by Landslide
I had seen rabbit trails in plenty so I staked out the three snares, then collected some wood for a fire, selecting small dead larch twigs and making sure they were bone dry. I took them back to camp and arranged them so as to make a small fire, but did not put a match to it. It would be time for that after sunset when the smoke would not be noticeable, little though it would be. I found a small birch tree and cut a cylinder of bark with my hunting knife, and arranged it around the fire as a shield, propping it up with small stones so as to allow a bottom draught.
Half an hour after sunset I lit the fire and retreated a hundred yards to see the effect. I could see it because I knew it was there, but it would take a man as good as me or better to find it otherwise. Satisfied about that, I went back, poured some water into a pannikin and set the mushrooms to boil. While they were cooking I went to see if I had any luck with the snares. Two of them were empty but in one I had caught a half-grown doe rabbit. She didn't have more than a couple of mouthfuls of flesh on her but she'd have to satisfy me that night.
After supper I did a circuit of the camp, then came back and risked a cigarette. I reckoned I'd come nearly thirty miles heading due north. If I angled north-west from here I should strike the Kinoxi Valley in about fifteen miles, hitting it about a third of the way up just where Matterson's logging camp was. That could be dangerous but I had to start hitting back. Prowling around the edges of this thing was all very well but it would get me nowhere at all; I had to go smack into the centre and cause some trouble.
After a while I made sure the fire was out and went to sleep.
Chapter 2
I topped a rise and looked over the Kinoxi Valley at just about two o'clock next afternoon. The new Matterson Lake had spread considerably since I had seen it last, and now covered about one-third of its designed extent, drowning out the wasteland caused by the logging. I was just about level with the northernmost point it had reached. The logged area extended considerably farther and stretched way up the valley, almost, I reckoned, to the Trinavant land. Matter son had just about stripped his land bare.
As the logging had proceeded the camp had been shifted up-valley and I couldn't see it from where I was standing, so I dipped behind the ridge again and headed north, keeping the ridge between me and the valley bottom. Possibly I was now on dangerous ground, but I didn't think so. All my activities so far had been centred on Fort Farrell and on the dam which was to the south at the bottom of the valley.
I put myself in Howard Matterson's place and tried to think his thoughts -- a morbid exercise. Boyd had caused trouble in Fort Farrell, so watch it -- we nearly caught him there and he might try for it again. Boyd was interested in the dam, he was drilling there -- so watch it because he might go back. But Boyd had never shown much interest in the Kinoxi Valley itself, so why should he go there?
I knew what I was going to do there -- I was going to raise hell! It was ground I had prospected and I knew all the twists and turns of the streams, all the draws and ravines, all the rises and falls of the land. I was going to stick to the thick forest in the north of the valley, draw in Howard's hunters and then punish them so much that they'd be afraid to push it further. I had to brake his deadlock and get Howard in the open.
And I thought the best place to start raising hell was the Matterson logging camp.
I went north for four miles and finally located the camp. It was situated on flat ground in the valley bottom and set right in the middle of the ruined forest. There was too much open ground around it for my liking but that couldn't be helped, and I saw that I could only move about down there at night. So I used the remaining hours of daylight in studying the problem.
There didn't seem to be much doing down there, nor could I hear any sounds of activity from farther up the valley where the loggers should have been felling. It looked as though Howard had pulled most of the men away from the job to look for me and I hoped they were still sitting on their butts around Fort Farrell. There was a plume of smoke rising from what I judged was the cookhouse and my belly rumbled at the thought of food. That was another good reason for going down to the camp.
I watched the camp steadily for the next three hours and didn't see more than six men. It was too far to judge really properly but I guessed these were old-timers, the cooks and bottle-washers employed around the camp who were too old or not fit enough to be of use, either in logging or in chasing Bob Boyd. I didn't see I'd have much trouble there.
