'You bet on it,' Teasle said.
Ward looked anxiously toward the direction of the shots. He closed his eyes, sickened. 'Those poor dumb bastards.' Reluctantly he bolstered Mitch, and they moved off to the left, gaining speed. The rain eased off, then got heavier.
'The kid will probably wait for us at the cliff in case we didn't hear,' Teasle said. 'That will give us a lead. As soon as he's sure we're not coming, he'll set off across the bluff to find our trail, but this rain will wipe it out and he won't find anything.'
'We're in the clear then,' Ward said.
'Clear then,' Mitch repeated stupidly.
'No. When he doesn't find our trail, what he'll do is run toward the far end of the bluff and try to get ahead of us. He'll find a spot where he thinks we're most likely to climb down, and he'll lie waiting for us.'
'Well then,' Ward said, 'we'll just have to get there first, won't we?'
'First, won't we,' Mitch repeated, staggering; and Ward made it sound so easy, Mitch's echo sounded so funny, that Teasle laughed, nervously. 'Hell yes, we'll just have to get there first,' he said, looking at Shingleton and Ward, impressed by their control, and he suddenly thought that things might work out after all.

13
At six the rain changed to big cracking chunks of hail, and Shingleton was hit so hard in the face by some that they had to grope close under the shelter of a tree. The leaves had already fallen from the tree, but there were enough bare branches for most of the hail to glance off of, and the rest of it came down striking sharply against Teasle's bare back and chest and the arms he had raised protectively over his head. He was desperate to start moving again, but he knew it would be crazy to try: a few wallops from chunks of hail this size could lay a man flat. But the longer he stayed huddled by this tree, the more time the kid had to catch up, and his only hope was that the hail had forced the kid to stop and take cover also.
He waited, glancing around, braced for an attack, and then at last the hail stopped and no more rain came, and with the light clearing and the wind dying, they worked fast across the bluff. But without the distraction of the wind and rain, the noises they made hurrying through the underbrush were loud, a signal to the kid. They tried going slower, but the noises were almost as loud, so they hurried on again, crashing.
'Doesn't this top have an end?' Shingleton said. 'We've been going for miles.'
'For miles,' Mitch echoed. 'Four miles. Five. Six.' He was dragging his feet again.
Next he sagged; Ward heaved him up; and then Ward himself heaved up, careening backward. The report from the rifle was rolling through the trees, and Ward was now on his back, arms and legs stuck out in a death frenzy, and from where Teasle lay on the ground, he saw that Ward had taken the bullet directly in the chest. He was surprised to be lying on the ground. He didn't remember diving there. He was surprised that he had his pistol out.
Christ, Ward dead now too. He wanted to crawl to him, but what was the use. What about Mitch? Not him too. He was fallen into the mud, lying still as if he had been shot as well. No. He was all right, eyes opening, blinking at a tree.
'Did you see the kid?' Teasle said fast to Shingleton. 'Did you see where he shot from?'
No answer. Shingleton was flat on the ground, staring blankly ahead, his face drawn tight around his massive cheek-bones.
Teasle shook him. 'Did you see, I asked you. Snap out of it!'
Shaking him was like pressing a release valve. Shingleton broke into motion, fist up close to Teasle's face. 'Keep your fucking hands off me.'
'Did you see him, I asked you.'
'No, I said!'
'You didn't say anything!'
'Anything,' Mitch echoed dumbly.
They looked at him. 'Quick, give me a hand,' Teasle said, and they dragged him forward into a slight hollow ringed with bushes, a rotting tree fallen across the forward rim. The hollow was full of rain water, and Teasle sank slowly into it, cold against his chest and stomach.
His hands were shaking as he checked his pistol to be sure no water plugged the barrel. He knew what had to be done now and it frightened him, but he did not see any other way, and if he thought about it too much, he might not be able to make himself go through with it. 'Stay here with Mitch,' he said mouth-dry to Shingleton. His tongue had not been moist in hours. 'If somebody comes back through these bushes and doesn't first say it's me, shoot him.'
'What do you mean stay here? Where-'
'Out ahead. If we try running back the way we came, he'll only follow us. We might as well save ourselves the trouble of running and try to end this right here.'
'But he's trained to fight like this.'
'And I was trained for night patrol in Korea. That was twenty years ago, but I haven't forgotten all of it. I might be slow and out of practice, but I don't hear any better ideas.'
'Stay here and wait for him. Let him come to us. We know he'll come. We're ready for him.'
'And what happens when it gets to be night and he sneaks right onto us before we hear him?'
'We'll move out when it's night.'
'Sure, and make so much noise he won't even need to see us to shoot us. He'll just have to aim toward where he hears us. You just said it. He's trained to do this, and I'm betting that's our edge. With any luck he won't expect me to go out there and play it his way. He'll expect me to run, not attack.'
'Then I'm going with you.'
'No. Mitch needs you to stay with him. Two of us crawling around out there might make enough noise to warn the kid.'
He had another reason for doing it alone, but he didn't wait to explain anymore. He had waited too long as it was. Immediately he crawled up out of the hollow, to the left around the fallen tree. The mud was so chill against his stomach that he had to force himself down along it. He squirmed forward several feet, and paused to listen, and squirmed forward again, and each time he dug his shoes into the mud to push ahead, the mud gave a sucking noise and he tensed. The suck increased until finally he stopped using his feet to push and switched to wriggling forward on his elbows and knees, always careful to keep his pistol free of the mud. Drops of water spilled icy onto his spine as he wormed under bushes. He stopped and listened and crawled on.
Shingleton wouldn't understand his other reason for doing this anyhow, he thought. It wasn't Shingleton who had been in charge and made the mistakes that killed Orval and Lester and the young deputy and Ward and Galt and the two men in the helicopter and all the rest. So how could Shingleton understand why he couldn't bring himself to let anybody else die for him? This time it would be just himself and the kid and nobody else, just the way this thing started, and if there were going to be anymore mistakes, this time it would be just himself who would pay.
His watch hands had been at six-thirty when he set out. He was so busy concentrating on the movements and sounds around him that it was seven when he next looked at his watch. A squirrel scrambling up a tree startled him into guessing it was the kid, and he came close to shooting at it. The light was dimming again, not from the clouds now, but from the start of evening, and the air was colder and he was shivering as he crawled. Even so, there were rivulets of sweat trickling down his face and back and under his arms.
It was fear. The hot pressure of his anus. The adrenalin squirting into his stomach. He wanted desperately to turn and go back, and because of that, he urged himself to go farther on. God in heaven, if he missed this chance at the kid, it wasn't going to be because he was afraid to die. Jesus no. He owed that to Orval. He owed it to the rest of them.
Seven-fifteen. He had crawled far out now, and he had worked back and forth across the forest, pausing, peering deeply into groves and thickets to see if the kid was hiding there. Small noises made him jumpy, noises he could not account for, the snap of a branch that could be the kid adjusting his position to aim, the brush of leaves that could be the kid circling behind him. He crawled slowly, fighting his panic to speed up and get this over, fighting to concentrate on everything around him. The slightest piece of cover was all the kid needed. All he himself had to do was get careless once and not check one bush or one stump or one dip in the ground, and that might be the end. It would be so abrupt that he would never hear the burst of the shot that killed him.
Then it was seven-thirty and the shadows had merged deep enough to trick him. What looked like the kid was only the dark trunk of a crooked tree set far back in the gloom. A fallen log in back of a bush deceived him the same way, and he knew he had done the best he could. It was time to head back. That was the worst part. His eyes were tired and the shadows were touching him, and he just wanted to hurry back to Shingleton and relax a minute and let Shingleton keep watch for the kid. But he could not dare give up searching to speed up back there. Even as he returned, he still had to take his time and check every bush and tree before he made a move. He had to look behind, afraid the kid was sneaking toward him. His back felt so naked, so white in the gloom that he kept expecting to glance around and see the kid aiming with a smile at the cleft between his shoulder blades. The bullet would blast apart his backbone and rupture his insides and instantly he would be dead. In spite of himself he hurried to return.
He almost forgot to let Shingleton know it was himself coming. Wouldn't that be a laugh. To risk searching for the kid and then be shot by his own man. 'It's me,' he whispered. 'It's Teasle.'
But nobody answered.
I whispered too low and he didn't hear me, Teasle thought. 'It's me,' he repeated, louder. 'It's Teasle.' But again nobody answered, and Teasle knew something had to be wrong.
He circled the hollow and crept up from behind, and something was more than wrong. Shingleton wasn't there, and Mitch was flat on his back in the water, his throat neatly slit from ear to ear, his blood steaming in the cold. Shingleton. Where was Shingleton? Worried and tired of waiting, he must have gone after the kid too, and left Mitch and the kid came up and slit his throat to kill him quietly. The kid, Teasle realized, the kid must be very close. He crouched and spun, and the sight of Mitch, the frenzy of trying to protect himself from all angles made him want to cry out, Shingleton, get back here, Shingleton! Two men facing in opposite directions would maybe see the kid before he rushed them. Shingleton, he wanted to call.
Instead Shingleton called to him from some place on the right. 'Look out, Will, he's got me!' His cry was punctuated by a rifle shot, and that was all Teasle could stand. He finally had his breakdown, running before he knew it, screaming, racing away, charging through the shadows, through the trees and bushes. Aaaeeiii, he was screaming. The niche in the cliff, was all he could think. The cliff the cliff !

14
He shot at Teasle, but the light was bad and the trees were too thick, and anyway, Shingleton grabbed the rifle so that the bullet jerked low. Shingleton ought to have been dead. He had been shot in the skull. He should not have been able to get back off the ground and grab the rifle to throw off its aim. Rambo really had to admire him as he shot him again, through one eye now, and this time Shingleton was dead for sure.
Without a pause he set off running after Teasle. It was obvious that Teasle's direction was back toward the niche in the cliff, and he planned on beating him there. He did not follow exactly on Teasle's path - Teasle might get control of himself and lie somewhere waiting - so he ran in a line parallel to Teasle, racing to beat him to the cliff.
He just missed him. He came hurrying through the woods, able to see the cliff edge now and the top of the niche, and he dropped to his knees, hiding for Teasle. But then he heard chips of stone rattling down the cliff and the sound of heavy breathing down there, and he rushed over just in time to see Teasle jump the last few feet down the niche, ducking around the side of the cliff wall. He saw too the bodies of the four deputies where he had shot them at the bottom of the cliff, and he didn't like the position he was in. Now Teasle had the advantage. To climb down the niche after him, he would be as easy a target for Teasle as the four deputies had been for himself.
He knew damn well that Teasle was not going to stand down there all night waiting for him. Shortly Teasle was going to take his chance and clear out, and he would be left up on top, suspecting that Teasle was gone but not willing to risk that he was still there. To be safe he had to find another way down off this bluff, and that way had to be in the direction Teasle would take for home.
He raced back toward where he had killed Shingleton, and passed his body, and continued racing toward where he hoped the bluff would slope down into the draw, and it did slope down, and in half an hour he was into the draw, running through the woods toward a stretch of grass he had dimly spotted from above. The light was fading worse, and he was hurrying to get to the grass before the dark could blot out Teasle's trail. He reached the grass and ran through the line of trees that bordered it, not wanting to show himself as a target while he searched for tracks that led out of the trees into the open space. He looked and ran to look farther along, but still no tracks in the wet earth, and he thought that maybe Teasle had been slow to leave the cliff, began to worry that Teasle was behind him, coming, watching. Just as it started to rain again and made everything even darker, he found the grass pushed down.
There.
But he had to take a handicap, give Teasle a headstart.
Because in spite of his temptation to rush across the open grass after him, he had to wait until the night was fully black: Teasle might not be running ahead at all, he might he lying in the bushes on the other side, aiming. Then he supposed it dark enough so he could run across without showing himself as a target, but his caution was needless because when he got over there Teasle was not around. The rain was falling lightly through the trees, it muffled sounds very little, and there, up ahead, something was working to break through the thick underbrush.
He set out after it, stopped and listened, corrected his direction toward the noise, then set on again. He expected that fairly soon Teasle would give up running and try to ambush him, but as long as he could hear Teasle running, it was safe to keep after him and make all the noise he had to. Then one time he stopped and listened, and the running up ahead was stopped as well, so he sank to the ground and began crawling quietly forward. In a minute the running up ahead continued again, and he leapt to his feet, charging after it. That was the pattern for an hour: running, stopping, listening, crawling, running. The rain kept on in a cold faint drizzle, and the belt that was cinched around his ribs loosened, and he had to tighten it to ease the pain. He was certain now that his ribs were broken and that sharp bones were lancing his insides. He would have given up, but he knew he would have Teasle soon; he doubled over in agony, but Teasle was still running up there, so he straightened, pushing himself on.
The chase went up a slope of trees, over a spine of rock and down a patch of shale to a stream, then along the bank of the stream, across the stream into more woods, across a ravine. The pain in his chest cut sharply as he jumped across, and he almost slipped down into the ravine, but he pulled himself up, listened for Teasle, heard him and chased after him. Each time his right foot hit the ground, the jolt went all the way up his right side, grating his ribs. Twice he was sick.

