Man-Stalk

The wind, coming down from the high places, had the smell of ice in it, but the sun was hot enough in the dooryard to make me unbutton my flannel shirt right down to the belt before I had half finished the repair work on the canoe. Belle had the kitchen door open and I hummed along with her as she sang in that true, husky voice.

I thought of the big wall chart I’d pinned up by the chunk stove. The letters were coming in and my schedule was filling up. It looked like another good year. When the snow finally goes for good it gives a man a wonderful feeling. I had to get all the equipment in shape to take the customers out after bear, trout, deer and moose — all in season, all scheduled.

A man can feel so good he gets a little superstitious about it. I stopped working and straightened up and for a moment the ice in the breeze struck through me, down to the small tightly-coiled knot of memory. I smiled it away. After a time you learn how to look a man in the eye again, how to walk down the village street the way an honest man walks. In time, you become an honest man, because that is what you wanted to be all the time. And you are accepted as such. It was that simple.

I heard the car slow down to turn into my place and, because the memory was so close to me then, I turned too quickly. Old habits come back.

After a few years in that sort of country you know everyone. I knew the big station wagon belonged to Car-son Medwell. I had never spoken to Medwell, though I had seen him accompanied by the small-boned dark man who sat behind the wheel. Medwell owns ten thousand acres of heavily wooded perpendicular country.

I turned back to my work. The man blatted the horn. In the woods when you drive into a man’s yard you get out of the car. I didn’t look up. I kept working. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Belle come to the doorway.

The little dark man came across the dooryard toward me, his mouth tight, throwing his feet out to each side in a cityman’s strut. I watched him come.

“You deef?” he asked.

“What can I do for you?”

“Medwell wants to see you. I’m to take you back with me.”

I glanced at Belle. Her face had taken on that unintelligent look she saves for annoying strangers.

“You could have a long wait,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of work here.”

He looked at me and he smiled. It was an oddly knowing smile. It said that we should understand each other. It made the breath I took feel shallow, as though I wasn’t getting enough air.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to come along and find out what he wants?”

The threat in the words was semi-innocent. But it was there. I bent over and laid the brush across the top of the can. “It might, at that.”

“You were going to get that finished before lunch, Ben,” Belle said mildly.

I turned and let her see some of the fury I wanted to show the little man. Her eyes widened a bit, then she turned without a word and went back into the kitchen.

I buttoned my shirt as I walked toward the station wagon. I found that I had my jaw set so tightly that my teeth were beginning to ache.

A half mile down the road I asked, “What does he want?”

“He’ll tell you.”

He drove uncomfortably fast. We turned off and bounced over the corduroy road, then turned again into the winding brush road through the Medwell property. I had heard about his lodge, but I had never seen it. It was made of redwood, cedar and lake stone, sprawling along the south shore of a lake that was a half-mile in length.

Medwell was bigger than I had realized. He was standing by a huge stone fireplace, a drink in his hand, as we came in. A thick, heavy, white-skinned, positive man in his fifties. He wore gray flannels and his stomach pushed out against the front of the fancy dude-ranch shirt. A young blonde girl sat by the fire hugging her knees. Medwell looked at her and she got up without a word and went out. The little man who had brought me stayed.

“Sit down, Lawson,” Medwell said. “Scotch, rye or whatever?”

I told myself this was just an order for a hunting party and that my imagination had been playing tricks. I sat down. “Nothing, thanks.” The leather chair was deep and comfortable.

“I won’t waste your time, Lawson. I’ve been looking for a man with your qualifications and your... ah... interesting background.”

I couldn’t keep my hand from tightening on the chair arm. He saw it before I could relax it. He smiled. “Lawson, did you really think you could keep it hidden forever?”

“Keep what hidden?”

“You would play a poor brand of poker. Guides have to have licenses. If they knew, they wouldn’t license you again, would they?”

There was no use running the bluff any further. “It was long ago and I served my time. What can you gain by ruining me and my business?”

He finished his drink and set the glass on the mantel. He had a satisfied look. “Ruining you is the furthest thing from my mind, Ben Lawson. I have an assignment for you. It’s completely legal, of course. But, to be blunt, I’m afraid you wouldn’t have taken it unless I — found a basis for applying pressure. Do you know how I made my money?”

