Chapter III: Part 3

That happened shortly before Duckfoot disappeared for a whole week. To be expected, said Mun, for wild ducks were passing daily now and doubtless Duckfoot had gone in search of his father. But Harky had another feeling.

He'd been with Duckfoot along Willow Brook, or near one of the ponds, when wild ducks flushed. Far from betraying his duck blood, Duckfoot had given them not the slightest attention. Could it be, thought Harky, that a coon, maybe Old Joe himself, had come raiding? Had Duckfoot trailed him, treed him, and stayed at the tree until he was just too tired and hungry to stay longer?

Mun scoffed at such notions. He pointed out that Duckfoot was still a puppy who, as far as anyone knew, had never been on a coon's trail. So what could he know about running coons, especially Old Joe? Harky was indulging in another pipe dream even to think that a puppy, any puppy, would tree a coon and stay at the tree for a week. Precious Sue herself wouldn't have stayed that long.

Harky knew only that Duckfoot was lean as a blackberry cane when he finally came home and that he kept looking off into the forest. If he hadn't treed a coon, he certainly acted as though he had.

In sudden panic Harky realized that he had a scant four minutes left. He began to run, and he burst into Miss Cathby's school just as the last bell was tolling laggards to their desks.

The school was a one-room affair flanked by a woodshed half as big as the school proper. Inside were the regulation potbellied stove, six rows of five desks each, a desk for Miss Cathby, and a plain wooden bench upon which the various classes seated themselves when called to recite. Behind Miss Cathby's desk was the blackboard. If it was not the ultimate in educational facilities, it was a vast improvement over the no school at all that had been at the Crossroads until three years ago.

When Harky ran in, his fellow pupils were seated.

The first grade, consisting of the younger daughters of Mellie Garson and Raw Stanfield, and the youngest sons of Butt Johnson and Mule Domster, was the largest. Thereafter the grades decreased numerically but with an increasing feminine contingent. Boys old enough to help out at home could hardly be expected to waste time in school. Melinda and Mary Garson were the fifth grade, Harky the sixth, and Mildred and Minnie Garson the seventh and eighth.

Miss Cathby smiled pleasantly when Harky came in.

"Good morning, Harold," she greeted.

"Good morning, ma'am," Harky mumbled.

"Is your father's harvest in, Harold?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Harky, who knew his name was Harold but wished Miss Cathby didn't know, squirmed and longed to drop through the floor. With the only other male who even approached his age being Mule Domster's ten-year-old son, he was indeed surrounded.

Miss Cathby, who knew several things not written in textbooks, understood and let him alone. Harky fixed his eyes on the back of twelve-year-old Melinda Garson's slender neck. He calculated the exact spot where a spitball would have the ultimate effect, then decided that it wasn't worth his while to throw one.

The first grade was called for recitation. Solacing himself with the thought that Mun's enthusiasm for booklore seldom endured more than three weeks, Harky escaped in a dream. He had his shotgun, Duckfoot was hot on a coon's trail, and presently they heard his tree bark. Mun and Harky made their way to the tree.

"Harky," said Mun, "git your light beam on that coon."

Harky made ready to shine the treed coon. The words were repeated and he came rudely awake to discover that Miss Cathby was speaking.

"Harold," she said, "are you dreaming so soon?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harky said meekly.

"Well come down here. The sixth grade is called to recite."

Harky rose and shuffled unhappily to the recitation bench. He slumped down, head bent, shoulders hunched, fists in pockets. Never again, he thought, would he have any part in caging a coon. Not even to train Duckfoot. He knew now what cages are like.

"Have you been keeping up with your studies?" Miss Cathby asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Harky.

"Which books have you been using?" queried Miss Cathby.

"Same ones I used last year," Harky mumbled.

Miss Cathby frowned prettily. Harky's last year's books were for the fifth grade; Harky had started in the fourth solely because he'd been too old to begin in the first. Miss Cathby's frown deepened.

She knew that, with the best of luck, Harky would be under her influence for a maximum four weeks. But Miss Cathby's fragile body harbored a will of granite. If she combined guile with persistence, four weeks were enough to turn this youngster from the heathenish ways of his ancestors and show him at least a glimmer of the one true light.

"Very well," she said pleasantly. "We'll review your last year's arithmetic. If a farmer harvests thirty tons of hay, sells two thirds and feeds the remainder, how much will he feed?"

Harky shuffled nervous feet and stared past her at the blackboard. "I never could figger that one, Miss Cathby."

Miss Cathby said, "It isn't difficult."

"Parts ain't," Harky admitted. "But parts are. He'll sell twenty tons, always reckoning he can find somebody to buy. The rest just shrivels me up."

Miss Cathby sighed. As soon as she proved to her own satisfaction that these backwoods boys were not morons, they proved her wrong. Anyone able correctly to deduce two thirds of thirty should be able to subtract twenty from thirty. A firm adherent of the idea that sugar entices flies where vinegar will not, Miss Cathby applied the sugar.

"Come, Harold," she coaxed. "If you have thirty potatoes and give twenty away, how many will you have left?"

"Ten," Harky said promptly. "But we was talking about tons of hay, not potatoes, and that ain't what crosses me up."

"What is it that you do not understand?" Miss Cathby pursued.

"What kind of critter a remainder is and how much hay does it eat?"

The fifth, seventh, and eighth grades, as represented by the sisters Garson, filled the room with giggles. Miss Cathby rapped for order and evolved a cunning plan to win Harky's interest and favor by discussing something he did know.

"Do you have a good raccoon hound for the coming season, Harold?"