15
Up and down, the pattern of the country repeated itself. Stumbling up a slope of rocks and brush, Teasle felt like he was back on the ledge, trying to get up the rise to the woods. In the dark he couldn't see the top; he wished he knew how far it was; he couldn't keep on climbing much longer. The rain was making the rocks slippery, and he was losing his balance, falling hard. He took to crawling up, and the rocks tore at his pants, cut into his knees, while behind him, down in the trees at the bottom, he heard the kid breaking through the undergrowth.
He scrambled faster. If he could just see the top and know how far he had to go. The kid must be out of the woods now and starting up the slope, and Teasle thought of shooting blindly down to hold him back. He couldn't: the flashes from his pistol would give the kid a target, but Christ, he had to do something.
In one desperate lunge he reached the top but didn't know it was the top until he tripped and barely grabbed a rock in time to stop from rolling down the other side. Now. Now he could shoot. He stretched out and listened to where the kid was rushing up the slope, and he fired six times in a line across the noises. Then he hugged the ground in case he had missed, and a shot came from below, zinging over him. He heard the kid climbing off to the left, and he fired once more at the noise before he started racing down the other side of the slope. Again he tripped, and now he struck his shoulder solidly against a rock and couldn't keep from rolling as he grabbed his shoulder and tumbled to the bottom.
He lay there dazed. The wind was knocked out of him, and he fought to breathe but he couldn't. He gasped and pushed his stomach muscles in, but they wanted to push out, and then he managed to suck in a little air and a little more, and he was almost breathing normally again when he heard the kid clambering on the rocks above. He groped to his knees, then to his feet - and discovered that in his fall he had lost hold of his pistol. It was somewhere up on the slope. No time to go back for it. No light to find it.
He staggered through woods, circling he guessed, going nowhere, winding around and around until he'd be brought to bay. Already his knees were buckling. His direction was wobbly. He was bumping against trees, a crazy vision in his head of him in his office, bare feet on the desk, head tilted sipping hot soup. Tomato soup. No, bean with bacon. The rich expensive kind where the label said don't add water.

16
It was only minutes now before he'd have him. The noises ahead were slowing, more erratic, clumsy. He could hear Teasle breathing hoarsely, he was that close to him. Teasle had given him a good race, that was sure. He had figured to tag him several miles ago, and here they were still at it. But not for long. A few minutes now. That was all.
The pain in his ribs, he had to slow, but it was still a fair pace, and since Teasle had slowed too, he wasn't bothered much. His hand was over his ribs, helping the belt to press. All his right side was swollen. In the rain the belt was even looser than before, and he had to keep his hand pressing.
Then he stumbled and fell. He hadn't done that before. No, he was wrong about that. He had stumbled at the ravine. Then he stumbled again, and rising to his feet, working on, he decided it might take slightly more than a few minutes before he caught up to Teasle. It would be soon, though. No question about it. Just a little more than a few minutes. That was all.
Had he said that out loud?
The brambles caught him full in the face as he came up to them in the dark. They were spikes lashing into him, and he recoiled, clutching his ripped cheeks. He knew it wasn't rain wetting his cheeks and hands. But it did not matter, because off in there in the brambles was the sound of Teasle crawling. This was it. He had him. He bore to the left along the edge of the brambles, waiting for it to curve down and lead him to the bottom of the patch where he could rest and wait for Teasle to crawl out. In the dark he would not be able to see the surprised look on Teasle's face when he shot him.
But the longer he hurried along the edge of the brambles, the farther it stretched on, and he began to wonder if the brambles covered all this section of the slope. He hurried farther, and still the brambles did not curve down, and then he was sure they stretched all along this rise. He wanted to stop and double back, but he had the thought that if he kept on just a little more, the brambles would at last curve down. Five minutes became what he judged was fifteen, and then twenty, and he was wasting his time, he should have gone right in after Teasle, but now he could not. In the dark he had no idea where Teasle had entered.
Double back. Maybe the brambles did not go far along the other end of this ridge, maybe they curved down over there. He rushed back, holding his side, moaning. He hurried a long while until he no longer believed they would ever curve down, and when next he stumbled and fell, he remained face down in the muddy grass.
He'd lost him. He had given up so much time and strength to come so close and lose him. His face stung from the gashes of the brambles. His ribs were on fire, his hands pulpy, his clothes ripped, his body slashed. And he had lost him, the rain coming down in a gently cooling drizzle as he lay there splayed out, breathing deeply…holding it, letting it out slowly, breathing deeply again, letting the dead weight of his arms and legs relax with every slow exhale - for the first time he could remember, crying, softly crying.

17
Any moment the kid would be breaking through the brambles after him. He crawled hysterically. Then the brambles got lower and thicker until he had to press himself flat and wriggle. Even so, the lowest branches scraped across his back and snagged in the seat of his pants, and when he twisted to unsnag them, other branches gouged his arms and shoulders. He's coming, he thought, and squirmed desperately forward, letting the barbs dig into him. His belt buckle scooped into the mud, funneling it into his pants.
But where was he going? How did he know he wasn't completing a circle, returning to the kid? He stopped, frightened. The land sloped down. He must be on the side of a hill. If he kept wriggling downward, he'd be headed straight away. Or would he? Hard to think, suffocated in the dense black tangle and the constant rain. You bastard kid, I'm going to get away and kill you for this.
Kill you for this.
He lifted his head off the mud. And couldn't recall having moved for a while. And gradually understood he had passed out. He stiffened and glanced all around. The kid could have crept up to him a his stupor and slit his throat just like he did to Mitch. Christ, he said out loud, and his voice was a croak that startled him. Christ, he said again - to free his voice - but the word broke like a crust of ice.
No, I'm wrong, he thought, his brain slowly unclouding. The kid wouldn't have crept up in my sleep to kill me. He would have wakened me first. He'd want me to know what was happening.
So where is he? Watching close? Finding my trail, coming? He listened for noises in the brush and didn't hear anything and had to keep moving, had to keep distance between them.
But when he tried crawling fast, he only managed a sluggish strain to pull forward. He must have been unconscious a long time back there. The light wasn't black now, it was gray, and he could see the brambles everywhere, thick and ugly, spines an inch long. He fingered his back, and he was like a porcupine, dozens of barbs hooked in his skin. He stared at his hand all bloody and struggled worming on. Maybe the kid was very close, watching him, enjoying him suffer.
Then it all confused, and then the sun was up, and through the tops of the brambles, he saw the sky bright and stark blue. He laughed. What are you laughing at?
Laughing at? I don't even remember the rain stopping, and now the sky is clear and it's daylight for crissake. He laughed again and realized he was turning giddy. And that was funny and he laughed at that. He had crawled ten feet out of the brambles into an autumn-plowed field before he understood that he was out. It was quite a joke. He squinted and tried to see the end of the field and couldn't, and tried standing and couldn't, and the inside of his head was spinning so much that he had to laugh again. Then he suddenly quit. The kid would be around here somewhere aiming. He'd enjoy watching me come out sliced to pieces before he shot. The sonofabitch I'll…
Bean with bacon soup.
His stomach heaved up.
And that was a joke too. Because what on earth did he have in his stomach to heave up? Nothing. That's right, nothing. So what was this stuff on the ground in front of him? Raspberry pie, he joked. And that made him sick again.
So he crawled through it over a couple of furrows and collapsed, and then he crawled over a few more. There was a pool of black water between two furrows. He had been twisting his face toward the sky all night to drink the rain, but his tongue was still choking him, his throat was still swollen dry, and he drank from the muddy water, poking his face down close and lapping and almost passing out with his face in the water. There was sweet gritty dirt in his mouth. A few more feet. Just try to do a few more feet. I get away, I'll kill that bastard kid… tear him.
Because I'm a, but then the idea fell apart on him.
I'm a, but he couldn't remember, and then he had to stop and rest, chin on the top of a mulchy furrow, the sun warming his back. Can't stop. Pass out. Die. Move.
But he couldn't move.
He couldn't raise himself to crawl on his hands and knees. He tried clawing at the dirt ahead of him to pull himself forward, but he couldn't force himself to move that way either. Got to. Can't pass out. Die. He braced his shoes against a furrow and pushed and pushed harder and this time he budged a little. His heart swelling, he pushed his shoes against the furrow even harder and inched forward through the mud, and he didn't dare let himself stop: he knew he would never be able to raise the strength to go again. Shoes against furrow. Push. Worm. The kid. That's it. He remembered now. He was going to fix the kid.
I'm not as good a fighter.
Oh yes, the kid's a better fighter.
Oh yes, but I'm, and then the idea fell apart again as he lapsed into the mechanical rhythm of shoes against furrow - push - one more time - and push - one more time. He didn't know when his arms had started back to work, hands clawing the dirt, dragging him along. Organize. That was the word he'd been searching for. And then he clawed forward and he touched something.
It took a while to register.
A wire.
He looked up, and there were other wires. A fence. And sweet God, through the fence was something so beautiful that he didn't believe he was really seeing it. A ditch. A gravel road. His heart was pounding wildly and he was laughing, sticking his head through the wires, shimmying through, the fence barbed wire, ripping his back some more, but he didn't care, he was laughing, rolling into the ditch. It was full of water and he tumbled on his back, the water trickling into his ears, and then he was struggling up the rise toward the road, sliding down, groping up, sliding, flopping himself over the top, one arm touching the gravel of the road. He could not feel the gravel. He could see it sure. He was squinting directly at it. But he could not feel.
Organize. That was it. Now be remembered it all.
I know how to organize.
The kid's a better fighter. But I know how… to organize.
For Orval.
For Shingleton and Ward and Mitch and Lester and the young deputy and all of them.
For me.
I'll cream that fucking bastard.
He lay there at the side of the road, repeating that over and over to himself, closing his eyes to the glare of the sun, snickering at how his pants were in shreds, at how bloody he was, the blood seeping through the mud on him while he grinned, repeating his idea, telling it to the state trooper who said 'My God' and gave up trying to lift him into the cruiser and ran for the car radio.


