Chapter II: Part 2

Naturally the catastrophe had not gone unchallenged. Except for essential tasks, farm work ended the day after Sue disappeared. As Mun explained it, a body could always get more cows or pigs, or even another farm. But there was only one coon hound like Precious Sue.

Mun was not unduly optimistic when he began the search, for after all Sue had run in the dark of the moon. But the fact that Sue was doomed by the gods did not prevent Mun's pressing the hunt with utmost vigor. Mun and Harky traveled up Willow Brook and down, visiting every neighbor for nine miles in one direction and eleven in the other.

Mellie Garson hadn't seen Sue. Though Mellie had not seen her, he recognized a genuine emergency and joined the hunt for her. So did Raw Stanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, Pine Heglin, and Mule Domster. After two weeks it was sadly concluded that Precious Sue had indeed placed herself beyond hope of redemption when she took after Old Joe in the dark of the moon. The searchers gathered in Mun Mundee's kitchen, decided that Sue's mortal remains would come to rest an undetermined number of miles down Willow Brook, since it was impossible to tell where the breakup would carry her, and they drank a solemn toast to the memory of a great coon hound.

And Harky still had a feeling.

He reached the cornfield, and, as though his heart were really in it, started hoeing at the right place. The right place, naturally, was the side nearest the house. Mun Mundee would have reason to wonder if Harky evinced too much interest in starting near the woods. As he began the first row, which was thirty yards long when one was not hoeing it and thirty miles when one was, Harky mentally reviewed his caches of fishing tackle.

Upstream, thirty steps north, eight east, and ten south from a round rock above the first riffle, which in turn was above the first pool where a snapping turtle with a pockmarked shell lived, a line and three hooks were hidden in a hollow stump. Downstream, on a straight line between the pool where Precious Sue had jumped an almost black coon and the white birch in which she'd bayed it, a line and two hooks were concealed in last year's nest of a song sparrow.

Harky worried about that cache. It had been all right two days ago because he'd seen it, and most birds had already nested. But some would nest a second time, and the ruins of this old nest might be summarily appropriated for a new one. His line would disappear, too, and like as not his hooks. Birds were not particular as long as they had something to hold their nest together. As soon as he found another place not likely to attract Mun's eye, perhaps he'd better move his tackle from the nest. Good hooks and line were not so easy come by that a man could get reckless with them.

Leaning slightly forward, the position in which Mun thought the wielder of a hoe would do most work, and slanting his hoe at the angle Mun favored, Harky sighed resignedly as the blade uncovered a fat and wriggling earthworm. He did not dare pick it up and put it in his pocket--Harky had never seen the need of bait containers--for there were times when Mun seemed to have as many eyes as a centipede had legs, and an eagle's sight in all of them. If he saw Harky put anything in his pocket--and he would see--he'd be present on the double.

Well, there were plenty of worms to be had by probing in moist earth near pools and sloughs. The trouble with them was that they were accustomed to water, and they did not wriggle much when draped on a hook and lowered into it. Garden worms, on the other hand, were so shocked by an unfamiliar environment that they wriggled furiously and attracted bigger fish.

The sun grew hot on Harky's back, but his body was too young, too lithe, and too well-conditioned, to rebel at this relatively light labor. His soul ached. Of all the vegetables calculated to bedevil human beings, he decided, growing corn was the worst.

He tried to find solace by thinking of the good features of corn, and happily alighted on the fact that it attracts coons. Also, it tasted good when stripped milky from the stalk and either boiled or roasted. However, the coons would come anyhow. If there was no corn, they'd still be attracted by the apples in Mun's orchard. And if the Mundees had no corn, neighbors who did would be glad to share with them. Meanwhile, this patch must be hoed a few million times.

Harky pondered a question that has bemused all great philosophers: how can humans be so foolish?

Working at that rhythmic speed which Mun considered ideal for hoeing corn, missing not a single stroke, Harky went on. Discontent became anguish, and anguish mounted to torture, but Harky knew that the wrong move now might very well be ruinous. Like all people with great plans and strong opposition, he must suffer before he gained his ends. But he'd suffer only half as much if the master strategy he'd worked out did not fail him.

Exactly halfway across the first row, Harky turned and started back on the second.

It was a bold move, and Harky's heart began to flutter the instant he made it, but the situation called for bold moves. Harky did not break the rhythm of his hoeing or look up when he heard Mun approach, and he managed to look convincingly astonished when Mun asked,

"What ya up to, Harky?"

Harky glanced up quickly. "Oh. Hello, Pa!"

"I said," Mun repeated, "what ya up to?"

"Why--What do ya mean, Pa?"

"You know blasted well what I mean," Mun growled. "You didn't do but half the first row."

"Oh," Harky might have been a patient teacher instructing a backward pupil. He gestured toward tall trees that, in a couple of hours, would keep the sun from the far half of the corn patch. "The sun, Pa. It's high and warm now, but it'll be high and hot time I get this first half done. Then I can work in shade."

Mun scowled, suspecting a trick and reasonably sure there was one, but unable to fly in the face of such clear-cut logic. If he thought of it, he conceded, he'd plan to hoe the corn that way himself. As he turned on his heel and started walking away, he flung another warning over his shoulder.

