Two Make A Team
By Hugh B. Cave
Originally published in the February, 1947 issue of Short Stories

Alec Maintained He'd Come Back to Be Game Warden—
Not Fourth Assistant to a Venus in Breeches!

FROM someone with shoulders and a man-sized chin, Alec Britt might have endured the bombshell with equanimity. At the least, he could have kept his temper stoppered until the office door was shut behind him. But to be told off by a lisping young upstart who obviously wouldn't know mink tracks from those of a skunk—that was too much. Alec's ears flamed.
"Mr. Palmer," he shouted across the desk "I came home to be game warden, not fourth assistant valet to a Venus in breeches!"
Young Mr. Palmer stilled his trembling hands by fumbling with his tie. "D-don't you mean Diana?" he timidly suggested. "Diana, not Venus, was the goddess of the hunt, you know. And you wouldn't be fourth assistant, really—"
"I'll work for Cready at the logging camp!"
"B-but I've already informed the warden that you—"
"Then tell her I changed your mind for you!" Alec retorted on his way to the door. And the glass panel in the door, marked Fish & Game Commission was still quivering when he reached the end of the hall.
The gall of them! To be sure, there was some small excuse for their naming a new warden during his eighteen months' absence, but to turn the job over to a woman and expect him to take orders from her on his return—! Did they expect him to sew buttons on her breeches while she served afternoon tea to poachers? Hadn't they learned yet that the game-law violators in this border county would as soon shoot a warden as jack a deer?
The air was as brittle as his temper, and the hard-packed snow squealed under his boots as he hiked across the street to Moose Landing's block of business establishments. The restaurant into which he strode was empty of customers, but its proprietor, a puffing woman in a vast white apron, came from the kitchen when the door clapped shut behind him.
"Alec Britt!" she exclaimed. "How long have you been back?"
Alec straddled a stool and put his elbows on the scrubbed plank counter. "I got in last night, Ma. Think you can fix me a meal of something while I use your phone?"
Ma Liscomb chuckled. "One thick steak, rare. French fries. A dish of peas swimin' in gravy. A slab of apple pie."
"And coffee."
"And coffee. Seems like you left only yesterday, Alec. Were you game warden out there in the west?"
"I worked for the government, searching out special kinds of timber."
"Will you be game warden again in these parts, Alec?"
He slid off his stool, glowering at her. "You won't be the last to ask me, I suppose," he grumbled. "What you'd better do, Ma, is take a crayon and write 'no' on the back of my jacket, so I can save wear and tear on my blood pressure." Alec strode to the phone and gave the crank a vicious turn. "I've done a lot of fool things in my time, but I draw the line at partnership with a female game warden. Hello? This Jenny MacAndrews? Jenny, this is Alec Britt. Get me Matt Cready at the logging camp, will you?"
It took a while to put a call through to the camp on Racing River. While he waited, Ma Liscomb went to the kitchen to prepare his meal. But she was in the doorway, listening, when Cready answered.
"Matt?" Alec said. "About those letters you wrote me this spring.... If the job is still open, I'll take it. What? Well, I know, but the situation is some different. I'll be out tomorrow."
"Are you living out at your cabin, Alec?" Ma Liscomb asked when he returned to the counter.
"Me and eighteen months' dust," he said wryly. "But not for long. You heard what I told Cready."
"It's a no-good shame you can't take up where you left off, " she declared indignantly. "At heart, Alec, you're a game warden. Up there at Cready's place you'll be eatin' venison that would never be killed if your were back on your old job."
Alec reached for the newspaper on the counter. He hardly knew what he read— something about a pair of convicts breaking out of the near-by state prison—but the paper sheltered him from Ma Liscomb's questions while he ate. Not until he was on his way out the door did she get a rise out of him.
"Alec," she said then, "do you know who the new warden is?"
He turned deliberately, his jaw out. "No." he thundered, in the voice he had used on young Mr. Palmer. "And I damn well don't care!" And before Ma could recover from that, he was gone.

HE HAD not exaggerated about the dust in his cabin at Crazy Lake. The place was thick with it. The curtains had absorbed so much weight that they scarcely stirred in the breeze.
