicopter was nearby. It was not - he could not even hear it - and there was no sign of anybody watching him from a neighboring height or from below. He slipped into bushes and trees near the cliff edge and crept swiftly to his right toward an outcrop with a long view of the draw, and there he lay, watching the alternate strips of grass and woods. A mile down the draw he saw that men were racing from trees across a wide clear space toward more trees. In the distance the men were small and hard to distinguish; he counted what he thought were ten. He could not make out the dogs at all, but they sounded like quite a lot. It wasn't their number that bothered him, though. What did was that they had obviously found his scent and were tracking him fast. Fifteen minutes and they would be where he was now. Teasle should not have been able to catch up to him this fast. Teasle should have been hours behind. There had to be somebody, maybe Teasle, maybe one of his men, who knew the country and knew from his general direction the shortcuts to head him off.

He ran back to the niche up through the cliff: there was no way Teasle was going to have the easy climb he himself had. He set his rifle on a grassy mound where no dirt would get into it, and began pushing at a boulder that was near the cliff. The boulder was large and heavy, but once he had it rolling somewhat, the shift of its weight helped him to push. Soon he had it where he wanted, completely blocking off the top of the crack, one side extending over the cliff edge. A man coming at the boulder from below would not be able to get around or over it. He would have to shove it out of the way before he could get on top, but braced from below, he would not have the leverage to move it. He would need several men helping him but the crack was too narrow for several men to fit at once. Teasle would be a while figuring out how to clear the boulder away, and by then he himself would be long gone.

He hoped. Glancing down at the draw, he was amazed that while he positioned the boulder, the posse had been travelling so fast they were already at the pool and bushes where he had hidden. The men in miniature down there stopped looking at the bushes to watch the dogs sniffing the ground, barking in circles. Something must have confused the scent. The wounded deer, he realized. When he had dove into the bushes, some of the deer's blood had smeared onto him, and now the dogs were trying to decide which track to follow, his or the deer's. They chose damn fast. The second they sprang yelping on his path toward the cliff, he turned and grabbed his rifle and ran through more bushes and trees, inland. Where the undergrowth was very thick, he swung and pushed through backward, and then ran forward again until once more he had to push through backward. His effort shoving the boulder over to the niche in the cliff had lathered his face and chest with sweat that stung and bit, and now more sweat poured out as he struggled through a wall of nettles, scraping his knuckles raw, filming them with blood.

Then in a second he was free. He came breaking out of the dark wood into the bright sunlight on a slope of rock and shale, and paused quickly to catch his breath, and slid cautiously down to the edge. There was a cliff and a wide forest at the bottom, leaves red and orange and brown. The cliff was too sheer for him to climb down.

So now there was a cliff before him and behind him, which meant he could go only two other routes. If he went to the east, he would be moving back toward the wide end of the draw. But Teasle likely had groups searching the highlands on both sides of the draw, in case he doubled back. That gave him just one other course, to the west, in the direction the helicopter had taken, and he ran that way until he came upon another drop and found that he had trapped himself.

Christ. The dogs were barking louder, and he clenched his rifle, cursing himself for having ignored one of the most basic rules he had ever learned. Always choose a route that won't trap you. Never run where you might cut yourself off. Christ. Had his mind gone soft along with his body from lying in all those hospital beds? He should never have climbed up that cliff back there. He deserved to be caught. He deserved the shit that Teasle would do to him if he let himself be caught.

The dogs were barking even closer. Sweat smarting his face, he touched a hand to it and felt the sharp rough stubble of his beard, and brought down the hand sticky with blood from where the bushes and nettles had slashed and ripped him. The blood made him furious with himself. He had thought that running away from Teasle would be fairly simple and routine, that after what he had been through in the war, he could handle anything. Now he was telling himself to think again. The way he had been shaking from the helicopter should have warned him, he knew, but still he had been so confident he could outrun Teasle that he had gone and cornered himself, and now he would be damn lucky to get out of this with just the blood that was already on him. There was only one thing yet that he could do. He rushed along the top of the new cliff, staring down checking the height, stopping where the cliff seemed lowest. Two hundred feet.

All right, he told himself. It's your goddamn mistake, you pay for it.

Let's see just how tight your ass-end really is.

He slipped the rifle snugly between his belt and his pants, shifting it around so it went straight down his side, the butt near his armpit, the barrel by his knee. Certain that it would not work loose and fall to smash on the rocks far below, he lay flat on his stomach, eased himself over the edge, and hung by his hands, his feet dangling. Toe holds, he could not find any toe holds.

The dogs began yelping hysterically as if they had reached the blocked-off niche in the cliff.

7

To use its pulley and winch for clearing the boulder, to check the bluff in case he was still up there, for whatever reason, Teasle must have radioed for it almost immediately. Rambo was ten body-lengths down the cliff when he heard it again, droning far off, gathering volume. He had taken what he judged was nearly a minute for every body-length down this far, each fissure and outcrop he grabbed onto hard to find, each toe hold having to be tested, settling down, resting his weight on it little by little, breathing with relief when it stayed firm. Often he had dangled as he had at the top, shoes flailing against the rockface, scrabbling for support. His holds had been so far apart that climbing back up to avoid being seen by the helicopter would be as difficult as climbing down had been. Even then, he would probably not get up before the helicopter passed over him, so there was no point in trying, he might just as well keep climbing down, hoping the copter would not spot him.

The rocks below distorted huge, attracting him, as though he were leaning closer and closer into their image in a magnifying glass, and he tried to pretend this was merely like an exercise at jump school. It was not though, merely like an exercise at jump school. It was not though, and as he listened to the dogs, the helicopter droning near, he quickened his descent, hanging to the limit of his reach, taking less care to test his foot holds, sweat dribbling itchy down his cheeks, accumulating tremulously on his lips and chin. Before, when he had heard the copter as he ran across the field of grass toward the cover of the fallen pine tree, the sound of its approach had been like a solid force that was pushing him. But here, now, restricted, slow in spite of his haste, he felt its growing roar as a slippery thing that was inching up from the small of his back, heavier the higher it came. When the thing leeched up to the base of his skull, he glanced over toward the sky behind him and clung motionless to the wall, the helicopter enlarging rapidly over the trees, bearing toward this cliff. His outside wool shirt was red against the gray of stone; he prayed the gunman would somehow fail to see it.

But he knew that the gunman would have to see it.

His fingers were dug bleeding into a slit in the cliff. The toes of his shoes were pressed hard onto an inch-wide ledge; his throat shuddered involuntarily as one shoe slipped off the ledge. The close whack of the bullet into the cliff by his right shoulder dazed him, and so startled that he almost lost his grip, shaking his head to clear it, he began groping frantically down.

He managed only three more toe holds and then there were no more. Ca-rang! the second bullet ricocheted off the rock, striking higher, nearer to his head, startling him as much as the first one, and he knew he was as good as dead. The jiggle of the copter was all that had saved him from being hit so far: it was throwing off the gunman's aim, and the pilot was bringing on the copter fast, which made the jiggle worse, but it would not be long before the pilot understood and held the copter steady. His arms and legs trembling from the strain, he grasped down for a handhold and then another and then let down his feet, taking a chance, dangling again, scraping the cliff with his shoes for something, anything, to step onto.

But there wasn't anything. He hung by his bleeding fingers, and the helicopter swooped toward him like some grotesque dragonfly, and sweet Jesus, keep that damn thing moving, don't let it hang still so he can get a decent shot. Ca-rang! Chips of stone and molten bullet ripped burning into the side of his face. He peered at the rocks a hundred feet below. Sweat stinging his eyes, he barely made out a lush fir tree that rose up toward him, its top branches maybe ten feet under him. Or fifteen, or twenty: he had no chance to figure.

The helicopter looming huge, wind from the rotors rushing over him, he aimed his body at the top of the tree and let loose his pulpy fingers and dropped. His stomach gushed up, his throat expanded in the sudden emptiness, and it was so long, so endless before he slammed past the first branches, plummetted through the clutching boughs, cracked to a stop against a stout limb.

Absolutely numb.

He could not breathe. He gasped, and pain flooded his body; his chest throbbed sharply, and his back, and he was certain he had been shot.

But he hadn't, and the din of the copter above the tree and the slash of a bullet through the branches got him moving. He was high in the tree. His rifle was still between his belt and his pants but the impact when he hit had rammed it violently against his side, half-paralyzing him. In agony, forcing his arm to bend, he clutched the gun and tugged, but it would not come. Above, the helicopter was circling, returning for another shot, and he was tugging at the gun, wrenching it free, the release so strong that the branch he was on started swaying. He slipped off balance, scraping his thigh along sharp bark, desperately hooking his arm around the branch above him. It made a crack; he quit breathing. If it broke, it would send him falling outward past the ends of the boughs down onto the rocks deep below. The branch made one more crack before it held firm, and he breathed again.

But the sound from the copter was different now. Constant. Steady. The pilot was getting the idea, keeping it still. Rambo didn't know if they could see him in the tree or not, but that didn't matter much - the area at the top of the tree was so small that if the gunman sprayed it with bullets he was sure to be hit. He didn't have time to switch to a stronger branch; the next bullet might finish him. Hurried, desperate, he pushed away needles and light boughs and sought where the helicopter hung there whipping in the air.

Across from him. A house distance high. And craning his head out the open cockpit window was the gunman. Rambo saw his round, big-nosed face quite clearly as the man prepared to fire once more; a glance was all Rambo needed. In one smooth instinctive motion, he raised his gun barrel to the branch above him, steadied it there, and aimed out along it at the center of the round face, at the tip of the big nose.

A gentle squeeze on the trigger. Bull's-eye.

Inside the cockpit the gunman clutched his sunken face.