Miss Cathby composed herself to listen while Harky launched an enthusiastic, and minutely detailed, description of the misadventures of Precious Sue and the wiles of Old Joe. He needed eighteen minutes to reach the thrilling climax, the discovery of Duckfoot and,

"His Pa's a duck," he said seriously.

"A duck!" Miss Cathby gasped.

"Not just a barnyard duck and not just a wild duck," Harky explained patiently. "It was some big old duck, maybe older'n Old Joe himself, that's been setting back in the woods just hoping Sue would come along."

Miss Cathby's eyes glowed with a true crusader's zeal. In all the time Harky had spent in school and all the time he would spend there, she could not hope to impart more than the rudiments of an education. But here was a heaven-sent opportunity to strike at the very roots of the ignorance and superstition that barred his march toward a more enlightened life. Miss Cathby saw past the boy to the father who would be. Strike Harky's chains and he would voluntarily free his children.

"That's impossible, Harold," she began.

Warming to her subject, she sketched the Garden of Eden, traced the history of mankind, disposed of witches and witch hunters in a few hundred well-chosen words, explained the laws of genetics, and finished with conclusive proof that a coon hound cannot mate with a duck.

Harky listened, not without interest. When it came to telling stories, he conceded, Miss Cathby was even better than Mun and almost as good as Mellie Garson. Nor was she shooting wholly in the dark; Harky himself did not believe that Duckfoot had been sired by a duck. But there was something wanting.

For a moment he could not define the lack. Then, happily, he thought of another of Pine Heglin's ideas. If apples were stored so they could not roll, Pine decided, there would be fewer bruised apples. Forthwith he constructed some latticeworks of willow withes, arranged them as shelves, and stored his apples on them. But Pine had forgotten that some apples are big and some small. The small ones fell through the lattices and the big ones became jammed in them. All were bruised, and rotted quickly, with the result that Pine had no apples at all.

Miss Cathby's lecture was like that, Harky decided. She would find an exact niche for Old Joe, Duckfoot, Mun, everything in the world, and she'd never stop to think that few things really belonged in exact niches. Her ideas just didn't have room to grow in. Mun's did.

"Can you prove to me, Harold, that there is any such creature as this witch duck?" Miss Cathby finished.

"No ma'am," said Harky, and he forebore to mention that neither could she prove there wasn't.

By some miracle, the endless day ended. The new books that Miss Cathby gave him strapped in the bridle rein and slung over his shoulder, Harky walked straight up the road. He had a feeling that was justified when he saw Dib Heglin waiting.

"Ya been to see Miss Cathby?" Dib squawked in a voice that would have maddened a sheep. "Did Miss Cathby give ya a bathby?"

Harky shifted the bridle rein from his right hand to his left. Effecting a gait that was supposedly a caricature of Miss Cathby's feminine walk, and was remarkably similar to the waddle of a fat goose, Dib came toward him.

"Ya been to see--?" he began.

They were near enough. Harky's right fist flicked out.

"Ya-ooo!" Dib shrieked.

Harky danced happily on. No day was wholly wasted if it left Dib Heglin nursing a bloody nose.

MELINDA

Mellie Garson sat on an overturned pickle keg sourly contemplating the inequity of fate. If he was no better than the next man, he told himself, neither was he worse. So why should some be rewarded with a free buggy ride while others received a kick from the mules pulling the buggy?

Mellie shifted his right foot, his newest reason for eating bitter bread, and glared at the crutches without which he was helpless. It was indeed a bitter blow, but it seemed to Mellie as he sat there that his entire life had been one blow after another.

Though he was the father of children, the very fact that there was no son among them was a desperate situation. How did one hand a coon hound, not to mention the mass of coon lore that Mellie had acquired during his sixty-seven years on earth, down to a girl child?

The lusty wail of a baby floated out of the house. Mellie shuddered, and only by exercising a heroic effort could he refrain from putting his hands over his ears. It was not that he didn't love his daughters and do for them as a proper father should. But did his thirteenth child, now yelling away in her crib, have to be a girl, too?

Mellie ran down the list of his offspring: Marilyn, Maxine, Martha, Minerva, Margaret, Mildred, Minnie, Melinda, Mary, Maud, Marcy, Marcella, and finally, Michelle. There'd been some hope they'd run out of Ms, but he'd hoped that clear back when Mary arrived and now hope was dead. He couldn't have thought of Michelle. But his daughters could and that, he supposed, was no more than he deserved for exposing them to Miss Cathby's school.

Mellie often wondered if he'd been born in the wrong time of the moon. Maybe he'd even been born in a caul, but he'd never know whence came his talent for fathering girls, because by the time he started wondering his parents had gone to their eternal reward and it was too late to ask them.

He sighed. Thirteen girl children were thirteen facts of life that nobody could change. There were rare intervals, when they didn't all start talking at once, that it was even pleasant to have them around. But how explain the rest of his misfortunes?

Mellie retraced the chain of events that had culminated in this stark tragedy.

Morning Glory, his pup out of Raw Stanfield's Queenie by Butt Johnson's Thunder, showed every indication of becoming a rare coon hound indeed. Though Mellie would have been satisfied had she inherited the talent of either parent, there were reasons to believe that she combined the best of both.

However, Glory must have some education and tonight, this matchless autumn night, Raw Stanfield with Queenie and Butt Johnson with Thunder were meeting at Mun Mundee's house. Had they planned a coon hunt, and that only, Mellie would have contented himself with just being heart-broken. But Mun and Harky Mundee were going along with Duckfoot and Mellie had been invited to bring Glory. So--

Yesterday he'd been mule-kicked!