I’ve seen a bear in a trap after he knows he can’t pull free. There’s a slow-moving numbness about him.

“Mining, wasn’t it? In Canada.”

He used the soft tone of a man speaking of work he loves. “The mining business is a poker game. There is ruthlessness in it. Four years ago I went into partnership on one venture with a man named Jay Fournier. He was handling the prospecting end, using aircraft. I found that it was in his mind to dissolve the partnership before staking claim to a good strike. I took steps. No need for details. I ended up with the strike and Jay ended up, as I planned, with twenty years in King’s Prison. I’m afraid his knowledge of innocence in the matter on which he was convicted made him bitter.”

“You mean then that he was framed?”

“It was a very rich strike, Lawson. Fifteen days ago he escaped, killing a guard in the process. They believe he has drifted down this way across the border. He was once a guest here. It is no secret that I’m here. And he has nothing to lose.”

“How do I come in?” I asked.

“You are a woodsman, and, rumor has it, a good one. So was Jay, four years ago. I have a pleasant apartment in New York. I could go there. But I have never run from anything in my life and fifty *is a poor age to start. I am the bait. If I was any good in the woods I would become the hunter. But I never play another man’s game with his cards.”

“I won’t go into the woods to kill a man,” I said.

“Did I say that, Lawson? I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I am hiring you to protect me. I shall pay you for it.”

I thought it over. He gave me time to think. What could be wrong with such an assignment?

Before I could answer, he took a wallet from his hip, took out five crackling, crisp hundred-dollar bills. He put them on the arm of the chair, close to my hand, spread so that I could see there were five of them.

“If you can capture Jay Fournier. Lawson. I shall consider it a job well done. He can be returned to prison. For that I will add another five hundred. However, if you should find it necessary to kill him, I know that there would be considerable mental anguish involved. So I am prepared to add forty-five hundred to that five hundred to bring it to five thousand.”

They were both watching me. The small man looked quietly amused. Medwell had the look of a man who has just pushed a bet to the center of the table.

“You said you didn’t want him killed, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know why you keep questioning my motives, Lawson. Killing a man is unpleasant work. The reward should be higher. You can take the job and try to capture him. A thousand dollars is good money up here.”

I hadn’t touched the five hundred. “How do I know I would get the forty-five hundred?” That didn’t sound right. I added quickly, “That is, if I have to kill him.”

“All I can give you is my word. And many men have taken my word when larger amounts are involved. They haven’t regretted it. It’s a matter of pride with me.”

Anger came from an unknown place. I stood up quickly. “What kind of fool game is this? If you want him killed, say so!”

Carson Medwell shrugged and picked up his glass. “You have an active imagination, Lawson. I want him returned to King’s Prison.”

I stood by the chair. I watched my own hand go out, touch the bills, pick them up. I could hand them to Medwell. Or crumple them and drop them. Yet, to refuse, would mean that a word from Medwell in the right place would put an end to the years of work. What harm could there be in trying to capture an escaped convict? He deserved capturing. Taking money would not imply a willingness to kill the man.

I folded the bills the long way and put them in my shirt pocket.

“He has had time to get here, barely,” Medwell said. “I want you in the woods as soon as possible.”

“Tomorrow morning,” I said. I looked him in the eye. It required an effort to bring my gaze up to his face.

“Take him back, Harry,” Medwell said. “I am armed, Lawson, and so is Harry. I shall stay inside the lodge here until this thing is over.”

My attempt at humor was shallow. “Suppose he gets me?”

“That will be unfortunate, Lawson.”

I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark. I had been there a long time.

Belle touched my back. I hadn’t heard her awaken. “What is it, Ben? What’s the matter?”

“Can’t sleep,” I said.

“I could heat some milk,” she said uncertainly.

“Don’t bother. Go to sleep.”

I reached out in the darkness, found the shirt pocket, took the bills out. They felt cold. I dressed quickly.

Turning on the light over the old desk, I sat down and put the money in front of me. The pen scratched as I wrote:

“Dear Mr. Medwell,

I have thought it over and I can’t do what you ask. I think you must go ahead if you want to and tell them about me. I think you want that man killed and you know if you told me to do it I would not be able to because...”

The point caught in a rough spot on the paper and sprayed a thin line of tiny blots. I heard Belle getting out of bed. I crumpled the note and tucked the money back in the shirt pocket.