"I hope ya don't aim to scoot off an' go fishin'."

"Oh no, Pa!"

Suddenly, because he'd have to hoe only half the corn patch, Harky's burdens became half as heavy. It had worked, as he'd hoped it would, and the most tangled knot in his path was now smooth string. Of course he was not yet clear. But even Mun could not watch him constantly, and once he was near enough the woods to duck into them, Harky would be satisfied with a ninety-second start.

Two hours later, having hoed his way to the edge of the woods, Harky dropped his hoe and started running.

When Mun Mundee would shortly be on one's trail one must ignore nothing, and all this had been planned, too. Harky took the nearest route to Willow Brook.

So far so good, but strictly amateur stuff. Mun, who'd need no blueprint to tell him where Harky had gone, would also take the shortest path to Willow Brook. Harky put his master strategy into effect.

Coming to a patch of mud on the downstream side of a drying slough, Harky ran straight across it the while he headed upstream. He emerged on a patch of new grass that held no tracks, leaped sideways to a boulder, and hop-skipped across Willow Brook on exposed boulders. Reaching the far side, he ran far enough into the forest to be hidden by foliage and headed downstream.

With the comfortable feeling of achievement that always attends a job well done, Harky slowed to a walk. Mun, hot in pursuit and even more hot in the head, would see the tracks leading upstream. Thereafter, for at least a reasonable time, he would stop to think of nothing else. By the time he did, and searched all the upstream hiding places, Harky would be a couple of miles down. He knew of several pools that had their full quota of fish, and that were so situated that a man could lie behind willows, fish, and see a full quarter of a mile upstream the while he remained unseen.

His heart light and his soul at peace, Harky almost started to whistle. He thought better of it.

Mun Mundee never had mastered the printed word. But his eyes were geared to tracks and his ears to the faintest noises. If Harky whistled, he might find his fishing suddenly and rudely interrupted. The softest-footed bobcat had nothing on Mun when it came to silent stalks. More than once, when Harky thought his father was fuming at home, Mun had risen up beside him and applied the flat of his hand where it did the most good.

Harky contented himself with dancing along, and he never thought of the reckoning that must be when he returned home tonight, because in the first place tonight was a long ways off. In the second, there were always reckonings of one sort or another. A man just had to take care he got his reckoning's worth.

Harky halted and stood motionless as any boulder on Dewberry Knob. A doe with twin fawns, and none of the three even suspecting that they were being watched, moved delicately ahead of him. Harky frowned.

It was a mighty puzzling thing about deer, and indeed, about all wild creatures. Except for very young poultry, a man could tell at a glance whether most farm animals were boys or girls, and that was that. He could never be sure about wild ones, largely because he could never come near enough, and there might be something in Mellie Garson's theory that the young of all wild creatures were alike, a sort of neuter gender, until they were six months old. Then they talked it over among themselves and decided which were to be males and which females. Thus they always struck a proper balance.

It was a sensible system if Mellie were correct, though Harky was by no means sure that he was. Neither could he be certain Mellie was wrong, and as the doe and her babies moved out of sight, Harky wondered what sex the two fawns would choose for themselves when they were old enough to decide. Two does maybe, or perhaps two bucks, though it would be better if one were a doe and the other a buck. Both were needed, and the Creeping Hills without deer would be nearly as barren as they would without coons.

When the doe and her babies were far enough away so that there was no chance of frightening them--a man never would get in rifleshot of a buck if he scared it while it was still a fawn--Harky went on down the creek. He stopped to watch a redheaded woodpecker rattling against a dead pine stub. He frowned. The next job Mun had slated for him was putting new shingles on the chicken house, and the woodpecker's rattling was painfully similar to a pounding hammer moving at about the same speed that Mun would expect Harky to maintain.

Obviously finding something it did not like, the woodpecker stopped rattling, voiced a strident cry, and flew away. It was a bad omen, and Harky's frown deepened. He'd seen himself in the woodpecker. Just as the bird had come to grief, so Harky was sure to meet misfortune if he tried shingling the chicken house.

He'd have to think his way out of that chore, too. But the shingling was still far in the future, and the only future worth considering was embodied in what happened between now and sundown. Troubles could be met when they occurred.

When Harky was opposite the pool where Precious Sue had jumped the almost black coon, he turned at right angles. It was scarcely discreet to go all the way and show one's self at the edge of Willow Brook, for though Mun should have been lured upstream, he might have changed his mind and come down.

As soon as he could see the pool through the willows that bordered it, Harky turned and sighted on the white birch in which Sue had finally treed the coon.

He was about to start toward it but remained rooted. Suddenly he heard Precious Sue growl. Not daring to believe, but unwilling to doubt his own ears, Harky turned back to the pool.

He peered through the willows and saw the pup.

DUCKFOOT

By some mischance, one of the willows bordering the pool grew at a freakish angle. A two-pound sucker, probably coon-mauled or osprey-dropped somewhere upstream, had washed down and anchored beneath the misshapen tree. Its white belly was startlingly plain in the clear water.

When Harky came on the scene, the pup was trying to get that sucker. Harky almost called, certain that he had finally found Precious Sue. Then he knew his error. The pup was marked exactly like Sue, and at first glance it seemed exactly the size of Sue. But though it was big for its age, and was further magnified by the water in which it swam, undoubtedly it was a puppy.

