"You've been running that trail since April. I'd think you'd know it by now."
"All the rain is going to make the footing different. Might be muddy going up the big hill."
Father Max nodded sagely. "David, did I ever tell you that your parents would have been proud of you?"
Valentine paused for a second as he laced his high moccasins. "Yes. Mostly after you've had a drink. It always makes you soft."
"You're a bit of the best of both of them. You've got his quick thinking and dedication, and enough of your mother's looks and humor and heart to soften his edges. I wish he- they-could see you today. We used to call the last day of school graduation, you know that?"
"Yup. I've seen pictures and everything. A funny hat and a piece of paper that says you know stuff. That would be great, but I want to get us that gun." He moved to the door. "You going to be in the public tent?"
"Yes, blessing the food and watching you collect first prize. Good luck, David."
He opened the patched, squeaky screen door and saw two bearded men coming up the path from the road. They were strangers to him. They looked as though they had spent every moment of their adult years in the elements. They wore buckskin top to bottom, except for battered, broad-brimmed felt hats on their heads. They bore rifles in leather sheaths, but they did not have the shifty, bullying air that the soldiers of the patrols did. Unlike the soldiers charged by the Kurians with keeping order in the Boundary Waters, these men moved with a cautious, quiet manner. There was something to their eyes that suggested wary wild animals.
"Father Max," Valentine called into the house without taking his eyes off the men. "Strangers coming."
The men paused, smiling with tobacco-stained teeth. The taller of the two spoke: "Don't let the guns scare you, boy. I know your people."
Father Max emerged from the house and stepped out into the rain-soaked yard with arms outstretched. "Paul Samuels," he half shouted, walking out to embrace the tall man in his gangly arms. "You haven't come this way in years! Who is this with you?"
"My name's Jess Finner, sir. I've sure heard about you, sir."
The Padre smiled. "That could be good or bad, Mr. Finner. I'd like you both to meet my ward, David. He's the son of Lee Valentine and Helen Saint Croix."
"I knew your father, David," said the one named Samuels. Valentine saw memories lurking in the brown pools beneath his wrinkled brow. "Bad business, that day at his place. I saw you after the funeral. Took us four months, but we got the men that-"
"Let's not dredge up old history," the Padre interrupted.
Valentine caught the looks exchanged between the men and suddenly lost interest in the race and the shotgun.
The Padre patted his shoulder. "We'll talk later, David- that's a promise. Get going! But give my regrets to the Council at the public tent, and get back here as soon as you can. We're going to crack the seal on one of the bottles from the woodpile, and then you may have to put me to bed."
"Not likely," Samuels guffawed.
The Padre gave David his "I mean it, now" look, and Valentine headed off down the road. He still had time to look over the two-mile course if he hurried. Behind him, the three men watched him go, then turned and walked into the house.
The smell of cooking food greeted him at the campgrounds. The public tent, a behemoth, six-pole structure that saw weddings, baptisms, auctions, and meetings at the start of every summer, was hidden in a little glade surrounded by lakes and hills, miles from the nearest road and out of sight from any patrol in vehicles. The Hideout Festival featured sports and contests for the children and teenagers. A wedding or two always added to the celebratory atmosphere. The adults learned crafts; held riding, shooting, and archery competitions; and then feasted on barbecue each evening. Families brought their special dishes for all to share, for in a region of dreadful, cold winters and summers spent in hiding, there were few chances for large gatherings. With the festival's conclusion, the people would scatter into the woods and lakes to wait out the summer heat, hoping that the Reapers would comb some other portion of the Boundary Waters in search of prey.
The race felt less a sport and more of a chore to Valentine by the time he reached the crowd. The people, horses, wagons, and traders' stalls normally fascinated him, but the arrival of the two strangers held his thoughts in a grip that startled him. His desire for a ribbon and a shotgun in front of an applauding crowd seemed meaningless when compared with meeting a man who had known his father.
He resigned himself to running the race anyway. The course looped out in a horseshoe shape around BirchLake. Usually a mud-rimmed half-swamp by mid-May, BirchLake had swollen with the heavy rains until its fingers reached up almost to the public tent.
Valentine greeted Doyle and a few other acquaintances from school. He had many acquaintances but no close friends. As the Padre's live-in student, responsibilities in keeping the house and school running prevented him from forming attachments, and if that weren't enough, his bookish habits made him a natural outsider on the occasions when he did mix with the boisterous teenagers. He wandered off into the woods along the two-mile trail. He wanted time to be alone and to think. He had guessed right; the ground on the big hill to the west of BirchLake was slick with clay-colored mud. He stood on the hill and looked out across the rippled surface of the lake toward the public tent. A thought sprang from the mysterious garden in his mind where his best ideas grew.
Fifteen boys participated in the race, though only a handful had enough points from the other Field Game events to have a chance at the prize. They were dressed in everything from overalls to leather loincloths, all tan and thin, tangle haired and wire muscled.
"One to be steady," invoked Councilman Gaffley to the rocking assortment of racers. "Two to be ready, and you're off!"
A few of the boys almost stopped a hundred yards into the race when Valentine made a sharp right turn off the trail, heading for Birch Lake. He sprinted out onto a long spit of land and thrashed his way into the water.
Valentine swam with lusty, powerful strokes, sighting on a tall oak on the other side. This neck of the lake was 150 yards or so across, and he figured he would be back on the trail about the time the rest of the boys skidded down the muddy hill.
And he was right, lunging dripping wet from the lake and pounding up the trail before the lead boy, Bobby Royce, could be seen emerging from the woods. David broke the string at the finish line with a muddy chest to a mixture of cheers and boos. Most of the boos came from families who had their boys in the race. A frowning Councilman grabbed it off him as if it were a sacred icon being defiled and not a piece of ratty twine.
The other boys hit the finish line two minutes later, and the debate began. A few maintained that the important thing was to race from point A to point B as quickly as possible, and the exact route, land or water, didn't matter. The majority argued that the purpose of the race was a two-mile run cross-country, not a swim, which would be a different sport altogether. Each side increased its volume under the assumption that whoever made the most noise would win the argument. Two old men found the whole fracas hilarious, and they pressed a bottle of beer into David's palm, slapping him on the back and pronouncing him a first-rate sport for getting Councilman Gaffley so huffy he looked like a hen with her feathers up.
A hasty, three-councilmen panel pronounced Valentine disqualified from the race, but the winner of a special award in recognition for his "initiative and originality." Valentine watched Bobby Royce receive the shotgun and shells and wandered out of the tent. The barbecue smell made him hungry all over again. He grabbed a tin tray and loaded it from the ample spread outside. The homemade beer tasted vile. Had beer been this bad in the Old World? he wondered. But somehow it complemented the smoky-tasting meat. He found a dry patch of ground under a nearby tree and went to work on the food.