I rubbed my chin as I thought of the consequences of Howard's action and the conclusions to be drawn from them. He'd pulled off his loggers at full pay to search for me, and that was wasting him an awful lot of time and money. If he didn't get them back on the job it might be too late to save the trees -- unless he'd opened the sluices on the dam to prevent the lake encroaching any farther up the valley. But even then he'd be running into financial trouble; the sawmill must have been geared to this operation and the cutting off of the flow of raw lumber from the valley would have its repercussions there -- if he didn't get his loggers back to work pretty soon the sawmill would have to close down.
It seemed to me that Howard wanted me very badly -- this was another added brick in the structure of evidence I was building. It wasn't evidence in the legal sense, but it was good enough for me.
Towards dusk I made my preparations. I took the blankets from the pack and strapped them on the outside and, when it was dark enough, I began my descent to the valley floor. I knew of a reasonably easy way and it didn't take long before I was approaching the edge of the camp. There were lights burning in two of the prefabricated huts, but otherwise there was no sign of life beyond the wheezing of a badly played harmonica. I ghosted through the camp, treading easily and headed for the cookhouse. I didn't see why I shouldn't stock up on supplies at Howard's expense.
The cookhouse had a light burning and the door was ajar. I peered through a window and saw there was no one in sight so I slipped through the doorway and closed the door behind me. A big cooking-pot was steaming on the stove and the smell of hash nearly sent me crazy, but I had no time for luxuries -- what I wanted was the stock-room.
I found it at the end of the cookhouse; a small room, shelved all round and filled with canned goods. I began to load cans into my pack, taking great care not to knock them together. I used shirts to separate them in the pack and added a small sack of flour on top. I was about to emerge when someone came into the cookhouse and I closed the door again quickly.
There was only one door from the stock-room and that led into the cookhouse -- a natural precaution against the healthy appetites of thieving loggers. For the same reason there was no window, so I had to stay in the stock-room until the cookhouse was vacated or I had to take violent action to get out . ..
I opened the door a crack and saw a man at the stove stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. He tasted, put the spoon back in the pot, and walked to a table to pick up a pack of salt. I saw that he was an elderly man who walked with a limp and knew that violence was out of the question. This man had never done me any harm nor had he set out to hurt me, and I couldn't see myself taking Howard's sins out on him.
He stayed in the cookhouse for an eternity -- not more than twenty minutes in reality -- and I thought he'd never go. He puttered around in a pestiferous way; he washed a couple of dishes, wrung out a dishrag and set it to dry near the stove, headed towards the stock-room as though he were going to get something, changed his mind in mid-limp just as I thought I'd have to hit him after all, and finally tasted the contents of his pot again, shrugged, and left the cookhouse.
I crept out, checked that all was clear outside, and slid from the cookhouse with my booty. Already an idea had occurred to me. I had decided to raise hell, and raise hell I would. The camp was lit by electricity and I had heard the deep throb of a diesel generator coming from the edge of the camp. It was no trick to find it, guided by the noise it made, and the only difficulty I had was in keeping to the shadows.
The generator
chugged away in its own hut. For safety's sake, I explored around before I did anything desperate, and found that the next hut was the saw doctor's shop. In between the two huts was a thousand-gallon tank of diesel oil which, on inspection of the simple tube gauge, proved to be half full. To top it off, there was a felling axe conveniently to hand in the saw shop which, when swung hard against the oil tank, bit through the thin-gauge sheet metal quite easily.
It made quite a noise and I was glad to hear the splash of the oil as it spurted from the jagged hole. I was able to get in another couple of swings before I heard a shout of alarm and by that time I could feel the oil slippery underfoot. I retreated quickly and ignited the paper torch I had prepared and tossed it at the tank, then ran for the darkness.
At first I thought my torch must have gone out, but suddenly there came a great flare and flames shot skyward. I could see the figure of a man hovering uncertainly on the edge of the fire and then I went away, making the best speed I could in spite of my conviction that no one would follow me.
