Carl Thornton had become something of a local hero. Nobody knew how the news had leaked out, but everyone knew that Crestwood's owner was paying all of Smoky's extensive hospital bills. That puzzled Ted, for Thornton had never seemed the type to care about anyone's welfare save his own. But he would do anything that worked to his own advantage, and perhaps he thought it worth his while, at the price of Smoky's hospital expenses, to have Lorton solidly behind him. There could be no doubt that Lorton was there. "Cut it out!" Ted urged himself. "You don't like Thornton, but give him credit, if credit's due." Ted swung up the Harkness drive and parked. While Tammie went off on an inspection tour to assure himself that everything was as it should be, the boy took the basket of laundry inside. He grimaced. Modern in some respects, Al had by no means accepted the streamlined age as an unmixed blessing. He'd bought a freezer and refrigerator because their advantages were obvious. But he scorned washing machines and was sure that, though clothes emerging from one might look clean, they couldn't possibly be as pure as those that were washed on a scrub-board. Ted put the washtub on its stand, filled it with hot water, added soap and went to scrubbing. He rinsed the laundry, ran it through a hand wringer and hung it on a line stretched behind the house. An hour before sundown, he went back to camp to replace the bedding and wind his clotheslines on a spool. He got his own supper, fed Tammie, washed the dishes and had just finished putting them where they belonged when the collie whined a warning. A car, followed by a second, came up the drive and, a moment later, there was an unnecessarily loud knock on the door. Ted opened it to confront a rather plump man, who was probably in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in a gaudy wool shirt, hunting pants, ten-inch lace boots, and around his middle was belted a hunting knife almost long enough to be a small sword. His black hair was a little wild and so were his eyes, but his smile was pleasant and his outstretched hand was quite steady. "Ted?" "That's right." "I'm Beamish," the other stated, a little thickly. "B'-gosh, we found you!" "You certainly did!" Ted smiled faintly. Hunters going into camp often did a little anticipatory celebrating and evidently Arthur Beamish had been overdoing it. "This the camp?" he asked. "No, the camp's farther up the road." "Good!" Arthur Beamish said happily. "You go in the woods, you go in the woods! More woods, the better! That's what I always say! What do you always say?" "Same thing." Ted grinned. "If you want to follow me, I'll show you the way up there." "Ride with ya," Beamish declared. "Tha's just what I'll do." "You're welcome." Ordering Tammie to stay in the house, Ted guided his exuberant guest to the pickup and opened the door for him. Arthur Beamish bellowed, "Follow us, men! Ah, wilderness!"