Since wild horses couldn't have torn him away, Harky stayed where he was and watched.

The pup couldn't possibly have scented the fish, for the water would kill scent. Therefore he must have seen it and known what he was looking at. Now, despite a certain awkwardness that was to be expected in a pup, he seemed as comfortably at home in the water as Old Joe was in Mun Mundee's chicken house.

He made a little circle, head cocked to one side so that he might peer downward as he swam. For a moment he held still, paws moving just enough to keep him from drifting in the gentle current. Then he dived.

Smooth as a fishing loon, the pup went down headfirst and straight to his objective. Reaching the anchored sucker, he swiped at it with a front paw. The sucker did not move. The pup, who did not seem to know that he was where no dog should be and trying what no dog should try, made another attempt. Failing a second time, he tried a third.

Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Harky voiced the astonishment that he had not dared express while the pup was in hearing:

"Jinglin' all peelhaul! Sue's pup for sure!"

There couldn't be the slightest doubt. A hound pup was one thing. A hound pup that looked exactly like Sue, down to the last blue tick, might leave room for argument. But there was no disputing the lineage of a hound pup that even growled exactly like Sue. Harky had heard her do it a hundred times, always when she was frustrated by something or other.

Once more his feeling had served him well. Sue had not drowned in Willow Brook that black night when she was so hot on Old Joe's trail. However, neither had she followed him across. As close as she'd been, she'd have treed him sure. Even though Old Joe would have taken care to climb a tree with one or more escape routes, Sue would have barked as soon as she got him up. Harky and Mun, who'd lingered near the broken ice for the better part of an hour, would have heard her bark.

Something had happened, and though Harky did not know what it was, he suspected that the broken ice provided the proper clue. If it had broken under Sue, and evidently it had, perhaps she'd been hurt. Somehow or other she'd made it across Willow Brook and the breakup had kept her there. Trapped, unable to come home, she'd gone wandering in search of a mate. She'd found one.

Which one? A hound obviously, and a big one, but Harky knew every hound this side of Willow Brook, and neither the blood nor the characteristics of any were evident in the pup. It must have been a coon hound, for none except coon hounds had reason to work in the water, and the pup combined Sue's aquatic skill with some other hound's genius. A hound that could not only dive, but apparently was capable of remaining submerged for as long as it chose, was a marvel fully as astounding as the two-headed calf that had been born to Mellie Garson's mule-footed cow.

It was what one might expect from a mule-footed cow, Mun opined, and anyway the calf lived only a few hours. The pup was not only alive, but Harky himself was watching it. This day, he told himself, would long be remembered in the annals of the Creeping Hills.

The pup, finally needing air, glided up through the water as gracefully as a trout rising to a fly. Not knowing whether he'd spook, Harky held very still. But he could not control his imagination, and, after the pup dived, what held him down? Fish were able to do as they pleased because, as everyone knew, they gulped water to make themselves heavy when they wanted to go down and spit it out to eject ballast when they wanted to come up. Loons, grebes, and some species of ducks had mastered the same trick. But the only animals that knew it, probably because they spent so much time in the water that they could see for themselves what the fish did, were beavers and muskrats.

Harky had a sudden feeling. Far and away the greatest coon hound ever to run the Creeping Hills, Precious Sue would never run again. If she were alive, she'd be with the pup. But Harky's new feeling had to do with the thought that the pup was destined to become even greater than his mother.

The pup growled once more. Harky rubbed his eyes, certain that he was hearing Sue. He looked away and back again before he convinced himself that he was watching the pup.

Swimming so smoothly that there was scarcely a ripple in his wake, the pup made another circle. Harky's heart pumped furiously as he realized what was happening.

The pup, who probably had tried to retrieve the fish a dozen times, was not working blindly. Having learned from past mistakes, he was planning this new attempt in a brand new way. Rather than go straight down, he turned, swam four feet away, then turned again and dived at a forty-five degree angle.

This time he aimed at the willow stalk rather than the anchored fish. He struck with his shoulder so hard that the willow's topmost leaves rattled, but the stalk moved aside and the fish floated free.

Floating slowly upward, the fish was within three inches of the surface when it was seized by a swift little current and whisked away. Breaking water exactly where the sucker should have been, the pup was bewildered. But he remained at a loss for only a split second.

Splashing for the first time, he churned mightily, raised his forequarters high, looked all around, and sighted the fish. Now it was about a dozen feet away. The pup overtook it, grasped it in his mouth, and circled back toward shore.

With one mighty leap, Harky landed in knee-deep water. He hadn't dared move while the pup was in the shallows near the bank, for there was too much chance that it might slip around him, run into the brush, and escape. But not even a pup as talented as this one could swim fifteen feet and get away.

The water rose to Harky's thighs, then to his belt. Watching him, but not dropping the sucker, the pup made a downstream circle designed to carry him around Harky and into the willows. His eyes were calculating, his manner the calm and detached air of one who knows exactly what he's doing.

Water lapped Harky's armpits, and he knew that he was going to win but not by a comfortable margin. With another foot or so of lead, or a second more, the pup would get away.