She stood, barefooted, in the bedroom doorway, her toes pulled up off the cold boards. “Don’t you want to tell me?” she said.

I made myself smile. I dipped my fingers into the pocket and got one bill loose from the others. I held it out to her. “Here. This was a secret. I’ve been saving it to get you something. You better spend it.”

She looked solemnly at the bill, doubt in her eyes, and reached out her hand and took it. “Goodness!” she said. I saw the doubt slowly go away. She came over and kissed me. “It’s a lot of money, Ben.”

“It was a tip from — from Ludwigs.”

“Last year? After he got the bear?”

“After he got the bear.” I stood up and stretched. “Now I can sleep. I’ve got to go out early. Medwell hired me.”

“For how long?”

“Until he gets tired of walking across his own land.”

I didn’t sleep. I lay and felt the warmth that came from her. At three I caught the clock before the alarm sounded. She was breathing deeply. I took the three-ought-three with the four-power scope. In the shoulder bag I put dried beef, army rations, compass, matches and my Belgian .38 automatic with three extra clips. I took three extra clips for the rifle, too. Moccasins, belt knife, heavy brown jacket, trousers and dark cap.

I shivered in the pre-dawn chill. By six o’clock the thin edge of a watery sun began to show. By then I was on Medwell’s property with nothing between me and the Canadian border but line after line of mountains, woods that had been too rugged to be timbered off. If Medwell was right, Fournier was either north of me, working his way south, or he had already crossed onto Medwell’s property. I began to range from west to east across the northern portion of the tract, keeping to the terrain that would show up sign the quickest. Mist clung to the low places, with the sun beginning to eat at it. I picked up mud and killed the gleam of the barrel of the three-ought-three.

I felt twice as tall as a man and four times as strong. I had been a fool to worry. This was just another job. I moved with the greatest care, finding animal track, keeping to cover when I could, moving fast in open spots.

It must have been about nine when I pulled back and held my breath as a sow bear, her sides slatted by the long winter, ambled across a clearing with her two cubs. One whiff of me and she’d wheel and charge. They went off into the brush and I waited twenty minutes before continuing.

At noon I crawled into a thicket and ate, burying the traces as I had after the cold breakfast. At three o’clock in the afternoon I found man track. It was in damp leaf mold. He took big strides, toes turned in a bit, wore store shoes. I ranged back a few yards over the trail he’d made, examined the leaf bruises on the pale green stuff that was beginning to poke up from the forest floor. It could have been a day old, I guessed. I followed the trail until I found a place where he had to work his way through close brush. On a broken twig I found two gray cotton threads. I went over the brush carefully, but it wasn’t until I imitated how a man would have to go through there that I found what I wanted. The normal thing would be to lift a rifle high in your right hand and edge through sideways. I found a dark stain on the edge of a green bud over my head. When I pulled it down and touched my tongue to it I tasted gun oil. Fournier had a rifle.

This was tracking in a new, more exciting way.

I decided to follow his trail with as much speed as I could manage without getting winded. What to do when I came up on him wasn’t clear. I was probably two miles from the north end of the small lake.

Fournier laid his trail across the easiest, fastest part of the terrain, the way a trained woodsman will. I was glad that he was making no effort to cover track. I had a hunch that he would have made it almost impossible to unravel. With the start he had, it was likely that he had been holed up in sight of the lodge waiting for a shot at Medwell.

Absorption in the problem at hand made me careless. Also, it was good to stop thinking of why I was doing this, to think only of trotting along the clear track he had left.

The stream came in from the right, bubbling white over the stones, cold and black in the eddies. It was the inlet to the small lake. I saw where his toe had dug into the far bank. The western side of the lake was a sheer rock wall, rising from the north and south ends to a peak a good eighty feet high a bit south of the midpoint, fading off to the west in a steep wooded slope. I stood in the open listening to the sound of the stream. Fournier would know that the highest crest of the wall would give him a vantage point.

A man can be empty-headed. I stood there like a fool, picking out stepping stones, thinking of circling and coming up close enough to rush him...

