He looked at where Mitch was sitting in the rain and mud, holding his mouth, groaning. 'Help me with him,' he said, lifting Mitch to his feet.
Mitch shoved him away. 'I'm all right,' he murmured through his missing teeth. 'You've done enough. Don't come near me.'
'Let me try,' Ward said.
But Mitch pushed him away too. 'I'm all right, I tell you.' His lips were swollen purple. His head drooped and he covered his face with his hands. 'Dammit, I'm all right.'
'Sure you are,' Ward said and caught him as he sagged to his knees.
'I - Jesus, my teeth.'
'I know,' Teasle said, and together, he and Ward braced Mitch up.
Shingleton looked at Teasle, shaking his head. 'What a mess. Look at how dull his eyes are. And look at you. How are you going to make it through the night without a shirt? You'll freeze.'
'Don't worry about it. Just watch out for Lester and them.'
'By now they're long gone.'
'Not in this storm. They won't be able to see to walk in a straight line. They'll be wandering around this bluff somewhere, and if we stumble into them, look out. Lester and that young deputy are so scared about the kid coming, they're liable to think we're him and start shooting. I've seen it happen like that before.'
Snowstorms in Korea where a sentry shot his own man by mistake, he was thinking, no time to explain. Rainy nights in Louisville where two policemen got confused and shot each other. His father. Something like that had happened to his father too - but he could not let himself think about it, remember it.
'Let's go,' he said abruptly. 'We've got a lot of miles to cover and we're not getting any stronger.'
The rain pushing at their backs, they guided Mitch through the trees. At first his legs dragged in the mud; then clumsily, sluggishly, he managed walking.
A war hero, Teasle thought, his back numb from the cold rain streaming down it. The kid had said he was in the war, but who would have thought to believe him? Why hadn't the kid explained more?
Would that have made a difference? Would you have handled him different from anybody else?
No. I couldn't.
Fine, then you just worry about what he knows to do to you when he comes.
If he comes. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe he won't come.
He came back to town all those times, didn't he? And he'll come this time too. Oh, he'll come all right.
'Hey, you're trembling,' Shingleton said.
'Just look out for Lester and them.'
He could not keep from thinking about it. Legs stiff and hard to move, holding Mitch up as he and the others trudged wearily through the trees in the rain, he could not help remembering what had happened to his father, that Saturday, the six other men who had gone on the deer hunt. His father had wanted him along, but three had said he was too young, and his father had not liked the way they said it, but gave in: that Saturday was the first day of the season, an argument would spoil it.