PART 3

1
It was night, and the back of the truck smelled of oil and grease. A sheet of stiff canvas had been pulled across the top to form a roof, and in under it Teasle sat on a bench, staring at the big map that hung on one wall. The only light was from an unshielded bulb dangling over the map. Next to the map was a bulky two-way radio on a table.
The radioman wore earphones. 'National Guard truck twenty-eight in position,' he was saying to a deputy. 'Three miles down from the bend in the stream.' The deputy nodded, shoving one more red pin into the map next to the others along the south side. To the east, yellow pins showed the deployment of state police. Black pins in the west were police from nearby towns and counties; white pins to the north were police from Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Covington.
'You're not going to stay here all night, are you?' someone said to Teasle from outside the back of the truck. Teasle looked, and it was Kern the captain of the state police. He was out far enough that the glare from the bulb lit just part of his face, his eyes and forehead in shadow. 'Go home and get some sleep, why don't you?' Kern said. 'The doctor told you to rest, and nothing serious will happen here for a while.'
'Can't.'
'Oh?'
'Reporters are looking for me at my place and the office. The best way I know to rest is not go through everything again for them.'
'They'll be coming around here looking for you soon anyhow.'
'No. I told your men at the roadblocks not to let them pass.'
Kern shrugged and stepped toward the truck into the full light. It was stark and accented the lines in his forehead, the pinched skin around his eyes, making him look older than he was. It did not reflect off his red hair, making even that seem lustreless and dull.
He's the same age I am, Teasle thought. If he looks like that, then after these last few days, how must I look?
'That doctor came close to making a career out of bandaging your face and hands,' Kern said. 'What's that dark stain soaking through your shirt? Don't tell me you're bleeding again.'
'Some kind of ointment he spread on too thick. I have bandages under my clothes too. The ones around my legs and knees are so tight I can hardly walk.' He made himself smile, as if the tight bandages were a practical joke from the doctor. He did not want Kern to realize how very bad he felt, sick, dizzy.
'Any pain?' Kern said.
'I hurt less before he put these bandages on so tight. He gave me some pills to take every hour.'
'Any help?'
'Enough.' That sounded right. He had to be careful how he talked about it to Kern, minimizing his pain, but not so much that Kern would stop believing him and insist that he go back to the hospital. Before, at the hospital, Kern had shown up damn mad at him for rushing into the forest after the kid without waiting for the state police. 'It's my jurisdiction, and you took advantage, and now you can just stay the hell out of this,' Kern had said. Teasle had taken it all, letting Kern get rid of his anger, and then slowly he had done his best to convince Kern that more than one person was needed to organize this wide a search. There was another argument that he did not use, but he was sure that Kern was thinking it: as many men could die this time as at the start, and somebody ought to be around to share the responsibility. Kern was that son of weak leader. Teasle had seen him rely on others too often. So now Teasle was here helping, but not necessarily for long. Despite Kern's faults, he did worry about his men and how much work they could stand, and if he once thought that Teasle was in too great pain, he could easily decide to send him away.
Outside, trucks were rumbling by in the night, big lorry trucks that Teasle knew would have soldiers in them. A siren started, coming up the road fast, shrieking by toward town, and he was glad to talk about something besides how he felt. 'What's the ambulance for?'
'Another civilian who just got himself shot.'
Teasle shook his head. 'How they're dying to help.'
'Dying is about the word for it.'
'What happened?'
'Stupidity. A bunch of them were up camping in the woods, figuring to be right with us when we start in the morning. They heard a noise out in the dark and guessed it might be the kid trying to sneak down and across the road, so they grabbed their rifles and went out to see. First thing, they mixed up in the dark. One guy heard another guy and thought it was the kid, started shooting, the other guy shot back, everybody else started shooting. God's mercy nobody was killed, just hit bad. I never saw anything like it.'
'I did.' For a time earlier, when he had been staring at the map, his head had felt like it was stuffed with satin, and now without warning it was like that again. His ears felt stuffed too, and the words 'I did' seemed to have come in an echo from outside him. Off balance, faintly nauseous, he wanted to stop and lie down on the bench, but he could not let Kern know what was happening to him. 'When I worked in Louisville,' he said, and almost could not continue. 'About eight years ago. There was a little town near us where a six-year-old girl had been kidnapped. The local police thought she might have been assaulted and left somewhere, so they organized a search, and some of us off-duty that weekend drove over to help. Trouble was that the people who were organizing the search put out a call for help over the radio stations and in the newspapers, and any guy who wanted a free meal and some excitement decided to come.'
He was determined not to lie down. But the light was going gray on him, the bench he sat on seemed to be tilting. He finally had to compromise and lean back against the wall of the truck, hoping he looked at ease. 'Four thousand,' he said, concentrating to keep the words straight. 'No place for them all to sleep, to eat. No way to co-ordinate that many. The town just grew overnight and split at the seams. Most of them drank half the time and then showed up hung-over on the buses going out to the search area. One guy nearly drowned in a swamp. One group got lost, and the search had to be stopped so everybody else could go find them. Snake bites. Broken legs. Sunstroke. It finally got so confused that all civilians had to be ordered home, and just the police kept on the search.'
He lit a cigarette and dragged deeply on it, trying to numb his dizziness. He looked and the radioman and the deputy were turned to him, listening. How long had he been talking? Ten minutes it seemed, although it could not have been. His mind was skimming up and down in a smooth undulating pattern.
'Well don't stop,' Kern said. 'What about the girl? Did you find her?'
Teasle nodded slowly. 'Six months later. In a shallow grave off a side road about a mile from where the search originally ended. Some old guy drinking in a bar in Louisville made a few jokes about feeling little girls, and we heard about it. A long chance there was a connection, but we followed up anyhow. Since I had been on the search and knew the case, they had me question him, and forty minutes after I started on him, he came out with the whole story. How he'd been driving by this farm and saw this little girl splashing in a plastic pool in the front yard. It was her yellow swimsuit attracted him, he said. Grabbed her right out of the front yard and into the car without anybody seeing. He took us directly to the grave. It was the second grave. The first grave had been in the middle of the search area, and while the civilians had been wandering around screwing things up, he had come back one night and moved her.' He took another deep drag on his cigarette, feeling the smoke fill his throat, his bandaged fingers thick and numb holding the cigarette. 'Those civilians will screw things up here too. Word about this should never have been let out.'
'It's my fault. There's a reporter who comes around my office who heard my men talking before I could keep them quiet. I've got some of them herding all outsiders back to town right now.'
'Sure, and that bunch in the woods might get jumpy again and take a shot at your men. Anyway, you'll never round every one up. Tomorrow morning there'll be civilians all through those hills. You saw the way they've taken over town. There's just too many of them to control. The worst hasn't come yet. Wait until the professionals show up.'
'I don't know what you mean professionals. Who in hell are they?'
'Amateurs really, but they call themselves pros. Guys with nothing better to do than chase around the country to every place that has a search. I met a few of them when we were looking for that little girl. One guy had just come from the Everglades where they were tracking down some lost campers. Before that he'd been to California helping search for a family out hiking caught in a brush fire. That winter he'd been to Wyoming after skiers hit by an avalanche. Between times he went where the Mississippi was flooding or where miners were sealed off by a cave-in. The trouble is, types like him never work with the people in charge. They want the power of organizing their own groups and going off on their own, and before long they confuse the search pattern, interfere with official groups, run ahead to places that look exciting, like old farms, leaving whole fields unsearched -'
Teasle's heart suddenly fluttered, missed a beat, sped up, and he held his chest, gasping.
'What's the matter?' Kern said. 'You're-'
'Fine. I'm fine. I just need another pill. The doctor warned me this would happen.' It wasn't true. The doctor had not warned him at all, but this was the second time his heart had done that, and the first time a pill had brought it back to normal, so now he quickly swallowed another. He certainly could not let Kern know there was anything the matter with his heart.
Kern did not look satisfied with his answer. But then the radioman adjusted his earphones as if he were listening to a report, and told the deputy 'National Guard truck thirty-two in position.' He traced his finger down a list on a page, 'That's at the start of Branch Road,' and the deputy shoved one more red pin into the map.
The chalk taste of the pill remained in Teasle's mouth. He breathed, and the tightness around his heart began to relax. 'I never could understand why that old guy moved the little girl's body to a different grave,' he said to Kern, his heart relaxing even more. 'I remember when we dug her up, and how she looked from six months in the ground and what he had done to her. I remember thinking, God, it must have been a lonely way to die.'
'What just happened to you?'
'Nothing. Fatigue, the doctor said.'
'Your face matched the gray of your shirt.'
More trucks rolled by outside, and in their noise Teasle did not have to answer. Then a patrol car pulled up behind Kern, its headlights flooding him, and Teasle knew he would not have to answer at all.
'I guess I have to go,' Kern said reluctantly. These are the walkie-talkies to hand out.' He stepped toward the cruiser, hesitated, then turned back. 'Why don't you at least lie down on that bench and catch a little sleep while I'm gone. Staring at the map won't tell you where the kid is, and you'll want to be fresh when we start tomorrow.'
'If I get tired. I want to make double sure that everybody is where he should be. I'm in no shape to go into those hills with you, so I might as well be good for something here.'
'Listen. What I said at the hospital about the poor way you went after him.'
'It's done. Forget it.'
'But listen. I know what you're trying. You're thinking about all your men shot and you're straining your body to punish yourself. Now maybe it's true what I said - that Orval might still be alive if you had worked with me from the beginning. But the kid is the one who pulled the trigger on him and the rest. Not you. Remember that.'
Teasle did not need to be reminded. The radioman was saying 'State police unit nineteen in position,' and Teasle was dragging on his cigarette, watching intently as the deputy shoved another yellow pin into the eastern side of the map.