He was dead before he had a chance to open his mouth and scream. There was a moment when the pilot went on holding the helicopter steady like nothing had happened, and then at once Rambo saw through the glass front of the cockpit how it registered on the man that there were bits of bone and hair and brain everywhere, that the top of his partner's head was gone. Rambo saw him gape down in horror at the blood that was spattered across his shirt and pants. The man's eyes went wide; his mouth convulsed. The next thing he was fumbling with his seat belt, clutching his throttle stick crazily as he dove to the cockpit floor.

Rambo was trying to get a shot at him from the tree. He could not see the pilot, but he had a fair idea where the man would be huddled on the floor, and he was just aiming at that part of the floor when the helicopter veered sharply up the cliff. Its top section cleared the ridge nicely, but the angle of the copter was so steep that the rear section caught on the edge of the cliff. In the roar of the motor, he thought he heard a metallic crack when the rear section struck: he could not be certain. The copter seemed interminably suspended there, and then with an abrupt flip over backward, it plunged down directly against the cliff wall, screeching, cracking, blades bending and breaking as the explosion came, a deafening ball of fire and zing of metal that flashed up past the tree and died. The outer branches of the tree burst into flame. A stench rose up of gasoline and burning flesh.

Straight-off Rambo was on the move, scrambling down the tree. The branches were too thick. He had to circle the trunk to find where he could squeeze down. The dogs were barking louder, fiercer now, as if they were past the barricade up onto the ridge. That boulder should have taken longer to clear away; he couldn't understand how Teasle and the posse had climbed up so fast. He held tightly to his rifle, scraping down past the branches, through the pointed needles pricking at his hands and face. His chest was throbbing from his drop into the tree - it hurt like some ribs were cracked or broken, but he couldn't let that bother him. The dogs were yelping closer; he had to climb down faster, twisting, sliding. His outside wool shirt caught on a branch and he ripped it loose. Faster. Those sonofabitch dogs. He had to go faster.

Near the bottom he reached thick black smoke that choked his lungs, and saw indistinctly through it the twisted wreck of the helicopter burning and crackling. Twenty feet from the bottom he could not climb down any farther: there were no more branches. He couldn't spread his arms around the trunk and shinny down: it was too wide. Jump. No other way. The dogs yelping up on top, he checked the rocks and boulders underneath him and chose a spot where dirt and silt and dry brown needles were gathered in a pocket between the rocks, and without realizing, smiled - this sort of thing was what he had been trained to do - the weeks of leaping from towers at parachute school. Holding his rifle, he grabbed the last bough with his free hand and eased down hanging and dropped. And struck the ground perfectly. His knees buckled just right and he slumped and rolled just right and came to his feet as properly as he had done a thousand times before. It wasn't until he left the choking smoke around the shelter of the tree and scurried over the rocks that the pain in his chest got worse. Much worse. And the smile disappeared. Christ, I'm going to lose.

He charged over the rocks down a slope toward the forest, legs pounding, chest heaving painfully. There was grass ahead, and then he was out of the rocks and into the grass, racing toward the trees, and then he heard the dogs insanely loud on top behind him. They had to be where he tried climbing down the cliff; the posse would be shooting at him anytime now. Out in the open like this, he didn't have a chance, he needed to get to the trees, dodging, ducking his head, using every trick he knew to make himself an awkward target, tensing himself to take the first bullet that would blow his back and chest apart as he burst through the bushes and scrub into the woods, pushing farther on, stumbling over vines and roots until he tripped and fell and stayed flat, gasping on the damp, sweet-smelling forest floor.

They hadn't shot. He couldn't understand it. He lay there gasping, filling his lungs to capacity and exhaling and breathing deeply again, ignoring the pain in his chest each time he swelled it. Why hadn't they shot? And then he knew: because they had never been on top of the cliff in the first place. They were still getting there. They had only sounded like they were on top. His stomach retched, but this time nothing came up, and he flopped onto his back, staring past the autumn-colored leaves toward the deep sky. What was the matter with him? He had never misjudged like that before.

Mexico. The image of a warm, wave-lapped beach flashed inside his mind. Get moving. Have to start moving. He struggled to his feet and was just trudging farther into the forest when he heard men shouting behind him, dogs barking, and the posse was undoubtedly on top of the cliff now. He stopped and listened, and still gasping for breath, he turned back the way he had come.

Not the exact same path. The grass into the forest had been long, and he knew he had left a track through it that would be quite plain from on top of the cliff; the posse would be studying that part of the forest where he had entered, and as he came back, he might make some sign that would show them where he was. So he headed to the left approaching a part of the forest's edge where they would have no reason to expect him. When the trees began to thin out, he sank low and crawled to the edge, and crouching behind some brush he saw something beautiful: a hundred yards off, clear as could be on top of the cliff, were the men and the dogs. They were all running toward where he had climbed down, the dogs barking, one man behind the dogs hanging onto a master leash, the rest of the men rushing up behind, all stopping now and staring down at the smoke and fire of the helicopter. They were the closest Rambo had seen them since the hunt began, the sun stark on them, making them seem very close, strangely magnified. Six dogs, he counted, and ten men, nine in the gray police uniform of Teasle's men and one in a green jacket and pants, that one holding the dogs' master leash. The dogs were sniffing at where he had climbed over the edge, circling to check if the scent went anywhere else, returning to the edge and barking in frustration. The man in green was older than the rest and taller; he was soothing the dogs, patting them, talking to them gently in words that came across to him muffled. Some of the policemen were sitting, others standing to look down at the blazing helicopter or else point toward the forest where he had entered.

But he wasn't interested in those, only in the one pacing back and forth slapping his hand against his thigh. Teasle. There was no missing that short chunk of a body, that puffed-out chest, that low head that darted side to side like a fighting rooster. Sure. Like a cock. That's what you are, Teasle. A cock.

The joke made him smile. It was shadowed where he lay under the bush, and resting was luxurious. He lined up Teasle in his rifle sights just as Teasle spoke to the man in green. Wouldn't Teasle be surprised to find that in the middle of a word a bullet had gone in and out of his throat. What a joke that would be. He became so fascinated he almost pulled the trigger.

It would have been a mistake. He wanted to kill him all right; after his scare being caught between the helicopter and the posse, he didn't care what he had to do to get away, and now that he thought about the two men he had killed in the helicopter, he realized he wasn't bothered as he had been after he had killed Galt. He was getting used to death again.

But there was a question of priorities. The cliff wouldn't stop Teasle; it would just put him behind an hour or so. And killing Teasle wouldn't necessarily stop the posse; they would still have the hounds to keep them tracking fast. The hounds. They weren't vicious like the German Shepherds he had seen in the war, but just the same they were natural hunters, and if they ever caught him, they might even attack instead of merely cornering him as hounds were schooled to do. So he had to shoot them first. After that he would shoot Teasle. Or the man in green, if he showed before Teasle. The way the man handled the dogs, Rambo was sure he knew a lot about tracking, and with both him and Teasle dead, the others likely wouldn't know what to do, they'd have to drift back home.

For sure they didn't seem to know much about this kind of fighting. They were standing or sitting in plain view up there, and he sniffed in disgust. Evidently they had not even considered that he might still be around. The man in green was having trouble getting the dogs quiet; they were bunched together, tangled, in each other's way. The man separated the master leash and handed over three dogs to a deputy. Rambo lay beneath the cool underbrush and aimed at the three that the man in green had kept and shot two of them just like that. He would have hit the third dog with his next shot if the man in green had not yanked it back from the edge. The policemen were shouting, jumping low out of sight. The other set of dogs was acting wild, howling, straining to get away from the deputy who held them. Rambo quickly shot one. Another shied and slipped off the cliff, and the deputy holding the leash tried to pull it back instead of letting go, lost his balance and dragging the last of his dogs with him, he went over the side too. He wailed once just before he thumped on the rocks far below.

8

There was an instant when they lay flat paralyzed, the sun glaring on them, no wind, nothing. The instant stretched on and on. Then in a scramble Shingleton aimed down at the forest, shooting along its edge. He had four shots off when another man joined him, and then another, and then except for Teasle and Orval, everyone was laying down a heavy line of fire, the gun reports rattling off together, as if a bandoleer of ammunition had been thrown into a furnace and the heated cartridges were exploding in a steady roll.

'That's enough,' Teasle ordered.

But nobody obeyed. They were spread flat along the ridge, behind rocks and mounds of earth, shooting as fast as their rifles would allow. Crack, crack, crack, their trigger hands in constant motion, ejecting old shells, chambering fresh ones, not really aiming as they yanked off their bullets, the recoils jolting them. Crack, crack, crack. And Teasle was sprawled in a furrow of rock, shouting, 'That's enough I told you! Stop I said!'

But they kept right on, strafing the line of trees and scrub, homing in where another's bullet had churned the leaves and made it seem that someone was there moving.

A few were reloading and starting again. Most had already done so. Rifles of different make: Winchester, Springfield, Remington, Martin, Savage. Different calibers:.270,.300,.30-06,.30-30. Bolts and levers and different-sized magazines holding six rounds or seven or nine, empty cartridges strewn around and more coming all the time. Orval was holding steady his one last dog, shouting 'Stop it!' And Teasle was rising from the furrow, crouching as if to pounce, the veins in his neck bulging as he yelled, 'Dammit, stop I said! The next man pulls a trigger loses two days' pay!'

That struck them. Some had not yet reloaded the second time. The rest somehow checked themselves, tense, rifles at their shoulders, fingers poised over triggers, eager to resume. Then a cloud shut out the sun and they were all right. They sucked in air and swallowed and lowered their rifles sluggishly.

A breeze came up, gently brushing the dry leaves in the forest up behind them. 'Christ,' Shingleton said. His cheeks were pale and taut like the skin on a drum.

Ward relaxed off his elbows onto his stomach and licked at the corners of his mouth. 'Christ is right,' he said.