When a yard and a half separated them, Harky flung himself forward, enfolded the pup with both arms, and clasped it to his chest. Being caught, the pup dropped his fish. Sinuous as a snake and swift as a hummingbird, he brought his head around, scored Harky's arm with needle-sharp puppy teeth, and blood seeped out of the scratches.

"Ouch!" Harky gritted. "Leetle devil!"

Holding the pup with his right arm, he clamped his left hand around its neck so the pup could not turn and bite again. The pup whined. When Harky petted him gently, his whine changed to a warning growl. Harky pondered the entire situation.

Here was the proper place to teach manners, but the pup was not without justice on his side. He had located the fish and worked hard to get it. Therefore he should have it. Now in quiet water, the fish was bobbing against Harky's chest. He let go of the pup's neck, grabbed at the fish, and the pup bit him again before he was able to grasp it.

"Cut it out!" Harky ejaculated. "I'm just trying to help you!"

Now that the fish was in Harky's hand, the pup forgot all about biting. He extended his muzzle, licked his chops, and wriggled. When Harky held the fish near enough, the pup bit off a chunk of tail and swallowed it whole. Three bites later, the fish was eaten.

"You ain't just hungry," Harky commented. "You're starved."

The pup sighed, snuggled against Harky's chest, and then turned to look him full in the face. Harky looked back. The pup was Sue all over again except for his eyes. Hers were gentle. His could be, but they could also be proud and fierce. Harky thought of Mun.

"I think you'd as soon be friends," Harky said, "but something tells me nobody will ever take a switch to you. Whoever thinks you need a hiding had best use a club."

Oddly as though he wanted to shake hands, the pup raised a forepaw to Harky's left palm. Harky's heart skipped a beat. He gulped, wondering if he felt what he thought he did and not daring immediately to feel again. Then he did and almost threw the pup back into the pool.

"If I hadn't felt it!" he gasped, "I couldn't no ways believe it!"

No lightning flashed in the blue sky and no thunder pealed. Bright day did not turn to black night. Harky felt the paw again, then steeled himself to look. He gulped, but because no supernatural forces descended upon him, he first felt and then looked at the pup's other three paws.

There was no shade of doubt. Each of the pup's toes was joined to the next by a webbing of skin. Sue had given birth to a duck-footed hound!

Suddenly it occurred to Harky that he was still waist-deep in Willow Brook, and that nothing special was to be gained by staying there. Carrying the pup, who seemed satisfied to be carried now that he was no longer so hungry, Harky waded back to the bank. His awe mounted. Since he was born with a duck's feet, no wonder Sue's pup could swim like a duck. Dripping water, Harky climbed the bank.

"What are we going to do with you, Duckfoot?" he asked.

Duckfoot answered that question by wriggling, rolling sidewise, and jumping to the ground. Harky sighed with relief. If the pup was allied with witches--and how else could duck feet on a dog be explained?--now was the time for him to disappear in a flash of flame and a cloud of smoke and return to the infernal regions from which he had emerged.

He did nothing except sit down, blink solemnly at Harky, and wag his tail. Harky had a fleeting thought that almost frightened him all over again. Duckfoot had certainly been touched by sinister forces that no man ever saw.

Man sometimes heard them when they shrieked on the midnight wind or moaned among the forest trees, and decidedly they were better left alone. But suppose, just suppose, that Duckfoot was more hound than spirit? What if the good, as embodied in the hound, was powerful enough to overcome the bad, which was surely represented in webbed feet on a dog? If Duckfoot gave his allegiance to any man ...

Harky trembled when he considered such possibilities. Old Joe himself, who'd been running the Creeping Hills for all of time, could not run away from a duck-footed hound!

In sudden near panic Harky swooped, caught Duckfoot, clutched him tightly, and raced up Willow Brook. He needed experienced counsel. Mun, who knew far more than he about such matters, was the man to advise him.

It never occurred to Harky that deserved punishment awaited his return. And it never occurred to Mun, who knew the ways of his son, that Harky would even think of coming home until he had enjoyed his full day. The hiding wouldn't be any harder.

Mun's first fleeting thought was that Harky had gone insane. Then he noticed the pup in Harky's arms and came incredulously forward.

"What the blazes?"

"Look!"

Harky put Duckfoot down. The pup gave Mun a sober and very critical inspection, then came forward to sniff his shoes.

"Sue's pup!" Mun ejaculated.

Harky looked curiously at his father. He'd never thought much about Mun except that, when it came to running away from trifling farm tasks to engage in worthwhile pursuits, he was a mighty hard man to fool. All he knew at the moment was that, for the first time since that dreadful night when Sue disappeared, Mun looked happy.

Harky fidgeted. He'd like it well enough if Mun always looked happy, but he dared not assume the fearful responsibility of pronouncing judgment on Duckfoot. Nor was it for him to bring a hound that was only part hound into the household. Not even if the hound part was all Precious Sue. Harky steeled himself, caught up Duckfoot, and extended his paw.

"Look!"

For a moment Mun did not speak. Then he discovered his voice.

"Goshamighty! Whar'd ye git that pup?"

"In the pool by the shale bank he was, trying to get a sucker from beneath that crookety willow--"

Mun listened attentively, and when Harky finished he cleared his throat. But he did not speak for a full forty-five seconds.