Mellie groaned his misery. Glory and Duckfoot had an opportunity to learn their trade under masters such as Queenie and Thunder. Now Glory couldn't go, and what had Mellie ever done to merit such catastrophe?

No doubt Duckfoot would be there, and thinking of Duckfoot, Mellie wondered why a little of the Mundee luck couldn't rub off on Mellie Garson. It had been a terrible blow to lose Precious Sue. But to stumble on Sue's pup, even if he was half duck, and to find that he probably would be as good as Sue ever was. How come the Mundees were so favored?

Mellie glanced bitterly around as a mule-drawn wagon came from behind the barn. Morning Glory wagged contentedly behind it and four of Mellie's daughters comprised the crew that was bringing in another load of corn. Mellie fixed his eyes on Melinda.

Twelve years old, limber as a willow withe and pretty as a week-old colt, she was driving the self-same mules that had kicked Mellie right out of a coon hunt. Furthermore, she was driving them more skillfully than her father ever had. Mellie permitted himself a troubled frown.

Certain Melinda would be a boy, and a firm exponent of starting the worthwhile things of life as early as possible, Mellie had even dickered for a hound pup so the two babies might grow up together. Somebody had crossed him up, or sneaked up on him, but Melinda should have been a boy.

She could throw a rock straighter than Harky Mundee; catch bass when Mellie himself couldn't lure them; handle in perfect safety mules that could kick flies off each other's ears and were anxious to kick anything else; she could do everything most boys could and do it better. If more was needed, Glory adored her with a passion few hounds bestow on any human.

Melinda backed the wagon into the barn, and as her three sisters started to unload the corn, she unhitched the mules and drove them to their stable. A fiendish plan formed in Mellie's brain. Girls were about as welcome on a coon hunt as bees at a sewing circle, but why should Mellie do all the suffering? Melinda came out of the stable and floated toward the house. Mellie came to a decision and called,

"Melinda."

She danced to him on feet that never seemed to touch the ground. "Yes, Pa?"

"Raw Stanfield an' Butt Johnson'll be at Mun Mundee's come evenin'. They're goin' to take Duckfoot on a coon hunt. How'd you like to go with Glory?"

"Pa! You mean it?"

"Sure I mean it, honey."

She stooped and kissed him, and suddenly Mellie felt sorry for unfortunate fathers who do not have at least thirteen daughters.

* * * * *

Making himself as small as possible, Harky Mundee kept his fingers crossed and hoped Mun had forgotten he was alive. Everything had worked out so much better than he'd dared hope that surely there must be some mistake.

After eleven days at Miss Cathby's school, he was ready and unwilling to begin the twelfth when he happened to glance toward the pasture. He himself, after helping milk them at half past five, had turned the cows out. But though he'd turned all six out, only five remained. Old Brindle, Mun's ornery cow, had decided to take herself for a walk. It was nothing that could be ignored. Old Brindle was fast as a deer and if she decided she'd had enough of human society, she'd be as hard to catch.

"You'd best help me get her," Mun said.

"Yes, Pa."

They'd scarcely left the house, when, apparently having decided that the free life is for those who want it, Old Brindle jumped back into the pasture she'd just jumped out of. But instead of turning on Harky and roaring for him to be off to school, Mun said nothing at all.

It had been easy as that, which is why Harky worried. Though it was hard even to imagine Mun's having thoughts to spare for Miss Cathby and her school with a coon hunt coming up, dismal experience had taught Harky that it was easier to forecast the next skip of a sand flea than to anticipate Mun.

Until he knew exactly how the wind was blowing, Harky thought, silence was not only golden but silver, gold and diamonds. If Mun was thinking about sending him back to school, to school he would go. If he was not, an incautious word might start him thinking.

Harky watched furtively as Mun put on his coon-hunting pants, boots, and curled the brim of his coon-hunting hat. Then he went to the tool box for his coon-hunting axe.

"Harky!" he roared. "What's your shotgun doin' in my toolbox?"

"Why," Harky hoped he appeared innocent, "is it in there, Pa?"

"Git it out!"

Harky drew his first easy breath since Old Brindle's escape. If Mun had forgotten why he'd confiscated Harky's shotgun, he'd forgotten about school. The ordeal was over, at least for this year, and Harky was free to concentrate on important matters. For the immediate future, the only matter of importance consisted of wishing it was night so they could go coon hunting.

Evening finally arrived, and, with Queenie and Thunder at their respective heels, Raw Stanfield and Butt Johnson arrived with it. The older hounds sneered in their own fashion at Duckfoot, who enthusiastically sneered right back, and curled up on the porch.

None of the men, as yet, knew that Mellie was sending his daughter to substitute for him. When Queenie, Thunder, and Duckfoot set up a desultory baying, all thought that Mellie would join them shortly. To do so he would follow prescribed etiquette of the Creeping Hills, which involved opening the door and walking in.

When Mellie did not enter, but someone knocked, the four hunters first looked astounded. Then they looked at each other. It was Harky who decided that one way to find out who was knocking would be to go open the door. His astounded bellow made Queenie cringe and sent Thunder slinking from the porch.

"What in tunket do you want?"

"Hello, Harold," Melinda trilled.

She was dressed in the boy's trousers she always wore except when she went to school, a boy's shirt which immediately gave the lie to the theory that girls can't wear boys' clothing and look like girls, and a denim jacket. Her feet were encased in an old pair of shoes, and a boy's hat was pushed back on her saucy black curls. Without a second glance for Harky, she walked past him into the kitchen.