'Never so scared,' somebody was mumbling over and over. Teasle looked and it was the young deputy.

'What's that smell?' Lester said.

'Never so scared.'

'Him. It's coming from him.'

'My pants. I -'

'Leave him alone,' Teasle said.

The cloud that had shut out the sun passed smoothly on, and the bright glare retouched him, and glancing over at where the sun was low in the valley, Teasle watched another cloud approaching, a bigger one, and behind it, not far off, the sky was rumpled with them, black and puffy. He unstuck his sweaty shirt from his chest and then leaving it alone because it stuck right back to his skin, he hoped it might rain. At least that would cool things off.

Next to him he heard Lester talking about the young deputy: 'I know he can't help it, but Christ what a smell.'

'Never so scared.'

'Leave him alone,' Teasle said, looking at the clouds.

'Any bets we hit that kid just now?' Mitch said.

'Anybody hurt? Everybody O.K.?' Ward said.

'Yeah sure,' Lester said. 'Everybody's fine.'

Teasle looked sharply at him. 'Guess again. There's only nine of us. Jeremy went over the side.'

'And three of my dogs went over with him. And two others are shot,' Orval said. His voice was all in one tone, like from a machine, and the strangeness of it made everybody turn to him. 'Five. Five of them gone.' His face was the gray of powdered cement.

'Orval. I'm sorry,' Teasle said.

'You damn well should be. This was your damn foolish idea in the first place. You just couldn't wait and let the state police take over.'

The last dog was trembling on its haunches, whining.

'There now. There now,' Orval told it, gently stroking its back as he squinted through his glasses at the two dead dogs along the edge of the cliff. 'We'll get even, don't you worry. If he's still alive down there, we'll get even.' He shifted his squint toward Teasle, and his voice went louder. 'You just couldn't wait for the goddamn state police to take over, could you?'

The men looked at Teasle for an answer. He moved his mouth, but no words came out.

'What's that?' Orval said. 'Jesus, if you've got something to say, then say it clear like a man.'

'I said nobody forced you to come. You've had a hell of a good time showing us what a tough old shit you are, running ahead of everybody, quick climbing up that break in the cliff to move the boulder and prove how smart you are. It's your own fault the dogs were hit. You know so much, you should have kept them back from the edge.'

Orval shook with anger, and Teasle wished he had not said that. He stared down at the ground. It was not right of him to mock Orval's need to outdo everyone. He had been grateful enough when Orval realized how to free the boulder, climbing up to tie one end of a rope around it, telling the others to haul on the other end of the rope while he used a thick bough to lever at the boulder. It had come hurtling over the top in a rumble and crash and splintering of rock that they had all just managed to stumble back from. 'All right, listen, Orval,' he said, calm now. 'I'm sorry. They were fine dogs. Believe me, I'm sorry.'

There was a sudden movement next to him. Shingleton was sighting his rifle, firing down at a clump of brush.

'Shingleton, I told you to stop!'

'I saw something move.'

'Two days' pay that cost you, Shingleton. Your wife's going to be mad like hell.'

'But I saw something move I tell you.'

'Don't tell me what you think you saw. You're shooting excited like you wanted to back at the station when the kid broke out. Just listen. That goes for all of you. Listen. You hit nowhere close to that kid. The time you took returning his fire, he could have crapped and buried it and still got away.'

'Come on, Will, two days' pay?' Shingleton said. 'You can't mean that.'

'I'm not finished. All of you, look at all the shells you wasted. Half your ammunition's gone.'

They scanned the empty cartridges lying all around them in the dirt, looking surprised at how many there were.

'What'll you do when you run into him again? Use up the rest of your shells and then throw rocks at him?'

'The state police can fly us more,' Lester said.

'And won't you feel great when they come in here, laughing at how you wasted all your shells.'

He pointed once more at the empty cartridges, and for the first time he noticed that one group of shells was very different from the rest. The men had to lower their eyes in embarrassment as he scooped up the shells. 'These aren't even fired. One of you dummies pumped out all his bullets without even pulling the trigger.'

It was obvious to him what had happened. Buck fever. The first day of hunting season a man could get so excited when he saw his target that he stupidly pumped out all his shells without first pulling the trigger, completely mystified why he wasn't hitting what he was aiming at. Teasle couldn't let it pass, he had to make an issue of it. 'Come on, who did it? Who's the baby? Give me your gun, I'll give you one that shoots caps.'

The number on the cartridges was.300. He was about to check whose rifle was that caliber when he saw Orval point toward the edge of the cliff - and then he heard the whimper. Not all the dogs the kid had shot were dead. One had been shocked unconscious by the force of the bullet, was now coming to, kicking, whimpering.

'Gutshot,' Orval said disgustedly. He spat and stroked the dog he had been holding and gave its leash to Lester next to him. 'Hang on tight,' he said. 'You see how she's quivering. She smells that other dog's blood, and she's liable to go crazy.' He spat again and stood, dust and sweat mixed on the green of his clothes.

'Wait now,' Lester said. 'You mean this one might get vicious?'

'Maybe. I doubt it. Most likely she'll try to break free and run off. Just hold tight.'

'I don't like this one bit.'

'Nobody asked you to like it.'

He left Lester holding the leash and walked over to the wounded dog. It was on its side, kicking its legs, trying to roll over and stand, always sinking back on its side, whining miserably.

'Sure,' Orval said. 'Gut shot. That bastard gutshot her.'

He wiped his sleeve across his mouth and squinted over at the dog that was untouched. It was tugging on its leash to get away from Lester.

'Mind you hang on tight to that one,' Orval told him. 'I have something to do that'll make her jump.'

He bent down to inspect the wound in the dog's stomach, came up shaking his head disgustedly at the glistening rolls of intestine, and without a pause he shot the dog behind the ear. 'A God damn terrible shame,' he muttered, watching the body contort spastically and then settle. His face had changed from gray to red, wrinkled worse than ever. 'So what's to wait for?' he said quietly to Teasle. 'Let's go butcher that kid.'

He took one step away from the dog and staggered violently off balance, dropping his rifle, clutching queerly at his spine, the report from the gun in the woods below echoing as he whipped forward and hit the ground hard with his face and chest. The shock of landing split his glasses apart on his nose. And this time nobody returned fire. 'Down!' Teasle was shouting. 'Everybody down!' They dove flat on the ground. The last dog broke free from Lester and bounded over to where Orval lay, and it flipped around shot too. And pressed low in the furrow, fists clenched, Teasle was vowing to track the kid forever, grab him, mutilate him. He would never let up. No more because of Galt, because he could not let somebody who had killed one of his men get away. Personal now. For himself. Father, foster father. Both shot. The insane anger of when his real father had been killed, wanting to strangle the kid until his throat was crushed, his eyes popping. You bastard. You fucking sonofabitch. It was only as he went through in his mind how to climb off this cliff and get his hands on the kid that he suddenly understood how big a mistake he had made. He had not been chasing the kid. It was the other way around. He had been letting the kid lead them into an ambush.

And Jesus what an ambush. With the nearest town thirty miles over hard country, with the helicopter crashed and the dogs dead, the kid could pick everybody off whenever he felt like it. Because the land didn't go straight back behind them. Because eight feet back from the edge of the cliff the land sloped up. To pull back they would have to run uphill in open sight while the kid blasted away at them from the woods below, and where in hell did he get his rifle and how in hell did he know enough to work an ambush like this.

That moment, where the clouds were looming black in the sky, it thundered loud.

9

Orval. Teasle couldn't stop looking at him. The old man was spread out quietly on his face by the edge of the cliff, and Teasle could hardly breathe. Because of me. Just this once in his life he got careless, and I didn't warn him to stay down. He began crawling toward him, to cradle him.

'The kid'll swing around,' Lester said hoarsely.

Too hoarsely, Teasle thought. Reluctant he turned, worried about his men. They were only seven now, tight-faced, fingering their rifles, looking next to useless. All except Shingleton.

'I'm telling you the kid will swing around,' Lester said. The knee was ripped out of his pants. 'He'll swing up there behind us.'

The men jerked to stare up the rise behind them as if they expected the kid to be there already.

'He's going to come all right,' the young deputy said. There was a brown liquid stain seeping through the seat of his gray pants, and the men had shifted away from him. 'Dear God, I want out of here. Get me out of here.'

'Go on then,' Teasle said. 'Run up the slope. See how far you get before he shoots you.'

The deputy swallowed.

'What are you waiting for?' Teasle said. 'Go on. Run up the slope.'

'No,' the deputy said. 'I won't.'

'Then stop it.'

'But we have to get up there,' Lester said. 'Before he beats us to it. If we wait too long, he'll make it up there and we'll never get off this ledge.'

The dark clouds hulking closer lit up with lightning. It thundered again, long and loud.

'What's that? I heard something,' Lester said. His knee was scraped red where it showed through the rip in his pants.

'The thunder,' Shingleton said. 'It's playing tricks.'

'No. I heard it too,' Mitch said.

'Listen.'

'The kid.'

It was like weak vomiting, like a man choking. Orval. He was starting to move, hunched up, knees and head keeping his stomach off the ground while he clutched his chest, holding himself together. He looked like a caterpillar raising its back for traction to inch forward. But he wasn't going anywhere. Back arched high, he stiffened and collapsed. There was blood dripping from his arms and he was drooling, coughing blood.

Teasle was stopped in disbelief. He had been sure Orval was dead. 'Orval,' he said. And then he was hurrying before he knew it. 'Stay down,' he had to remind himself, pressing low to the rocks, trying not to make himself the target Orval had. But Orval was too close to the edge, Teasle was sure he would be seen from the woods below. He took hold of Orval's shoulder and struggled to drag him back to the furrow. But Orval was too heavy, it was taking too long, any second the kid might shoot. He tugged at Orval and pulled and dragged, and slowly Orval moved. But not quick enough. The stones were too jagged. Orval's clothes were catching on the sharp rocks near the edge of the cliff.

