There was a knock on the door and Ted opened it to admit Loring Blade.
"Hi!"
"Hi!" the warden grumped. "I've made all arrangements."
"For taking Dad to jail?"
"For having my head examined!" the warden snapped. "Who in his right mind would let himself in for this sort of thing?"
"In about three minutes," Ted promised, "I'll have hot coffee and bacon and eggs. You'll feel better then."
They ate, the warden maintaining a sour silence and Ted again filled with doubt. All he really knew was that Carl Thornton had killed Damon and wounded Pythias before the season opened. The wounded deer in the beech scrub could have been shot by anyone at all and—
No, they couldn't. Al and Smoky Delbert, as far as anyone knew, had been the only two people in Coon Valley that day. Al wouldn't shoot an illegal deer and Ted had Loring Blade's word for it that Smoky's rifle had never been fired. There had been a third party, and after Ted chased him out of the thickets on Burned Mountain, Pythias had cut through the beech scrub. Obviously, he knew the route and he wouldn't have remembered that, a couple of months ago, he had almost come to disaster on it. A deer's memory isn't that long.
When the two had finished eating, Ted asked, "Shall we go?"
"I'm ready. But if we're going to Glory Rock, why can't we drive to the mouth of Coon Valley?"