He had meant to put things in shape after picking up his old job. But now, working for Cready, he would not be using the cabin.
Up early in the morning, he threw some clothes into his duffel, tossed his bedding into the storage chest, and went out to his car.
He was behind the wheel, gazing glumly at the frozen lake and waiting for the idling engine to cast off its morning chill, when another car bumped into the cabin clearing. A girl stepped out of it and spoke before she reached him. "Hi, Alec!" she said.
Alec stared at her. He had known Ruth Daniels a long time. Her father, old Tom Daniels ran the best sporting camp in the county. Alec had hunted, trapped and fished with her more times than he could remember. He'd taken her to Saturday night dances in Moose Landing.
Normally he would have grinned at her eager welcome and the warmth of her smile. But after the ultimatum he had been handed in the commissioner's office, he saw only the badge on her black and red wool shirt. "So you're the one," he growled. "I might have known!"
She put her hands on her hips and met his scowl with one of her own. "That's a fine welcome after all these months, Alec Britt! Aren't you glad to see me?"
"Should I be?"
"Alec, " she said, "what's eating you? The way you talked to poor Mr. Palmer. And now me."
"I don't like Mr. Palmer."
"You don't know whether you do or not. He's new   in   the   department. Besides, he   isn't responsible   for   the   new   system. You   said yourself, before you went away, that if wardens worked in pairs—"
"I'm all for it," Alec retorted. "Then why on earth—"
"When I pumped for a partner, we didn't have female wardens."
That stopped her, and the flush that colored her face gave him a moment of satisfaction. At the same time, being fundamentally honest, he knew himself for a first class heel. With Palmer, and now with her, he had made the woman-warden thing the paramount issue in his revolt, when what really burned him was the fact that he was expected to take orders.
"You've been away so long," Palmer had said, "that of course for the time being, you will be in a somewhat awkward position."
Awkward was right!
Alec lit a cigarette and flipped the match out the window. He was stuck now with his rebellion, and any change of attitude would only make him look ridiculous. "Well, thanks for dropping in," he said. "I'm on my way to Cready's."
"You—you won't even talk it over?"
"Can't." He shrugged. "I phoned Cready yesterday." And because something more than professional pride was eating him, he added unnecessarily, "Give my regards to Palmer." That seemed to end the conversation nicely.
But as he ground out the thirty-odd miles of road to Racing River, Alec found himself brooding over that last remark more than he wanted to. "You think of the damnedest things to say," he told himself. He knew, though, why Palmer's name had come so glibly to his Lips. At sight of the badge on Ruth's shirt he had discovered a new significance in some of the remarks made yesterday at the office. Yesterday he hadn't known whom Palmer was talking about.
"What difference does it make?" he asked himself angrily.
But he had one mighty virtue—he had never tried to kid Alec Britt. Scowling through the car's windshield, he recalled the times on end, out west, when his thoughts had wandered back to the North Woods. Almost any little thing—a queer shaped tree, a bit of sunlit water shining In a purple valley—had been enough to take him home in his mind. And on practically every one of those nostalgic excursions he had wound up in the company of the girl who now had his job.
He'd never written to her. He just wasn't the writing sort. But time and again he had thought of her, remembering the sound of her voice, the look of her, her love of the woods. Now she probably thought him a full-fledged skunk, and with reason.
He swore at himself until his breath ran out, then turned on the car radio. The rest of the way to Racing River he listened to dance music and a news broadcast, the latter filled with talk about the hunt for the two escaped convicts. It kept Alec's mind from his troubles.

THE job at Cready's was good enough. Under contract to make a rush cut on leased land, Cready had put together a camp on the river bank, assembled fifty so-called loggers from a depleted labor pool, and was doing his best to get the work out. He was the man for that job—huge, bull-headed, savagely efficient. "Show the fools what to cut," he said to Alec. "I'll see they cut it!"
His duties kept Alec on the prowl from dawn till dark in a wilderness half buried under snow. It was hard, cold work. But he knew the woods, liked to be in them, especially alone in them, and had no desire to hang around camp where Cready's temper bit like a buzz-saw on the slightest pretext. When restlessness rose up to plague him, he simply worked harder.