'Help me,' Teasle shouted to the men behind him.

Orval coughed more blood.

'Somebody help me! Give me a hand!'

And then in a rush somebody was beside him, helping him, both dragging Orval back from the edge, and all at once they were safe. Teasle let out his breath in a gasp. He wiped sweat from his eyes and didn't need to look to see who'd helped him: Shingleton.

And Shingleton was grinning, laughing, not loud, not hilarious, but laughing just the same. It was mostly all inside him. His chest was heaving and he was laughing. 'We made it. He didn't shoot, we made it.'

And sure it was funny, and Teasle started laughing too. Then Orval coughed more blood and Teasle saw the pain on Orval's face and nothing seemed funny after that.

He reached to unbutton Orval's bloody shirt.

'Take it easy, Orval. We'll have a look and fix you up.'

He tried to open the shirt gently but the blood had stuck the cloth to the flesh, and finally he had to tug at the shirt to free it and Orval groaned.

The wound was not something Teasle wanted to look at very long. There was a rank gas coming out the open chest.

'How. bad?' Orval said, wincing.

'Don't you worry about it,' Teasle said. 'We'll fix you up.' He was unbuttoning his own shirt as he spoke, slipping it off his shoulders.

'I asked you. how bad.' Each word was a distinct pained whisper.

'You've seen enough things wounded, Orval. You know how bad it is as much as I do.' He was rolling his sweaty shirt into a ball, setting it on the hole in Orval's chest. Immediately the shirt was soaking blood.

'I want to hear you tell me. I asked you -'

'All right, Orval, save your strength. Don't talk.' His hands were sticky with blood as he buttoned Orval's shirt over the bundle he had put on the wound. 'I won't lie to you and I know you don't want me to lie. There's a lot of blood and hard to see for sure but it's my guess he hit a lung.'

'Oh my Jesus.'

'Now I want you to stop talking and save your strength.'

'Please. You can't leave me. Don't leave me.'

'That's the last thing you have to worry about. We're taking you back, and we're going to do everything we can for you. But you have to do something for me too. You hear? You have to concentrate on holding your chest. I have my shirt inside yours and I want you to hold it close to where you're hit. We have to stop the bleeding. Can you hear me? Do you understand?'

Orval licked his lips and nodded weakly, and Teasle's mouth tasted full of dry dust. There wasn't a hope that a rolled-up shirt would stop the bleeding from a wound that size. His mouth stayed dusty and he felt streaks of sweat trickle down his bare back. The sun was long gone behind the clouds, but the heat was continuing to press on him, and he thought of water, realizing how thirsty Orval must be.

He knew he shouldn't give him any. He knew that from Korea. A man shot in the chest or stomach would vomit water he drank, and the wound would rip larger, and the pain would get worse. But Orval was licking at his lips, licking at his lips, and Teasle couldn't bear to watch his pain. I'll give him a little. A little won't hurt.

There was a canteen snapped to Orval's belt. He worked it loose, the canvas cover rough, and unscrewed the cap, pouring a. little into Orval's mouth. Orval coughed, and the water bubbled out mixed with blood.

'Dear God,' Teasle said. For a moment his mind was blank: he didn't know what to do next. Then he thought of the radio and swung over to it. 'Teasle calling state police. State police. Emergency.' He raised his voice. 'Emergency.'

The radio crackled with static from the clouds.

'Teasle calling state police. Emergency!'

He had been determined not to radio for help no matter what happened. Even when he saw the crashed and burning helicopter, he had not called. But Orval. Orval was going to die.

'State police come in.'

The radio shrieked with lightning, and in the ebb a voice came through, indistinct and raspy. 'State. here. ble.'

Teasle couldn't waste time asking him to say it again. 'I can't hear you,' he said hurriedly. 'Our helicopter has crashed. I have a wounded man here. I need another helicopter for him.'

'. done.'

'I can't hear you. I need another helicopter.'

'. impossible. An electric storm moving in. Every. grounded.'

'But dammit he's going to die!'

The voice answered something, but Teasle couldn't make it out, and then the voice dissolved in static and when it came back it was in the middle of a sentence.

'I can't hear you!' Teasle shouted.

'. sure picked. guy to try and hunt. Green Beret. Medal of Honor.'

'What? Say that again.'

'Green Beret?' Lester said.

The voice was starting to repeat, broke up, never came back again. It started to rain, light drops speckling the dust and dirt, spotting Teasle's pants and soaking in, pelting cool on his bare back. The black clouds shadowed over. Lightning crackled and lit up the cliff like a spotlight, and as fast as the spotlight came on, it went off and the shadows returned, bringing with them shockwaves of exploding thunder.

'Medal of Honor?' Lester said to Teasle. 'Is that what you brought us after? A war hero? A fucking Green Beret?'

'He didn't shoot!' Mitch said.

Teasle looked sharply at him, afraid he was out of control. But Mitch wasn't. He was excited, trying to tell them something, and Teasle knew what it was: he had already thought of it and decided it was no good.

'When you dragged Orval back,' Mitch was saying, 'he didn't shoot. He isn't down there anymore. He's swinging around behind us and now's our chance to move!'

'No,' Teasle told him, rain pelting his face.

'But we've got a chance to.'

'No. He might be swinging around, but what if he isn't. What if he doesn't want just one target, and he's waiting down there for the whole lot of us to get careless and show ourselves.'

Their faces went ashen. The clouds unloaded and the rain came down for real.

10

It came and it came. Lashing at them solidly. Teasle had never been in anything like it. The wind was whipping the rain at his eyes, driving it into his mouth.

'Storm, my ass. It's a goddamn cloudburst.'

He was lying in the water. He didn't think it could get worse, and then the rain increased, and he was almost buried in the water. Lightning cracked bright like the sun, darkness instantly was everywhere, darkness that got blacker and blacker until it was like night, only the time was late afternoon, and rain lashing blind at his eyes, Teasle couldn't even see to the edge of the cliff. Thunder shook him. 'What is this?'

He shielded his eyes. Orval was lying face up, mouth open in the rain. He'll drown, Teasle thought. His mouth'll fill up with water and he'll breathe it in and drown.

He squinted at his men stretched out in the water on the ledge, and realized that Orval wasn't the only one who might drown. Where they all lay was now the bed of a raging stream. There was swift water rushing down the rise behind them, surging over them, sweeping toward the edge of the cliff, and though he couldn't see the ledge, he knew what it looked like. It was the top of a waterfall: if the storm got any worse, they'd all be washed over the side.

And Orval would be the first to go.

He grabbed Orval's legs. 'Shingleton! Help me!' he called, rain driving into his mouth.

Through his words it thundered loud.

'Grab his arms, Shingleton! We're clearing out!' The temperature had gone down rapidly. The rain was now shocking cold on his bare back as he remembered stories about men caught in flash floods in the mountains, about men washed down draws and thrown over cliffs and crushed and broken on the rocks below. 'We have to clear out!'

'But the kid!' somebody yelled.

'He can't see us now! He can't see anything!'

'But the kid might be waiting for us up there!'

'We don't have time to worry about him! We have to get off this ledge before the storm gets worse! It'll sweep us over!'

Lightning flashed brilliantly. He shook his head at what he saw. The men. Their faces. In the lightning and rain, their faces changed to white skulls. As suddenly as they came, the skulls were gone, and he was blinking in darkness and the thunder hit him like a string of mortar explosions.

'I'm here!' Shingleton yelled, grabbing Orval's arms. 'I've got him. Let's go!'

They heaved him out of the water, bearing toward the rise. The rain doubled, heavier, faster. It was streaking at them almost sideways, drenching them, pouring off them in a constant rush. Teasle slipped. He fell hard on his shoulder and dropped Orval into the swirling current. He struggled splashing to grab Orval, to keep Orval's head above water, then slipped again so his own head went under water and he breathed.

He breathed. The water he sucked up his nose choked his nasal passages and spewed out the two small holes at the back of the roof of his mouth, wrenching them wide. He was wild, frantic, coughing, now up out of the water. Somebody had him. Shingleton was pulling him.

'No! Orval! Grab Orval!'

They couldn't find him.

'He'll go over the side!'

'Here!' somebody yelled. Teasle blinked rain out of his eyes, trying to see who it was yelling. 'Orval! I've got him!'

The water rose to Teasle's knees. He waded, legs churning to where the man held Orval's head out of the water. 'The current had him!' the man said. It was Ward, and he was tugging at Orval, working to drag him toward the rise. 'He was drifting toward the cliff! He bumped me going past!'

Then Shingleton was there, and they all lifted Orval from the water and staggered with him toward the slope. When they reached it, Teasle understood why the water was rising so fast. There was a trough in the hillside, and the streams on top were draining into it, flooding down upon them.

'We have to move farther along!' Teasle said. 'We have to find an easier way up!'

The wind shifted and the rain lanced at their faces from the left. As one, they stumbled toward the right, the wind helping them along. But where were the rest of the men,

Teasle wanted to know. Were they already climbing the slope? Were they still on the ledge? Why in hell weren't they pitching in to move Orval?

The water rose above his knees. He hoisted Orval higher and they staggered on, and then the wind shifted again: it was no longer pushing them the way they wanted to go, it was shoving them back the way they had come, and they were straining into the full force of the wind and the rain. Shingleton had his arms around Orval's shoulders, Teasle had the legs, Ward was cradling the back and they slipped and stumbled through the rain until they came at last to where the rise seemed easiest. There was a flood gushing down this part of the slope too, but not as strong as back at the trough, and there were big rocks jutting up for handholds. If only he could see to the top, Teasle thought. If only he could be sure the rocks were like that right up to the top.