2
The map had almost no interior details. 'Nobody ever wanted a breakdown of these hills before,' the county surveyor had explained when he brought it. 'Maybe if a road goes through there someday, we'll have to chart it. But surveying costs a lot of money, especially in that kind of rough country, and it just never seemed practical to use up our budget on something nobody would ever likely need.' At least the surrounding roads were accurate. To the north they formed the top part of a square; but the road to the south curved like the bottom part of a circle, joining with the roads that went straight up on either side. Teasle's communication truck was parked on the lowest part of the south road's arc. That was where he had been found by the state trooper, and since the kid was last near there, it was the point from which the search was being directed.
The radioman looked at Teasle. 'A helicopter's coming in. They're talking, but it's not clear enough to understand.'
'Our two just left. None of them should be coming back this soon.'
'Motor trouble maybe.'
'Or it's not one of ours at all. It might be another news crew flying by taking pictures. If it is I don't want them to land.'
The radioman called it, asking for identification. No reply. Then Teasle heard the roar of the approaching rotor blades, and he rose stiffly from the bench, walking with difficulty to the open back of the truck. Next to the truck was the plowed field that he had crawled across that morning. It was dark, and then he saw the furrows, a harsh white as the searchlight on the bottom of the copter swooped down and across the field. It was the kind of searchlight the camera crew had used to take pictures earlier.
'They're hovering,' he told the radioman. 'Try them again. Make sure they don't land.'
But already the copter was setting down, motor quieting, blades whipping through the air in a recurrent whistle that came less and less often. There was a light in the cockpit, and Teasle saw a man climb out, and from the bearing of this man as he walked across the field toward the truck, steady and lithe and straight, Teasle knew even without being able to make out his clothes that this was no reporter, nor any state policeman coming back with motor trouble. This was the man he had sent for.
He climbed down slowly and in pain from the back of the truck and limped to the edge of the road. The man had just reached the barbed wire fence where the field ended.
'Excuse me, I've been up and down the line to find someone,' the man said. 'I wonder if he's here. They said he might be. Wilfred Teasle.'
'I'm Teasle.'
'Well, I'm Sam Trautman,' he said. 'I've come about my boy.'
Three more lorry trucks drove by, National Guardsmen standing in back holding rifles, faces pale under their helmets in the dark; and as the headlights flashed, Teasle could see Trautman's uniform, his Captain's insignia, his green beret tucked neatly under his belt.
'Your boy?'
'Not exactly, I suppose. I didn't train him myself. My men did. But I trained the men who trained him, so in a sense he's my boy. Has he done anything more? The last I heard he killed thirteen men.' He said it clearly, directly, without emphasis, but all the same Teasle recognized the things subdued in his voice; he had listened to them too often before, too many fathers at night in the station, shocked, disappointed, embarrassed over what their children had done.
But this was not the same, not that simple. There was something else hidden in Trautman's voice, something so unfamiliar in this kind of situation that Teasle was having trouble identifying it, and when he did, he was bewildered.
'You sound almost proud of him,' Teasle said.
'Do I? I'm sorry. I don't mean to. It's just that he's the best student we ever turned out, and things would certainly be wrong with the school if he hadn't put up a good fight.'
He pointed to the barbed wire fence and began climbing over it, the same smooth economy of movement as when he had got out of the helicopter and walked across the field. Coming down into the ditch on Teasle's side of the fence, he was close enough for Teasle to see how his uniform molded perfectly to his body, not a fold or a wrinkle. In the dark his skin seemed the color of lead. He had short black hair combed straight back, a thin face, a sharp chin. The chin pointed forward a little, and Teasle was reminded of how Orval sometimes used to think of people in terms of animals. Not Trautman, Orval would have said now. Not trout. But feist. Or ferret. Or weasel. Some type of slick fleshhunter. He remembered career officers he had come up against in Korea, professional killers, men totally at home with death, and they always made him want to stand back. I don't know if I really want you here after all, he thought.
Maybe asking you to come was a mistake.
But Orval had taught him to judge a man by his grip as well, and when Trautman came in three steps out of the ditch, his handshake was not what Teasle expected. Instead of rough and overbearing, it was strangely gentle and firm at the same time. It made him very comfortable.
Maybe Trautman would be all right.
'You came sooner than I expected,' Teasle told him. Thank you. We need all the help we can get.'
Because he had just been thinking of Orval, he was suddenly struck that he had gone through this another time, two nights ago when he had thanked Orval for coming, in almost the same words that he had just used to thank Trautman.
But now Orval was dead.
'You do need all the help,' Trautman said. 'To he honest I was planning to come even before you called. He's not in the service anymore, this is strictly a civilian matter, all the same I can't help feeling partly responsible. One thing though - I'm not about to involve myself in any butcher job. I'll only help if I see that this thing is done properly, to capture him, not to kill him without a chance. He might get killed yet, but I wouldn't like to think that was the point. Are we together on that?'
'Yes.' And he was telling the truth. There was no way he wanted the kid shot to pieces out of his sight up in the hills. He wanted him brought back, wanted to see every damn thing that happened to him.
'All right then,' Trautman said. 'Although I'm not sure my help will do you any good. It's my guess that none of your people will get close enough to even see him, let alone catch him. He's much smarter and tougher than you can imagine. How is it he didn't kill you too? I don't see how you ever managed to get away from him.'
There it was again, that faintly mixed tone of pride and disappointment. 'Now you sound like you're sorry I did.'
'Well in one sense I am, but there's no need to take that personally. Strictly speaking, he shouldn't have slipped up. Not with his skill and training. If you had been an enemy he let get away, it could have been very serious, and I would like to find out why it happened in case there's a lesson I can pass on to my men. Tell me how you've planned this so far. How did you get the National Guard mobilized this fast?'
'They had war games scheduled for the weekend. Their equipment was ready, so all they had to do was activate their men a few days early.'
'But this is a civilian command post. Where are headquarters for the military?'
'Down the road in another truck. But the officers are letting us give the orders. They want to learn how their men do alone, so they're only monitoring, just as they would have in the war games.'
'Games,' Trautman said. 'Christ, everybody loves a game. What makes you sure he's still around?'
'Because every road around these hills has been watched since he went up there. He can't have gotten down without being seen. Even if he had, I would have felt it.'
'What?'
'It's nothing I can explain. A kind of extra sense I've been having after what he put me through. It doesn't matter. He's up there all right. And tomorrow morning I'll be pouring men after him until there's one for every tree.'
'Which isn't possible of course, so he still has the advantage. He's an expert in guerrilla fighting, he knows how to live off the land, so he doesn't have the problem that you do of bringing up food and supplies for your men. He's learned patience, so he can hide somewhere and wait out this fight all year if he has to. He's just one man, so he's hard to spot. He's on his own, doesn't have to follow orders, doesn't have to synchronize himself with other units, so he can move fast, shoot and get out and hide some place else, then do the same all over again. Just like my men taught him.'
'That's fine,' Teasle said. 'Now you teach me.'

3
Rambo woke in the dark on cold flat stone. He woke because of his chest. It was swollen so painfully that he had to ease the belt he had cinched around it, and each time he breathed, his ribs lanced him and he had to wince.
He didn't know where he was. He guessed it must be night, but he couldn't understand why the dark was so complete, why there were no grays mixed in with the black, no stars flickering, no faint radiance from cloud cover. He blinked, the dark remained the same, and fearing some damage had been done to his eyes, he quickly spread his hands over the stone he lay on, groped frantically around, touched walls of damp rock. A cave, he thought puzzled. I'm in a cave. But how? And still dazed he began to stagger out.
He had to stop and go back to where he had wakened because he didn't have his rifle in his hand, but then his stupor cleared a little and he realized that his rifle had been with him all along, wedged between his equipment belt and his pants so he started out again. The floor of the cave sloped gradually down though, and he knew that the cave mouth would likely be somewhere up, not down, so once again he had to turn around and start out. The direction of the breeze coming down the tunnel from outside should have told him which way to go, but he didn't figure that until he had stumbled around a bend and reached the mouth.
Outside it was a crystal night, brilliant stars, a quarter moon, the outlines of trees and rocks distinct below. He didn't know how long he had been passed out, nor how he had come to be in the cave. The last things he recalled were struggling up at sunrise from where he lay near the ridge of brambles, wandering through the forest, and collapsing by a stream to drink. He had deliberately rolled into the stream he remembered, and had let the cool water flow over him reviving him, and now he was at the mouth of this cave and it was night, and there was an entire day plus a passage of territory that he could not account for. At least he guessed it was only one day. He suddenly thought, could it have been longer?
Far down and away, there were lights, what looked like hundreds of bright speckles, except that these were off and on, coming and going, yellow and red mostly, traffic on a road he thought, a highway maybe. But there was too much of it to be ordinary. And something else: it did not seem to be going anywhere. The lights were slowing. Then they stopped, a sweeping string of them from his left to his right about two miles off. He could have been wrong calculating the distance, but he was positive now that the lights had to do with coming after him. That much activity down there, he thought, Teasle must want me worse than anything he ever wanted before.
The night was very cold, and there were no insects sounding nor any animals moving around in the brush, just a slight wind that was rustling fallen leaves and scraping bare branches together. He hugged his outside wool shirt and shivered and then he heard the helicopter chugging up from his left, building to a roar, dimming as it flew off far behind him. There was another one behind it, and another to his right, and to his right as well, he heard the faint echoes of dogs barking. The wind shifted then, coming toward him from the direction of the lights down there, bringing with it the yelp of more dogs, and the accumulated far-off murmur of heavy truck engines. Since the lights had been left on, the engines would need to be kept idling, he thought. He tried counting the lights but in the distance they confused him, and he multiplied their countless number by the amount of men each truck could carry, twenty-five, perhaps thirty. Teasle certainly wanted him. And this time he was not taking any chance of failure, he was going to come with every man, every piece of equipment he could muster.
But Rambo did not want to fight him anymore. He was sick and in pain, and sometime between losing Teasle in the brambles and waking in this cave, his anger had gone. It had started to go even as the chase for Teasle had drawn on, him exhausted, wanting desperately to catch the man, not anymore for the pleasure of teaching him, but just so he could do it and get it over and be free. And after killing all those men, after sacrificing so much time and strength that he needed for escape, he had not even won. The stupid useless waste, he thought. It made him feel empty and disgusted. What had it all been for? He should have taken his chance in the storm and run away.
Well, this time he was going. He'd had his fight with Teasle, and it had been fair, and Teasle had survived: that was the end of it.
What kind of crap-screen is that you're throwing up now? he told himself. Who are you fooling? You were hungry to be in action again, and you were damn sure you could beat him, but you lost and now it's dues time. He won't be looking for you just yet, not in the dark, but by sunrise he'll be coming after you with a small army that you don't have a chance against. You're not going because he won fairly and it's over. You just want to get out while you damn well still can. Even if he's leading them all, right at the head in plain sight, you had just better clear out and stay alive.
Then he knew it would not be that easy. Because as he stood there shivering, wiping the sweat from his forehead, his eyebrows, there was a flash of heat from the root of his spine to the base of his skull, then a sudden chill. The sequence repeated itself, and he understood now that he was not shivering from the breeze and the cold. It was fever. And extremely high to make him sweat this much. If he tried moving off, maybe to see if he could sneak through that line of lights down there, he would end up collapsed. He was having trouble standing as it was. Heat - that's what he needed. And shelter, someplace to sweat out the fever and rest his ribs. And food, he had not eaten since he had found the dried meat on the body of the old man who had been washed off the cliff, however long ago that was.
He shook and swayed and had to put out a hand to steady himself against the cave entrance. This was it then, the cave would have to do, he didn't have the strength to find anyplace better. He was going weak so fast that he wasn't even sure he would have the strength to get the cave ready. Well then, don't stand here telling yourself how weak you are. Do it.
He picked his way down a strip of shale to the trees he had seen in outline. The first trees he came to had sharp branches from where the leaves had fallen, and that was no good, so he shuffled through the leaves until at last they changed to soft springy fir needles underfoot, and then he searched among these trees, feeling for lush branches that might easily be broken off, always careful to take only one from each tree so that it would not be obvious he had gone through here gathering them.
When he had five, the motion of raising his arms to break off the boughs became too great a strain on his ribs. He would have liked more, but five would have to do. He lifted them painfully onto the shoulder away from his damaged ribs, and worked back toward the cave, the weight of the boughs making him stagger even worse than he already had been. The climb up the slope of shale was the really bad time. He kept teetering off to one side instead of straight up. Once he lost his footing and slipped face forward, wincing.
Even when he made it to the top, setting the boughs at the cave entrance, he still had to go back down the slope, this time gathering dead leaves and bits of wood that were scattered on the ground. He stuffed what he could inside his wool shirt and filled his arms with large dead branches and carried them back to the cave where he made two trips inside, first with the dead branches he already had in his arms, then with the fir boughs. He was thinking better, doing what he should have done when he had first moved around in the cave. As soon as he was deep in, past where he had wakened, he tested the floor ahead with his feet to be careful of sudden drops. The farther in he went, the lower the roof came, and when he had to crouch, bunching his ribs, he quit. The pain was too much.
This part of the cave was clammy, and he hurried to pile the dead leaves on the floor and spread chips of wood on them and lit the leaves with the matches the old man with the still had given him nights before. The matches had been soaked in the rain and the stream, but there had been time enough for them to dry, and while the first two wouldn't strike, the third did, going out, and the fourth stayed lit, setting flame to the leaves. The flame spread, and he patiently added more leaves, more chips of wood, nursing each lick of fire until they all came together in a blaze that was big enough to add larger chunks of wood and then the dead branches.
The wood was so old that it did not smoke much, and the little smoke that did come off was tugged at by the breeze from the entrance and wafted down the tunnel. He stared at the fire, hands out, warming them, shivering, and directly he looked around at the shadows on the cave walls. He had been wrong. It wasn't a cave, he saw now. Years ago somebody had worked this place as a mine. That much was obvious from the symmetry of the walls and the roof and the flatness of the floor. There were no tools left around, no rusty wheelbarrows or broken picks or rotting buckets - whoever gave up this place had respected it all right, and left it neat. He should have closed the entrance, though. That was strangely careless of him. By now the timber pilings and support beams were old and sagging, and if children ever came in to explore, they might knock against a beam or make too much noise and bring down a part of the roof on them. But what would children be doing out here anyhow? This was miles from where anybody lived. Still, he had found it; others could too. Sure and they would find it tomorrow, so he had better watch his time and leave before then. The quarter moon outside had been up to what he imagined was eleven o'clock. A few hours of rest. That was all he needed, he told himself. Sure. Then he could be gone.
The fire was warm and soothing. He brought the fir boughs next to it and spread them on top of each other in imitation of a mattress, stretching out on them, his bad side towards the fire. Here and there the points of the needles stuck through his clothes and pricked him, but there was nothing he could do about that: he needed the boughs to keep him off the dampness of the floor. In his exhaustion the boughs became soft and restful beneath him, and he closed his eyes and listened to the low crackle of the burning wood. Down the tunnel, water was dripping, echoing.
On first sight of the mine walls he had almost expected to see drawings, paintings, animals with horns, men clutching spears, stalking them. He had seen photographs of something like that, but he could not remember when. In high school maybe. Pictures of hunting had always fascinated him. When he was a young boy at home in Colorado, he had often gone hiking by himself into the mountains, and once when he had stepped cautiously into a cave, rounding a corner, flashing his light, there had been a drawing of a buffalo, just one, in yellow, perfectly centered on the wall. It had looked so real, as if it would bolt at the sight of him and run, and he had watched it all afternoon until his flashlight dimmed. He had gone back to that cave at least once a week after that, to sit there, and watch. His secret. His father had one night beaten him repeatedly in the face for not saying where he had been. Remembering, Rambo nodded his head at not having told. It was a long time now since he had been in that cave, and this place made him feel secret like in the other. One buffalo, high-humped, squat-horned, staring at him. So high up in the mountains, away from its native plains, and how long had it been there and who had drawn it? And who had worked this mine and how long ago was that? The cave had always reminded him of a church, and this place did too, but now the association embarrassed him. Well, he had not been embarrassed when he was a child. First Communion. Confession. He remembered what it had been like to push away the heavy black cloth and slip into the dark confessional, his knees on the padded board, the voice of the priest, muffled, giving absolution to the penitent in the other side of the box. Then the wood slide snicking back and him confessing. Confessing what? The men he had just killed. It was in self-defense, Father.
But did you enjoy it, my son? Was it an occasion of sin?
That embarrassed him more. He did not believe in sin, and he did not like to entertain ideas about it. But the question repeated itself: was it an occasion of sin? And his mind drowsing with comfort from the fire, he wondered what he would have said as a child. Probably yes. The sequence of killings was very complicated. He could justify to the priest that it was self-defense to kill the dogs and the old man in green. But after that, when he had his opportunity to escape, when instead he went after Teasle and shot his deputies while they were in rout, that was sin. And now Teasle would be coming for good, he thought as he had before, and now it was time for his penance. Down the tunnel the water was dripping hollowly.
Down the tunnel. He should have checked it at the first. A mine was a natural place for a bear. Or snakes. What was the matter that he had not checked it already? He took a flaming brand from the fire and used it for a torch down the tunnel. The roof came lower and lower, and he hated stooping, torturing his side, but this needed to be done. He came around a curve where the water he had heard was dripping from the roof, gathering in a pool and draining through a crack in the floor, and that was the end. His torch sputtering to go out, he came to a final wall, a two foot gap in it that angled down, and he decided he was safe. By the time his torch did go out, he was well on his way back to the fire, so near he could see the shimmering reflection of the flames.
But now he remembered there were other things to do. Check outside to be certain the light from the fire could not be seen. Get food. What else? Resting in this mine had seemed so simple an idea at the start, but it was getting more bothersome as he went along, and he was tempted to forget the whole thing and make a try at sneaking through that line of lights down there. He managed as far as the entrance before he swayed so dizzily that he had to sit down. This had to be it. He didn't have a choice. He was going to have to stay for a while.
Just for a while.
The first rifle shot echoed up from somewhere down on his right. Three more came immediately after. It was too dark and they were too far off for him to be the target. Another three shots echoed up and then the faint wail of a siren. What the hell? What was going on?
Food. That's all you need to worry about. Food. And he knew exactly what kind: a big owl he had seen take off from a tree down there when he had come out of the cave the first time. It had swung off, and in a couple of minutes had drifted back. He had seen that happen in silhouette twice now. The bird was already gone again and he was waiting for it to complete its round.
There was more shooting far off to the right. But what for? He stood and shivered and waited, puzzling. At least his shot would only blend with all the other shots down there; it would not tell his position. Aiming at night was always difficult, but with the luminous paint the old man with the still had put on the sights of this rifle, he had a chance. He waited, and waited, and just as the sweat on his face, the chill in his spine became too much, he heard the single flap of wings and looked to see the quick silhouette swoop and settle in the tree. One, two, and he had the rifle up to his shoulder, aiming at the black spot of the owl. Three, four, and he was shivering, clenching his muscles to control them. Ca-rack! the recoil jarred his ribs and he staggered in pain against the cave entrance. He was thinking that he might have missed, fearing that the owl might take off and not fly back, when he saw it move, just a little. And then it plummetted gracefully from the tree, hit a branch, toppled off, disappeared in the dark. He heard it strike rustling into fallen leaves, and he slipped hurriedly down the shale toward the tree, not daring to take his eyes off where he thought the bird had landed. He lost his bearings, couldn't find the bird; only after a long search did he happen upon it.
At last returned to his fire in the cave, he collapsed head spinning onto the boughs, shivering violently. He struggled to ignore his pain by concentrating on the closed talons of the owl, by smoothing its ruffled feathers. It was an old owl, he decided, and he rather liked the wizened face of it, but he could not keep his hands steady enough to smooth its feathers well.
He still could not understand what all the shooting outside was for, either.

