The next morning it was his, and in the days and nights and weeks to come, he was never busier. From eight to five he organized his force, interviewing the men already on the job, firing those who did not want to go nights to the shooting range or the state police night school, hiring men who did not mind extra duty, throwing out obsolete equipment and buying new, streamlining the cluttered operation that his predecessor had left when he died on the front steps of a heart attack. Then from five until he dropped to sleep, he worked on the house, roofing it, putting new glass in the windows and caulking them, building a new porch, painting it all rust color to blend with the green of the trees. The bad wood that he stripped from the roof and the porch he used for a fire in the yard every night, and he sat by it, cooking, eating chili con carne, steak and baked potatoes or hamburgers. Food had never tasted better, nor had he slept sounder or his body felt greater, the calluses on his hands making him proud, the stiffness in his legs and arms turning to strength and smooth-moving ease. For three months he was like that, and then the job on the house was done, and for a time he found small things to fix, but then there were nights with nothing to do, and he went out for a beer or else he stayed longer at the shooting range or else he went home to watch television and drink beer. Then he got married and now that was ended, and racing through the trees out into the grass, breath rasping, sweat stinging, he felt so good that he wondered why he had ever stopped taking care of himself.
The dogs were yelping ahead, and Orval's long legs were stretching to stay with them. The deputies were trying to keep up with Teasle and he was straining to keep up with Orval, and there was a moment as he raced across the grass, the sun bright and hot on him, his arms and legs in swift steady rhythm, when he felt he could go on forever. Abruptly Orval surged farther ahead, and Teasle could not match his speed anymore. His legs grew heavy. The good feeling drained from him.
'Slow down, Orval!'
But Orval stayed right on going with the dogs.
6
When he reached the line of trees and rocks he had to slow, placing his shoes carefully so he would not slip on the rocks and maybe break a leg. At the base of the cliff he hurried along, seeking an easy way to the top, and found a crack in the cliff that went in three feet and rose straight to the top, and climbed. Near the top the jutting stones that he used for handholds were wide apart and he had to claw and boost himself, but then the climbing got better again until shortly he was out of the crack onto level stone.
The yapping from the dogs echoed loudly on top. He crouched to see if the helicopter was nearby. It was not — he could not even hear it — and there was no sign of anybody watching him from a neighboring height or from below. He slipped into bushes and trees near the cliff edge and crept swiftly to his right toward an outcrop with a long view of the draw, and there he lay, watching the alternate strips of grass and woods. A mile down the draw he saw that men were racing from trees across a wide clear space toward more trees. In the distance the men were small and hard to distinguish; he counted what he thought were ten. He could not make out the dogs at all, but they sounded like quite a lot. It wasn't their number that bothered him, though. What did was that they had obviously found his scent and were tracking him fast. Fifteen minutes and they would be where he was now. Teasle should not have been able to catch up to him this fast. Teasle should have been hours behind. There had to be somebody, maybe Teasle, maybe one of his men, who knew the country and knew from his general direction the shortcuts to head him off.
He ran back to the niche up through the cliff: there was no way Teasle was going to have the easy climb he himself had. He set his rifle on a grassy mound where no dirt would get into it, and began pushing at a boulder that was near the cliff. The boulder was large and heavy, but once he had it rolling somewhat, the shift of its weight helped him to push. Soon he had it where he wanted, completely blocking off the top of the crack, one side extending over the cliff edge. A man coming at the boulder from below would not be able to get around or over it. He would have to shove it out of the way before he could get on top, but braced from below, he would not have the leverage to move it. He would need several men helping him but the crack was too narrow for several men to fit at once. Teasle would be a while figuring out how to clear the boulder away, and by then he himself would be long gone.
He hoped. Glancing down at the draw, he was amazed that while he positioned the boulder, the posse had been travelling so fast they were already at the pool and bushes where he had hidden. The men in miniature down there stopped looking at the bushes to watch the dogs sniffing the ground, barking in circles. Something must have confused the scent. The wounded deer, he realized. When he had dove into the bushes, some of the deer's blood had smeared onto him, and now the dogs were trying to decide which track to follow, his or the deer's. They chose damn fast. The second they sprang yelping on his path toward the cliff, he turned and grabbed his rifle and ran through more bushes and trees, inland. Where the undergrowth was very thick, he swung and pushed through backward, and then ran forward again until once more he had to push through backward. His effort shoving the boulder over to the niche in the cliff had lathered his face and chest with sweat that stung and bit, and now more sweat poured out as he struggled through a wall of nettles, scraping his knuckles raw, filming them with blood.
Then in a second he was free. He came breaking out of the dark wood into the bright sunlight on a slope of rock and shale, and paused quickly to catch his breath, and slid cautiously down to the edge. There was a cliff and a wide forest at the bottom, leaves red and orange and brown. The cliff was too sheer for him to climb down.
So now there was a cliff before him and behind him, which meant he could go only two other routes. If he went to the east, he would be moving back toward the wide end of the draw. But Teasle likely had groups searching the highlands on both sides of the draw, in case he doubled back. That gave him just one other course, to the west, in the direction the helicopter had taken, and he ran that way until he came upon another drop and found that he had trapped himself.
Christ. The dogs were barking louder, and he clenched his rifle, cursing himself for having ignored one of the most basic rules he had ever learned. Always choose a route that won't trap you. Never run where you might cut yourself off. Christ. Had his mind gone soft along with his body from lying in all those hospital beds? He should never have climbed up that cliff back there. He deserved to be caught. He deserved the shit that Teasle would do to him if he let himself be caught.
The dogs were barking even closer. Sweat smarting his face, he touched a hand to it and felt the sharp rough stubble of his beard, and brought down the hand sticky with blood from where the bushes and nettles had slashed and ripped him. The blood made him furious with himself. He had thought that running away from Teasle would be fairly simple and routine, that after what he had been through in the war, he could handle anything. Now he was telling himself to think again. The way he had been shaking from the helicopter should have warned him, he knew, but still he had been so confident he could outrun Teasle that he had gone and cornered himself, and now he would be damn lucky to get out of this with just the blood that was already on him. There was only one thing yet that he could do. He rushed along the top of the new cliff, staring down checking the height, stopping where the cliff seemed lowest. Two hundred feet.