It was, Ted decided after the warden had left, a smart way to do things. The penalty for breaking game laws should be harsh, but fining Arthur Beamish a hundred and seventy-five dollars would bother him less than a ten-dollar fine might inconvenience a Stacey or a Crawford. However, Beamish's hunting privileges really meant something to him.
At any rate, the warden's method worked. Nels, who lost none of his admiration for the grouse hunters, gave Ted a complete report at intervals. Nobody in the camp took more than the limit after Beamish was fined—and there was still another angle. Ted had always known that he and his father were in the minority—sometimes it seemed that nobody except he and Al cared what happened to the Mahela. But now the boy was assured that others worked for its best interests, too.
The grouse hunters had gone home and for a whole week there would be nobody in the camp. There was nothing to worry about in the immediate future. Al, as his last note indicated, was doing all right. The Beamish party, who'd really liked Nels, had expressed their satisfaction in more lavish tips and for the first time in three years, Nels' family could get by for a while, even if he did not work. However, he could certainly work all through deer season. The Andersons might face a bleak New Year, but they would have a happy Christmas.
Ted had decided to seize the week's interlude as a fine time to go over the camp from top to bottom, but there was little to do. Nels would never write a learned dissertation about Shakespeare, or come up with a startling new aspect of the nuclear fission theory, but whoever hired him got all they paid for, plus a substantial bonus. Working by the day, in Nels' opinion, meant working twenty-four hours, if that were necessary. The cabin was spotless. Even the blankets had been aired.
With time heavy on his hands, Ted fretted. He collected the six grouse to which he was entitled and put them in the freezer. For lack of something else to do, he went twice more to the three sycamores near Glory Rock, the scene of Smoky Delbert's shooting. He didn't find anything, but he hadn't really expected to discover any new evidence or clues. Looking for them had helped kill time while he waited anxiously for the bear hunters.
Deer were not especially hard to get, if all one wanted was venison; there were does and young deer that wouldn't even run from hunters. But the big old bucks with acceptable racks of antlers got big because they were wary and they were difficult to bring down. Woodcock were sporting and who hunted grouse successfully had every right to call himself a hunter. Squirrels were fun, providing one hunted them with a rifle instead of a shotgun. But unless one used dogs to bring them to bay—and it was against the law to use dogs on any big game in the Mahela—black bears were far and away the most difficult game of all.
Keen-nosed and sharp-eared, they almost always knew when hunters were about. Wise, they were well aware of the best ways to preserve their own hides. As circumstances prescribed, they could slink like ghosts or run like horses and they laid some heartbreaking trails. Fifty miles was no unusual distance for a black bear to cover in a day and they were full of tricks. Ted himself had followed black bears on snow and come to where the trail ended abruptly. The bears had walked backwards, stepping exactly in the tracks they had made running forward, and made a long sidewise jump that always delayed their pursuer and sometimes baffled him.
Some men who'd spent their lives in black bear country had yet to see their first one. It took hunters of the highest caliber to get them, and thus Ted looked forward to those who would occupy his camp. But while he waited there was little else to do and he spent some of his time in Lorton.
Just another sleepy little town for forty-nine weeks of the year, Lorton was almost feverishly preparing for its moment of glory. If it was not exactly the center of all eyes, due to its geographical position as the town nearest the Mahela, it was the center of deer hunting. Every room in its two hotels and three motels had long since been reserved and any householder with a room to rent could have a choice of at least ten hunters. In the next few weeks, Lorton would see at least twice as many deer hunters as it had permanent residents. Its normally quiet streets would have bumper-to-bumper traffic. Parking space would be at a premium; there'd be crowds waiting in every eating place; stores would sell more merchandise than they did at any other time of the year; and any Lortonite who knew anything at all about the Mahela, even if his knowledge was limited to how to get into it and out of it again, could have a job guiding deer hunters, if he wanted it.
In addition, every camping ground in the Mahela would have its quota of trailers, tents and hardy souls who either slept in cars or made their beds on the ground. Sometimes, in the event of heavy storms, these venturesome ones got into trouble and were trapped until snowplows or rescue parties reached them. But this fall the weather had been mild, almost springlike, and there was every indication that it would continue to be so.