They started climbing. Shingleton was first; he went up backward, stooping to hold Orval up by the shoulders. He wedged a foot behind a rock and backed up onto it, and then squinted to see another rock behind him and wedged a foot behind that one and backed up onto it as well. Teasle and Ward followed, bent over taking most of Orval's weight, letting Shingleton worry about where to put his feet so he could back up higher. The stream rushed harder down the slope, swashing against their legs.

But where were the others, Teasle wanted to know. Why in Christ weren't they helping? The rain was biting cold on his back. He was lifting Orval blindly, and he felt Shingleton ahead, backing up the slope, pulling Orval with him, and Teasle's arms were aching in their sockets, muscles twisting with Orval's weight. It was taking too long. They wouldn't be able to keep carrying him much longer he knew. They had to get to the top. And then Ward slipped and fell and Teasle almost lost his grip on Orval. They tumbled flat on the slope and slid down a few feet sucked by the current as they all scrambled to hang on to Orval.

They had him. They started working farther up the slope.

And that was as far as they got with him. Shingleton all at once yelled and came falling past Orval, slamming into Teasle's chest. They reeled backward, falling, and Teasle lost hold of Orval, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back at the bottom of the slope, water swelling over him, rocks tumbling painfully against him.

'I couldn't help it!' Shingleton cried. 'The rock slipped out from under me!'

'Orval! The current's got him!'

Teasle splashed toward the cliff edge. He wiped his arm across his eyes, blinking to see in the rain. He couldn't let himself go too near the edge - the current was too strong there. But God, he had to stop Orval.

He slowed, groping closer, wiping his eyes. Lightning flashed. And there, distinct, bright, was Orval's body flipping over the side. Then it was black again, and Teasle's stomach heaved. Hot tears mixed with the cold rain on his face, and he screamed until his throat seized shut, 'God damn those bastards, I'll kill them for not helping!'

Shingleton loomed beside him. 'Orval! Can you see him?'

Teasle shouldered past. He made it to the rise. 'I'll kill them!'

He grabbed for a rock and drew himself up and thrust a foot against a rock and shoved himself up and clawed and dug for handholds through the water sucking past him. All at once he reached the top, bolting into the forest. The din up there was deafening. Wind was bending trees, and rain was shrieking through branches and closeby lightning cracked bright through a trunk with the sharp sound of an ax splitting a solid piece of timber.

The tree crashed down in front of him. He vaulted over it.

'Chief!' somebody called. 'Over here, Chief!'

He couldn't see the face. He only saw the body huddled by a tree.

'Over here, Chief!' The man was waving his arm in wide gestures. Teasle charged over to him, grabbing his shirt front. It was Mitch.

'What are you doing?' Mitch said. 'What's the matter with you?'

'He went over the side!' Teasle said. Drawing back his fist, he punched Mitch hard in the teeth, jolting him against a tree and into the mud.

'Christ,' Mitch said. He shook his head, shook it again. He moaned and held his bloody mouth. 'Christ, what's the matter with you?' he was crying. 'Lester and the others ran! I stayed behind to stick with you!'

11

Teasle must have made it into the forest by now. Rambo was certain of it. The storm had been going on too long and heavy - Teasle and his men could not have held out on that open ledge. With the rain giving them cover so he could not see to shoot, they must have taken their chance to get up that slope and into the trees. That was all right. They would not be far. He had done a lot of this kind of work in the rain and he knew exactly how to hunt men down in it.

He came out of the bushes and trees, bearing through the rain toward the base of the cliff. In the confusion of the storm, he knew he could escape the other way, deep into the forest if he wanted. Judging from the wide dense cloud cover, he could be hours and miles away before the storm cleared enough for Teasle to track him - so far away that Teasle would never be able to catch up to him again. It was possible that after the ambush and the rain Teasle might not even have the heart to chase after him, but that did not matter: for the moment he was determined not to run anymore, whether he was being chased or not. He had been lying sheltered under the bushes, watching the top of the cliff for another target, thinking about how Teasle had made him into a killer once more and had got him wanted for murder; growing angrier as he thought about all the months, two months at least, that he would have to run and hide run and hide before he reached Mexico; and for now, by God, he was going to turn the game and make Teasle run from him, show him what the hell it felt like. That bastard was going to pay for this.

But you asked for some of it yourself. It wasn't only Teasle. You could have backed off.

For the sixteenth time for crissake? No way.

Even if it was for the hundredth time, so what? Backing off would have been better than this. Leave it alone. End it. Get away.

And let him do this to somebody else? Screw. He has to be stopped.

What? That's not why you're doing this? Admit you wanted all this to happen. You asked for it - so you could show him what you knew, surprise him when he found you were the wrong guy to try and handle. You like this.

I didn't ask for anything. But damn right I like it. That bastard is going to pay.

The land was dark; his clothes clung icy to his skin. Ahead, long slick grass was bent over in the driving rain, and he waded through, the grass slippery on his smooth wet pants. He came to the stones and rocks that led up toward the base of the cliff, and he stepped cautiously onto them. There were streams of water swirling between them and over them, and in the wind it would be easy to slip and fall and hurt his ribs some more. They were throbbing from when he had leapt off the cliff and crashed against the tree limb, and each time he breathed he felt something pressing sharply inside his right chest. It was like a big fishhook in there, or a jagged chunk of broken bottle. He would have to fix it. Soon.

Very soon.

There was a roar. He had heard it back in the trees and had guessed it was from the sound of the wind and rain. But now it was getting louder as he climbed up over the rocks toward the cliff, and he knew it wasn't the rain. The cliff came into gray view and he saw. A cataract. The cliff had become a waterfall, and a flood was cascading down, roaring onto the rocks, spraying mist high up into the rain. It wasn't safe to go any closer; he began working to the right. About a hundred yards along he knew would be the tree he had leapt into. And very near would be the body of the policeman who had fallen off the cliff with his dogs.

He didn't find the body anywhere around the tree. He was about to look in the wreckage of the helicopter when he realized that the waterfall would have swept the body down over the rocks to the long grass. He went down and the guy was right at the border, face down in the water. The top of his head was struck flat and his arms and legs were sticking off at queer angles. Rambo wondered about the dogs, but he couldn't find them. The carcasses must have been washed farther into the long grass. He knelt quickly to search the body.

The guy's equipment belt - he needed it. He held his rifle so it wouldn't drop in the water, and with one hand he pulled the body over. The face wasn't too bad, he had seen worse in the war. He stopped looking at it and concentrated on unbuckling the belt and yanking it free.

The effort set him wincing - his ribs cut inside his chest. Finally he had the belt loose, and he checked what was on it.

A canteen that was dented but not split open. He unscrewed the cap and drank and the canteen sloshed half-full. The water from it had a stale metallic taste.

A revolver snug in a holster. There was a leather flap snapped over the handle: not much water would have got in. He unholstered the gun, impressed by how well Teasle equipped his men. It was a Colt Python: a thick four-inch barrel with a big sighting pin at the end. The plastic handle it was always sold with had been replaced by a stout wooden grip designed not to be slippery if it got wet. The sights near the hammer had also been changed. Usually they were stationary, but these had been made adjustable for long distance shooting.

He had not hoped for this fine a gun. It was chambered for a.357 magnum cartridge, the second most powerful handgun load. A man could kill a deer with it. A man could shoot clean through a deer with it. He pushed the lever at the side and swung out the bullet cylinder. There were five shells in it; the chamber underneath the firing pin was empty. Quickly he slipped the gun back into the holster out of the rain and checked the cartridge pouch and counted fifteen more shells. Then he buckled the gunbelt around his waist and stooped, his ribs biting, to search the guy's pockets. But there wasn't anything to take. Especially no food. He had thought the guy at least might have some chocolate.

Stooped, his chest was hurting worse than ever. He had to fix it. Now. He unbuckled the guy's trouser belt and straightened painfully with it, unbuttoning his outer wool shirt and the white cotton shirt under that. The rain slapped at his chest. He wound the belt around his ribs and cinched it like a roll of strong tape holding him tight. And the pain stopped cutting. It switched to a swelling, aching pressure against the belt. Hard to breathe. Tight.

But at least the pain had stopped cutting.

He buttoned up and felt the cotton shirt soggy cold against him. Teasle. Time to go after him. For a second he hesitated and almost went away in the forest: chasing Teasle would cost him time getting away, and if there was another posse in these hills, he might run into them. But two hours wasn't much. That was only as long as he would take to catch him, and after that, under cover of the night, he would still have time to get away. It was worth two hours to teach that bastard.

All right then, which way after him? The niche in the cliff, he decided. If Teasle wanted to get down off the bluff in a hurry, he would likely go back there. With any luck he would be able to head Teasle off and meet him as he came down. He hurried to the right, following the border of grass. Very soon he stumbled across the second body.

It was the old man in green. But how had he tumbled off the cliff so that he ended up all the way over here? His equipment belt didn't have a handgun. It did have a hunting knife, and it had a pouch, and inside Rambo touched something - food. Sticks of meat. A handful. He bit, barely chewing, swallowing, biting off more. Sausage, sticks of smoked sausage, wet and crushed a little from the old man slamming onto the rocks, but it was food, and he was biting into it, chewing, swallowing quickly, forcing himself to slow and mulch it around to all parts of his mouth; then it was almost gone and he was tucking the last bits into his mouth and sucking his fingers; and then all that was left was the smoke taste and his tongue slightly burning from the hot peppers that had been in with the meat.

Sudden lightning and then thunder as if the earth had shuddered. He had better watch himself; he was getting too lucky. First the gun, the bullets, the canteen, and now the knife and the sausage. They had been so easy to get that he better watch himself. He knew how these things worked and how they evened out. One minute you got lucky and the next - well, he would make damn sure he watched himself so all the luck stayed with him.

