Manhunt. Volume 14, Number 1, February/March, 1966

Some unseen limpkins moaned about his cry for a little while. Then they shut up and the silence picked up again, and there was nothing but the usual sing of the attacking mosquitoes.

Five minutes... ten minutes...

A redheaded pilcated woodpecker banked among the trees in its peculiar up-and-down flight pattern. Ramsay watched it go. Had it been flushed out? His thumb stretched for the.22’s hammer.

“Haw!” Tanner’s laugh exploded in the jungle.

“Smart bastard, ain’t you? Figgered to bushwhack old Coz, did you? Figgered I’d thunk I got you and would come booming along to see the body. But you ort a left my knife on that titi!” Tanner let out a crazy laugh, and a chill zagged up Ramsay’s spine.

“Now I’m goan show you real bushwhacking, boy! I’m coming at you, hear? But you won’t see me!”

He was now certain that Tanner had a gun — else he wouldn’t have risked wasting his knife on the spring trap. And Ramsay didn’t dare try to match the.22 against a real firearm. Conscious of his danger, he scrambled hastily to his feet and took off into the jungle.

He didn’t flee in absolute terror this time. He ran with an idea forming in his mind. Two could play at traps...

The jungle opened and he ran panting into the sawgrass. Four wild turkeys, flushed out of hiding, raced like streaks through the grass and palmetto and took flight, thrashing the air with powerful wings. Ramsay dodged in among a tall, lacy stand of Caribbean pines and cut back toward the creek and the pindown thicket again.

He was laying a track that a blind man couldn’t miss.

Nearing the pindowns, he turned south and started forcing a path through the devilclub and catclaws until he reached a little soggy leaf-covered patch of earth. The number two downstream trap was under those leaves.

With Tanner’s knife he cut down the telltale bait dangling from a gum tree, and pitched it into a witch hobble. Then he stepped over the concealed trap and pushed deeper into the devilclub.

Not three minutes later a piercing shriek all but split his eardrums, and all manner of little creatures went scurrying in the sky with a great beating of crimson wings. Ramsay stopped short with a tight grin. A moment later he slipped quietly back along the path.

He spotted Tanner from some distance away. The killer was thrashing around in the damp leaves like a wounded cougar, wearing the steel trap on his right foot. Suddenly he wheeled over, belly to the ground, and his eyes glared insanely at Ramsay.

He snatched for something by his side, and Ramsay piled sideways into the thicket as Tanner whacked out a shot.

That was that. He had a 30 carbine, and Ramsay didn’t stand a chance of getting close enough to put the.22 to use. He pulled back in the bush, wondering what to do next.

Tanner, evidently, knew just what to do. He knew he didn’t have a prayer of forcing down those powerful springs on the trap by hand, so he disentangled the drag hook and picked it up along with the connecting chain, and started hobbling painfully after Ramsay.

Ramsay understood Tanner’s desperate play. The killer was going to go back to the camp and find Harris’ jackscrew which would loosen the steel jaws on the trap. Which meant that Ramsay would have to get to the camp first and pocket the jackscrew.

The trouble was, he didn’t know where Harris kept it. It would probably cost him precious minutes trying to find the damn thing among all the patrolman’s gear. And all Tanner needed with that carbine was one clear shot.

Then he remembered there was one other kind of trap that he had completely overlooked...

He started laying a fresh trail back to camp, making it comparatively easy for Tanner to follow him. Reaching the marshy thicket at a point where the godawful pin-downs pushed far over the spongy bank of the island, he hacked a sizeable path through the tules and hoop bushes with the knife. The oozy marl was only ankle deep.

He paused, listening to Tanner’s labored breathing and gasps of pain, still coming on strong. And he knew then that Tanner was one of those hardheaded, iron-ribbed men who would never throw in the towel. Even if he never got the jackscrew, he would keep right on limping after Ramsay with that damned thing on his foot, until he ran him down and killed him.

Cutting reeds right to left, he forged on through the clinging muck until he reached the place where Harris had warned him to watch out. Carefully separating the tules with his hands, he veered around the danger spot and came back again on the opposite side of the sinkhole.

He hacked open a path in the tules — one that would look as if he had waded straight across the marled space. Then he slogged on toward the rising jungle, slashing and shoving at the damn Moses reed which was as thick as the business end of a broom. But not for far. He stopped, panting for breath, listening—

A startled cry splintered the silence, and he turned back.