His books strapped together with a discarded bridle rein, and dangling
over his shoulder, Harky Mundee placed one reluctant foot after the
other as he strode down the dirt road.
The events that culminated in this dreadful situation--returning to Miss
Cathby's school at the Crossroads--had for the past three days been
building up like a thunderstorm, and on the whole, it would have been
easier to halt the storm. Every autumn, just after the harvest, Mun
acquired firm ideas concerning the value of higher education for Harky.
But never before had Mun resorted to such foul tricks or taken such
unfair advantage.
Coming to where Tumbling Run foamed beneath a wooden bridge and hurled
itself toward Willow Brook, Harky halted and rested both elbows on the
bridge railing. He looked glumly into the icy water, along which coons
of high and low degree prowled every night, and he wished mightily that
he were a coon.
Though even coons had their troubles, Harky had never known of a single
one that had been forced to hoe corn, milk cows, feed pigs, pitch hay,
dig potatoes, or do any of the other unspeakable tasks that were forever
falling to the lot of human beings. But even farm chores were not
entirely unbearable. In a final agony of desperation, his cause already
lost, Harky had even pointed out to Mun that the fence needed mending
and hadn't he better cut the posts?
"Blast it!" Mun roared. "Stop this minute tryin' to make a fool of me,
Harky! You know's well as I do that the cows ain't goin' to be out to
pasture more'n 'nother three weeks! You need some book lore!"
Harky rubbed the heel of his right shoe against the shin of his left
leg and wished again that he were a coon, even a treed coon. Being
hound-cornered was surely preferable to becoming the hapless victim of
Miss Ophelia Cathby.
Grasping the very end of the bridle rein, Harky whirled the books around
his head. But exactly on the point of releasing the strap and reveling
in the satisfying distance the books would fly, Harky brought them to a
stop and slung them back over his shoulder.
He sighed. Free to walk the two miles to the Crossroads, with Mun not
even in attendance, Harky was anything except free to throw his books
away and explore Tumbling Run. When he ran away from farm tasks, which
he did at every opportunity, the worst he could expect was the flat of
Mun's hand.
But if he did not show up at school this morning, and for as many
mornings hereafter as Mun thought necessary, he would never see his
shotgun again. Harky lived again the inhuman scene wherein he had been
subjected to torture more intense than any mortal should ever endure.
Mun took the shotgun, locked it in his tool case, pocketed the key and
addressed Harky:
"Thar! Now jest peg on to school, an' I aim to see Miss Cathby an' find
out if ya did! Hingein' on what she tells me, ya kin have the shotgun
back!"
Harky permitted himself a second doleful sigh. A man could take a hiding
even if it were laid on with a hickory gad. But a man might better lose
life itself rather than the only gun he had or could hope to get, at
least in the foreseeable future. Mun was a man of his word. Harky saw
himself in a fiendish trap from which there was no faint hope of escape.
He glanced at the sun, and from the length of the shadows it was casting
deduced that it still lacked forty-five minutes of nine o'clock, the
hour at which Miss Cathby called her classes to order. If he stuck to
the road, forty-five minutes was at least thirty-eight more than he
needed to cover the less than a mile remaining between himself and the
Crossroads. But there were excellent reasons why he could not stick to
the road.
Raw Stanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, and Mule Domster all
lived upstream from the Mundee farm. Mellie Garson and Pine Heglin lived
down. Harky had not hesitated to walk openly past Mellie's farm, for
though Mellie had been an enthusiastic sire, he had begat only
daughters. They were all pretty enough to be snatched up the moment they
came of marriageable age, and the four oldest were happily married. But
girls of all ages were forever gadding about doing silly things that
interested girls only. Though they probably would think it a modern
miracle, Mellie's eight youngest would not consider it necessary to rub
salt in Harky's already-raw wounds simply because he was going to
school.
Pine Heglin had specialized in sons, of which he had seven. The six
eldest were carbon copies of their father. It was said along Willow
Brook that if one cared to give Pine or any of his six elder sons a good
laugh in January, one had only to tell them a good joke the preceding
April.
The youngest Heglin, named Loring and called Dib, had been born on
Halloween and showed it. Every witch who walked must have touched Dib
Heglin, and among other questionable gifts they'd bestowed a tongue with
a hornet's sting.
Dib was three months older than Harky. He did not go to school. He found
endless amusement in the fact that Harky did go. Harky had no wish to
meet Dib.
A quarter of a mile on the upstream side of the Heglin farm, Harky
started into the woods and stopped worrying. Dib was a not-unskilled
woodsman. But he'd never studied in the stark school from which Harky
had graduated with honors; anyone able to hide from Mun Mundee could
elude fifty Dib Heglins.
A sour chuckle escaped Harky. Dib, who knew how to add two and two,
would know that the Mundees' harvest was ended. Nobody would have to
tell him that this was the logical day for Mun to expose Harky to some
more of Miss Cathby's education. No doubt he'd got up a half hour early
just so he could wait for Harky and insult him when he appeared.
Presently, as it always did, the magic of the forest overwhelmed less
desirable influences. Miss Cathby and her school, while not far enough
away to let Harky forget he'd better be there on time, needn't be faced
for the immediate present. Harky found himself wondering.
Duckfoot had grown like a weed in the corn patch, and to the casual
observer he was not greatly different from other gangling hound puppies.
But a careful scrutiny revealed him as a dog of diverse talents. There
was the incident of the root cellar.
Because it would not keep long in warm weather, meat was at a premium
along Willow Brook during the summer months. When somebody butchered, it
was both practical and practice to share with his neighbors.
Mule Domster butchered a hog, and to the Mundees he brought a ham and a
loin. Mun stored both in the root cellar, that was closed by a latch.
The latch was lifted by a string dangling down the door. While Duckfoot,
who to all appearances was interested only in scratching a flea behind
his ear, sat sleepily near, Mun removed the ham.
Shortly afterward, returning for the loin and finding an empty space
where it had been, Mun went roaring to the house for his rifle. Since no
farmer of the Creeping Hills would think of robbing his neighbor's root
cellar, obviously an unprincipled and hungry stranger had come up Willow
Brook. Finding no tracks, Mun further declared that he was a cunning
stranger.
Harky had a feeling. It was based on the fact that Duckfoot, who
normally ate like a horse except that he did not chew his food nearly as
much, was not at all hungry when his meal was put before him. It meant
nothing, asserted Mun, for he had flushed an early flight of teal from
Willow Brook and Duckfoot was perturbed by the ducks. Harky watched the
root cellar.
Evening shadows were merging into black night when Duckfoot padded to
the door, reared, pulled the latch string with his teeth, and entered.
Since Mun was sure to take a dim view of such goings on, Harky never
betrayed the thief. All he did was break the latch and replace it with
an exterior latch that was not string-operated.
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."