Harky looked hastily up to see his father beside him. "Yes, Pa," he
said.
[Illustration]
"Lemme see."
Mun sat down beside Old Brindle and Harky sighed with relief. When Mun
Mundee could not get the last squirt from a cow, it followed that the
cow was indeed stripped. But Mun, conditioned by experience, never
completely approved of anything Harky did.
"We'll close up for the night," he said.
Harky scooted out of the barn ahead of his father and gulped lungfuls of
the softening wind. It seemed that a man could never get enough of that
kind of air. Mun closed and latched the barn door and Harky turned to
him.
"It's a thaw wind!" he said rapturously.
"Yep."
"Not the big thaw, though."
"Nope."
"Do you reckon," Harky asked, "it will fetch the coons out?"
Mun deliberated. A subject as serious as coons called for deliberation.
"I don't rightly know," he said finally. "I figger some will go on the
prowl an' some won't."
It was, Harky decided, a not unreasonable answer even though it lacked
the elements of true drama. Harky gulped another lungful of air and
almost, but not quite, loosed the reins of his own imagination. Even
seasoned hunters did not argue coon lore with Mun Mundee, but on an
evening such as this it was impossible to think in prosaic terms.
They lingered near the barn and faced into the wind. Presently Harky
stood there in body only. His spirit took him to Heaven.
Heaven, as translated at the moment, was the summit of a mountain ten
times as high as Dewberry Knob. From his lofty eminence, Harky looked at
a great forest that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Each tree
was hollow and each hollow contained a coon. As though every coon had
received the same signal at the same time, all came out. There were more
coons than a man could hunt if he hunted every night for the next
thousand years.
At exactly the right moment, this entrancing scene became perfection.
Deep in the great forest, Precious Sue lifted her voice to announce that
she had a coon up.
Harky made his way among the great trees toward the sound. He found
Precious Sue doing her best to climb a sycamore so massive that ten men,
holding each others' hands, could not come even close to encircling the
trunk. When Harky shined his light into the tree he saw, not just a
coon, but the king of coons. Sitting on a branch, staring down with eyes
big as a locomotive's headlight, was Old Joe himself.
The fancy faded, but Harky was left with no sense of frustration because
fact replaced it. Somewhere out in the Creeping Hills--the aura that
surrounded him considerably enhanced by the fact that no human being
knew exactly where--Old Joe really was sleeping the winter away. Suppose
that he really came prowling tonight? Suppose Precious Sue really did
run him up that big sycamore in the wood lot? Suppose Harky really--?
Harky could no longer be silent.
"Pa," he asked, "how long has Old Joe been prowling these hills?"
A man who would speak of coons must think before he spoke. For a full
ninety seconds Mun did not answer. Then he said seriously:
"A right smart time, Harky. There's them'll tell you that even if a coon
don't get trapped, or shot, or dog kil't, or die no death 'fore his
time, he'll live only about ten years anyhow. I reckon that may be so if
you mean just _ordinary_ coons. Old Joe, he ain't no ordinary coon. My
grandpa hunted him, an' my pa, an' me, an' you've hunted him. Old Joe,
he's jest about as much of a fixture in these hills as us Mundees."
Harky pondered this information. When he went to school down at the
Crossroads, which he did whenever he couldn't get out of it, he had
acquired some education. But he had also acquired some disturbing
information. Miss Cathby, who taught all eight grades, was a very
earnest soul dedicated to the proposition that the children in her care
must not grow up to wallow in the same morass of mingled ignorance and
superstition that surrounded their fathers and mothers.
Miss Cathby had pointed out, and produced scientific statistics to
prove, that the moon was nothing more than a satellite of the earth. As
such, its influence over earth dwellers was strictly limited. The moon
was responsible for tides and other things about which Miss Cathby had
been very vague because she didn't know. But she did know that the moon
could not affect birth, death, or destiny.
Old Joe had been the subject of another of Miss Cathby's lectures. He
was just a big coon, she said, though she mispronounced it "raccoon." It
was absurd even to think that he had been living in the Creeping Hills
forever. Old Joe's predecessor had also been just a big raccoon. Since
Old Joe was mortal, and like all mortals must eventually pass to his
everlasting reward, his successor would be in all probability the next
biggest raccoon.
Harky conceded that she had something to offer. But it also seemed that
Mun had much on his side, and on the whole, Mun's conception of the real
and earnest life was far more interesting than Miss Cathby's. She got
her information from books that were all right but sort of small. Mun
took his lore from the limitless woods.
"How long have us Mundees been here?" Harky asked.
"My grandpa, your great-grandpa, settled this very farm fifty-one years
past come April nineteen," Mun said proudly.
"Where did he come from?"
"He never did say," Mun admitted.
"Didn't nobody ask?"
"'Twas thought best not to ask," Mun said. "Blast it, Harky! What's
chewin' on you? Ain't it enough to know where your grandpa come from?"
"Why--why yes."
Confused for the moment, Harky went back to fundamentals. His
great-grandfather had settled the Mundee farm fifty-one years ago. He
was thirteen. Thirteen from fifty-one left thirty-eight years that
Mundees had lived on the farm before Harky was even born.
Confusion gave way to mingled awe and pride. Old Joe was not the only
tradition in the Creeping Hills. The Mundees were fully as famous and
had as much right to call themselves old-timers. For that matter, so did
Precious Sue. The last of a line of hounds brought to the Creeping Hills
by Mun's grandfather, her breed was doomed unless Mun found a suitable
mate for her. But better to let the breed die than to offer Precious Sue
an unworthy mate.