"Pa's been mule-kicked and can't come," she announced. "I brought Glory."

"Right kind of ya," said Mun. "We'll take good care of her an' see that she gits back."

"Oh, I'll take her back myself," Melinda said. "Pa will expect it."

"Nice of ya to offer," said Mun. "But Harky an' me, we sort of batch it here. The house ain't rightly fixed fer a girl to stay in an' we may be gone all night."

"Don't you worry about that, Mr. Mundee," Melinda reassured him. "I'm going hunting with you."

Harky gagged. Melinda turned to face him.

"You sound as though you've been eating green apples, Harold," she said sweetly. "Have you?"

"Why'n'choo go home?"

"Harky!" Mun roared, but not very loudly, "mind your tongue!"

"Thank you, Mr. Mundee," Melinda said, with the barest hint of a sob in her young voice. "You do want me along, don't you?"

"Well uh--" Mun stammered and appealed to Raw Stanfield. "We do want her along, don't we?"

"Well uh--" Raw aped Mun and looked at Butt Johnson.

Butt stuttered, "Why--why--why--" and fixed his gaze on Harky.

"There!" Melinda said triumphantly. "The other three want me! Now what do you say?"

"Hope ya fall in the mud!"

"Harold!" Melinda wrinkled her distinctly fetching nose. "How terrible!"

"Hope ya fall in the mud, an' I'll stomp on your head if ya do!" Harky said.

"Harky!" This time Mun voiced a full-throated roar. "Mind your tongue!"

"Le's get coon huntin'," Raw Stanfield choked. "Le's do anything long's we git out of here!"

OLD JOE UP

Raw Stanfield with the lantern, Butt Johnson with a torch for shining treed coons and a .22 rifle for plinking them out of the trees, Mun with his coon-hunting axe, Melinda with serene self-assurance, and Harky with a miserable feeling that it couldn't be very long now before the whole world went to pot, they set off through the night.

Misery was Harky's only feeling. If he had another, he told himself sourly, he wouldn't dare put stock in it. When girls horned in on coon hunts anything could happen and it probably would.

Harky comforted himself with thoughts of what can happen on coon hunts. He had a soul-satisfying vision of a cold, wet, mud-spattered, and hungry Melinda wandering through the night pleading for Harky to come to her succor. Harky heard, but he let her wander until the last possible second. Then, just as she was about to sink into mud from which she would never rise had it not been for valiant Harky, he lifted her to her feet, took her home, and scuffed scornful feet on Mellie Garson's threshold.

"There!" he heard himself saying. "Let that teach you that girls ought never horn in on coon hunts!"

Harky breathed a doleful sigh. Delightful as this mental image was, in no way did it erase the fact that a girl had horned in on a coon hunt. Harky sought solace by tearing his thoughts away from Melinda and fastening them on something pleasant. He considered the four hounds.

Queenie was a slow and methodical worker who'd never been known to lose a trail she started. Of course they did not get every coon Queenie started; some went to earth in rock-bound burrows and some escaped by devious means. Queenie, who tongued on a trail, was one of the few hounds who'd followed Old Joe to his magic sycamore.

Glory, as yet untried, might and might not adopt her mother's hunting style. Duckfoot--neither Harky nor anyone else had any reason to believe that he'd already tracked Old Joe to his sycamore--was another unknown quantity insofar as his own special way of hunting was concerned. But Harky had no doubt that, after adequate training, Duckfoot would shine, and Glory would do well enough.

Thunder, next to Precious Sue the best coon hound ever to run the Creeping Hills, couldn't be doubted. Big, long-legged, and powerful, Thunder was another hound who'd distinguished himself by tracking Old Joe to the big sycamore. A silent trailer but a tree barker who did credit to his name, Thunder was so fast that he often caught coons on the ground. With six years of hunting experience behind him, he was probably the best of the four hounds on this current hunt.

They were, Harky thought, a pack fit to run in any company. With Thunder to run ahead and jump the coon, Queenie to work out the trail at her own pace and at regular intervals to announce the direction Thunder had gone, and quality pups like Duckfoot and Glory, any coon they struck tonight, with the probable exception of Old Joe, would find his stretched pelt on the barn door tomorrow. Maybe even Old Joe would have a hard time with this pack.

Thinking of coons, Harky was pleasantly diverted for a few minutes more.

Creatures of the season, coons availed themselves of the most of the best of whatever was handy. When they emerged from their dens at winter's end, they liked to fill empty stomachs with buds and tender grass and flower shoots. As the season advanced, coons conformed. They never spurned vegetation if it was to their liking, but as soon as the spring freshet subsided, they did a great deal of fishing and frog, crawfish, and mussel hunting. When gardens started to bear, the coons varied their diet with green vegetables. As they ripened, both wild and domestic fruits received the attention of properly brought up coons. They were always ready to raid poultry.

At this time of year, with frogs already gone into hibernation, fish inclined to linger in deep pools where even Old Joe couldn't catch them, the crawfish and mussel crop well picked over, and vegetation withered, coons concentrated on fields of shocked corn, such fruit as might cling to branches, and beech and oak groves, where they foraged for fallen beechnuts and acorns.

It was to a beech grove that Raw Stanfield led them.

The black thunderheads that had been surging through Harky's brain changed suddenly to a sky of dazzling blue. Rubber boots were not unknown among coon hunters of the Creeping Hills, but except by a few eccentrics, they were unused. A man trying to make time to a tree-barking hound did not care to be slowed by boots.