I stepped from stone to stone. There was a pulse of air by my cheek, a slapping sound against one of the stones, a screech of ricochet off into the air. As I dived headlong for the brush the sound of the distant shot punctuated the scream of the ricochet. A second slug chunked into the ground close by and I scrambled around a corner of rock, thudding my rifle against it in my haste. From the interval between the thud of the slug and the sound of the shot I guessed that he was shooting at better than three hundred yards. Fournier was a shot. No mistake about that. There had been sympathy in my mind for him. Medwell had put both of us in an awkward situation. I wasn’t sorry for him any longer. I felt it all, from the incredulous feeling at the nearness of death to the hard anger that followed.

The man needed killing.

The thud against the rock had cracked the object lense of the scope. I dismounted it, checked the position of the windage on the supplementary V sight, stowed the scope in the shoulderbag after taking out the automatic and the clips for both weapons. I put the clips in my pockets, the automatic under my belt, then shoved the shoulderbag back under the rock. The last light of day was going fast. I wiggled off to where it was safe to stand. Then, bending low, I ran hard through the brush, ignoring the noise, heading due west. When my wind was nearly gone I dropped and lay still. With silence and care I angled left, drifting through the deepening shadows. When at last I felt the slope, I dropped to hands and knees and went more slowly. As the pitch grew steeper I flattened out, progressed by reaching the rifle far ahead with my right hand, worming my way up to it. The highest part of the wall overlooking the lake was ahead of me.

I picked one of the trees outlined against the sky and waited until it was black night. It took long minutes to work my way up the trunk into the crotch I had spotted. From here the first dawn light would silhouette anyone on the crest forty yards in front of me.

During the long, cold, miserable night I brought myself back up to the point of anger every time I felt it slipping away. Twice, wedged into the crotch, I managed to sleep for a little while, waking to rub feeling back into my legs. I knew I would be close enough to pick the shot. Smash the right shoulder. It would be enough. But four inches and four thousand dollars to the left was the base of the throat.

When the dawn began to grow, when the trees became ghostly visible, I edged around and brought the rifle up into position. Lighter and lighter. I searched the shadows under the pines for him, alert for any movement.

At last it was daylight, the stand of pines as empty as it had been a hundred years before that morning.

The crackle of brush, behind me, was alarmingly close. I twisted around with a great violent effort and saw a big man, crouched, moving slowly up the trail I had made the night before. Fear was quick, hot and fluid in my throat. He had outsmarted me by cutting my back trail at the first dawn’s light. As I tried to swing the rifle around to get in the first shot, the butt thumped the tree. With one oiled and perfect motion he brought the rifle up to his shoulder and fired.

I called myself a dead man as I fell. The smashing blow against the rifle numbed my arm, broke my hold and my balance. I floated down, naked and slow and alone in the air, down like a balloon to the ground so far below, yet always with the consciousness of which side was exposed to him, which side he would hit. I landed hard on my right shoulder and hip on the soft ground, clawing my way to the shelter of the trunk at the moment I landed, snatching the automatic from my belt. Something plucked at my thigh and there was a wetness there, a slow stinging. I threw one shot from the automatic at where he had been. The rifle was a yard and a half to my right, the foregrip splintered where his slug had hit it.

“Fournier!” I shouted. “Fournier!”

Alarmed birds scolded from the brush. There was no answer. The black flies found me again, fire needles on my wrists and throat. I knew I had to kill him or be killed, and all of the implications of the dirty mess struck me. I had been playing, never committing myself completely, thus making two mistakes. Either mistake could have killed me. The next one would. I had to decide what he would do.

In his position I would circle. Which way? Off to the right so as not to put the tree bole between me and the rifle. I listened to the bird sounds. Off to my right a bird made a sudden squawk of alarm. That was enough. To reach slowly for the rifle would be a guarantee to death. I prodded the nick in my thigh. It was bleeding slightly. A bit of flesh had been chewed away.

On the slow count of five I lunged for the rifle, gathered it up, rolled with it in my arms to the shelter of a rotting log, hearing the hard whack of the shot.

Keeping my head down I lifted the automatic and squeezed off three fast shots in his general direction. At the third shot I dropped the automatic, swung the rifle around and, with my finger on the trigger, I lifted my head cautiously and quickly above the log. I had to see him before he saw me. The slope was empty. I wanted to pull my head back down. He had to be out there. There were two places where he could have taken cover. The first was a tangled deadfall. I aimed at the densest part of it and shot twice, carefully. Silence. I swung the muzzle toward the second possible hiding place.

