By noon he had realized that no intelligent driver was going to endanger his life by picking up a skinny, filthy Indian with a bow and arrow, so he left the road and did some more hunting. He bagged three quail in a field, and another rabbit. For once he had the food all to himself, and it was a veritable feast that filled his belly and beyond. The heavy fatigue turned his limbs to iron.
He found a patch of firs where he could lie down. The sunlight hurt his night-sharpened eyes, causing a headache. He decided it was not a good idea to change his sleeping schedule so abruptly, so he decided to do some tramping that night.
A twig cracked. The Indian saw the dog settling down a discreet distance from him. “Fucking beast,” he muttered at the persistent animal, but he was too tired to really chew it out. Let the beast sleep. He could always beat hell out of it later. He set his mental clock to awaken him around seven, when the coolness of late afternoon became the coldness of night.
In town, Jason bought a small tent, a bedroll, a kerosene stove, and a gas lantern. At the sporting-goods store he purchased a steel hatchet and a box of .357 Magnum shells for his Colt Python, a handgun so ludicrously deadly that six shots could sever a small tree. He was a better shot with this pistol than with a rifle, a skill gained by hours of practice at a Kansas City country club.
He found a U.S. Army survey map of the county, with markings for the trailer park, the apple orchard, and various small farms. This map revealed a group of five streams just beyond the apple orchard. Jason remembered that the ape had escaped down a stream after killing Nicolson in Canada.
He walked the dog through the photographers and curious gawkers swarming around the orchard, entered the cottonwoods, and tramped up to the first stream. It was like the one in Canada, with a shallow run of water leading to deeper depths overhung with willows.
Buck became nervous as he sniffed both banks for an hour. The scent was palpable, but there was no trail along the water’s edge. Instead, the scent led to deeper woods.
“That’s weird, Buck. I thought he liked rivers.” Jason tried to ignore the small ring of alarm that went off in his mind.
The second stream was half a mile distant. This water was deep and slow-moving. Again the dog picked up faint traces of the ape’s passage leading farther into the woods. Jason’s alarm grew to a continual nagging itch.
The third stream was hardly a stream. It was more a series of rocky ponds, chained together by rivulets. The smell clinging to branches and bits of moss indicated that the ape had passed by this water, too. Jason was thoroughly puzzled. The beast had crossed all three rivers and gone deeper into the woods.
At the fourth stream, the shepherd howled mournfully, little piteous cries of terror. Jason pushed his muzzle against the ground and noted that the ape at last was moving along water in a westward direction. This river was deep and slow-moving, gladed by spruce and moss. Deprived of the sunlight, the forest floor was clear of undergrowth, and the scent was embedded in the soft, wet gravel of the bank. Jason’s worry abated somewhat. He was on to something, but he did not know what. At least it looked like the beast was moving somewhere.
He consulted the map. They were five miles from the orchard, in deep woods. “It almost makes sense, Buck. Almost. Except the logical thing to do is take the first river you come to, if you’re on the run. There’s something about this fourth one he liked.” Jason felt that he had been given the key to some kind of very important lock, which he would have to find.
The soft, wet bank gravel did not hold footprints of either the ape, the Indian, or the dog. Jason noted how the scent always came from hard rocks or tight-packed gravel, where footprints did not take. The thing concealed its tracks perfectly. And Jason suspected the beast had an inordinate love, maybe even a need, for fruits. There was no other reason for it to stop running before it was well clear of the pandemonium of the trailer park.
He tied the shepherd to a tree and took out a ham sandwich. He laid the map on the ground and examined the squiggles of the rivers as if he could peel underneath the paper somehow and uncover secrets. The shepherd regarded him with sharp wolf’s eyes. Already he was homesick for his old chain.
“Buck, old boy, here’s the situation.” Jason picked a piece of wax paper from the sandwich. “That scent’s going to be dead cold in another day. Unless we trip over him, we won’t get anywhere following him like this.”
He gave half of the sandwich to the dog. It was easy and comfortable talking to the animal. It was always easy talking to animals if you were a solitary man. “So we’ve got to put ourselves in that ape’s mind and see if we can’t get ahead of him somehow. Predict where he’ll go. Right? What do we know about him so far? We know he moves at night. We know he sticks close to the water. Best of all, we know he eats constantly. Night, food, and water are three walls of a cage, if you look at it right. Especially food. He always goes for food.”
His finger hovered over the map. Bull’s-eye!
He punched down on an oblong lake called the Little Harrington, about twenty miles west of where they were sitting. All five streams emptied into it. The Little Harrington was surrounded by ink bristles signifying swampland. Swampland meant thick vegetation, birds, beavers, rodents, and insects. Swampland meant food.
“Buck, I bet you anything he hits this lake! The way he eats, a swamp would be a feast for him! He hasn’t got there yet! It’s too far! But he’ll get there tonight or tomorrow night, and we’ll be waiting there.” Elated, Jason rose to his feet, rolling up the map. The beast was his, he was sure of it. He could almost reach into the leaves and touch it. “We’ll have him, boy! We’ll have him by the short hairs. We’ll nail him at the lake!” Jason burst out laughing as the dog’s hackles rose. “You feel him, boy? So do I. So do I!”
Jason’s elation was not total. The mysterious lock in his mind remained sealed. He looked at the map again with the irresistible feeling that it was trying to tell him something terribly important about his quarry.
The Little Harrington lake was a wetland basin with an indeterminate shore of reeds and vines, through which Jason and the dog waded in muck, searching for signs of the ape’s passage. All five streams converged into its eastern end, forming a muddy delta. Frogs splashed through the water, and gnats dizzily circled one another in the dimming daylight.
“So far so good, Buck. There’s plenty of gunk to eat, and he hasn’t been through here yet.”
Jason watched the small pips of nipping fish spreading outward on the water’s surface into smooth symmetrical circles that interlocked with one another. For several moments he let the heavy peace of the lake massage him.
Then he took a metal ultrasonic dog whistle from his pocket. He threw a rotten stick into the water. Buck splashed into the lake, paddled out to the stick, and closed his jaws around it, snapping it to pieces.
Jason blew a short, soundless hiss on the whistle. Buck woofed, made a splashy starboard turn, and came back. He emerged trembling in the reeds, shaking off great halos of water that made Jason cringe. Although they were not friends yet, a working relationship was being forged between them.
They splashed around the muddy delta where it gradually separated into five component streams. “I’d like to know where I am in case I have to do some night running. He’ll be here either tonight or tomorrow night.”
Unless he was completely wrong about the lake and the beast did not show up at all. But Jason did not want to think about that.
After an hour of sweaty sloshing through mud, Jason returned to the car and let the dog inside, where it promptly soaked the floor and seat covers. He should have been feeling good. Instead, that lock in his mind, that tight question about why the beast took the fourth river instead of the first, remained closed.