4
The ambulance wailed past the communications truck, speeding back toward town, three lorries rumbling up behind it, loaded with civilians, some complaining loudly, shouting indistinctly at the National Guardsmen along the road. Directly after the lorries two state cruisers swept by, keeping watch on them all. Teasle stood at the side of the road, the headlights flashing by him in the dark, shook his head and walked slowly over to the truck.
'No word yet how many more were shot?' he asked the radioman in the back.
The radioman was haloed by the glare of the lightbulb dangling farther inside. 'Just now, I'm afraid,' he said, slowly, quietly. 'One of them. One of us. The civilian was hit in the kneecap, but our man got it in the head.'
'Oh.' He closed his eyes a moment.
'The ambulance attendant says he might not live to reach the hospital.'
Might, nothing, he thought. The way things have been going the last three days, he won't make it. There's no doubt. He just won't make it.
'Do I know who he was? No. Wait. You'd better not tell me. I already have enough men dead that I knew.
Are those drunks at least all gathered up now so they can't shoot anybody else? Was that the last of them in the lorries?'
'Kern says he thinks so but he can't be positive.'
'Which means there could still be as much as another hundred camped up there.'
Christ, don't you wish there was another way to do this, that it was just you and the kid again. How many others are going to die before this is over?
He had been walking around too much. He was going dizzy once more, leaning against the back of the truck to hold himself up, legs becoming limp. His eyes felt like they would roll up into their sockets. Like doll's eyes, he thought.
'Maybe you ought to climb back inside and rest,' the radioman said. 'Even when you're almost out of the light, I can see you sweating, your face, through the bandages.'
He nodded weakly. 'Just don't say that when Kern's here. Hand me your coffee, will you?'
His hands were shaking as he took the coffee and swallowed it with two more pills, his tongue and throat balking from the bitter taste, and just then Trautman returned from where he had been speaking with the shadowed forms of National Guardsmen down the road. He took one look at Teasle and told him, 'You ought to be in bed.'
'Not until this is over.'
'Well, that's likely going to take a while longer than you expect. This isn't Korea and the Choisin Reservoir all over again. A mass-troop tactic would be fine provided you had two groups against each other: if one flank got confused, your enemy would be so large that you could see it coming in time to reinforce that flank. But you can't do that here, not against one man, especially him. The slightest bit of confusion along one line and he's so hard to spot he can slip through your men without a signal.'
'You've pointed out enough faults. Can't you offer something positive?'
He said it stronger than he intended, so that when Trautman answered 'Yes,' there was something new, resentment, hidden in that even voice: 'I have a few details to settle on yet. I don't know how you run your police department, but I like to be sure before I go ahead on something.'
Teasle needed his co-operation and immediately tried to ease off. 'Sorry. I guess it's me who sounds wrong now. Don't pay attention. I'm just not happy unless I get miserable every once in a while.'
Again it came, that strange intense doubling of past and present: two nights ago when Orval had said 'It'll be dark in an hour,' and he himself had snapped 'Don't you think I know it' and then had apologized to Orval in almost the same words he had just said to Trautman.
Maybe it was the pills. He didn't know what was in them, but they certainly worked, his dizziness leaving now, his brain slowly revolving to a stop. It bothered him that the periods of dizziness were coming more and more often and lasting longer, though. At least his heart was not speeding and missing anymore.
He gripped the back of the truck to climb up, but he did not have the strength to raise himself.
'Here. Take my hand,' the radioman said.
With help then, he managed to get up, but too fast, and he had to wait a moment before he was steady enough to go and sit on the bench, shoulders at last relaxing against the wall of the truck. There. Done. Nothing to do but sit, rest. The pleasure of fatigue and relief he sometimes had after vomiting.
Trautman climbed up with apparently unconscious ease and stood at the back, watching him, and there was something that Trautman had said a while ago that puzzled Teasle. He could not decide what it was. Something about -
Then he had it.
'How did you know I was at the Choisin Reservoir?'
Trautman looked in question.
'Just now,' Teasle said. 'You mentioned -'
'Yes. Before I left Fort Bragg I called Washington and had your file read to me.'
Teasle did not like that. At all.
'I had to,' Trautman said. 'There's no need to take that personally either, as if I was interfering in your privacy. I had to understand what kind of man you were, in case this trouble with Rambo was your fault, in case you were after blood now, so I could anticipate any trouble you might give me. That was one of your mistakes with him. You went after a man you didn't know anything about, not even his name. There's a rule we teach - never engage with an enemy until you know him as well as yourself.'
'All right. What does the Choisin Reservoir tell you about me?'
'For one thing, now that you've told me a little of what happened up there, it explains part of why you managed to get away from him.'
'There's no mystery. I ran faster.' The memory of how he had bolted in panic, leaving Shingleton, made him disgusted, bitter.
'That's the point,' Trautman said. 'You shouldn't have been able to run faster. He's younger than you, in better condition, better trained.'
The radioman had been sitting by the table listening to them. Now he turned from one to the other and said, 'I wish I knew what you guys were talking about. What's this reservoir?'
'You weren't in the service?' Trautman said.
'Sure I was. In the navy. Two years.'
'That's why you never heard of it. If you had been a marine, you'd know the details by heart and you'd brag about them. The Choisin Reservoir is one of the most famous marine battles of the Korean war. It was actually a retreat, but it was as fierce as any attack, and it cost the enemy thirty-seven thousand men. Teasle was right in the center of it. Enough to earn a Distinguished Service Cross.'
The way Trautman referred to him by name made Teasle feel strange, as if he were not in the same place with them, as if he were outside the truck listening, while Trautman, unaware he was being overheard, talked about him.
'What I want to know,' Trautman asked Teasle, 'was Rambo aware that you were in that retreat?'
He shrugged. 'The citation and the medal are on my office wall. He saw it. If it meant anything to him.'
'Oh, it meant something to him, all right. That's what saved your life.'
'I don't see how. I just lost my head when Shingleton was shot, and ran like a goddamn scared rat.' Saying it made him feel better, publicly confessing it, out in the open, nobody criticizing him for it when he wasn't near.
'Of course you lost your head and ran,' Trautman said. 'You've been out of that kind of action for years. In your place who wouldn't have run? But you see, he didn't expect you to. He's a professional and he naturally would think that somebody with that medal is a professional too - oh, a little out of practice and certainly not as good as him, but still he would think of you as a professional - and it's my guess he went after you on that basis. Did you ever watch a chess match between an amateur and a pro? The amateur wins more pieces. Because the pro is used to playing with people who have a reason and pattern for every move, and here the amateur is shifting pieces all over the board, not really knowing what he's up to, just trying to do the best he can with the little he understands. Well, the professional becomes so confused trying to see a nonexistent pattern and allow for it, that in no time he's behind. In your case, you were in blind flight, and Rambo was behind you trying to anticipate what somebody like himself would do for protection. He would have expected you to lie in wait for him, to try to ambush him, and that would have slowed him down until he understood, but then it would have been too late.'
The radioman had just slipped on his earphones to listen to a report that was coming through. Now Teasle saw him staring blankly at the floor.
'What's wrong? What's happened?' Teasle said.
'Our man who was shot in the head. He just died.'
Sure, Teasle thought. Dammit, sure.
So what are you letting it bother you for, like it was something you didn't expect? You were already certain he was going to die.
That's the trouble. I was certain. Him and how many others before this is through.
'God help him,' Teasle said. 'I can't think of another way to go after that kid except with all these men, but if I could have anything in the world, I'd want it to be just me and him again.'
The radioman took off his earphones and stood soberly from the table. 'We were on different shifts, but I sometimes used to talk to the guy. If you don't mind, I'd like to go walk around for a while.' He climbed distracted down the open end of the truck to the road, and paused a moment before he spoke again. 'Maybe that supply van is still parked down the road. Maybe I'll get some doughnuts and more coffee. Or something.' He paused a moment longer, then walked off, disappearing into the darkness.