Harky licked his lips. God tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but ice water felt like ice water even to a coon hunter and the grove toward which Raw headed was on the far side of Willow Brook. The water was autumn-low with plenty of exposed stones, but jumping them by daylight and jumping them under lantern light were different matters. Harky wasn't sure that even he could cross at night without getting wet.

It looked as though ladies' night at coon hunts would terminate abruptly and soon. Harky hoped so, and it would be a nice touch indeed if Melinda scraped her shins when she fell in.

Willow Brook glinted in the light as Raw Stanfield held his lantern high to see whether they were approaching a pool or riffle. It was a riffle that purled lazily, and coldly, around exposed stones. Harky grinned in the darkness. It _looked_ easy, but there was a trick to it.

Once you started jumping there was no turning back and the stones were unevenly spaced. You had to adjust your jumps accordingly, so that it took a really experienced stone jumper to cross in reasonably dry condition.

Contemplating the joys of watching Melinda come reasonably near drowning, Harky made a shocking discovery.

Thunder, Queenie, and Glory still trailed at the heels of the hunters, but Duckfoot was no longer present. Harky gulped, then used the thumb of his left hand to trace a circle on the palm of his right. Less than half a shake ago, Duckfoot had pushed his cold nose into that dangling palm and the circle Harky made there would certainly close him in and bring him back from wherever he had gone. At any rate, it should.

It didn't. Chills never born of the frosty night chased each other up and down Harky's spine. Mun claimed Duckfoot was half duck, Miss Cathby said that couldn't be, and Harky wavered between the two. He looked again, but only three hounds waded into the riffle to join the hunters gathering on the other side. Harky jumped.

If he had his mind on his work, he'd have crossed in perfect safety. But just as he made ready to strike a humpbacked boulder with the sole of his left foot, he miscalculated and struck with the heel. That broke his stride to such an extent that the next jump was six inches short, and instead of landing on a flat-topped rock where he could have balanced, he came down in ten inches of ice water.

Only vast experience as a rock jumper prevented an allover bath; Harky threw himself forward to support his upper body on the flat rock. Then, since it was impossible to get his feet any wetter than they were, he waded the remaining distance.

"Really, Harold," said Melinda, who was dry as a shingle under the July sun, "you did that rather clumsily."

Harky made a mental note. It was easy to work the pith out of an elderberry stick. Small stones were plentiful. One of the latter, placed in the mouth and blown through the former, was never forgotten by anyone with whom it collided. The next time Harky attended Miss Cathby's school, Melinda was in for an unforgettable experience.

For the moment, since he could do nothing else about her, he could imagine she wasn't along. Harky turned his back on Melinda and addressed Mun:

"Duckfoot's gone."

"Danged if he ain't," said Mun, who noticed for the first time that they had only three of the four hounds with which they'd started. "When'd you note it?"

"Other side of the brook," Harky said in a hushed voice. "One minute his nose was in my hand, the next it wasn't. Do you figure he took wings and flew off?"

"It could," Mun began, but his about-to-be-expressed opinion that such a premise was wholly reasonable was interrupted by Melinda's, "Nonsense!"

Harky blazed, forgetting his sensible plan to ignore her. "Watta you know about it?"

"Now don't lose your temper, Harold," Melinda chided. "It's silly to suppose Duckfoot's half duck."

Harky drew his arm back. "Silly, huh? I've a good mind to--"

"Harky!" Mun roared. "Men don't hit wimmen!"

"Why don't they?" Harky growled.

"You're being childish, Harold," Melinda said sweetly. "Duckfoot's simply gone off somewhere. Perhaps he got tired and went home."

Harky tried to speak and succeeded only in choking. If it was insult to assert that Duckfoot could not be half duck, it was heresy even to imply that he left a hunt and went home because he was tired. Harky recovered his breath.

"Duckfoot didn't go home!" he screamed.

"Really, Harold," Melinda said, "it isn't necessary to make so much noise."

Harky was saved by the bell-like tones of a suddenly-tonguing hound.

"Queenie's got one," Raw Stanfield said.

"That's Glory tonguing," Melinda corrected. "She's pitched just a shade higher than Queenie."

"Now, Miss," Raw stuffed his tobacco into a corner of his mouth, "I know my own hound."

"There she is," Melinda said.

A second hound, almost exactly like the first but with subtle differences that were apparent when both tongued at the same time, began to sing. Raw Stanfield promptly swallowed his chew. Butt Johnson and Mun were momentarily too shocked to move.

Harky gasped. There was witchery present that had nothing to do with Duckfoot. Raw didn't know his own hound when he heard it, but Melinda did. Then Harky put the entire affair in its proper perspective. What else could you expect when you brought a girl on a coon hunt? Raw was just so shook up that he might be pardoned for failing to recognize Queenie even if he saw her.

"Le's git huntin'," Raw muttered.

Guiding himself by the blended voices of Queenie and Glory rising into the night air, and seeming to hover at treetop level for a moment before they faded, Harky began to run. The cold air whipped his face. The night whispered of all the marvels that have been since the beginning of time and will be until the end. For a moment, he even forgot Melinda.

This, he thought, was what coon hunting really meant. Listening to the hounds and trying to keep pace; knowing that somewhere far ahead, swift and silent-running Thunder was also on the coon's trail; drawing mental pictures of the coon and his scurry to be away; Thunder bursting upon and surprising the coon, who'd be listening to the tonguing hounds; the chorus as all hounds gathered at the tree. Harky laughed out loud.

