Ted prepared a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and fed Tammie. Then he fixed a lunch and, with Tammie beside him, got into Al's old pickup. He gulped. The seat had always seemed small enough when he and his father occupied it together. With Al gone, and despite the fact that Tammie sat beside him, the seat was huge. Ted gritted his teeth and started down the drive. He turned left on the Lorton Road, slowed for the dangerous, hairpin turn that was Dead Man's Curve, speeded up to climb a gentle rise, descended back into the valley and turned again on the Fordham Road. A well graded and not at all a dangerous highway, somehow the Fordham Road had never seemed a place for cars. It was as though it had always been here, a part of the Mahela, and had never been torn out of the beech forest with gargantuan bulldozers or ripped with blasting powder. For the most part, it was used by the trucks of a small logging outfit which, under State supervision, was cutting surplus timber and by hunters who wanted to drive their cars as close as possible to remote hunting country. Ted slowed up for five deer that drifted across the road in front of him and stopped for a fawn that stood with braced legs and wide eyes and regarded the truck in amazement. Only when Ted tooted the horn did the fawn come alive, scramble up an embankment and disappear. The boy smiled wearily. Had Al been with him, both would have enjoyed the startled fawn and they would have talked about it. An hour after leaving his house, Ted came to the mouth of Coon Valley. Long and shallow, the upper parts of both slopes were covered with beech forest. But if any trees had ever found a rooting in the floor of the valley or for about seventy yards up either side, they had died or been cut so long ago that even the stumps had disappeared. The usual little stream trickled down the valley. Ted pulled over to the side and stopped. He got out and put the truck's keys in his pocket. Tammie jumped to the ground beside him. The big collie bristled and walked warily around a dark stain in the road. Ted fought a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no doubt that some hurt thing had lain here, but unless someone had told him so, he never would have known that it was a man. Ted licked his lips, and Tammie stayed close beside him as they started up the valley. Smoky Delbert's journey had indeed been a terrible one. Had he not been hardened by a lifetime of outdoor living, probably he never could have made it. In a way, Ted supposed, it was Smoky's atonement for his many vicious practices. Yet, the boy found it in his heart to admit that, whoever had shot the poacher and forced him to crawl, wounded and bleeding, to the Fordham Road, was even more vicious. Ted stirred uneasily, then calmed himself. Al had said it was no part of his doing. Therefore it was not. Who had done this dreadful thing?