'If it was just you and the kid again,' Trautman said, 'he'd know how to come after you this time. On a straight run. He'd kill you for sure.'
'No. Because I wouldn't run now. Up there I was afraid of him. I'm not anymore.'
'You should be.'
'No, because I'm learning from you. Don't go after a man until you understand him. That's what you said. Well, I know enough about him now that I could take him.'
'That's just stupid. I hardly told you anything about him. Maybe some party-game psychiatrist could build up a theory about his mother dying of cancer when he was young, his father being an alcoholic, about when his father tried to kill him with a knife, and how he ran from the house that night with a bow and arrow that he shot at the old man, nearly killing him. Some theory about frustration and repression and all that. How there wasn't enough money to eat and he had to quit high school to work in a garage. It would sound logical, but it wouldn't mean anything. Because we don't accept crazies. We put him through tests, and he's as well-balanced as you or I.'
'I don't kill for a living.'
'Of course not. You tolerate a system that lets others do it for you. And when they come back from the war, you can't stand the smell of death on them.'
'At the start I didn't know he was in the war.'
'But you saw he wasn't acting normally, and you didn't try very hard to find out why. He was a vagrant, you said. What the hell else could he have been? He gave up three years to enlist in a war that was supposed to help his country, and the only trade he came out with is how to kill. Where was he supposed to get a job that needed experience like that?'
'He didn't need to enlist, and he could have gone back to work in the garage.'
'He enlisted because he figured he was going to be drafted anyhow, and he new the best trained cadres that gave a man the best chance to stay alive didn't take draftees, only enlisted men. You say he could have gone back to the garage. That's some cold comfort, isn't it? Three years, and he gets a Medal of Honor, a nervous breakdown, and a job greasing cars. Now you talk about fighting him one-to-one, yet you imply there's something diseased about a man who kills for a living. Christ, you haven't fooled me, you're as military as he is, and that's how this mess got started. I hope you do get a one-to-one fight with him. It'll be the last surprise of your life. Because he's something special these days. He's an expert at his business. We forced him into it over there, and now he's bringing it all back home. To second-guess him even once, you'd have to study him for years. You'd have to go through every course he took, every fight he was in.'
'For a captain, the way you're talking, you don't seem to like the military very much.'
'Of course I don't. Who in his right mind would?'
'Then what are you staying in it for, especially doing that job of yours, teaching men to kill?'
'I don't. I teach them to stay alive. As long as we send men anywhere to fight, the most important thing I can do is make damn sure at least some of them come back. My business is saving lives, not taking them.'
'You say I haven't fooled you, that I'm as military as he is. I think you're wrong. I do my job as fair as I know how. But let's leave that for a second. Because you haven't fooled me, either. You talk about coming here to help, but so far that's all you've done - talk about it. You claim you're out to save lives, but you haven't done one thing yet to help prevent him from killing more people.'
'Suppose something,' Trautman said. He slowly lit a cigarette from a package that was on the radio table. 'You're right. I have been holding back. But suppose I did help. Now think about this. Would you really want me to help? He's the best student my school ever turned out. Fighting against him would be like fighting against myself, because I suspect he was pushed into this -'
'Nobody pushed him into killing a policeman with a razor. Let's get that straight.'
'I'll put it differently: I have a conflict of interests here.'
'You have what? Dammit he's -'
'Let me finish. Rambo is a lot like myself and I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit that I sympathize with the position he's in, enough so that I'd like to see him get away. On the other hand, Christ, he's gone wild. He didn't have to chase after you once you were in retreat. Most of those men didn't have to die, not when he had a chance to escape. That was inexcusable. But no matter how I feel about that, I still sympathize. What if, without knowing it, I work out a plan against him that allows him to escape?'
'You won't. Even if he escapes here, we still have to keep hunting him, and someone else is bound to be shot. You've already agreed that's your responsibility as much as mine. So if he's your best, then dammit prove it. Put every obstacle against him that you can dream of. Then if he still breaks free, you'll have done everything you could and you'll have double reason to be proud of him. In a couple of ways you can't afford not to help.'
Trautman looked at his cigarette, drew deeply on it, then flipped it out of the truck, sparks showering in the dark. 'I don't see why I lit that in the first place. I gave up smoking three months ago.'
'Don't avoid the question,' Teasle said. 'Are you going to help now or aren't you?'
Trautman looked at the map. 'I suppose none of what I'm saying matters. In a few years a search like this won't even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you have to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat. Right now there aren't enough of those machines to go around. Most of them are in the war. But when we come home from there, well, a man on the run won't have a hope. And a man like me, he won't be needed. This is the last of something. It's too bad. As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.'
'But you're avoiding the question.'
'Yes, I'm going to help. He does have to be stopped, and I'd rather the person who manages it be someone like myself who understands him and goes through his pain with him.'

5
Rambo held the owl's soft pliant back, clutched a fistful of feathers on the belly, and pulled. They made a dull tearing sound as they came away. He liked the feel of the feathers in his hand. He plucked the carcass bare, cut off the head and the wings and the claws then pressed the point of his knife in at the bottom of the rib cage, drawing the sharp edge of the blade down to between its legs. He spread the flaps of the carcass, reached inside for the warm wet offal, and smoothly steadily drew it out, getting most of the entrails in a bunch on his first try, and scraping the inside with his knife to get the rest. He would have gone to rinse the carcass where the water was dripping from the roof of the mine, but he could not tell if the water had poisons in it, and anyway, rinsing the bird would just be another complication when all he wanted was to get this over, eat and get out. He had already wasted too much energy as it was. He took a long branch that was not in the fire, sharpened it and spitted the point into the owl, extending it over the fire. The bits of feathers and hair that were still on it sparked in the flames. Salt and pepper, he thought. Since the owl was old, it would be solid and tough. The smell of its blood burning was acrid, and the meat would probably taste like that, and he wished he at least had salt and pepper.
So this is what he had fucking come to, he thought. From camping in his sleeping bag in the forest, and eating hamburgers washed with Coke in the dusty grass at the side of a road, to this, a bed of fir boughs in a mine and the carcass of an owl and not even goddamn salt and pepper. Not all that different from camping in the forest, but living then on a minimum had been a kind of luxury, because he wanted to do it. Now, though, he might be forced to live like this for a long while, and it really did seem like a minimum. Soon he might not even have this much, and he would look back on this good night when he slept for a few hours in a mine and cooked this tough old owl. Mexico was not even on his mind anymore. Only his next meal and what tree he would sleep in. A day at a time. A night at a time.
Chest throbbing, he raised his two shirts and looked at his ribs, fascinated by how swollen and inflamed they were. It was like he had a tumor in there or something growing in him, he thought. A few more hours sleep weren't going to cure that. At least he wasn't dizzy anymore. Time to move. He built up the fire to make the bird cook faster. The heat from the fire touched his forehead and the stretch of his nose. Or maybe it was the fever, he thought. He lay back flat on the fir boughs, face turned sweating toward the fire. The mucus in his mouth was dry and sticky, and he wanted to drink from his canteen, but he had already drank too much from it, he needed to save some for later. But whenever he parted his lips, a thin web of sticky mucus clung between them. Finally he sipped and swirled the warm metallic water around in his mouth, collecting the mucus, debating whether he could afford the waste of spitting it out, deciding not and swallowing thickly.
The voice startled him. It echoed indistinctly down the tunnel, sounding as if a man were outside with a loudspeaker talking to him. How could they have known where he was? He hurriedly checked that his pistol and knife and canteen were attached to his equipment belt, grabbed his rifle and the stick in the owl, and rushed toward the mouth. The breeze coming down the shaft was fresh and cool. Just before the opening, he slowed, taking care that men were not out there in the night waiting for him. But he could not see anyone, and then he heard the voice again. It was definitely from a loudspeaker. From a helicopter. In the dark the motor was roaring over the rise, and throughout a man's voice was booming 'Groups twelve to thirty-one. Assemble toward the eastern slope. Groups thirty-two complete to forty. Spread out north.' Far down and away, the line of lights was still there, waiting.
Teasle wanted him all right. He must have a small army down there. But what was the loudspeaker for? Weren't there enough field radios to co-ordinate the groups? Or is this just noise to get on my nerves? he thought. Or to scare me, to let me know how many are coming for me. Maybe it's a trick and he doesn't have any men at all north and east. Maybe he just has enough for south and west. Rambo had heard a loudspeaker used like this by Special Forces in the war. It generally confused the enemy and tempted them to second-guess what Special Forces was about to do. There was a counter-rule: when somebody wants you to second-guess them, that's when you don't try. The best reaction is to go on as if you never heard it.
Now the voice was repeating itself, dimming with the helicopter over the rise. But Rambo didn't care about anything it said. For all he cared, Teasle could bring men into these hills from every side. It wouldn't matter. Where he was going, they would pass right by him.
He glanced east. The sky was gray now over there. Sunup in a while. He eased down on the cold rocks at the entrance to the mine and tested the bird with his finger in case it was too hot to eat. Then he carved off a strip and chewed, and it was just awful. Worse than he had expected. Stiff and dry and sour. He had to force himself to bite into another piece, and he had to chew and chew before he could swallow.

