Raw Stanfield with the lantern, Butt Johnson with a torch for shining
treed coons and a .22 rifle for plinking them out of the trees, Mun with
his coon-hunting axe, Melinda with serene self-assurance, and Harky with
a miserable feeling that it couldn't be very long now before the whole
world went to pot, they set off through the night.
Misery was Harky's only feeling. If he had another, he told himself
sourly, he wouldn't dare put stock in it. When girls horned in on coon
hunts anything could happen and it probably would.
Harky comforted himself with thoughts of what can happen on coon hunts.
He had a soul-satisfying vision of a cold, wet, mud-spattered, and
hungry Melinda wandering through the night pleading for Harky to come to
her succor. Harky heard, but he let her wander until the last possible
second. Then, just as she was about to sink into mud from which she
would never rise had it not been for valiant Harky, he lifted her to her
feet, took her home, and scuffed scornful feet on Mellie Garson's
threshold.
"There!" he heard himself saying. "Let that teach you that girls ought
never horn in on coon hunts!"
Harky breathed a doleful sigh. Delightful as this mental image was, in
no way did it erase the fact that a girl had horned in on a coon hunt.
Harky sought solace by tearing his thoughts away from Melinda and
fastening them on something pleasant. He considered the four hounds.
Queenie was a slow and methodical worker who'd never been known to lose
a trail she started. Of course they did not get every coon Queenie
started; some went to earth in rock-bound burrows and some escaped by
devious means. Queenie, who tongued on a trail, was one of the few
hounds who'd followed Old Joe to his magic sycamore.
Glory, as yet untried, might and might not adopt her mother's hunting
style. Duckfoot--neither Harky nor anyone else had any reason to believe
that he'd already tracked Old Joe to his sycamore--was another unknown
quantity insofar as his own special way of hunting was concerned. But
Harky had no doubt that, after adequate training, Duckfoot would shine,
and Glory would do well enough.
Thunder, next to Precious Sue the best coon hound ever to run the
Creeping Hills, couldn't be doubted. Big, long-legged, and powerful,
Thunder was another hound who'd distinguished himself by tracking Old
Joe to the big sycamore. A silent trailer but a tree barker who did
credit to his name, Thunder was so fast that he often caught coons on
the ground. With six years of hunting experience behind him, he was
probably the best of the four hounds on this current hunt.
They were, Harky thought, a pack fit to run in any company. With Thunder
to run ahead and jump the coon, Queenie to work out the trail at her own
pace and at regular intervals to announce the direction Thunder had
gone, and quality pups like Duckfoot and Glory, any coon they struck
tonight, with the probable exception of Old Joe, would find his
stretched pelt on the barn door tomorrow. Maybe even Old Joe would have
a hard time with this pack.
Thinking of coons, Harky was pleasantly diverted for a few minutes more.
Creatures of the season, coons availed themselves of the most of the
best of whatever was handy. When they emerged from their dens at
winter's end, they liked to fill empty stomachs with buds and tender
grass and flower shoots. As the season advanced, coons conformed. They
never spurned vegetation if it was to their liking, but as soon as the
spring freshet subsided, they did a great deal of fishing and frog,
crawfish, and mussel hunting. When gardens started to bear, the coons
varied their diet with green vegetables. As they ripened, both wild and
domestic fruits received the attention of properly brought up coons.
They were always ready to raid poultry.
At this time of year, with frogs already gone into hibernation, fish
inclined to linger in deep pools where even Old Joe couldn't catch them,
the crawfish and mussel crop well picked over, and vegetation withered,
coons concentrated on fields of shocked corn, such fruit as might cling
to branches, and beech and oak groves, where they foraged for fallen
beechnuts and acorns.
It was to a beech grove that Raw Stanfield led them.
The black thunderheads that had been surging through Harky's brain
changed suddenly to a sky of dazzling blue. Rubber boots were not
unknown among coon hunters of the Creeping Hills, but except by a few
eccentrics, they were unused. A man trying to make time to a
tree-barking hound did not care to be slowed by boots.
Harky licked his lips. God tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but ice
water felt like ice water even to a coon hunter and the grove toward
which Raw headed was on the far side of Willow Brook. The water was
autumn-low with plenty of exposed stones, but jumping them by daylight
and jumping them under lantern light were different matters. Harky
wasn't sure that even he could cross at night without getting wet.
It looked as though ladies' night at coon hunts would terminate abruptly
and soon. Harky hoped so, and it would be a nice touch indeed if
Melinda scraped her shins when she fell in.
Willow Brook glinted in the light as Raw Stanfield held his lantern high
to see whether they were approaching a pool or riffle. It was a riffle
that purled lazily, and coldly, around exposed stones. Harky grinned in
the darkness. It _looked_ easy, but there was a trick to it.
Once you started jumping there was no turning back and the stones were
unevenly spaced. You had to adjust your jumps accordingly, so that it
took a really experienced stone jumper to cross in reasonably dry
condition.
Contemplating the joys of watching Melinda come reasonably near
drowning, Harky made a shocking discovery.
Thunder, Queenie, and Glory still trailed at the heels of the hunters,
but Duckfoot was no longer present. Harky gulped, then used the thumb of
his left hand to trace a circle on the palm of his right. Less than half
a shake ago, Duckfoot had pushed his cold nose into that dangling palm
and the circle Harky made there would certainly close him in and bring
him back from wherever he had gone. At any rate, it should.
It didn't. Chills never born of the frosty night chased each other up
and down Harky's spine. Mun claimed Duckfoot was half duck, Miss Cathby
said that couldn't be, and Harky wavered between the two. He looked
again, but only three hounds waded into the riffle to join the hunters
gathering on the other side. Harky jumped.
If he had his mind on his work, he'd have crossed in perfect safety. But
just as he made ready to strike a humpbacked boulder with the sole of
his left foot, he miscalculated and struck with the heel. That broke his
stride to such an extent that the next jump was six inches short, and
instead of landing on a flat-topped rock where he could have balanced,
he came down in ten inches of ice water.
Only vast experience as a rock jumper prevented an allover bath; Harky
threw himself forward to support his upper body on the flat rock. Then,
since it was impossible to get his feet any wetter than they were, he
waded the remaining distance.
"Really, Harold," said Melinda, who was dry as a shingle under the July
sun, "you did that rather clumsily."
Harky made a mental note. It was easy to work the pith out of an
elderberry stick. Small stones were plentiful. One of the latter,
placed in the mouth and blown through the former, was never forgotten by
anyone with whom it collided. The next time Harky attended Miss Cathby's
school, Melinda was in for an unforgettable experience.
For the moment, since he could do nothing else about her, he could
imagine she wasn't along. Harky turned his back on Melinda and addressed
Mun:
"Duckfoot's gone."
"Danged if he ain't," said Mun, who noticed for the first time that they
had only three of the four hounds with which they'd started. "When'd you
note it?"
"Other side of the brook," Harky said in a hushed voice. "One minute his
nose was in my hand, the next it wasn't. Do you figure he took wings and
flew off?"
"It could," Mun began, but his about-to-be-expressed opinion that such a
premise was wholly reasonable was interrupted by Melinda's, "Nonsense!"
Harky blazed, forgetting his sensible plan to ignore her. "Watta you
know about it?"
"Now don't lose your temper, Harold," Melinda chided. "It's silly to
suppose Duckfoot's half duck."