Chapter 3
By dawn I was comfortably ensconced in the fork of a tree well into the thick forest of the north of the valley. I had eaten well, if coldly, of corned beef and beans and had had a few hours' sleep. The food did me a power of good and I felt ready for anything Matterson could throw at me. As I got myself ready for the day's mayhem I wondered how he would begin.
I soon found out, even before I left mat tree. I heard the whirr of slow-moving blades and a helicopter passed overhead not far above treetop level. The downdraught of the rotor blew cold on my face and a few pine needles showered to the ground. The whirlybird departed north but I stayed where I was, and sure enough, it came back a few minutes later but a little to the west.
I dropped out of the tree, brushed myself down, and hoisted the pack. Howard had deduced what I wanted him to deduce and the helicopter reconnaissance was his first move. It was still too early for him to have moved any shock troops into the valley, but it wouldn't be long before they arrived and I speculated how to spend my time.
I could hear the helicopter bumbling down the valley and thought that pretty soon it would be on its way back on a second sweep, so I positioned myself in a good place to see it. It came back flying up the valley dead centre, and I strained my eyes and figured it contained only two men, the pilot and one passenger. I also figured that, if they saw me, they wouldn't come down because the pilot would have to stick with his craft and his passenger wouldn't care to tangle with me alone. That gave me some leeway.
It was a simple enough plan I evolved but it depended on psychology mostly and I wondered if my assessment of Howard's boys was good enough. The only way to find out was to try it and see. It also depended on some primitive technology and I would have to see if the wiles I had learned in the north would work as well on men as on animals.
I went through the forest for half a mile to a game trail I knew of, and there set about the construction of a deadfall. A snare may have been all right for catching a rabbit but you need something bigger for a deer -- or a man. There was another thing, too; a deer has no idea of geometry or mechanics and wouldn't understand a deadfall even if you took the trouble to explain. All that was necessary was to avoid man scent and the deer would walk right into it. But a man would recognize a deadfall at first sight, so this one had to be very cleverly constructed.
There was a place where the trail skirted a bank about four feet high and on the other side was a six-foot drop. Anyone going along the trail would of necessity have to pass that point. I man-handled a two-foot boulder to the edge of the bank and checked it with small stones so that it teetered on the edge and would need only a slight touch to send it falling. Then I got out the survival kit and set a snare for a man's foot, using fishing-line run through forked twigs to connect to a single pebble which held the boulder.
The trap took me nearly half an hour to prepare and from time to time I heard the helicopter as it patrolled the other, side of the valley. I camouflaged the snare and walked about the deadfall, making sure that it looked innocent to the eye. It was the best I could do, so I walked up the trail about four hundred yards to where it ran through a marshy area. Deliberately I ploughed through the marsh to the dry ground on the other side leaving much evidence of my passage -- freshly broken grasses, footprints and gouts of wet mud on the dry land. I went still farther up the trail then struck off to the side and in a wide circle came back to my man-trap.
That was half of the plan. The second half consisted of going down the trail to a clearing through which ran a stream. I dumped my pack by the trail and figured out when the helicopter would be coming over again. I thought it would be coming over that clearing on to the next pass so I sauntered down to the stream and tilled my canteen.
I was right, and it came over so unexpectedly it surprised even me. The tall firs muffled the sound until it was roaring overhead. I looked up in surprise and saw the white blob of a face looking down at me. Then I ran for cover as though the devil was at my heels. The 'copter wheeled in the air and made a second pass over the clearing, and then a wider circle and finally it headed down valley going fast. Matterson had found Boyd at last.
I went back to the clearing and regretfully ripped a piece of my shirt and stuck it on a thorn not far up the game trail. I'd see these guys did the right thing even if I had to lead them by the nose. I humped the pack to a convenient place from where I could get a good view of my trap and settled down to wait and used the time to whittle a club with my hunting knife.
