The dog started up-slope toward the brush and Ted followed. He ducked into the thicket, so dense that, once within it, visibility was limited to twenty feet or less and there were places where he had to crawl. In the center of the thicket, Tammie halted to look down and Ted came up beside him.
In the center of the beech brush was a well-marked trail used by deer that knew perfectly well the advantages of staying in a thicket. Tammie was looking down at a splash of drying blood, obviously a deer had been badly wounded here and had fallen. Ted heaped lavish praise on his dog.
"Good boy! Good boy, Tammie!"
He set his jaw and his eyes glinted. Unless a hunter were within twenty feet of the trail, in which case it was highly improbable that any deer would have come down it, nobody within the beech brush could have wounded the deer. But how about the opposite slope?
Ted retraced his steps and climbed to the top of Glory Rock. From that vantage point, where he could look across at it instead of trying to look through it, the beech thicket became more open. He couldn't see everything, but he could see very plainly the place where the deer had fallen. Moving to one side, Ted had the same view. The deer could have been shot from any of a dozen places on this slope.... What had taken place assumed definite shape in Ted's mind.
Smoky Delbert, always the poacher, had known of the beech thicket and the trail through it. He had waited for a deer and shot one when it appeared. Somebody else, somebody who knew and took violent exception to Smoky and his antics—and there were at least thirty men who did—had either happened along or had witnessed the whole thing. Probably there had been an argument, followed by the shooting.
No nearer a solution than he had been before, Ted nibbled his lip in frustration. He knew now why Smoky had been shot, but he still hadn't the faintest idea as to who had shot him. All he had were widely scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with too many pieces missing. However, first things came first and he'd better get the hurt deer, for it was both practical and merciful to do so. Badly wounded, it couldn't possibly travel far. If he found it still alive, the least he could do was put it out of its misery. If it was dead, he should save what could be salvaged of the venison. Al would have done the same had he been here.
Ted said, "Come on, Tammie."
They returned to the place where the deer had fallen and took up the trail. It was easy to follow, for the animal had been badly hurt. Straight down the trail it had run, and sixty yards farther on Ted found where it had fallen again and thrashed about. The beech brush blended back into beech forest and the trail Ted followed swerved to within twenty feet of the valley floor. He found a great puddle of blood where the deer had fallen a third time.
He marveled. The deer had been down three times in a little more than three hundred yards and it never should have been able to get up and go on. But it had gone on and it had also nearly stopped bleeding. From this point there was only a spot here and there to mark the leaves. Ted shook his head. If he wasn't seeing this himself, he wouldn't have believed it. He remembered that a deer is an incredibly tough thing. It can still run after receiving wounds that would stop a man in his tracks.