First Blood

'What difference does it make? The state police will be out here in no time anyway - just as soon as the guy who owns this land calls them about all these cars driving across his fields. You'll have to turn this over to them no matter what.'

'Not if I'm in these woods before they get here.'

It would have been better for him to try convincing Orval without his men next to him listening. If he did not press Orval, then he would come off less to his men, but if he pressed too much, Orval would just throw up his hands and go home.

What Orval said next did not help any. 'No, Will, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you. I'll do a lot of things for you - but those hills are tough to get through even in the day, and I won't take my dogs up there at night to run them blind just because you want this show all to yourself.'

'I'm not asking you to run them blind. All I'm asking is that you bring your dogs in with me, and the minute you think it's gone too dark, we'll stop and camp. That's all it takes for me to stay in pursuit. Come on, we've camped out before, you and I. It'll be like when Dad was around.'

Orval let out a deep breath and looked around at the forest. It was darker, cooler. 'Don't you see how crazy this is? We don't have equipment to hunt him. We don't have rifles or food or -'

'Shingleton can stay behind to get whatever we need. We'll give him one of your dogs so in the morning he can track us to where we camped. I have enough deputies to keep charge of town so four of them can come in with Shingleton tomorrow. I have a friend at the county airport who says he'll lend his helicopter and fly us anything more we need and fly ahead to see if he can spot the kid. The only thing that can hold us up now is you. I'm asking you. Will you help?'

Orval was looking down at his feet, scuffling one boot back and forth in the dirt.

'I don't have much time, Orval. If we get up in there soon enough, the state police will have to let me stay in control. They'll back me up and have cruisers watching the main roads down out of the hills and leave us to chase him across the high ground. But I'm telling you, I might just as well forget about catching him if you don't chip in your dogs.'

Orval glanced up and slowly reached into his jacket for a tobacco pouch and cigarette paper. He was mulling it over as he carefully rolled a cigarette, and Teasle knew not to rush him. Finally, just before Orval struck a match: 'Could be, if I understood. What did this kid do to you, Will?'

'He sliced one deputy nearly in half and beat another maybe blind.'

'Yeah Will,' Orval said and struck the match, cupping it to light his cigarette. 'But you didn't answer me. What did this kid do to you?'

2

The country was high and wild, thickly wooded, slashed by ravines and draws and pocked with hollows. Just like the North Carolina hills in which he had been trained. Much like the hills he had escaped through in the war. His kind of land and his kind of fight and nobody had better push too close or he would push back - hard. Fighting to beat the fading light, he ran as far and as fast as he could, always up. His naked body was filmed with blood from the branches jabbing into him his bare feet were gashed and bloody from the sharp sticks lying across his trail, from the rocky slopes and cliff walls. He came up a rise where the skeleton of a hydro pylon straddled the top and a swath had been cut down through the trees to stop the electric tension wires from tangling in the treetops. The clear section was gravel and boulders and scrub brush, and he scrambled painfully up, high tension wires overhead. He needed to reach the tallest vantage point he could before it got dark; he needed to see what was on the other side of the rise and figure which way to go.