Ma Liscomb was right, though; he had not been with Cready a week before he faced his first meal of out-season venison. Mysteriously, enough deer meat to feed the entire crew had found its way into camp. Alec ate his share without protest, aware that Cready, warily watching from the opposite end of the long plank table, was poised to strike back at any comment.
Well, why should he protest? Regardless of game laws and conservation programs, independent loggers for years had been killing deer to supply their camps. Some went so far as to employ professional poachers. It was up to the warden, not Alec Britt, to stop such illegal slaughter.
Alec had a mental picture of the new warden daring to challenge Matt Cready. He put it from his mind quickly. You keep out of this, mister, he told himself. It's not your business.
Maybe it wasn't. But when, a week or so later, he found the carcasses of two young does in a clearing near camp, the Britt temper flared. Deer killing was one thing; gross butchery was something else again. He strode into Cready's office, slammed the door behind him and thrust out his jaw. "Who's doing your gunning?" he demanded.
Cready looked up, scowling, from some paper work. Any kind of paper work came hard to Cready. Interruptions enraged him. "What's it to you?" he snapped. "You quit being warden eighteen months ago."
"Matt, when a deer is killed for meat, there's some excuse. When it's hacked up and left to rot with fifty-sixty pounds of good venison still on the carcass, no man is going to keep his mouth shut."
The logger put down his pencil. "You're crazy. I wouldn't hire that kind of hunter and you know it."
"I know what I saw."
"Then someone else must have done it. Some outsider."
"No outsider would hunt within gunshot of a logging camp," Alec retorted. "I want to talk to your man, Matt. Who is he?"
"You leave that to me."
"Then I hope I don't find any more half-butchered deer. You tell him that."
"I've already told you—"
"Because I'll sure as hell report the next one." Alec turned to open the door.
He heard the other man rising from his chair, and swung back to face him. He knew Cready's capabilities. But Cready's big hands, though white at the knuckles, were not raised.
The threat was all in his twitching mouth and smoldering eyes. He just looked.
Alec walked out.
He kept his eyes open after that, curious to know which of Cready's men was responsible. But the fellow, whoever he was, was a shrewd operator; Alec was no nearer a solution when he found his third slaughtered deer a few days later. All but a few pounds of choice steak meat were spoiling on the abandoned carcass.
Cready's office was empty. Alec strode to the wall phone, cranked it and said, "Get me the office of the Fish & Game Commission at Moose Landing." It was Mr. Palmer of the lisp and the bow-tie who answered.
"Palmer, this is Britt at Cready's camp. It's none of my business any more, but you ought to know what's going on here." Without inviting an interruption, he went into details, then hung up and walked across camp to the bunkhouse. There was nothing to be gained by hanging around until Cready fired him. He threw his duffel into his car and drove down the road.
"Some day, mister," he told himself glumly, you'll learn to tend to your own business."
The road followed the river, and he had driven about a mile and a half when he heard shots. No sound could have angered him more. He stopped the car, got out, and stood listening. Long after the echoes had died in the woods on the far side of the stream, he stood with his hands clenched. Then he turned, took his revolver from the car and struck out across the ice.
Maybe the new warden would not thank him for delivering Cready's deer-killer to Palmer's office. Maybe she would resent being deprived of an opportunity to thrust her pretty head into a wolf's den. But he considered the loss of his job a fair price of admission. Besides, he was sore.

IN TWENTY minutes he had covered half a mile of wilderness and found footprints of both hunter and deer in the snow. Spots of blood told him the animal was wounded. A lifetime of prowling the woods told him, surprisingly, that Cready's deer-killer was not well versed in stealth. Before another ten minutes he had spotted both man and deer.
He watched as the man knelt and fired, saw the deer leap and collapse in a quivering heap. It was good shooting. Alec shifted his own gun from his mackinaw pocket to his hand, and waited.
Time enough to make his presence known after he had obtained, for Palmer, eye-witness evidence of the fellow's crude butchering methods.