"I got it figgered now," he said seriously. "When Sue run off that night, she missed Old Joe, but now I know how come she didn't drown. A duck pulled her out of the water."

"A duck?" Harky questioned.

"Not jest a barnyard duck," Mun said, "an' not jest a wild duck neither. It was some big ol' duck, mebbe bigger'n Sue herself, what's been settin' back in the woods for no man knows how many years, jest waitin' to put a spell on Sue."

"What'll we do, Pa?" Harky asked worriedly.

"Watch Duckfoot," Mun declared. "Watch him close an' shoot him the minute we find he's puttin' spells on us. Mebbe he won't. He's anyhow half Sue an' mebbe that'll keep the half that ain't down. Leave him go, Harky."

Harky put Duckfoot down. Just at that moment the single forlorn duck that shared the chicken house with Mun's chickens, chose to stroll past. Duckfoot leaped ecstatically at it, overtook it, bore it down in a flurry of threshing wings, and looked very pleased with himself.

"Sue done that," Mun declared. "She knows what she's fetched on us, an' she's tryin' to make up. But we still got to have a care. Jest as Sue was under a spell in the dark of the moon, Duckfoot is bewitched by ducks."

"What about the duck?" Harky asked practically.

"Take it behind the barn an' pick it," Mun directed. "We'll have it for supper. 'Twas sort of a piddlin' duck anyhows."

THE SUMMER OF OLD JOE

Downstream from the Mundee farm, approximately three miles away as the water flows, Willow Brook formed two channels. The main stream, a series of conventional pools and ripples, went sedately about the business of every creek and pursued its way to a river that in turn emptied into the sea. The secondary channel, as though weary of doing the same thing in the same way all the time, stole off to go exploring by itself.

In high water this channel dutifully accepted its share of the spring freshet. But even then it never became too big for its banks; there was plenty of room for surplus water in a swamp through which it dawdled.

In low water, the entrance to the channel was a bare seepage that struggled painfully around rocks and was so unimpressive that few human residents of the Creeping Hills ever bothered to go farther. Only Mun and Harky Mundee and Mellie Garson knew that some of the best fishing in Willow Brook was down this channel.

Old Joe knew it, and on this September night he was heading toward one of his favorite pools.

Though the days remained pleasantly warm, the heat of summer was past and the nights were cool without being cold. A light frost draped shriveled grasses, and a first-quarter moon that shone palely upon them made it appear as though someone had been very careless with a large quantity of silver flakes. It was exactly the sort of night Old Joe favored above all others.

He was very well satisfied with himself and his accomplishments as he pursued a leisurely way from a cave in a ledge of rocks where he'd lain up all day. In the summer now ending he'd added new luster to his already shining name and enjoyed himself thoroughly while doing it. Living, seldom a vexing matter for a hunter of his talents, had been ridiculously simple.

Weatherwise, with exactly the right balance of rain and sun, and no prolonged spells of excessive heat, conditions could not have been more ideal. Besides plenty of wild fruit in the woods, gardens bore a bumper crop and Old Joe helped himself whenever he felt like it, which was at least every other night. In addition, Pine Heglin had decided that it would be a wonderful idea if he raised some guinea fowl, and Old Joe had indeed found it wonderful.

In the first place, Pine Heglin had ideas, which is laudable enough if they are good ideas. Most of Pine's were not, but he never convinced himself of that. Pine had an idea that a mongrel was far more effective on coons than any hound can ever be, and his current pride and joy was a big dog of many breeds that Pine considered a canine genius. Actually, the dog hadn't sense enough to get up if he were sitting on a sand burr.

In the second place, most of the thirty guinea fowl that Pine acquired ran true to type and headed for the woods the instant they were released. Though they set up a hideous squawking whenever Old Joe raided their roost, the noise never disconcerted him in the smallest degree. Pine's dog, who couldn't have found a skunk in a packing box, was even less bothersome, and Pine was too stubborn to call in some neighbor who had a good hound.

Old Joe, who'd run ahead of all but two of the coon hounds along Willow Brook, and who feared none of them, happily raided every garden except Mun Mundee's and Mellie Garson's. He kept away from them because there was a new hound--Duckfoot at Mun's and Morning Glory at Mellie's--roaming each farm. Old Joe wasn't especially afraid of them either. But he had not had an opportunity to find out what they could do, and he hadn't lived to his present size and age by taking foolish chances.

He hadn't the least doubt that in the course of time both Duckfoot and Morning Glory would be on his trail. Old Joe intended to pick the time and place. Future actions in regard to both hounds would be based upon what he found out then.

In spite of the rich living the farms provided whenever he saw fit to take it, Old Joe was far too much the gourmet to spurn the delicacies of the woods and waters. The only reason he did not raid farms every night was that sometimes he felt like eating fresh-water mussels, sometimes he craved fish, sometimes he preferred frogs, and sometimes he yearned for crawfish. Tonight he was in a mood for crawfish.

Coming in sight of Willow Brook's adventurous channel, the big coon halted and stood perfectly still. His was the rapt air of a poetic soul so overcome by the wonders of the night that he must savor them, and perhaps that did account in part for Old Joe's attitude. More important, he'd long ago learned never to cross his bridges until he'd found what was on them, and Old Joe wanted to determine what else might be prowling the channel before he became too interested in hunting crawfish. Finding nothing to warrant concern, he moved nearer the water's edge.