As I did so he burst out of the deadfall, heading upslope at a blundering run, his left hand, fingers spread, pressed hard against his belly. I kept the sights on him but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I am quick to shoot a gunshot animal, but Fournier was a man. He almost reached the pines and fell heavily, full length.

I stood up, shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to explain to Fournier. I wanted to tell him I didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t move. I walked by him to the brink of the rock wall. The morning sun was on the lodge roof. I could see Harry standing there, looking over toward me. They had heard a great deal of shooting.

“Hallo!” I called. “Hallo! It’s all over. Over!”

Medwell came out and stood beside Harry. Harry pointed toward me. They went down to the dock and climbed into the small boat, Harry in the bow, Medwell handling the outboard motor. The staccato sound came closer. They came in a wide curve to a spot far below me.

Medwell cut the motor and I heard the echoes off the far hills.

“You got him?” Medwell asked in a conversational tone.

“I killed him, damn you!”

“There’s no need to be emotional. You did very well. Push him over and Harry’ll put a line on him and we’ll tow him in.”

My voice shook and my eyes were stinging. “Come on up here and throw him over yourself.”

I heard the sound behind me. I spun around. Fournier, his face an agonized mask, was clawing his way toward the brink of the cliff. He pulled himself along by plunging his hard fingers deep into the bed of loam and pine needles that covered the rocks. I did not have time to see more. All I could feel was awe at the will that would not let him die. My weakened leg buckled under me and I fell to my hands and knees. The ground gave way under my right knee and I slid slowly over the brink.

“Watch it!” Medwell yelled.

There was no solid thing to grasp. I slipped backward. At the last moment I kicked myself away from the edge and fell. I hugged my knees and braced my shoulders. The fall was interminable and sickening. The water was as hard as a fist. I went down and down into green-black depths, my lungs tightening. Going back up was like climbing a soft green ladder. I broke through into the air, gasping.

I was thirty feet from the boat. The icy water was deadening my arms and legs. Medwell did an odd thing. He held a ridiculous looking target pistol in his right hand. With his free hand he yanked his shirt out of his pants, lifted it and stared down at a small black spot on the swelling expanse of white flesh at his waist. I saw that it was a hole. I had not heard the rifle.

Medwell slowly lifted the target pistol. I looked up. All I could see was the rifle barrel, Fournier’s blood-black hand on the foregrip.

Fournier fired again. The shot took Medwell high on the forehead, slamming his head back at a crazy angle. He slid sideways in the seat, lowered the pistol to the lake surface and let go of it. He let his thick white hand rest in the water. Harry sat huddled in the bow, making himself small. There was no need. Fournier’s rifle came down, turning once, end for end, in the sunlight. It hit muzzle first and disappeared with little splash.

I swam to the boat, pushed Medwell over onto his face in the bottom and climbed up into the stern.

As I steered in toward the dock Harry reached over and pulled the wallet out of Medwell’s hip pocket. I caught him by the scruff of the neck as he started toward the house.

He turned, vicious as a weasel. “Don’t think you’re getting any more money out of this, Lawson. He promised. I didn’t. Get your hand off me.”

I could crack his spine in my hands. I wanted to. He saw it on my face. He made wet sounds with his mouth and put his spread hands against my chest.

I hit him and caught him before he went into the water. I couldn’t find the blonde girl. He was beginning to stir by the time I had the bodies loaded. I hit him again and threw him in the station wagon with the bodies.

All the fine long years of work.

I drove to the village, to the trooper station on the far side and parked. I went in and told them everything and gave them the four hundred. I knew I had waited too long to turn back.

They kept me four days and let me go — without my license.

The sun is bright and hot. I’ve unbuttoned my shirt to the waist. Belle has talked me into finishing the work on the canoe. She won’t listen to me when I tell her it’s pointless. She has some crazy idea that all my regular customers would petition the Conservation Department about my license.

I tell her that we’re outcasts. We should move on. She has a blind, immovable faith in our friends and neighbors. I looked up a moment ago. There’s a half dozen of them coming up the road. They won’t come in. They just want to look at the ex-convict. Have a good look, friends. I won’t even look up.

But why should Belle sing at a time like this — unless they were coming as friends? She must be right. I’m one of them again, for good.