By my figuring the helicopter would be back pretty soon. I didn't think it would have to go farther south man the dam, say, ten miles in eight minutes. Give them fifteen minutes to decide the right thing to do, and another eight minutes to get back, and that was a total of about a half-hour. It would come back loaded with men, but it couldn't carry more than four, apart from the pilot. Those it would drop and go back for another load -- say, another twenty minutes.
So I had twenty minutes to dispose of four men. Not too long, but enough, I hoped.
It was nearer three-quarters of an hour before I heard it coming back, and by the lower note I knew it had landed in the clearing. Then it rose and began to circle and I wondered how long it was going to do that. If it didn't go away according to my schedule it would wreck everything. It was with relief that I heard it head south again and I kept my eye on the trail to the clearing, hoping that my bait had been taken.
Pretty soon I heard a faint shout which seemed to have a triumphant ring to it -- the bait had been swallowed whole. I looked through the screen of leaves and saw them coming up the trail fast. Three of them were armed -- two shotguns and one rifle -- an d I didn't like that much, but I reflected that it wouldn't make any difference because this particular operation depended on surprise.
They came up that trail almost at a run. They were young and fresh and, like a modern army, had been transported to the scene of operations in luxury. If I had to depend on outrunning them I'd be caught in a mile, but that wasn't the intention. I had run the first time because I'd been caught by surprise but now everything had changed. These guys didn't know it but they weren't hunting me -- they were victims.
They came along the trail two abreast but were forced into single file where the trail narrowed with the bank on one side and the drop on the other. I held my breath as they came to the trap. The first man avoided the snare and I cursed under my breath; but the second man put his foot right in it and tripped out the pebble. The boulder toppled on to number three catching him in the hip. In his surprise he grabbed hold of the guy in front and they both went over the drop followed by the boulder which weighed the best part of a hundred and fifty pounds.
There was a flurry of shouting and cursing and when all the excitement had died down one man was sitting on the ground looking stupidly at his broken leg and the other was yowling that his hip hurt like hell.
The leader was Novak, the big man I had had words with before. "Why don't you
look where you're putting your big feet?"
"It just fell on me, Novak," the man with the hurt hip expostulated. "I didn't do a damn' thing."
I lay in the bushes not more than twenty feet away and grinned. It had not been a bad estimate that if a big rock pushes a man over a six-foot drop then he's liable to break a bone. The odds had dropped some -- it was now three to one.
"I've got a busted leg," the man on the ground wailed.
Novak climbed down and examined it while I held my breath. If any trace of that snare remained they would know that this was no chance accident. I was lucky -- either the fishing-line had broken or Novak didn't see the loop. He stood up and cursed. "Jesus! We're not here five minutes and there's a man out of action -- maybe two. How's your hip?"
"Goddam sore. Maybe I fractured my pelvis."
Novak did some more grumbling, then said, "The others will be along soon. You'd better stay here with Banks -- splint mat leg if you can. Me and Scottie'll get on. Boyd is getting farther away every goddam minute."
He climbed up on the trail and after a few well-chosen remarks about Banks and his club-footed ancestry, he said, "Come on, Scottie," and moved off.
I had to do this fast. I watched them out of sight, then flicked my gaze to Banks. He was bending over the other man and looking at the broken leg and he had his back to me. I broke cover, ran the twenty feet at a crouch and clubbed him before he had time to turn.
He collapsed over the other man, who looked up with frightened eyes. Before he had time to yell I had grabbed a shotgun and was pushing the muzzle in his face. "One cheep and you'll get worse than a broken leg," I threatened.
He shut his mouth and his eyes crossed as they tried to focus on mat big round iron hole. I said curtly, "Turn your head."
"Huh!"
"Turn your head, dammit! I Haven't all day."
Reluctantly he turned his head away. I groped for the club I had dropped and hit him. I was soft, I guess; I didn't relish hitting a man with a broken leg, but I couldn't afford to have him start yelling. Anyway, I didn't hit him hard enough. He sagged a bit and shook his head dizzily and I had to hit him again a bit harder and he flopped out.