He knew every inch of this channel. The trickle that fed it in low water remained a trickle for a bit more than a hundred yards. Then there were three deep pools separated by gentle ripples. The channel snaked through the forest, pursued a devious route, dozed through a swamp, and rejoined Willow Brook proper three-quarters of a mile from where the pair separated.

The pools and ripples were the proper places to catch fish, the swamp yielded frogs and mussels, and the pool beside which Old Joe halted was the best in the entire channel for crawfish. Old Joe advanced to the edge of the pool, but he did not at once start fishing.

The ambitious first-quarter moon slanted a beam downward in such a fashion that it glanced in a dazzling manner from something directly in front of Old Joe's nose. Spellbound, he stared for a full two minutes.

He yearned to reach out and grasp whatever this might be, and it was half a mussel shell that had been shucked here by a muskrat and fallen white side up. But though he might safely have retrieved this treasure, Old Joe sighed, circled two yards around it, and waded into the pool. Trappers who know all about a coon's inclination to put a paw on anything shiny often bait their traps with nothing else.

Once in the pool, Old Joe went about his fishing with a businesslike precision born of vast experience. Crawfish, whose only means of offense are the pincerlike claws attached to their front end, back away from danger, and this bit of natural history was basic to Old Joe's hunting lore. He slid one front paw beneath each side of a small stone and was ready. There were crawfish under every stone in this pool. Whichever paw Old Joe wriggled, a crawfish would be sure to back into the other.

Before he had a chance to stir either paw, he withdrew both and sat up sputtering. Another coon was coming. As though it were not outrageous enough for a coon or anything else to trespass on a pool that Old Joe had marked for his private fishing, the stranger paid not the slightest attention to his warning growl.

Obviously the intruder needed a lesson in manners and Old Joe would be delighted to teach it. When the strange coon came near enough, he discovered the reason for its lack of courtesy. It was a mere baby, a little spring-born male, and it hadn't learned manners. But it would. Old Joe launched his charge.

The trespasser stopped, squalled in terror, and with Old Joe in hot pursuit, turned to race full speed back in the direction from which he had come. Seventy-five yards from where he started, Old Joe rounded a tussock and stopped so suddenly that his chin almost scraped a furrow in the sand.

Just in front of him, her bristled fur making her appear twice her usual size, was the same mate whose den tree he'd sought out when he left the great sycamore in February. Old Joe was instantly transformed from an avenger bent on punishment to a husband bent on appeasement. Experience had taught him how to cope with every situation except that which must arise when he chased his own son, whom he did not recognize, and came face to face with his mate, whom he definitely did.

Old Joe had time for one amiable chitter. Then, in the same motion, she was upon and all over him. Her teeth slashed places that Old Joe hadn't previously known were vulnerable while her four paws, that seemed suddenly to have become forty, raked. For a moment he cowered. Then, since she was obviously in no mood to listen even if he had known how to explain that it was all a mistake, he turned in inglorious flight.

She chased him a hundred yards and turned back. Old Joe kept running. He reached the other channel, swam Willow Brook, climbed the opposite bank, and finally slowed to a fast walk. He hadn't seen his mate since they'd left her den tree to go their separate ways, and he hadn't had a single thought for either his wife or his two sons and three daughters.

He had one now, a very profound one. They could have the pool where crawfish abounded and, for that matter, both channels of Willow Brook at least for this night. Having met his match, Old Joe hadn't the least desire to meet her again.

He put another half mile between them before he considered himself reasonably safe. With the feeling that he was finally secure, came a realization that his dignity had been sadly ruffled. He was also hungry, but broken pride could be mended and hunger satisfied with one of Pine Heglin's few remaining guinea hens.

No longer threatened, Old Joe became his usual arrogant self. Despite Pine's exalted opinion of his big dog, Old Joe knew the creature for the idiot it was. The guinea hens, though wild, were stupid enough to seek the same roost every night, and they roosted in a grove of small pines. Old Joe, who'd taken his last guinea hen six nights ago, went straight to the grove.

He had no way of knowing that sometimes the gods smile on those who refuse to court favor.

Five days ago, just after Old Joe's last visit, Pine Heglin's cherished mongrel had gone strolling past a limpid pond on Pine's farm. He'd looked into the water, seen his own reflection, decided that he was being challenged by a big and rather ugly dog, and promptly jumped in to give battle. The reflection disappeared as soon as he was in the water, but reflections were too complex for one of his mental capacity. All he knew was that he had seen another dog. He was sure that it must be lurking in the pond, and though he never got many ideas, he stuck by those he did get. Presently, still looking determinedly for the other dog, he sank and did not come up.

Though Pine could have borrowed any hound that any of his neighbors owned, he remained loyal to his conviction that mongrels are superior. He dickered with Sad Hawkins, an itinerant peddler who'd sell or swap anything at any time, and in exchange for six chickens and a shoat Pine got another mongrel.

It was a smaller dog than his former prize, but so tightly packed and heavily muscled that it weighed nearly as much. With a generous portion of pit bull among his assorted ancestors, the dog feared nothing. He differed from Pine's former mongrel insofar as he had some sense.