12

Teasle kneaded his fist, opening, closing it. The knuckles had gashed on Mitch's teeth, swelling now, but Mitch's lips were swelling twice as bad. In the thunder Mitch tried to stand; one knee gave out and he fell weeping against a tree.

'You shouldn't have hit him so hard,' Shingleton said.

'Don't I know it,' Teasle said.

'You're a trained boxer. You didn't need to hit him so hard.'

'I said I know it. I shouldn't have hit him at all. Let's leave it.'

'But look at him. He can't even stand. How's he going to travel?'

'Never mind that,' Ward said. 'We've got worse troubles. The rifles, the radio, they've washed over the cliff.'

'We've still got our handguns.'

'But they don't have any range,' Teasle said. 'Not against a rifle. As soon as it's light, the kid can pick us off a mile away.'

'Unless he takes advantage of the storm to clear out,' Ward said.

'No. We have to assume he'll come for us. We've been too careless already, and we have to start acting as if the worst will happen. Even if he doesn't come, we're still finished. No food or equipment. No organization. Dead tired. We'll be lucky if we can crawl by the time we get back to town.'

He looked at where Mitch was sitting in the rain and mud, holding his mouth, groaning. 'Help me with him,' he said, lifting Mitch to his feet.

Mitch shoved him away. 'I'm all right,' he murmured through his missing teeth. 'You've done enough. Don't come near me.'

'Let me try,' Ward said.

But Mitch pushed him away too. 'I'm all right, I tell you.' His lips were swollen purple. His head drooped and he covered his face with his hands. 'Dammit, I'm all right.'

'Sure you are,' Ward said and caught him as he sagged to his knees.

'I - Jesus, my teeth.'

'I know,' Teasle said, and together, he and Ward braced Mitch up.

Shingleton looked at Teasle, shaking his head. 'What a mess. Look at how dull his eyes are. And look at you. How are you going to make it through the night without a shirt? You'll freeze.'

'Don't worry about it. Just watch out for Lester and them.'

'By now they're long gone.'

'Not in this storm. They won't be able to see to walk in a straight line. They'll be wandering around this bluff somewhere, and if we stumble into them, look out. Lester and that young deputy are so scared about the kid coming, they're liable to think we're him and start shooting. I've seen it happen like that before.'

Snowstorms in Korea where a sentry shot his own man by mistake, he was thinking, no time to explain. Rainy nights in Louisville where two policemen got confused and shot each other. His father. Something like that had happened to his father too - but he could not let himself think about it, remember it.

'Let's go,' he said abruptly. 'We've got a lot of miles to cover and we're not getting any stronger.'

The rain pushing at their backs, they guided Mitch through the trees. At first his legs dragged in the mud; then clumsily, sluggishly, he managed walking.

A war hero, Teasle thought, his back numb from the cold rain streaming down it. The kid had said he was in the war, but who would have thought to believe him? Why hadn't the kid explained more?

Would that have made a difference? Would you have handled him different from anybody else?

No. I couldn't.

Fine, then you just worry about what he knows to do to you when he comes.

If he comes. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe he won't come.

He came back to town all those times, didn't he? And he'll come this time too. Oh, he'll come all right.

'Hey, you're trembling,' Shingleton said.

'Just look out for Lester and them.'

He could not keep from thinking about it. Legs stiff and hard to move, holding Mitch up as he and the others trudged wearily through the trees in the rain, he could not help remembering what had happened to his father, that Saturday, the six other men who had gone on the deer hunt. His father had wanted him along, but three had said he was too young, and his father had not liked the way they said it, but gave in: that Saturday was the first day of the season, an argument would spoil it.

So the story had come back. How they took up positions along a dried-up streambed that was marked with fresh deer tracks and droppings. How his father swung around to the top where he made a racket to frighten a deer down the streambed where the men would see it going by and shoot. The rule: everybody was to stay in position so that nobody would be confused about where anybody else was. But one of them, on his first hunt, tired of waiting all day for a deer to go by, wandered off to see what he could find on his own, heard a noise, saw movement in the brush, fired, and split Teasle's father's head very nearly in half. The body almost didn't lie in open state: the head was even more shattered than it first seemed. But the undertaker used a wig and everyone said the body looked perfectly alive. Orval had been on that hunt and now Orval was shot too, and as Teasle guided Mitch through the storm across the bluff, he was more and more afraid that he himself was going to die as well. He strained to see if Lester and the others were in the dark trees ahead. If they did lose direction and shoot scared, he knew it would be nobody's fault but his own. What were his men anyhow? Fifty-seven-hundred-dollar-a-year traffic police, small-town deputies trained to handle small-town crime, always hoping nothing serious would happen, always near help if they needed it; and here they were in the wildest mountains in Kentucky with no help around, up against an experienced killer, and God only knew how they had managed to bear up this long. He should never have brought them in here, he realized. He should have waited for the state police. For five years he had just been fooling himself that his department was as tough and disciplined as Louisville's, understanding now that over those years, little by little, his men had got used to their routine and had lost their edge. And so had he. Thinking about how he had argued with Orval instead of concentrating on the kid, about how he had got them all ambushed, and how their equipment was lost and how the posse was split up gone to hell and Orval dead, he was coming to realize - the idea cropping up and him pushing it away and it cropping up again stronger - how really soft and careless he had turned.

Like punching Mitch.

Like not warning Orval to stay low.

The first noise confused with the thunder, and he could not be certain that he had actually heard it. He stopped and looked at the others. 'Did you hear?'

'I don't know exactly,' Shingleton said. 'Up ahead, I think. Off to the right.'

Then three more came, and they were unmistakable shots from a rifle.

'It's Lester,' Ward said. 'But he's not shooting this way.'

'I don't think he saved his rifle anymore than we did,' Teasle said. 'That's the kid shooting.'

There was one more shot, still from a rifle, and he listened for yet another, but it never came.

'He ran around and caught them at the break in the cliff,' Teasle said. 'Four shots. Four men. The fifth was to finish somebody. Now he'll be after us.' He hurried to lead Mitch in the opposite direction from the shots.

Ward balked. 'Hold it. Aren't we going to try and help? We can't just leave them.'

'Depend on it. They're dead.'

'And now he'll be coming for us,' Shingleton said.

'You bet on it,' Teasle said.

Ward looked anxiously toward the direction of the shots. He closed his eyes, sickened. 'Those poor dumb bastards.' Reluctantly he bolstered Mitch, and they moved off to the left, gaining speed. The rain eased off, then got heavier.

'The kid will probably wait for us at the cliff in case we didn't hear,' Teasle said. 'That will give us a lead. As soon as he's sure we're not coming, he'll set off across the bluff to find our trail, but this rain will wipe it out and he won't find anything.'

'We're in the clear then,' Ward said.

'Clear then,' Mitch repeated stupidly.

'No. When he doesn't find our trail, what he'll do is run toward the far end of the bluff and try to get ahead of us. He'll find a spot where he thinks we're most likely to climb down, and he'll lie waiting for us.'

'Well then,' Ward said, 'we'll just have to get there first, won't we?'

'First, won't we,' Mitch repeated, staggering; and Ward made it sound so easy, Mitch's echo sounded so funny, that Teasle laughed, nervously. 'Hell yes, we'll just have to get there first,' he said, looking at Shingleton and Ward, impressed by their control, and he suddenly thought that things might work out after all.

13

At six the rain changed to big cracking chunks of hail, and Shingleton was hit so hard in the face by some that they had to grope close under the shelter of a tree. The leaves had already fallen from the tree, but there were enough bare branches for most of the hail to glance off of, and the rest of it came down striking sharply against Teasle's bare back and chest and the arms he had raised protectively over his head. He was desperate to start moving again, but he knew it would be crazy to try: a few wallops from chunks of hail this size could lay a man flat. But the longer he stayed huddled by this tree, the more time the kid had to catch up, and his only hope was that the hail had forced the kid to stop and take cover also.

He waited, glancing around, braced for an attack, and then at last the hail stopped and no more rain came, and with the light clearing and the wind dying, they worked fast across the bluff. But without the distraction of the wind and rain, the noises they made hurrying through the underbrush were loud, a signal to the kid. They tried going slower, but the noises were almost as loud, so they hurried on again, crashing.

'Doesn't this top have an end?' Shingleton said. 'We've been going for miles.'

'For miles,' Mitch echoed. 'Four miles. Five. Six.' He was dragging his feet again.

Next he sagged; Ward heaved him up; and then Ward himself heaved up, careening backward. The report from the rifle was rolling through the trees, and Ward was now on his back, arms and legs stuck out in a death frenzy, and from where Teasle lay on the ground, he saw that Ward had taken the bullet directly in the chest. He was surprised to be lying on the ground. He didn't remember diving there. He was surprised that he had his pistol out.

Christ, Ward dead now too. He wanted to crawl to him, but what was the use. What about Mitch? Not him too. He was fallen into the mud, lying still as if he had been shot as well. No. He was all right, eyes opening, blinking at a tree.

'Did you see the kid?' Teasle said fast to Shingleton. 'Did you see where he shot from?'

No answer. Shingleton was flat on the ground, staring blankly ahead, his face drawn tight around his massive cheek-bones.

Teasle shook him. 'Did you see, I asked you. Snap out of it!'

Shaking him was like pressing a release valve. Shingleton broke into motion, fist up close to Teasle's face. 'Keep your fucking hands off me.'

'Did you see him, I asked you.'

'No, I said!'

'You didn't say anything!'

'Anything,' Mitch echoed dumbly.

They looked at him. 'Quick, give me a hand,' Teasle said, and they dragged him forward into a slight hollow ringed with bushes, a rotting tree fallen across the forward rim. The hollow was full of rain water, and Teasle sank slowly into it, cold against his chest and stomach.