One thing puzzled him—he didn't recognize the man, though at one time or another he had dealt with nearly all of Cready's crew. Alec stared, trying to place him. Watched the fellow hack a chunk of flesh from the slain animal and rise from his knees. And then the killer turned and trotted away—not toward the river and Cready's camp, but in the opposite direction.
He's heading for North Creek, Alec thought suddenly. The cabin there—. That meat's not for Cready.
He followed. Even though the fellow disappeared once or twice, trailing him was not difficult, the snow was soft and every footprint was distinct. When Alec arrived on the wooded knoll above the creek, his quarry, below him, was crossing the ice toward the dilapidated cabin on the far side—relic of a timber survey made years ago. A plume of smoke rose from the cabin chimney. Alec scowled at it.
Behind him a businesslike voice cradled in the cold air. "Mister, I got a rifle aimed square at your head. Don't you move."
The fellow came from the edge of a poplar thicket, holding his rifle at the hip in both hands until he was close enough to reach out for Alec's revolver. Then without shifting his gaze he stepped aside and shouted, "Jon'than! Come back here!" And to Alec he said again, warningly, "Don't you move."
From the creek, the deer-killer could see what had happened. Dropping his burden, he trotted back up the slope, stopped in front of Alec and peered into his face. "Who're you?" he demanded.
"I work for Cready."
"He was trailin' you, Jon'than," the taller one declared.
"Why?" Jon'than said sharply. "Why were you trailing me?"
Alec shrugged. He had encountered poachers before but never any as unique as these two. Both wore ill-fitting city clothes and were shivering in the cold. Both were bearded and unkempt. "I wondered who was shooting deer out of season," he said.
"Well—now you know."
"That's right. Now I know."
"Minding your own business would have been healthier," Jon'than said, nodding. "You come along to the cabin. You're not the harmless one you pretend to be. You know who we are."
"I don't. Nor do I care."
"Maybe. Maybe not. You people listen to radios, even here."
Alec shrugged again and began walking. He had told the truth; he didn't know who they were. But he could guess, after seeing that newspaper on Ma Liscomb's counter and hearing the news broadcast on the radio.
He hadn't paid much attention to names, but his mind had automatically soaked up the descriptions—and these men fitted the descriptions.
He tried to make talk as he went down the slope, but they were silent, suspicious of him. Crowding him between them, they kept him off balance, and once, when he stumbled and fell headlong in the slippery snow, they froze in their tracks and waited, offering no help, until he had freed himself from a tangle of red-stemmed berry bushes and found his feet again. They would shoot him readily enough, he supposed, if given an excuse.
At the cabin, the short, ugly man named Jon'than opened the door and his companion pushed Alec inside. "Sit down," Jon'than ordered.
Alec walked across the single room and sat on the lower tier of a three-decker bunk while the tall man frowned at him and Jon'than went back to the creek for the venison he had dropped there. Nothing was said until Jon'than returned. Then, seating himself at the table, he frowned at Alec and said, "What's your name, mister?"
"Alec Britt."
"Do you know these woods?"
"Well enough, " Alec admitted.
"Do you know the way to the border, and across it?"
"I suppose so."
"You hear that, Lester?"
Lester, too looked thoughtful. "How far is it to the border?" he demanded, taking over the interrogating.
"I'd say about thirty miles."
"Hard going?"
"On foot, in winter, thirty miles is no pleasure trip."
"But we could do it? In a night?" 
"I suppose so. Unless you got lost."
"That's just it," Jon'than said, fingering a corner of his mouth. "That's why we haven't tried it. We got this far without trouble, but from here to the border is tougher. Much tougher." He scowled at the smoke from his cigarette. "Other hand, we can't hang out here forever. The way I see it, Britt, you could guide us. Hey, Lester?"
"Tonight," Lester agreed, nodding as he got up. "That gives us two-three hours to get to know each other, Britt. Relax. Take it easy. How will you have your steak?" At the sink he stood over the slab of venison with a knife in his hand, an ugly weapon with a spring-controlled blade that snapped in and out like a snake's tongue.
Alec winced. According to the news broadcast this one, Lester, had killed a guard in escaping. With a knife.
"Make mine rare," Alec said wryly.