Knowing as well as Old Joe where his guinea hens roosted, and aware of the fact that they were being raided, Pine left this dog in the grove with them. Thus came Old Joe's second shock of the night.

The dog, who wouldn't waste time barking or growling if he could fight, achieved complete surprise and attacked before Old Joe even knew he was about. Since he couldn't run, he had to fight.

The weight was nearly even, with the dog having perhaps a five-pound advantage. In addition, before he came into the possession of Sad Hawkins, he'd made the rounds of behind-the-barn dog-fights and he had never lost one. He could win over most coons.

The dog was a slugger. But Old Joe was a scientific boxer who knew better than to stand toe-to-toe and trade punches. He yielded to the dog's rushes even while he inflicted as much punishment of his own as possible. However, the battle might have been in doubt had it not been for one unforseen circumstance.

Hard-pressed by a determined and fearless enemy, Old Joe reached deep into his bag of tricks. He knew the terrain, and some fifteen feet away was a steep little knoll. It was elemental battle tactics that whatever might be in possession of any height had an advantage over whatever might attack it. At the first breathing spell, Old Joe scurried to the knoll, climbed it, and waited.

He was more than mildly astonished when the dog did not rush immediately. But the dog hadn't had a keen sense of smell to begin with. The numerous fights in which he'd engaged wherein his hold on a vanquished enemy was broken with a liberal application of ammonia, had ruined the little he did have. The dog was now unable to smell a dish of limburger cheese on the upwind side if it was more than three feet away, and he could not renew the battle simply because he couldn't find his enemy.

Never one to question good fortune, Old Joe turned and ran as soon as he could safely do so. First he put distance between himself and Pine Heglin's remaining guinea hens, that were standing on the roost screeching at the tops of their voices. Next he made a resolution to leave Pine's remaining guinea hens alone, at least for as long as this dog was guarding them.

Hard on the heels of that came anger. One needn't apologize for running away from one's angry mate. To be vanquished by a dog, and not even a coon hound, was an entirely different matter. Old Joe needed revenge, and just as this necessity mounted to its apex, he happened to be passing the Mundee farm.

Ordinarily he'd never have done such a thing. He knew nothing about Duckfoot, and a cornfield, with the nearest safe tree a long run away, was a poor place to start testing any unknown hound. Old Joe was too angry to rationalize, and too hungry to go farther. He turned aside, ripped a shock of corn apart, and was in the act of selecting a choice ear when Duckfoot came running.

In other circumstances, Old Joe would have stopped to think. Duckfoot, who would have the physical proportions of his father, had almost attained them. But he was still very much the puppy and he could have been defeated in battle.

Old Joe had had enough fighting for one night. He reached Willow Brook three jumps ahead of Duckfoot, jumped in, ran the riffles and swam the pools for a quarter of a mile, emerged in a little runlet, ran up it, and climbed an oak whose upper branches were laced with wild grapevines. The vines offered a safe aerial passage to any of three adjoining trees. Finding him now was a test for any good hound.

A half hour later, Old Joe was aroused by Duckfoot's thunderous tree bark. The big coon crossed the grapevine to a black cherry, climbed down it, jumped to the top of an immense boulder, ran a hundred yards to a swamp, crossed it, and came to rest in a ledge of rocks. This time Duckfoot needed only nineteen minutes.

Old Joe sighed and went on. The night was nearly spent, he needed safety, and the only safe place was his big sycamore. After the most disgusting night of his life, he reached and climbed it. He hoped that if he managed to get this far, Duckfoot would drown in the slough. But in an hour and sixteen minutes Duckfoot was announcing to the world at large that Old Joe had gone up in his favorite sycamore.

Old Joe sighed again. Then he curled up, but even as he dozed off, he was aware of one thing.

Duckfoot was a hound to reckon with.

MISS CATHBY

His books strapped together with a discarded bridle rein, and dangling over his shoulder, Harky Mundee placed one reluctant foot after the other as he strode down the dirt road.

The events that culminated in this dreadful situation--returning to Miss Cathby's school at the Crossroads--had for the past three days been building up like a thunderstorm, and on the whole, it would have been easier to halt the storm. Every autumn, just after the harvest, Mun acquired firm ideas concerning the value of higher education for Harky. But never before had Mun resorted to such foul tricks or taken such unfair advantage.

Coming to where Tumbling Run foamed beneath a wooden bridge and hurled itself toward Willow Brook, Harky halted and rested both elbows on the bridge railing. He looked glumly into the icy water, along which coons of high and low degree prowled every night, and he wished mightily that he were a coon.

Though even coons had their troubles, Harky had never known of a single one that had been forced to hoe corn, milk cows, feed pigs, pitch hay, dig potatoes, or do any of the other unspeakable tasks that were forever falling to the lot of human beings. But even farm chores were not entirely unbearable. In a final agony of desperation, his cause already lost, Harky had even pointed out to Mun that the fence needed mending and hadn't he better cut the posts?

"Blast it!" Mun roared. "Stop this minute tryin' to make a fool of me, Harky! You know's well as I do that the cows ain't goin' to be out to pasture more'n 'nother three weeks! You need some book lore!"