Now he knew what a running deer knew, he told himself, and almost instantly the swiftest deer seemed unbearably slow. He was the wind itself, and he exulted in the notion that the other plodding humans, who would surely be running, would just as surely be far behind. They hadn't had his experience in running away from Mun.

Glory and Queenie, who seemed to run at the same pace even as they tongued in almost the same pitch, drew farther ahead but remained well within hearing. Harky frowned thoughtfully as he sped through the night. The way that coon was running, and the way the dogs became quiet at intervals, as though they'd been thrown off the scent, he had a feeling that they were on Old Joe himself.

When he climbed a knoll and was able to hear nothing, he no longer doubted. Queenie and Glory were casting for the trail, and Old Joe was the only coon that could keep Queenie puzzled this long. Harky halted.

"Old Joe sure enough," he said out loud.

"Don't you think," Melinda asked calmly, "that we should go directly to his big sycamore?"

Harky jumped like a shot-stung fox. He blinked, not daring to believe she'd kept pace with him but unable to discredit his own eyes. Suddenly he felt far more the plodding turtle than the speeding deer, but he extricated himself as neatly as Old Joe foiled a second-rate hound.

"If I hadn't slowed down on accounta you," he said belligerently, "I'd of been at Old Joe's tree by now."

Melinda said meekly, "I know you were running slowly, Harold, but you needn't have. I could have gone much faster."

Harky gulped and felt his way. Melinda, he decided, must have brought her rabbit's foot with her and probably she'd rolled in a whole field of four-leaf clovers. Beyond any doubt, she'd also observed the phases of the moon and conducted herself accordingly.

"What do you know about Old Joe's sycamore?" he asked.

"What everyone knows," she said casually. "Old Joe runs to it every time he's hard pressed by hounds."

"He's probably lost a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters at that tree," Harky said.

"Pooh!" Melinda scoffed. "There haven't been a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters in the Creeping Hills during the past hundred years!"

"Old Joe's been prowling that long," Harky declared.

"Rubbish!" said Melinda. "He's just a big raccoon who's smart enough to climb a tree that can't be felled or climbed. Even my own father believes he's been here forever, but you should know better. You've been taught by Miss Cathby."

Harky sneered, "Miss Cathby don't know nothin' about nothin'."

"Harold!" Melinda was properly shocked. "Don't you dare talk that way about Miss Cathby!"

"Ha!" Harky crowed. "I'll--"

The battle that might have resulted from this impact of Miss Cathby's education with the lore and legend of the Creeping Hills was forestalled when two hounds began to bay at Old Joe's sycamore. They were Thunder and Duckfoot.

THE FALL OF MUN

Old Joe left his daytime den, a burrow beneath a humpbacked boulder, half an hour after nightfall. He paused for a moment in the exit he'd chosen--one of three leading from the den--to twitch his whiskers and wriggle his nose. As usual, he wanted to determine what was in the wind before going down it. There was nothing, or at least nothing that called for more than ordinary caution. Old Joe chittered contentedly to himself.

Except for the one bad night, when everything went wrong and he'd finally been chased up his big sycamore by Duckfoot, he had enjoyed a successful season indeed. Corn had been plentiful, crawfish and mussels abundant, poultry careless, and enemies few. Some of those that had threatened would have been considerably better off if they hadn't.

Notable among them was Pine Heglin's fighting dog. Smarting from that unexpected encounter, when he'd returned to steal one of Pine's guinea hens and been so desperately pressed, Old Joe had chosen his time and gone back to Pine's house one night. The dog rushed. Old Joe scooted away. After a pathetically short chase, the dog bayed him.

The dog, however, lacked a full appreciation of the properties of bees, and Old Joe had let himself be cornered on one of Pine's beehives. The dog closed, the hive tipped over, and while Old Joe scurried happily onward, the dog received a short but intensive education in the folly of tipping beehives. Bees did not bother Old Joe. Even in summer his fur was long enough to protect him, and whenever he felt like it, which was whenever he wanted some honey, he raided beehives.

Now, with a blanket of fat beneath his glossy fur, he was all ready for the wintry blasts that would send him to bed in his big sycamore. Between now and that uncertain period when bitter winds blew, there was considerable living to be done.

On this particular night the first order of living involved something to eat, and Old Joe was in a mood for beechnuts. They were so tiny that Melinda Garson might have held fifty in the palm of her hand and still lacked a handful. But they were delicious, and along with acorns they spread a bountiful autumn table because they existed by the billion. When frost opened the pods and wind rattled the branches of beech trees, the sound of beechnuts pattering into dry leaves was not unlike the sound of a violent rain.

Having chosen his menu for the night, Old Joe had only to decide which of many beech groves offered the easiest pickings with the greatest advantage to himself. He finally selected the one bordering Willow Brook and just opposite Mun Mundee's farm.

There were various reasons for his choice. First, the grove was in a sheltered area, which meant that its pods ripened later than those that were exposed to first frosts and heavy winds. Therefore it would not be so thoroughly picked over, and would still be dropping nuts in abundance. Second, this grove always produced a lush crop.

But Old Joe's most compelling reason for his choice was that the grove was infested with squirrels, who had been frantically gathering the beechnuts ever since they began to drop, and storing them in hollow logs, stumps, crevices, and any other place available. It was no part of Old Joe's plan to scrape in the leaves and gather his dinner nut by nut when a little investigation was certain to uncover a cache that might contain from half a pint to a couple of quarts of beechnuts, already gathered by some industrious squirrel.

His campaign mapped, Old Joe proceeded to execute it.

