At twenty minutes past five, just four hours before Old Joe startled the
owl that watched him come out of his den, Harky Mundee peered furtively
around the rear of the cow he was milking to see if his father was
watching. He was. Harky sighed and went back to work.
Mun Mundee had firm opinions concerning the proper way to milk a cow or
do anything else, and when other arguments failed he enforced his ideas
with the flat of his hand. Harky sighed again. Old Brindle, far and away
the orneriest of Mun's five cows and probably anyone else's, had teats
remarkably like the fingers of a buckskin glove that has been left out
in the rain and then dried in the sun. Coaxing the last squirts of milk
from her probably was not so hard as squeezing apple juice from a rock,
but it certainly ran a close second.
Since there was no alternative, Harky beguiled the anything-but-fleeting
moments with the comforting reflection that winter, after all, was one
of his favorite seasons. It could not compare with autumn, when corn
rustled crisply in the shock and dogs sniffed about for scent of the
coons that always raided shocked corn. Nor did it equal early spring,
when trout streams were ice-free and the earth still too wet for
plowing.
But it was far ahead of late spring and summer, with their endless farm
tasks, each of which was worse than the other. Only by exercising the
greatest craft and diligence, and manfully preparing himself for the
chastisement he was sure to get when he finally came home, could a man
sneak away for a bit of fishing or swimming.
Harky bent his head toward Old Brindle's flank but his thoughts whisked
him out of the stable into the hills.
Shotgun in hand, he'd spent a fair portion of yesterday tracking a
bobcat on the snow. It was a proved fact that a man on foot cannot catch
up with a bobcat that is also on foot. But it was not to be denied that
all bobcats have a touch of moon madness. They knew when they were being
tracked, but they also knew when the tracker ceased following, and that
kindled a fire in their heads.
As long as they were tracked they were comfortable in the knowledge that
they had only to keep running. When the tracker stopped, it threw the
bobcat's whole plan out of gear. They imagined all sorts of ambushes,
and cunning traps, and finally they worked themselves into such a frenzy
that they just had to come back along their own tracks and find out what
was happening. It followed that the hunter had nothing to do except rile
the bobcat into a lather and then sit down and wait.
Harky had waited. But he must have done something wrong, or perhaps the
bobcat he followed had not been sufficiently moonstruck. Though it had
come back, it had not been so anxious to find Harky that it forgot
everything else. Harky had glimpsed it across a gully, two hundred
yards away and hopelessly beyond shotgun range. If only he had a rifle--
He hadn't any, and the last time he'd sneaked Mun's out his father had
caught him coming back with it. The hiding that followed--Mun used a
hickory gad instead of the flat of his hand--was something a man
wouldn't forget if he lived to be older than the rocks on Dewberry Knob.
Harky lost himself in a beautiful dream.
Walking along Willow Brook, he accidentally kicked and overturned a
rock. Beneath it, shiny-bright as they had been the day the forgotten
bandit buried them, was a whole sack full of gold pieces. At once Harky
hurried into town and bought a rifle, not an old 38-55 like his father's
but a sleek new bolt action with fancy carving on breech and forearm.
When he brought it home, Mun asked, rather timidly, if he might use it.
No, Pa, Harky heard himself saying. It's not that I care to slight you
but this rifle is for a hunter like me.