6

Teasle did not sleep at all. An hour before dawn, Trautman lay down on the floor and closed his eyes, but Teasle kept sitting on the bench, his back against the wall, told the radioman to switch the sound from the earphones to the speakers, then listened to the position reports coming in, his eyes seldom leaving the map. The reports soon came in less frequently, and the radioman leaned forward onto the table, head on his arms, and Teasle was alone again.
Every unit was where it should be. In his mind he saw policemen and National Guardsmen strung along the edges of fields and woodlots, stamping out cigarettes, loading their rifles. They were in sections of fifty, and each section had a man with a field radio and at six o'clock the order would go down the line over the radios to move out. Still spread in a wide line, they would sweep across fields and through woods, moving in from the main points of the compass. It would take days to cover this much territory and converge in the middle, but eventually they would have him. If one group came into tangled country that slowed them, its man with the field radio would broadcast to the other groups to ease their pace and wait. That would prevent one group from slowing so much that it fell behind the main line, imperceptively shifting its direction until it was far to one side, searching an area that had already been covered by the others. There could be no gaps in the line except those which had been planned as traps, a band of men lying to catch the kid in case he tried to take advantage of that open space. The kid. Even now that Teasle knew his name, he couldn't get used to calling him by it.
The air seemed to dampen toward sunup, and he pulled an army blanket over Trautman on the floor, then wrapped one around himself. There was always something left to do, some flaw in any plan: he remembered that from his training in Korea, and Trautman had said it too, and he was going over the search from every angle for something he might have forgotten. Trautman had wanted helicopters to drop patrols on the highest peaks, from where they could spot the kid if he ran ahead of the search line. It had been dangerous lowering the patrols on pulleys in the dark, but they had been lucky and there had been no accidents. Trautman had wanted the helicopters to fly back and forth out there broadcasting fake directions to confuse the kid, and that was being taken care of. Trautman had suspected the kid would make a break south: that was the direction he had used escaping in the war, and there was a good chance he would try that way again, so the southern line was reinforced except for the intentional weak spots that were traps. Teasle's eyes were burning from lack of sleep, but he couldn't sleep, and then when he could not find any part of the plan that he had forgotten to check, he began to think about other things that he did want to forget. He had been putting them out of his mind, but now, his head starting to ache, the ghosts came of their own accord.
Orval and Shingleton. The Friday dinners week after week at Orval's place. 'A good way to start the weekend,' Mrs. Kellerman said, always phoning him at the police station on Thursday to find out what he wanted to eat the next day. In the old days she would have been phoning today, and tomorrow they would have been eating - eating what? - no, the idea of food filling his mouth was intolerable. Never Beatrice. Always Mrs. Kellerman. That was what they had decided when his father had been killed and he had gone to live with them. He couldn't bring himself to call her 'Mother,' and 'Aunt Beatrice' never sounded right, so it was always Mrs. Kellerman, and Orval liked that, having been raised to call his own parents 'Sir' and 'Ma'am.' With Orval's name it was different. Orval had been around his father's house so often that Teasle had got to calling him Orval, and the habit was hard to break. Friday dinners. She'd be cooking, and he and Orval would be outside with the dogs and then they'd come in for a drink before dinner, but Orval had given up drinking by then, so it would be just Mrs. Kellerman and himself, and Orval would have tomato juice with salt and tabasco sauce. Thinking about it now, Teasle's mouth salivated bitterly, and he tried not to think of food, thought instead of how the arguments had started and how the Friday dinners had then stopped. Why hadn't he given in to Orval? Was it really so important which way to holster a gun or train a dog that they had to argue about it? Was it that Orval was afraid of getting old and had to show that he was still as able as ever? Maybe they were just so close that every disagree¬ment was a betrayal and they had to argue. Or maybe I was so proud that I had to show him I wasn't a kid anymore, Teasle thought, and Orval couldn't bear a stepson talking to him the way he himself had never dared talk to his own father. Mrs. Kellerman was sixty-eight. She had been married to Orval for forty years. What was she supposed to do now without him? All her life was linked with his. Who would she cook for now? Who would she have to clean for and wash clothes for now?
Me, I guess, Teasle thought.
And what about Shingleton and the shooting tournaments they had been in together, representing the department? Shingleton had a wife too, and three young children, and what was she supposed to do? Get a job, sell the house, pay for babysitters while she worked? And how am I supposed to explain to both of them about the way their husbands died? he thought. He should have phoned them hours ago, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
His paper cup had soggy cigarette butts in the coffee. He lit his last one, crumpling the package, throat dry, thinking about his panic on the bluff, Shingleton crying, 'Look out Will! He's got me!' And then the shot and then his bolting. Maybe if he had stayed, he might have been able to get a shot at the kid, maybe if he had somehow reached Shingleton, he might have found him still alive and been able to save him. Reliving his hysterical race from the bluff, he shook with disgust. You're some tough guy, he told himself. Oh yes, a lot of mouth. And if you had it to do over, you'd do the same.
No, he thought. No, I'd die before I ran again.
The bodies up on the bluff. The state police had tried going after them with a helicopter, but from the air all the bluffs looked alike and the police had not found the right one, and finally they had been called back to help with the search. Had the rain half-covered the bodies with dirt and leaves? Were there animals nosing around them, insects crawling across their cheeks? What would Orval be like after his drop from the cliff? Galt's funeral had been yesterday morning, while he himself had been struggling across the field. He was glad that he had not been to it. He wished that he would not have to go to the funeral for all the others when at last they were found and brought back, what was left of them after several days in the forest. A mass funeral. All the coffins in a row before the altar, lids closed, the whole town there looking at him and then at the coffins and then at him once more. How was he supposed to explain to those people why it had to happen, why he had thought it best to keep the kid moving away from town, and why the kid in his bitterness had needed to defy him, both of them unable to stop pushing at each other once the thing had started?
He looked at Trautman asleep under the army blanket on the floor, and realized that he was coming to see the kid from Trautman's view. Not totally, but enough to understand why the kid had done it all, and even to sympathize a little.
Sure, but you didn't kill anyone when you came back from Korea, and you had been through almost as much as him.
But thinking that the kid should have been able to control himself was not going to revive Orval and Shingleton and the rest, and his anger at the kid for shooting Orval was too great to sustain. For the last hours his fatigue had been overpowering it. He no longer had the strength of emotion to rouse great brutal images of what he would enjoy doing to the kid.
He thought about it, and in his daze from lack of sleep, it seemed to him in a crazy way that everything had been out of control even before he and the kid had met, himself and Anna, the kid and the war. Anna. He was surprised that he had not remembered her in two days, not since the killing had started. Now she seemed farther off in his mind than California, and the pain of losing her was dwarfed by all that had happened since Monday. Still, though small, it was pain, and he did not want any more.
His stomach cramped. He had to swallow two more pills, the bitter chalk taste worse now because he was anticipating it. Through the open back of the truck he saw the sun barely above the horizon, pale and cold, troops ready along the road, frost coming from their mouths. The radioman was calling each group to be certain they were prepared.
Teasle leaned over and nudged Trautman on the floor to wake him. 'It's starting.'
But Trautman was already awake. 'I know.'
Kern drove up and climbed hurriedly into the back of the truck. 'I've been checking up and down the lines. Everything looks good. What about National Guard headquarters?'
'They're all set to monitor. Whenever we're ready,' the radioman said.
'That's it then.'
'Why are you looking at me?' Teasle said.
'Since you started things, I thought you might want to give the order to go.'

