"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.
[Illustration]