His hands were shaking as he checked his pistol to be sure no water plugged the barrel. He knew what had to be done now and it frightened him, but he did not see any other way, and if he thought about it too much, he might not be able to make himself go through with it. 'Stay here with Mitch,' he said mouth-dry to Shingleton. His tongue had not been moist in hours. 'If somebody comes back through these bushes and doesn't first say it's me, shoot him.'

'What do you mean stay here? Where-'

'Out ahead. If we try running back the way we came, he'll only follow us. We might as well save ourselves the trouble of running and try to end this right here.'

'But he's trained to fight like this.'

'And I was trained for night patrol in Korea. That was twenty years ago, but I haven't forgotten all of it. I might be slow and out of practice, but I don't hear any better ideas.'

'Stay here and wait for him. Let him come to us. We know he'll come. We're ready for him.'

'And what happens when it gets to be night and he sneaks right onto us before we hear him?'

'We'll move out when it's night.'

'Sure, and make so much noise he won't even need to see us to shoot us. He'll just have to aim toward where he hears us. You just said it. He's trained to do this, and I'm betting that's our edge. With any luck he won't expect me to go out there and play it his way. He'll expect me to run, not attack.'

'Then I'm going with you.'

'No. Mitch needs you to stay with him. Two of us crawling around out there might make enough noise to warn the kid.'

He had another reason for doing it alone, but he didn't wait to explain anymore. He had waited too long as it was. Immediately he crawled up out of the hollow, to the left around the fallen tree. The mud was so chill against his stomach that he had to force himself down along it. He squirmed forward several feet, and paused to listen, and squirmed forward again, and each time he dug his shoes into the mud to push ahead, the mud gave a sucking noise and he tensed. The suck increased until finally he stopped using his feet to push and switched to wriggling forward on his elbows and knees, always careful to keep his pistol free of the mud. Drops of water spilled icy onto his spine as he wormed under bushes. He stopped and listened and crawled on.

Shingleton wouldn't understand his other reason for doing this anyhow, he thought. It wasn't Shingleton who had been in charge and made the mistakes that killed Orval and Lester and the young deputy and Ward and Galt and the two men in the helicopter and all the rest. So how could Shingleton understand why he couldn't bring himself to let anybody else die for him? This time it would be just himself and the kid and nobody else, just the way this thing started, and if there were going to be anymore mistakes, this time it would be just himself who would pay.

His watch hands had been at six-thirty when he set out. He was so busy concentrating on the movements and sounds around him that it was seven when he next looked at his watch. A squirrel scrambling up a tree startled him into guessing it was the kid, and he came close to shooting at it. The light was dimming again, not from the clouds now, but from the start of evening, and the air was colder and he was shivering as he crawled. Even so, there were rivulets of sweat trickling down his face and back and under his arms.

It was fear. The hot pressure of his anus. The adrenalin squirting into his stomach. He wanted desperately to turn and go back, and because of that, he urged himself to go farther on. God in heaven, if he missed this chance at the kid, it wasn't going to be because he was afraid to die. Jesus no. He owed that to Orval. He owed it to the rest of them.

Seven-fifteen. He had crawled far out now, and he had worked back and forth across the forest, pausing, peering deeply into groves and thickets to see if the kid was hiding there. Small noises made him jumpy, noises he could not account for, the snap of a branch that could be the kid adjusting his position to aim, the brush of leaves that could be the kid circling behind him. He crawled slowly, fighting his panic to speed up and get this over, fighting to concentrate on everything around him. The slightest piece of cover was all the kid needed. All he himself had to do was get careless once and not check one bush or one stump or one dip in the ground, and that might be the end. It would be so abrupt that he would never hear the burst of the shot that killed him.

Then it was seven-thirty and the shadows had merged deep enough to trick him. What looked like the kid was only the dark trunk of a crooked tree set far back in the gloom. A fallen log in back of a bush deceived him the same way, and he knew he had done the best he could. It was time to head back. That was the worst part. His eyes were tired and the shadows were touching him, and he just wanted to hurry back to Shingleton and relax a minute and let Shingleton keep watch for the kid. But he could not dare give up searching to speed up back there. Even as he returned, he still had to take his time and check every bush and tree before he made a move. He had to look behind, afraid the kid was sneaking toward him. His back felt so naked, so white in the gloom that he kept expecting to glance around and see the kid aiming with a smile at the cleft between his shoulder blades. The bullet would blast apart his backbone and rupture his insides and instantly he would be dead. In spite of himself he hurried to return.

He almost forgot to let Shingleton know it was himself coming. Wouldn't that be a laugh. To risk searching for the kid and then be shot by his own man. 'It's me,' he whispered. 'It's Teasle.'

But nobody answered.

I whispered too low and he didn't hear me, Teasle thought. 'It's me,' he repeated, louder. 'It's Teasle.' But again nobody answered, and Teasle knew something had to be wrong.

He circled the hollow and crept up from behind, and something was more than wrong. Shingleton wasn't there, and Mitch was flat on his back in the water, his throat neatly slit from ear to ear, his blood steaming in the cold. Shingleton. Where was Shingleton? Worried and tired of waiting, he must have gone after the kid too, and left Mitch and the kid came up and slit his throat to kill him quietly. The kid, Teasle realized, the kid must be very close. He crouched and spun, and the sight of Mitch, the frenzy of trying to protect himself from all angles made him want to cry out, Shingleton, get back here, Shingleton! Two men facing in opposite directions would maybe see the kid before he rushed them. Shingleton, he wanted to call.

Instead Shingleton called to him from some place on the right. 'Look out, Will, he's got me!' His cry was punctuated by a rifle shot, and that was all Teasle could stand. He finally had his breakdown, running before he knew it, screaming, racing away, charging through the shadows, through the trees and bushes. Aaaeeiii, he was screaming. The niche in the cliff, was all he could think. The cliff the cliff !

14

He shot at Teasle, but the light was bad and the trees were too thick, and anyway, Shingleton grabbed the rifle so that the bullet jerked low. Shingleton ought to have been dead. He had been shot in the skull. He should not have been able to get back off the ground and grab the rifle to throw off its aim. Rambo really had to admire him as he shot him again, through one eye now, and this time Shingleton was dead for sure.

Without a pause he set off running after Teasle. It was obvious that Teasle's direction was back toward the niche in the cliff, and he planned on beating him there. He did not follow exactly on Teasle's path - Teasle might get control of himself and lie somewhere waiting - so he ran in a line parallel to Teasle, racing to beat him to the cliff.

He just missed him. He came hurrying through the woods, able to see the cliff edge now and the top of the niche, and he dropped to his knees, hiding for Teasle. But then he heard chips of stone rattling down the cliff and the sound of heavy breathing down there, and he rushed over just in time to see Teasle jump the last few feet down the niche, ducking around the side of the cliff wall. He saw too the bodies of the four deputies where he had shot them at the bottom of the cliff, and he didn't like the position he was in. Now Teasle had the advantage. To climb down the niche after him, he would be as easy a target for Teasle as the four deputies had been for himself.

He knew damn well that Teasle was not going to stand down there all night waiting for him. Shortly Teasle was going to take his chance and clear out, and he would be left up on top, suspecting that Teasle was gone but not willing to risk that he was still there. To be safe he had to find another way down off this bluff, and that way had to be in the direction Teasle would take for home.

He raced back toward where he had killed Shingleton, and passed his body, and continued racing toward where he hoped the bluff would slope down into the draw, and it did slope down, and in half an hour he was into the draw, running through the woods toward a stretch of grass he had dimly spotted from above. The light was fading worse, and he was hurrying to get to the grass before the dark could blot out Teasle's trail. He reached the grass and ran through the line of trees that bordered it, not wanting to show himself as a target while he searched for tracks that led out of the trees into the open space. He looked and ran to look farther along, but still no tracks in the wet earth, and he thought that maybe Teasle had been slow to leave the cliff, began to worry that Teasle was behind him, coming, watching. Just as it started to rain again and made everything even darker, he found the grass pushed down.

There.

But he had to take a handicap, give Teasle a headstart.

Because in spite of his temptation to rush across the open grass after him, he had to wait until the night was fully black: Teasle might not be running ahead at all, he might he lying in the bushes on the other side, aiming. Then he supposed it dark enough so he could run across without showing himself as a target, but his caution was needless because when he got over there Teasle was not around. The rain was falling lightly through the trees, it muffled sounds very little, and there, up ahead, something was working to break through the thick underbrush.

He set out after it, stopped and listened, corrected his direction toward the noise, then set on again. He expected that fairly soon Teasle would give up running and try to ambush him, but as long as he could hear Teasle running, it was safe to keep after him and make all the noise he had to. Then one time he stopped and listened, and the running up ahead was stopped as well, so he sank to the ground and began crawling quietly forward. In a minute the running up ahead continued again, and he leapt to his feet, charging after it. That was the pattern for an hour: running, stopping, listening, crawling, running. The rain kept on in a cold faint drizzle, and the belt that was cinched around his ribs loosened, and he had to tighten it to ease the pain. He was certain now that his ribs were broken and that sharp bones were lancing his insides. He would have given up, but he knew he would have Teasle soon; he doubled over in agony, but Teasle was still running up there, so he straightened, pushing himself on.

The chase went up a slope of trees, over a spine of rock and down a patch of shale to a stream, then along the bank of the stream, across the stream into more woods, across a ravine. The pain in his chest cut sharply as he jumped across, and he almost slipped down into the ravine, but he pulled himself up, listened for Teasle, heard him and chased after him. Each time his right foot hit the ground, the jolt went all the way up his right side, grating his ribs. Twice he was sick.

