"Yes, Pa."
Side by side they started down the soggy path toward the house. Precious
Sue left her bed on the porch and came to meet them.
She was medium-sized, and her dark undercoat was dappled with bluish
spots, or ticks. Shredded ears bore mute testimony to her many battles
with coons. Though she ate prodigious meals, every slatted rib showed,
her paunch was lean, and knobby hip bones thrust over her back.
Outwardly, Precious Sue resembled nothing so much as an emaciated
alligator.
For all the coon hunters of the Creeping Hills cared she could have
_been_ an alligator, as long as she continued to perform with such
consummate artistry on a coon's track. Though a casual observer might
have deduced that Precious Sue had trouble just holding herself up, she
had once disappeared for forty-eight hours. Mun finally found her under
the same tree, and holding the same coon, that she must have run up two
hours after starting. She was one of the very few hounds that had ever
forced Old Joe to seek a refuge in his magic sycamore, and no hound
could do more.
Unfortunately, she lived under a curse. The only pup of what should have
been an abundant litter, a bad enough thing if considered by itself,
Precious Sue had been born on a wild night at the wrong time of the
moon. Therefore, she had a streak of wildness that must assert itself
whenever the moon was dark. If she were run at such times, she must
surely meet disaster. But as Precious Sue met and fell in beside them,
Harky thought only of his dream.
"Do you think Old Joe will prowl tonight?" he asked his father.
"What you drivin' at, Harky?"
"I was thinking Old Joe might prowl, and come here, and Sue will run him
up that sycamore in the woodlot, and--"
"Harky!" Mun thundered. "Heed what you say!"
"Huh?" Harky asked bewilderedly.
Mun shook a puzzled head. "I can't figger you, Harky. I can't figger you
a'tall. This is the dark of the moon!"
"I forgot," Harky said humbly.
"I reckon you ain't allus at fault for what runs on in that head of
yours."
"Hadn't you ought to tie her up?" Harky questioned.
"Sue can't abide ties and no coon'll come here tonight," Mun said
decisively. "Least of all, Old Joe."
"But if he does--" Harky began.
"Harky!" Mun thundered. "He won't!"
"Yes, Pa."
Long after he was supposedly in bed, Harky stood before his open window
listening to the song of the south wind. Sometimes he couldn't even
figure himself.
There'd been last fall, when they jumped the big buck out of Garson's
slashing. Mun and Mellie Garson had taken its trail, but Harky had a
feeling about that buck. He'd felt that it would head for the
rhododendron thicket on Hoot Owl Ridge, and that in getting there it
would pass Split Rock. Harky went to sit on Split Rock. Not twenty
minutes later, the buck passed beside him. It was an easy shot.
Old Joe would not come tonight because Mun said he wouldn't. But Harky
was unable to rid himself of a feeling that he would, and he was uneasy
when he finally went to bed.
He slept soundly, but Harky had never been able to figure his sleep
either. Often he awakened with a feeling that something was due to
happen, and it always did. When the wild geese flew north or south, or a
thunder storm was due to break, Harky knew before he heard anything.
This night he sat up in bed with a feeling that he would hear something
very soon.
He heard it, the muffled squawk of a hen. On a backwoods farm, at night,
a squawking hen means just one thing. Harky jumped out of bed and padded
to the door of his father's bedroom.
"Pa."
"What ya want?"
"I heard a hen squawk."
"Be right with ya."
Harky was dressed and ready, with his shotgun in his hands, when Mun
came into the kitchen. Mun lighted a lantern, took his own shotgun from
its rack, and led the way to the chicken house. He knelt beside the
little door by which the chickens left and entered and his muffled word
ripped the air.
"Look!"
Harky looked. Seeming to begin and end at the little door, the biggest
coon tracks in the world were plain in the soft snow. Ten thousand
butterflies churned in his stomach. It was almost as though the whole
thing were his fault.