7
Sprawled on the spine of a high ridge, Rambo looked down and saw them coming, first small bands roaming through the woods far off, then a well-organized methodical sweep of the land by more men than he could count. They were about a mile and a half from him, tiny points that were growing fast. There were helicopters flying over, broadcasting orders which he dismissed, unable to decide if they were real or fake.
He guessed that Teasle expected him to retreat from the line of men and pull back farther inland. Instead he scurried down the ridge toward the men, staying low, using every clump of cover. At the bottom he raced toward the left, one hand holding his side. He would be able to stop running soon. He couldn't let his pain slow him. The men were only fifty minutes off, maybe less, but if he could get to where he was going before they did, then he would have all the chance he needed to relax. He labored up a wooded rise, slowing in spite of himself, gasping, reached the top, and there it was, the stream. He had been searching for it since he left the mine. The stream where he had lain after Teasle escaped into the brambles. He had judged that it would be close to the mine, and as soon as he had set out, he had climbed to the highest place near to try and see it. No luck. The stream had been too low and too sheltered by trees for him to make out a glint of water or a zigzag depression in the land. He had almost given up when he realized that the sign he was looking for had been there all along. Mist. Early morning fog off water. So he had hurried for it, and now in pain he was stumbling down through trees toward it.
He reached it where the water was a trickle over stones, a gentle bank of grass on either side. He hunted along it, coming to a deep pool, and here at last the banks were steep, but they were stitched with grass like the ones before. He moved farther on until there was another pool and steep banks, these of mud. A tree on his side of the pool had bare roots, their soil eroded by the water's flow. He could not step in the mud without leaving tracks. He had to grope long-legged from the grass and leaves on the top of the bank to the roots of the tree, and then he lowered himself cautiously into the stream, not daring to dislodge silt from the bottom that might linger in the pool and give him away. He slipped between the tree roots and the bank, in where there was a hollow of sodden earth above him, and then slowly, meticulously, he commenced burying himself, spreading mud over his feet and legs, scooping mud over his chest, drawing the tree roots closer to him, squirming, burrowing deep into the muck like a crab, wiping his face in it, pulling it onto him until he felt the cold wet heavy weight of it all over, breathing with difficulty, just a twig space to take air from. It was the best that he could do. Nothing more to try. An old expression came to him as a joke - you made your bed, now lie in it. So he did, and waited.
They were a long while coming. As much as he could tell, they had been two rises away when he reached the stream, and he estimated they would be fifteen minutes, perhaps a little longer, before they came to him. But fifteen minutes seemed to go, and there was no sound of them. He decided that his sense of time was off, that lying buried in the mud, nothing to do but wait, he was fooled into thinking a few minutes were a great deal more than that. Oppressed by the mud, he had much trouble breathing now. His air space wasn't enough, but he couldn't afford to make it wider: someone outside might see the hole and be curious. Moisture was beginning to condense in his nose, stuffing it like phlegm. His eyes were closed, the mud settling firmly onto his lids.
Still no sound of the searchers. He needed something to do, something to help him keep quiet and still, the pressure of the mud unnerving him, so he started counting off the seconds, at the end of each minute expecting to hear the men, sliding into another round of sixty when no sound came, expecting at the end of this minute to hear them, but still no sound. When he had gone through to sixty for the fifteenth time he was positive that things had gone wrong. The mud. Maybe that was it, maybe the mud cut off the sound of people going by and the hunt had gone past him long ago.
Sure and maybe not. If he had not heard them, they might still be coming. He couldn't take the chance of digging out to look; they might be just now approaching the stream, held up before this by thick underbrush on one of the rises. He waited, moisture filling his nose as if to drown him, frantic to breathe. The mud was pressing harder on his face and chest, and he wanted desperately to push out of it. He remembered playing by a sand cliff when he was a boy, digging into the sand to build a cave, crawling inside, then having the sudden urge to crawl out just as the whole cliff plunged down on him burying his head, him crazy with fear, clawing frenzied at the sand, worming out from under just as more sand spilled down on him. He had barely come out soon enough, and that night as he tried to sleep, he had been certain that in the sand cave a premonition of death occurred to him, that the premonition had been what spurred him to crawl out in time. Now, buried in the ooze and mud, he was thinking that if someone walked over and stood on the ground above him, a part of the bank might be dislodged, plopping down and cutting off his air space. He had the same instant premonition as in the sand cave: he was going to be buried alive, die in here. Already the moisture in his nose was completely clogging his breath. He had to get out, dear God, couldn't bear the suffocation, pushed at the mud.
And petrified, hearing them. The faint dull plod of footsteps. A lot of them. All together on top. And muffled voices, splashings in the stream, people walking up the stream. The footsteps came closer, one set of them stopping, then thundering close, directly on top, weighing on the mud, on his chest, his broken ribs, the pain. He couldn't move, hadn't been breathing. How long without air. Three minutes. If he had several deep breaths first. Two minutes then. Try holding two minutes. But time for him was so distorted, and one minute seemed like two, and he might need to breathe so much that he would squirm and shove and push out before he had to. Four five six seven, he was counting. To twenty, to forty, and as the sequence drew on, the numbers in his head linked up with his heartbeats that were coming louder and faster, and his chest was contracting, crushing. There. The mud above him budged, the pressure eased, the man on top of him moved. But hurry, not fast enough. The voices, the churning in the stream mercifully diminished. But too slow, he couldn't dig out yet. There might be stragglers. There might be someone who by chance glanced back this way. Oh Christ, hurry. Midway through the second minute, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, throat contorting, forty-eight, forty-nine. He never got to sixty, couldn't endure it anymore, suddenly thought he was so weak-headed from the lack of air that he didn't have the strength to dig out. Push. Push, dammit. But the mud would not part, and he struggled to raise himself, to heave away the mud, and then in a gathering rush, sweet Jesus, cool air was upon him and light and he was gasping, half in the stream. Gray turned to white in his head; his chest ballooned in an ecstasy of breath, then bit sharply in his ribs, drawing in huge gasps of breath, expelling them, sucking them in violently. Too much noise. They'll hear. He quickly looked to see them.
None around. Voices and rustling in the underbrush. But they were out of sight now, gone now, at last he was in the clear, only one more hard part to go, crossing the nearby roads. He slumped against the bank. On his own. Free.
Not yet you're not. There's a hell of a lot more to do before you go near those roads.
Dammit, you think I don't know that? he told himself. There's always something more to do. Always. It never fucking ends.
Then get busy.
In a second.
No. Now. You'll have all the time to rest if they catch you.
He breathed and nodded and grudgingly propped himself up from the side of the stream, wading through the water to the exposed tree roots. He slipped mud into the hole where he had been behind the roots, arranging it so if another group came through here they could not tell that the first group had missed his hiding place. They had to think that he was deep in the hills, not close to the road.
Next, his rifle on top of the bank, he eased into the deepest section of the pool and rinsed the mud off him. It did not matter now that he was stirring up silt and dirt from the bottom that might linger; the men who had just gone through here had completely clouded the water, and if they came back or if another group came, they would have no reason to think of him. He dunked his head to clean away the dirt in his hair and wash his face, taking a scummy mouthful and spitting it out with the grit that was in his mouth, blowing his nose underwater to get rid of the mud he had sucked up it. Just because he was living like an animal, he thought, didn't mean he had to feel like one. That was from training school. Be clean whenever you can. It makes you go longer and fight better.
He climbed dripping out of the stream, chose a thin branch off the ground and used it to clean the mud from inside the barrel of his rifle, to pick dirt from the firing mechanism. Then he worked the lever on the rifle several times to insure that it was smooth, reload the shells he had ejected, and he was finally off, moving cautiously through the bushes and trees toward the direction of the road. He was glad that he had washed the mud off in the stream; he felt better, more energetic, able to escape.
The feeling disappeared when he heard the dogs, two packs of them, one baying straight ahead, coming his way, the other to his left, moving fast. Those forward had to be trailing the scent from where he had lost Teasle on the slope of brambles, wandered to this stream and headed semi-conscious into the highlands, eventually ending at the mine. Those to the left then were following the route he had taken when he chased Teasle into the brambles. That chase was over a day old, and unless one of the men with the dogs was an expert tracker, they would have no idea which scent was him running toward the brambles and which scent was him wandering away. So they weren't taking any chances; they were setting dogs on both trails.
Figuring that out didn't help him much. He still had to get away from this pack of dogs rushing toward the stream, and he certainly couldn't outrun them, not with his side bursting with pain. He could ambush them and shoot them all as he had done with Teasle's group, but the sound of gunfire would reveal his position, and with this many searchers in the woods they would have no trouble cutting him off.
So. He needed a trick to fool the dogs off his trail. At least he had some time to do it. They would not be coming directly to this part of the stream. First they would follow his scent away from the water, up the hills to the mine, only then down here. He could try going for the road, but the dogs would eventually lead in that direction, and the men would radio ahead to set a trap for him.
He had one idea. It wasn't very good, but it was the best that he could come up with. In a rush he backtracked through the trees to where he had buried himself at the side of the stream; he quickly slid into the water, wading waist-high downstream toward the road, imagining what the dogs would do. They would trail him down from the mine, find the path he had taken away from his hiding place into the woods, follow it and sniff in confusion when his scent stopped abruptly in the undergrowth. It would take everybody a long while to guess that he had doubled-back along his trail, returned to the stream and waded into it; and when at last they did guess what he had done, he would be far off. Maybe driving a car or truck that he would manage to steal.
But the police would radio their cruisers to look out for a stolen car.
Then he would dump it after he had gone a few miles.
What then? Steal another car and dump that one? Leave it and run into the country only to have dogs start trailing him again?
As he waded down the stream, thinking desperately how to escape, he gradually came to understand how difficult it was going to be, almost impossible. Teasle would keep after him. Teasle would never allow him to get free, never allow him even to rest.
Worried about the dogs baying nearby, head down looking to avoid stones and logs submerged in the water that he might stumble over, clutching his ribs, he did not see the man until he was directly upon him. He came around a bend in the stream, and there the man was, shoes and socks off, sitting on the bank, feet in the water. The man had blue eyes. He held his rifle, looking suspicious. He must have heard Rambo coming and readied himself just in case, but he evidently had not believed this would actually be Rambo because when it registered on the man who Rambo was, his mouth opened and he sat there paralyzed as Rambo lunged for him. No noise. There can't be any noise. No shooting. Rambo had his knife out, wrenching the man's rifle away, the man scrambling to get up off the bank, Rambo stabbing him hard in the stomach, tugging the blade up to the rib cage.
'Jesus,' the man said in surprise, the last syllable gliding into a high whine, and he was dead.
'What?' somebody asked.
Rambo jerked involuntarily. He had no chance to hide.
'Didn't I tell you quit complaining about your feet?' the voice was saying. No. No. 'Come on, get your shoes on before we -' It was a man coming up from a hollow, buckling his pants, and when he saw, he was quicker than his friend. He leapt for a rifle that was leaning against a tree, and Rambo tried to race there first, but the guy managed to reach the gun and no no, his hand was on the trigger, pulling it, cracking off a wild shot that ended Rambo's hopes. The guy was fingering the trigger for another shot as Rambo blew his head in. You had to shoot and warn them, didn't you, you bastard? You had to fix me.
Dear God, what am I going to do?
Men were calling to each other off in the forest now. The underbrush was alive with the sound of branches snapping, men rushing. The pack of dogs that was near began barking toward him. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do. The men would be everywhere. I'm through.
He was almost grateful that he had lost. No more running, no more pain in his chest, they would take him to a doctor, feed him, give him a bed. Clean clothes. Sleep.
If they didn't shoot him here, thinking he still wanted to fight.
Then he would throw down his rifle and hold up his hands and yell that he was surrendering.
The idea revolted him. He couldn't let himself merely stand and wait for them. He'd never done it before. It was disgusting. There had to be something more to do, and then he thought again of the mine and the final rule: if he was going to lose, if they were going to capture him, at least he could pick the place where it would happen, and the place that gave him the best advantage was the mine. Who knew what might change? Maybe as he went to the mine, he would see another way to escape.
The men were crashing closer through the underbrush. Not in sight yet. Very soon. All right, the mine then. No time to think about it anymore, and suddenly the thrill of going into action flashed through his body and he was no longer tired and he took off away from the stream deep into the woods. Ahead, he heard them charging through the thick bushes. He darted to the left, staying low. Far to his right, he saw them now, running loudly toward the stream. National Guardsmen he saw. Uniformed. Helmeted. In the night, watching the chain of lights miles off, he had joked badly about Teasle having a small army after him, but Jesus Christ, this really was the army.

8
The Guardsmen had been reporting descriptions of the country as they moved inland, cliffs and swamps and hollows that the deputy sketched onto the barren map, and now Teasle sank tired and empty onto the bench, watching him mark an X where the bodies of the two civilians had been found by the stream. He felt as if he were watching from far away, at last numbed by all the pills he had been swallowing. He had not let on to Trautman or Kern, but shortly after the report came in about the bodies stabbed and shot, he had experienced a sharp constriction near his heart so severe that it had scared him. Two more killed. How many did that make now? Fifteen? Eighteen? He jumbled the numbers in his mind, wanting to avoid a new total.
'He must have been heading for the road when he was discovered by those two civilians,' Trautman said. 'He knows that we expect him near the road, so he'll have to turn around and go back into the hills. When he thinks it's safe he'll try a different route to another part of the road. Maybe east this time.'
'Then that's it,' Kern said. 'We have him trapped. The line is between him and the high ground, so he can't go that way. The only direction open to him is toward the road, and we have another line there waiting for him.'
Teasle had continued looking at the map. Now he turned. 'No. Didn't you listen?' he said to Kern. The kid is probably in the high ground already. The whole story is right there on the map.'
'But that doesn't make sense to me. How is he going to make it up through the line?'
'Easily,' Trautman said. 'When those Guardsmen heard the shots behind them, a group broke from the main line to go back and investigate. When they did, they left a hole more than big enough for him to slip through and up into the hills. Like you, they all expect him to keep moving away from the line anyhow, so they wouldn't have been alert to sight him when he came near and slipped through. You had better tell them to continue into the hills before he gains more distance.'
Teasle had been a long while expecting this from Kern. Now it came. 'I don't know,' Kern said. 'It's getting too complicated. I don't know what I had better do. Suppose he didn't think like that. Suppose he didn't realize there was a break in the line and just stayed where he was between the line and the road. Then if I order those men farther inland, I'll ruin the trap.'
Trautman lifted his hands. 'Suppose whatever the hell you want. It's no matter to me. I don't like helping in the first place. All the same I am. But that doesn't mean I have to explain over and over what I think should be done and then goddamn beg you to do it.'
'Wait, don't misunderstand. I'm not questioning your judgment. It's only that in his position he might not do what's logical. He might feel closed in and run in a circle the way a flushed rabbit does.'
For the first time the pride in Trautman's voice was completely open. 'He won't.'
'But if he does, if he just possibly does, you're not the one who answers for sending the men in the wrong direction. I do. I have to look at this thing from every angle. After all we're just talking theory here. We have no evidence to go on.'
'Then let me give the order,' Teasle said, and the truck seemed to drop three feet, jolting, as a new more serious constriction seized his chest. He struggled to go on talking, braced his body. 'If the order's wrong, I'll gladly answer for it.' He stiffened, holding his breath.
'Christ, are you all right?' Trautman said. 'You'd better lie down quick.'
He gestured to keep Trautman away. Abruptly the radioman said, 'A report is coming through,' and Teasle fought to ignore

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