The autumn night posed its usual charms, but hunger took precedence over esthetic inclinations. Old Joe did not linger to watch starlight glinting on a pond, investigate fox fire in a swamp, or even to retrieve a nine-inch trout, wounded in combat with some bigger fish, that was feebly wriggling in the shallows. The trout was a delicacy, but so were beechnuts. Let lesser coons settle for less than they wanted.

Coming to a long pool, Old Joe plunged in and swam its length. Thereafter he kept to Willow Brook. He'd seen no evidence of hunters and had no reason to suppose that any were abroad tonight. Though keeping to the water was an amateur's trick--one any good coon hound could decipher without difficulty--leaving this break in his scent was one of Old Joe's numerous forms of insurance. If a hound should get on him, Old Joe would at least have time to plan some really intricate strategy.

Dripping wet, but not even slightly chilled, and with every sense and nerve brought wonderfully alive by his journey through ice water, Old Joe climbed the bank into the beech grove. He paused to reconnoiter.

The grove, composed entirely of massive beech trees, bordered Willow Brook for about a quarter of a mile and gave way to spindly aspens on either side. The best beechnut hunting lay in the most sheltered area near Willow Brook, but there were other considerations.

There had still been no evidence of hunters. Old Joe, however, could not afford to ignore the possibility that some might venture forth. He knew perfectly well that the instant he left Willow Brook he had started laying a hot trail that any mediocre hound could follow. While mediocre hounds were no cause for concern, they were as scarce in the Creeping Hills as apples on a beech tree.

Old Joe must plan accordingly, and his immediate plans centered about a lazy slough that lay a short distance back in the beeches and had its source in a lazy runlet that trickled down an upheaval of massive rocks. He made his way toward that slough.

The grove already had an ample quota of beechnut harvesters of high and low degree. Old Joe circled a snuffling black bear that squatted on its rump, raked dead leaves with both front paws and gusty abandon, and bent its head to lick up beechnuts along with shredded leaves, dirt, and anything else that happened to be in the way. Farther on was a buck with massive antlers, then a whole herd of deer. A family of skunks had come to share the bounty, and a little coon that hadn't yet learned the proper technique of harvesting beechnuts made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in skill.

Old Joe bothered none. The bear and the deer were too big, the skunks too pungent, and he couldn't be bothered with callow little coons. Anyhow, there was plenty for all. Old Joe came to the slough and sat up to turn his pointed nose to each of the four winds. Detecting nothing that might interrupt his dinner, he fell to hunting.

Towering high over the slough, touching branches across it as though they were shaking hands, the beech twigs rattled dryly as the wind shook them and beechnuts pattered in the leaves or made tiny splashes in the slough. Old Joe, with no disdain for the many nuts he might have gathered but a hearty contempt for the work involved in gathering them, went directly to a moss-grown stump.

He sniffed it. Then he nibbled it. Finally, half sitting and half crouching, he felt all around it with both front paws. The moss was soft and the stump rotting, but nowhere was there a crack or crevice in which a provident squirrel, anticipating the winter to come, might have concealed any beechnuts.

In no way disheartened, Old Joe went from the stump to a gray-backed boulder and explored that. Again he failed. On his third try, fortune smiled.

At the very edge of the slough, possibly because its deep roots were imbedded in constantly-wet earth, a great beech had been partially toppled by a high wind that screamed through the grove. One massive root lay on top of the ground and snaked along it for three feet before probing downward again.

Beneath this root Old Joe found the hidden treasure trove of what must have been the most industrious squirrel in the Creeping Hills. At least a gallon of beechnuts were packed in so tightly that it was necessary to pry the first ones loose. Old Joe settled himself to partaking of the squirrel's hoard.

Opportunity, which knocked often but rarely in such lavish measure, had better be welcomed instantly and swiftly or there was some danger that the squirrel might yet partake of some of the nuts. But though Old Joe was industrious, it just wasn't his night.

He'd eaten about a fifth of the squirrel's cache when the bear he'd previously circled raced to the slough, splashed across it, and with a great rattling of stones and rustling of leaves ran up the hill and disappeared in the night.

Old Joe came instantly to attention. The bear, a big one, was frightened. Big bears did not easily take fright, therefore something was now in the beech grove that had not been present when Old Joe arrived.

A moment later, Duckfoot rushed him. Keener scented than any of the other three hounds, Duckfoot had been the first to discover that a coon was indeed in the beech grove and he acted accordingly.

Old Joe rolled down the bank into the slough and started swimming. On such dismal occasions his mind was automatically made up, so that there was no need to linger and determine a proper course of action. He swam fast, but at the same time he exercised discretion. A terrified young coon would have splashed and rippled the water, and thus marked his path of flight for any hound that was not blind. With everything except his eyes and the very tip of his nose submerged, Old Joe swam silently.

It had been a case of mutual recognition and Old Joe never deluded himself. With Duckfoot again on his trail, the only safe tree was his big sycamore. Emerging at the head of the slough, Old Joe ran up the trickle that fed it, scrambled down the far side of the upended rocks, raced through a swamp, and took the shortest possible route back to Willow Brook. He'd just reached and jumped into the brook when any lingering plans he might have had for foiling Duckfoot were put firmly behind him.

Back where the hunters were gathered, Glory and Queenie began to sing. Though he'd never been run by Glory, Queenie was the slower and noisier half of a formidable team, and Thunder would be along presently. There was no time to waste. Swimming the pools and running the riffles, and knowing that neither these nor any other tactics would baffle Thunder and Duckfoot for very long, Old Joe sacrificed strategy for haste. Panting like a winded dog, he sprang into the slough at the base of his sycamore, swam it, and climbed.

