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 c.o.o.n 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. G.o.d tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but ice water felt like ice water even to a c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n hunts would terminate abruptly and soon. Harky hoped so, and it would be a nice touch indeed if Melinda sc.r.a.ped 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 s.p.a.ced. 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."

Harky drew his arm back. "Silly, huh? I've a good mind to--"

"Harky!" Mun roared. "Men don't hit wimmen!"

"Why don't they?" Harky growled.

"You're being childish, Harold," Melinda said sweetly. "Duckfoot's simply gone off somewhere. Perhaps he got tired and went home."

Harky tried to speak and succeeded only in choking. If it was insult to a.s.sert that Duckfoot could not be half duck, it was heresy even to imply that he left a hunt and went home because he was tired. Harky recovered his breath.

"Duckfoot didn't go home!" he screamed.

"Really, Harold," Melinda said, "it isn't necessary to make so much noise."

Harky was saved by the bell-like tones of a suddenly-tonguing hound.

"Queenie's got one," Raw Stanfield said.

"That's Glory tonguing," Melinda corrected. "She's pitched just a shade higher than Queenie."

"Now, Miss," Raw stuffed his tobacco into a corner of his mouth, "I know my own hound."

"There she is," Melinda said.

A second hound, almost exactly like the first but with subtle differences that were apparent when both tongued at the same time, began to sing. Raw Stanfield promptly swallowed his chew. b.u.t.t Johnson and Mun were momentarily too shocked to move.

Harky gasped. There was witchery present that had nothing to do with Duckfoot. Raw didn't know his own hound when he heard it, but Melinda did. Then Harky put the entire affair in its proper perspective. What else could you expect when you brought a girl on a c.o.o.n hunt? Raw was just so shook up that he might be pardoned for failing to recognize Queenie even if he saw her.

"Le's git huntin'," Raw muttered.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Guiding himself by the blended voices of Queenie and Glory rising into the night air, and seeming to hover at treetop level for a moment before they faded, Harky began to run. The cold air whipped his face. The night whispered of all the marvels that have been since the beginning of time and will be until the end. For a moment, he even forgot Melinda.

This, he thought, was what c.o.o.n hunting really meant. Listening to the hounds and trying to keep pace; knowing that somewhere far ahead, swift and silent-running Thunder was also on the c.o.o.n's trail; drawing mental pictures of the c.o.o.n and his scurry to be away; Thunder bursting upon and surprising the c.o.o.n, who'd be listening to the tonguing hounds; the chorus as all hounds gathered at the tree. Harky laughed out loud.

Now he knew what a running deer knew, he told himself, and almost instantly the swiftest deer seemed unbearably slow. He was the wind itself, and he exulted in the notion that the other plodding humans, who would surely be running, would just as surely be far behind. They hadn't had his experience in running away from Mun.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Glory and Queenie, who seemed to run at the same pace even as they tongued in almost the same pitch, drew farther ahead but remained well within hearing. Harky frowned thoughtfully as he sped through the night.

The way that c.o.o.n was running, and the way the dogs became quiet at intervals, as though they'd been thrown off the scent, he had a feeling that they were on Old Joe himself.

When he climbed a knoll and was able to hear nothing, he no longer doubted. Queenie and Glory were casting for the trail, and Old Joe was the only c.o.o.n that could keep Queenie puzzled this long. Harky halted.

"Old Joe sure enough," he said out loud.

"Don't you think," Melinda asked calmly, "that we should go directly to his big sycamore?"

Harky jumped like a shot-stung fox. He blinked, not daring to believe she'd kept pace with him but unable to discredit his own eyes. Suddenly he felt far more the plodding turtle than the speeding deer, but he extricated himself as neatly as Old Joe foiled a second-rate hound.

"If I hadn't slowed down on accounta you," he said belligerently, "I'd of been at Old Joe's tree by now."

Melinda said meekly, "I know you were running slowly, Harold, but you needn't have. I could have gone much faster."

Harky gulped and felt his way. Melinda, he decided, must have brought her rabbit's foot with her and probably she'd rolled in a whole field of four-leaf clovers. Beyond any doubt, she'd also observed the phases of the moon and conducted herself accordingly.

"What do you know about Old Joe's sycamore?" he asked.

"What everyone knows," she said casually. "Old Joe runs to it every time he's hard pressed by hounds."

"He's probably lost a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters at that tree," Harky said.