IT WAS a long afternoon. The two men moved about the cabin, getting their few possessions together, readying their departure, yet the chair by the table was seldom empty and Alec was watched every moment. The rifles lay side by side on the table with their muzzles pointing at the bunk on which he sat. His revolver lay in Lester's pocket. The knife with the snake-tongue blade was almost never out of sight.
Darkness, Alec thought, would never come. And he wondered uneasily if Palmer, back there in Moose Landing, had acted on his phone call. "We ought to get started," he said. "Thirty miles is a long way." But when the two men showed no indication to take the hint, he was reluctant to press the point lest they be suspicious.
The cabin filled with shadows and Jon'than placed a candle on the shelf above the wooden sink. Alec fought his tongue to keep it quiet; gripped his knees to still the restlessness of his hands. Once the cabin lay behind them and they began the long hike through the wilderness, he would have a chance. Especially at night. But not if they guessed his thoughts.
"All right, Britt. Now listen." Jon'than stood before him, grim and purposeful. "We know there's a lot of tricks you could try on us, you being an old hand of these woods. But if you're smart, you won't. We're not dumb with guns. You remember that, hey?"
"I'll remember it." Alec stood up. "Let's get started." He picked up Jon'than's pack, shouldered it, and turned to the door.
The door clattered open in his face. On the threshold, with a gun in his hand, stood Matt Cready.
"Watch it!" Cready warned.
To get out of the way, Alec threw himself against the wall and took the table—and the rifles on it—with him. He moved fast then. He had one of the rifles in his hand before Lester, first to recover, made any move at all. And then Lester's move dissolved into an abortive, half-hearted gesture toward his pocket. Lester's hand never reached the pocket. Matt Cready's gun spoke once, with authority, and the convict's arm went limp.
Jon'than, snarling, flung himself at the door— a foolish move because the doorway was blocked then by two of Cready's loggers. He didn't reach it anyway. Alec's foot shot out. Jon'than tripped over it and went the rest of the way on hands and face. And then Ruth Daniels stepped in.
She knew what she was doing, Alec had to admit. Calm and purposeful, she stood by the door and gave orders—orders which Matt Cready and his loggers seemed more than eager to carry out. When the two dispirited convicts were disarmed and trussed up, Ruth turned to Alec. "Thanks, Alec," she said quietly.
She seemed to mean it. On the way through the darkening woods to Matt Cready's camp, she kept glancing at him, as if she wanted to say more if only he would thaw out enough to let her.
At last, reluctantly, Alec said, "If you like, I'll ride back to town with you. Not that you'll need any help with your prisoners, but.... " He wouldn't look at her.
"It would be lonesome, riding back alone," she said.

LEANING on his broom, Alec scowled through the mist of dust at the girl perched on the window-sill of his Crazy Lake cabin. "I wasn't sure you'd remember," he said. "I was pretty certain Palmer would send you, of course, and that you'd find my car and follow the trail without any trouble—but it's a long time since we did any trapping together. I couldn't be sure the sign would warn you." He scowled at her. "Did you run a trap line while I was away?"
"Uh-huh. Of course. "
"And marked your trap locations the way we always did—with a looped branch?"
Ruth finished polishing the window and made a face at him. "All I know about the woods," she said, "I learned from Warden Britt. When I saw you'd fallen—in a clump of berry bushes where there was absolutely no reason to fall—I stopped to find out why. The looped branch plainly said "Trap here!" so I went the rest of the way on guard and looked in the cabin window before announcing my presence."
"And then?"
"You were obviously in a jam. But those men appeared to be waiting for something—probably darkness and there was time for me to get help.
She grinned at him. "We make quite a team, Alec."
"We do at that," Alec admitted. "Daniels and Britt, poachers pinched, convicts collected. Phone Crazy Lake-one-three-two any time for prompt service."
Ruth slid from her perch and looked the room over with a woman's critical eye. It was clean now. Eighteen months' accumulation of dust had vanished. She took off her apron and shook the dust from her hair. "Alec," she said, "why be so stubborn?"
"Well—Britt and Britt would sound better. What do you think?"
"I think," she said, "Mr. Palmer will be delighted. And it's about time."
THE END