15

Up and down, the pattern of the country repeated itself. Stumbling up a slope of rocks and brush, Teasle felt like he was back on the ledge, trying to get up the rise to the woods. In the dark he couldn't see the top; he wished he knew how far it was; he couldn't keep on climbing much longer. The rain was making the rocks slippery, and he was losing his balance, falling hard. He took to crawling up, and the rocks tore at his pants, cut into his knees, while behind him, down in the trees at the bottom, he heard the kid breaking through the undergrowth.

He scrambled faster. If he could just see the top and know how far he had to go. The kid must be out of the woods now and starting up the slope, and Teasle thought of shooting blindly down to hold him back. He couldn't: the flashes from his pistol would give the kid a target, but Christ, he had to do something.

In one desperate lunge he reached the top but didn't know it was the top until he tripped and barely grabbed a rock in time to stop from rolling down the other side. Now. Now he could shoot. He stretched out and listened to where the kid was rushing up the slope, and he fired six times in a line across the noises. Then he hugged the ground in case he had missed, and a shot came from below, zinging over him. He heard the kid climbing off to the left, and he fired once more at the noise before he started racing down the other side of the slope. Again he tripped, and now he struck his shoulder solidly against a rock and couldn't keep from rolling as he grabbed his shoulder and tumbled to the bottom.

He lay there dazed. The wind was knocked out of him, and he fought to breathe but he couldn't. He gasped and pushed his stomach muscles in, but they wanted to push out, and then he managed to suck in a little air and a little more, and he was almost breathing normally again when he heard the kid clambering on the rocks above. He groped to his knees, then to his feet - and discovered that in his fall he had lost hold of his pistol. It was somewhere up on the slope. No time to go back for it. No light to find it.

He staggered through woods, circling he guessed, going nowhere, winding around and around until he'd be brought to bay. Already his knees were buckling. His direction was wobbly. He was bumping against trees, a crazy vision in his head of him in his office, bare feet on the desk, head tilted sipping hot soup. Tomato soup. No, bean with bacon. The rich expensive kind where the label said don't add water.

16

It was only minutes now before he'd have him. The noises ahead were slowing, more erratic, clumsy. He could hear Teasle breathing hoarsely, he was that close to him. Teasle had given him a good race, that was sure. He had figured to tag him several miles ago, and here they were still at it. But not for long. A few minutes now. That was all.

The pain in his ribs, he had to slow, but it was still a fair pace, and since Teasle had slowed too, he wasn't bothered much. His hand was over his ribs, helping the belt to press. All his right side was swollen. In the rain the belt was even looser than before, and he had to keep his hand pressing.

Then he stumbled and fell. He hadn't done that before. No, he was wrong about that. He had stumbled at the ravine. Then he stumbled again, and rising to his feet, working on, he decided it might take slightly more than a few minutes before he caught up to Teasle. It would be soon, though. No question about it. Just a little more than a few minutes. That was all.

Had he said that out loud?

The brambles caught him full in the face as he came up to them in the dark. They were spikes lashing into him, and he recoiled, clutching his ripped cheeks. He knew it wasn't rain wetting his cheeks and hands. But it did not matter, because off in there in the brambles was the sound of Teasle crawling. This was it. He had him. He bore to the left along the edge of the brambles, waiting for it to curve down and lead him to the bottom of the patch where he could rest and wait for Teasle to crawl out. In the dark he would not be able to see the surprised look on Teasle's face when he shot him.

But the longer he hurried along the edge of the brambles, the farther it stretched on, and he began to wonder if the brambles covered all this section of the slope. He hurried farther, and still the brambles did not curve down, and then he was sure they stretched all along this rise. He wanted to stop and double back, but he had the thought that if he kept on just a little more, the brambles would at last curve down. Five minutes became what he judged was fifteen, and then twenty, and he was wasting his time, he should have gone right in after Teasle, but now he could not. In the dark he had no idea where Teasle had entered.

Double back. Maybe the brambles did not go far along the other end of this ridge, maybe they curved down over there. He rushed back, holding his side, moaning. He hurried a long while until he no longer believed they would ever curve down, and when next he stumbled and fell, he remained face down in the muddy grass.

He'd lost him. He had given up so much time and strength to come so close and lose him. His face stung from the gashes of the brambles. His ribs were on fire, his hands pulpy, his clothes ripped, his body slashed. And he had lost him, the rain coming down in a gently cooling drizzle as he lay there splayed out, breathing deeply.holding it, letting it out slowly, breathing deeply again, letting the dead weight of his arms and legs relax with every slow exhale - for the first time he could remember, crying, softly crying.

17

Any moment the kid would be breaking through the brambles after him. He crawled hysterically. Then the brambles got lower and thicker until he had to press himself flat and wriggle. Even so, the lowest branches scraped across his back and snagged in the seat of his pants, and when he twisted to unsnag them, other branches gouged his arms and shoulders. He's coming, he thought, and squirmed desperately forward, letting the barbs dig into him. His belt buckle scooped into the mud, funneling it into his pants.

But where was he going? How did he know he wasn't completing a circle, returning to the kid? He stopped, frightened. The land sloped down. He must be on the side of a hill. If he kept wriggling downward, he'd be headed straight away. Or would he? Hard to think, suffocated in the dense black tangle and the constant rain. You bastard kid, I'm going to get away and kill you for this.

Kill you for this.

He lifted his head off the mud. And couldn't recall having moved for a while. And gradually understood he had passed out. He stiffened and glanced all around. The kid could have crept up to him a his stupor and slit his throat just like he did to Mitch. Christ, he said out loud, and his voice was a croak that startled him. Christ, he said again - to free his voice - but the word broke like a crust of ice.

No, I'm wrong, he thought, his brain slowly unclouding. The kid wouldn't have crept up in my sleep to kill me. He would have wakened me first. He'd want me to know what was happening.

So where is he? Watching close? Finding my trail, coming? He listened for noises in the brush and didn't hear anything and had to keep moving, had to keep distance between them.

But when he tried crawling fast, he only managed a sluggish strain to pull forward. He must have been unconscious a long time back there. The light wasn't black now, it was gray, and he could see the brambles everywhere, thick and ugly, spines an inch long. He fingered his back, and he was like a porcupine, dozens of barbs hooked in his skin. He stared at his hand all bloody and struggled worming on. Maybe the kid was very close, watching him, enjoying him suffer.

Then it all confused, and then the sun was up, and through the tops of the brambles, he saw the sky bright and stark blue. He laughed. What are you laughing at?

Laughing at? I don't even remember the rain stopping, and now the sky is clear and it's daylight for crissake. He laughed again and realized he was turning giddy. And that was funny and he laughed at that. He had crawled ten feet out of the brambles into an autumn-plowed field before he understood that he was out. It was quite a joke. He squinted and tried to see the end of the field and couldn't, and tried standing and couldn't, and the inside of his head was spinning so much that he had to laugh again. Then he suddenly quit. The kid would be around here somewhere aiming. He'd enjoy watching me come out sliced to pieces before he shot. The sonofabitch I'll.

Bean with bacon soup.

His stomach heaved up.

And that was a joke too. Because what on earth did he have in his stomach to heave up? Nothing. That's right, nothing. So what was this stuff on the ground in front of him? Raspberry pie, he joked. And that made him sick again.

So he crawled through it over a couple of furrows and collapsed, and then he crawled over a few more. There was a pool of black water between two furrows. He had been twisting his face toward the sky all night to drink the rain, but his tongue was still choking him, his throat was still swollen dry, and he drank from the muddy water, poking his face down close and lapping and almost passing out with his face in the water. There was sweet gritty dirt in his mouth. A few more feet. Just try to do a few more feet. I get away, I'll kill that bastard kid. tear him.

Because I'm a, but then the idea fell apart on him.

I'm a, but he couldn't remember, and then he had to stop and rest, chin on the top of a mulchy furrow, the sun warming his back. Can't stop. Pass out. Die. Move.

But he couldn't move.

He couldn't raise himself to crawl on his hands and knees. He tried clawing at the dirt ahead of him to pull himself forward, but he couldn't force himself to move that way either. Got to. Can't pass out. Die. He braced his shoes against a furrow and pushed and pushed harder and this time he budged a little. His heart swelling, he pushed his shoes against the furrow even harder and inched forward through the mud, and he didn't dare let himself stop: he knew he would never be able to raise the strength to go again. Shoes against furrow. Push. Worm. The kid. That's it. He remembered now. He was going to fix the kid.

I'm not as good a fighter.

Oh yes, the kid's a better fighter.

Oh yes, but I'm, and then the idea fell apart again as he lapsed into the mechanical rhythm of shoes against furrow - push - one more time - and push - one more time. He didn't know when his arms had started back to work, hands clawing the dirt, dragging him along. Organize. That was the word he'd been searching for. And then he clawed forward and he touched something.

It took a while to register.

A wire.

He looked up, and there were other wires. A fence. And sweet God, through the fence was something so beautiful that he didn't believe he was really seeing it. A ditch. A gravel road. His heart was pounding wildly and he was laughing, sticking his head through the wires, shimmying through, the fence barbed wire, ripping his back some more, but he didn't care, he was laughing, rolling into the ditch. It was full of water and he tumbled on his back, the water trickling into his ears, and then he was struggling up the rise toward the road, sliding down, groping up, sliding, flopping himself over the top, one arm touching the gravel of the road. He could not feel the gravel. He could see it sure. He was squinting directly at it. But he could not feel.

Organize. That was it. Now be remembered it all.

I know how to organize.

The kid's a better fighter. But I know how. to organize.

For Orval.

For Shingleton and Ward and Mitch and Lester and the young deputy and all of them.

For me.

I'll cream that fucking bastard.

He lay there at the side of the road, repeating that over and over to himself, closing his eyes to the glare of the sun, snickering at how his pants were in shreds, at how bloody he was, the blood seeping through the mud on him while he grinned, repeating his idea, telling it to the state trooper who said 'My God' and gave up trying to lift him into the cruiser and ran for the car radio.