He tumbled into his den, sighed gratefully, and waited for whatever came next.

It was Duckfoot and Thunder. Running neck and neck, the inexperienced puppy and the tested veteran reached the sycamore at exactly the same second and wakened the night with their voices.

Old Joe stirred uneasily. Though this was not the first time he had been trailed to his magic sycamore, never before had he been so hotly pursued. He was on the point of leaving his den, climbing farther up the sycamore and escaping through his tunnel, but Old Joe restrained himself. He'd always been safe here and he was too smart to panic. Besides, if the worst came to the worst, he could still use the tunnel.

Thunder and Duckfoot, blessed with voices that would have awakened Rip Van Winkle, were presently joined by Queenie and Glory. Old Joe scratched his left ear with his right hind paw, a sure sign of nervousness. On various occasions one hound had trailed him to the sycamore, a few times there'd been two, but never before had there been four hounds at the sycamore's base.

Again Old Joe was tempted to resort to his tunnel. Again he refrained and waited for the hunters.

Harky and Melinda came. Old Joe wriggled his black nose. Harky, usually the first to arrive at any tree when a coon was up, he knew well. His acquaintance with Melinda was only casual. He heard the pair talking.

"When he wants to get out," Harky avowed seriously, "some say he climbs out on a limb and drops back into the slough. On t'other hand, some say he grows wings and takes off like a bird."

"How silly!" Melinda exclaimed.

"Yeah?" Harky asked truculently. "Watta you know about it?"

Melinda declared scornfully, "Enough not to believe such nonsense! He has a den somewhere in that sycamore and he's in it right now! The only reason nobody ever found it is because everyone's been too lazy to climb!"

"And how you gonna climb?" Harky demanded.

"Just cut one of these smaller trees, brace it against the crotch of the sycamore, and shinny up it," Melinda asserted.

Harky said nothing because this purely revolutionary scheme left him speechless.

Old Joe's uneasiness mounted. Though he understood no part of the conversation, he had no doubt that a new force had invaded coon hunts. The men who'd always come to his magic sycamore had been happy just to get there, proud of hounds able to track Old Joe so far, and amenable to the idea that neither hounds nor humans could further cope with a coon that was part witch.

Old Joe didn't know what she was, but Melinda was definitely not a man. The rest of the hunters arrived, but before they could begin their ritual that had to do with the invincibility of Old Joe, Melinda threw her bombshell.

"I was telling Harold," she said brightly, "that Old Joe has a den somewhere in this big sycamore. Why don't we fell a smaller tree, brace it against the sycamore, and shinny up to find out?"

"By gum!" Mun said.

As soon as the three men recovered from this flagrant violation of everything right and proper, Old Joe heard the sound of an axe. A tree was toppled, trimmed, and leaned against the sycamore.

"Let me go up, Pa," Harky said.

Mun asserted, "If anybody's goin' to have fust look at Old Joe's den, it'll be me."

Mun and Old Joe started to climb.

"Thar he scampers!" yelled Raw Stanfield.

Old Joe continued to scamper, paying no attention whatever to the fact that, while excitement reigned, Mun fell out of the sycamore. Old Joe climbed out on the limb and tumbled into his tunnel.

Duckfoot, who'd noted the obvious escape route but was just a split second too late, tumbled in behind him. Both the tunnel and Old Joe, however, were low-built. Duckfoot, considerably farther from the ground, had to crawl where Old Joe ran.

The big coon ran out of the tunnel and into the swamp with a safe enough lead. But the next morning's sun was two hours high before he managed to shake Duckfoot from his trail.

IMPASSE

Harky Mundee shoved his fork deeply into the hay. He twisted the tines to gather the biggest possible load; as long as a man had to pitch fool hay he might as well do so in as few forkfuls as possible and get the misery over with. Then he tumbled his load down the shute into the cow stable and leaned on his fork to indulge in some sadly-needed self-criticism.

Mun sat in the house with a broken leg and that was a bad thing, though on the whole it was easier to endure than Mun's ruptured temper. However, Mun's temper was an abstract affair that might erupt at any moment, while a broken leg was distinctly concrete. Harky told himself that anything so indisputably tangible should never beset Mun.

Still, hadn't it been wrought by providence? If Mun had not tried to climb Old Joe's sycamore, he wouldn't have fallen. If he had not fallen, he wouldn't have a broken leg. He should not have such a thing, but he had it, and by all the rules of logic Harky should have achieved the ultimate ideal.

With his leg splinted and bound, Mun's current living space was restricted to the chair upon which he sat all day long and the cot upon which he lay all night long. Harky had been prudent enough to remove from the sweep of his father's arms all sticks of fire wood, dishes, hatchets, knives, and anything else Mun might throw. Let Mun roar as he might (and did, whenever Harky was in the house), roaring broke no bones. For the first time since he could remember, Harky had no need to outwit his father in order to do as he pleased.

Of course there were some tasks one did not avoid. Livestock was incapable of caring for itself, and Harky was too close to the earth to let any living creature suffer for lack of attention. It was far better to butcher it, an idea Harky had played with, but no matter how long the winter might be, two people couldn't eat six cows, four pigs, and sixty-nine chickens. There'd always be the horses left anyway.

Grimacing as he did so, Harky pitched another forkful of hay down the chute. Livestock should really be taught to eat coon meat so a man, with complete freedom of conscience, might spend all his time hunting coons. Maybe, if cows ate something besides hay, they wouldn't be such fools.

Harky thought suddenly of the last time he'd attended Miss Cathby's school, and shuddered.