Harky rubbed the heel of his right shoe against the shin of his left leg and wished again that he were a coon, even a treed coon. Being hound-cornered was surely preferable to becoming the hapless victim of Miss Ophelia Cathby.

Grasping the very end of the bridle rein, Harky whirled the books around his head. But exactly on the point of releasing the strap and reveling in the satisfying distance the books would fly, Harky brought them to a stop and slung them back over his shoulder.

He sighed. Free to walk the two miles to the Crossroads, with Mun not even in attendance, Harky was anything except free to throw his books away and explore Tumbling Run. When he ran away from farm tasks, which he did at every opportunity, the worst he could expect was the flat of Mun's hand.

But if he did not show up at school this morning, and for as many mornings hereafter as Mun thought necessary, he would never see his shotgun again. Harky lived again the inhuman scene wherein he had been subjected to torture more intense than any mortal should ever endure. Mun took the shotgun, locked it in his tool case, pocketed the key and addressed Harky:

"Thar! Now jest peg on to school, an' I aim to see Miss Cathby an' find out if ya did! Hingein' on what she tells me, ya kin have the shotgun back!"

Harky permitted himself a second doleful sigh. A man could take a hiding even if it were laid on with a hickory gad. But a man might better lose life itself rather than the only gun he had or could hope to get, at least in the foreseeable future. Mun was a man of his word. Harky saw himself in a fiendish trap from which there was no faint hope of escape.

He glanced at the sun, and from the length of the shadows it was casting deduced that it still lacked forty-five minutes of nine o'clock, the hour at which Miss Cathby called her classes to order. If he stuck to the road, forty-five minutes was at least thirty-eight more than he needed to cover the less than a mile remaining between himself and the Crossroads. But there were excellent reasons why he could not stick to the road.

Raw Stanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, and Mule Domster all lived upstream from the Mundee farm. Mellie Garson and Pine Heglin lived down. Harky had not hesitated to walk openly past Mellie's farm, for though Mellie had been an enthusiastic sire, he had begat only daughters. They were all pretty enough to be snatched up the moment they came of marriageable age, and the four oldest were happily married. But girls of all ages were forever gadding about doing silly things that interested girls only. Though they probably would think it a modern miracle, Mellie's eight youngest would not consider it necessary to rub salt in Harky's already-raw wounds simply because he was going to school.

Pine Heglin had specialized in sons, of which he had seven. The six eldest were carbon copies of their father. It was said along Willow Brook that if one cared to give Pine or any of his six elder sons a good laugh in January, one had only to tell them a good joke the preceding April.

The youngest Heglin, named Loring and called Dib, had been born on Halloween and showed it. Every witch who walked must have touched Dib Heglin, and among other questionable gifts they'd bestowed a tongue with a hornet's sting.

Dib was three months older than Harky. He did not go to school. He found endless amusement in the fact that Harky did go. Harky had no wish to meet Dib.

A quarter of a mile on the upstream side of the Heglin farm, Harky started into the woods and stopped worrying. Dib was a not-unskilled woodsman. But he'd never studied in the stark school from which Harky had graduated with honors; anyone able to hide from Mun Mundee could elude fifty Dib Heglins.

A sour chuckle escaped Harky. Dib, who knew how to add two and two, would know that the Mundees' harvest was ended. Nobody would have to tell him that this was the logical day for Mun to expose Harky to some more of Miss Cathby's education. No doubt he'd got up a half hour early just so he could wait for Harky and insult him when he appeared.

Presently, as it always did, the magic of the forest overwhelmed less desirable influences. Miss Cathby and her school, while not far enough away to let Harky forget he'd better be there on time, needn't be faced for the immediate present. Harky found himself wondering.

Duckfoot had grown like a weed in the corn patch, and to the casual observer he was not greatly different from other gangling hound puppies. But a careful scrutiny revealed him as a dog of diverse talents. There was the incident of the root cellar.

Because it would not keep long in warm weather, meat was at a premium along Willow Brook during the summer months. When somebody butchered, it was both practical and practice to share with his neighbors.

Mule Domster butchered a hog, and to the Mundees he brought a ham and a loin. Mun stored both in the root cellar, that was closed by a latch. The latch was lifted by a string dangling down the door. While Duckfoot, who to all appearances was interested only in scratching a flea behind his ear, sat sleepily near, Mun removed the ham.

Shortly afterward, returning for the loin and finding an empty space where it had been, Mun went roaring to the house for his rifle. Since no farmer of the Creeping Hills would think of robbing his neighbor's root cellar, obviously an unprincipled and hungry stranger had come up Willow Brook. Finding no tracks, Mun further declared that he was a cunning stranger.

Harky had a feeling. It was based on the fact that Duckfoot, who normally ate like a horse except that he did not chew his food nearly as much, was not at all hungry when his meal was put before him. It meant nothing, asserted Mun, for he had flushed an early flight of teal from Willow Brook and Duckfoot was perturbed by the ducks. Harky watched the root cellar.

Evening shadows were merging into black night when Duckfoot padded to the door, reared, pulled the latch string with his teeth, and entered. Since Mun was sure to take a dim view of such goings on, Harky never betrayed the thief. All he did was break the latch and replace it with an exterior latch that was not string-operated.