"Pooh!" Melinda scoffed. "There haven't been a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters in the Creeping Hills during the past hundred years!"

"Old Joe's been prowling that long," Harky declared.

"Rubbish!" said Melinda. "He's just a big racc.o.o.n who's smart enough to climb a tree that can't be felled or climbed. Even my own father believes he's been here forever, but you should know better. You've been taught by Miss Cathby."

Harky sneered, "Miss Cathby don't know nothin' about nothin'."

"Harold!" Melinda was properly shocked. "Don't you dare talk that way about Miss Cathby!"

"Ha!" Harky crowed. "I'll--"

The battle that might have resulted from this impact of Miss Cathby's education with the lore and legend of the Creeping Hills was forestalled when two hounds began to bay at Old Joe's sycamore. They were Thunder and Duckfoot.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE FALL OF MUN

Old Joe left his daytime den, a burrow beneath a humpbacked boulder, half an hour after nightfall. He paused for a moment in the exit he'd chosen--one of three leading from the den--to twitch his whiskers and wriggle his nose. As usual, he wanted to determine what was in the wind before going down it. There was nothing, or at least nothing that called for more than ordinary caution. Old Joe chittered contentedly to himself.

Except for the one bad night, when everything went wrong and he'd finally been chased up his big sycamore by Duckfoot, he had enjoyed a successful season indeed. Corn had been plentiful, crawfish and mussels abundant, poultry careless, and enemies few. Some of those that had threatened would have been considerably better off if they hadn't.

Notable among them was Pine Heglin's fighting dog. Smarting from that unexpected encounter, when he'd returned to steal one of Pine's guinea hens and been so desperately pressed, Old Joe had chosen his time and gone back to Pine's house one night. The dog rushed. Old Joe scooted away. After a pathetically short chase, the dog bayed him.

The dog, however, lacked a full appreciation of the properties of bees, and Old Joe had let himself be cornered on one of Pine's beehives. The dog closed, the hive tipped over, and while Old Joe scurried happily onward, the dog received a short but intensive education in the folly of tipping beehives. Bees did not bother Old Joe. Even in summer his fur was long enough to protect him, and whenever he felt like it, which was whenever he wanted some honey, he raided beehives.

Now, with a blanket of fat beneath his glossy fur, he was all ready for the wintry blasts that would send him to bed in his big sycamore.

Between now and that uncertain period when bitter winds blew, there was considerable living to be done.

On this particular night the first order of living involved something to eat, and Old Joe was in a mood for beechnuts. They were so tiny that Melinda Garson might have held fifty in the palm of her hand and still lacked a handful. But they were delicious, and along with acorns they spread a bountiful autumn table because they existed by the billion.

When frost opened the pods and wind rattled the branches of beech trees, the sound of beechnuts pattering into dry leaves was not unlike the sound of a violent rain.

Having chosen his menu for the night, Old Joe had only to decide which of many beech groves offered the easiest pickings with the greatest advantage to himself. He finally selected the one bordering Willow Brook and just opposite Mun Mundee's farm.

There were various reasons for his choice. First, the grove was in a sheltered area, which meant that its pods ripened later than those that were exposed to first frosts and heavy winds. Therefore it would not be so thoroughly picked over, and would still be dropping nuts in abundance. Second, this grove always produced a lush crop.

But Old Joe's most compelling reason for his choice was that the grove was infested with squirrels, who had been frantically gathering the beechnuts ever since they began to drop, and storing them in hollow logs, stumps, crevices, and any other place available. It was no part of Old Joe's plan to sc.r.a.pe in the leaves and gather his dinner nut by nut when a little investigation was certain to uncover a cache that might contain from half a pint to a couple of quarts of beechnuts, already gathered by some industrious squirrel.

His campaign mapped, Old Joe proceeded to execute it.

The autumn night posed its usual charms, but hunger took precedence over esthetic inclinations. Old Joe did not linger to watch starlight glinting on a pond, investigate fox fire in a swamp, or even to retrieve a nine-inch trout, wounded in combat with some bigger fish, that was feebly wriggling in the shallows. The trout was a delicacy, but so were beechnuts. Let lesser c.o.o.ns settle for less than they wanted.

Coming to a long pool, Old Joe plunged in and swam its length.

Thereafter he kept to Willow Brook. He'd seen no evidence of hunters and had no reason to suppose that any were abroad tonight. Though keeping to the water was an amateur's trick--one any good c.o.o.n hound could decipher without difficulty--leaving this break in his scent was one of Old Joe's numerous forms of insurance. If a hound should get on him, Old Joe would at least have time to plan some really intricate strategy.

Dripping wet, but not even slightly chilled, and with every sense and nerve brought wonderfully alive by his journey through ice water, Old Joe climbed the bank into the beech grove. He paused to reconnoiter.

The grove, composed entirely of ma.s.sive beech trees, bordered Willow Brook for about a quarter of a mile and gave way to spindly aspens on either side. The best beechnut hunting lay in the most sheltered area near Willow Brook, but there were other considerations.

There had still been no evidence of hunters. Old Joe, however, could not afford to ignore the possibility that some might venture forth. He knew perfectly well that the instant he left Willow Brook he had started laying a hot trail that any mediocre hound could follow. While mediocre hounds were no cause for concern, they were as scarce in the Creeping Hills as apples on a beech tree.

Old Joe must plan accordingly, and his immediate plans centered about a lazy slough that lay a short distance back in the beeches and had its source in a lazy runlet that trickled down an upheaval of ma.s.sive rocks.

He made his way toward that slough.

The grove already had an ample quota of beechnut harvesters of high and low degree. Old Joe circled a snuffling black bear that squatted on its rump, raked dead leaves with both front paws and gusty abandon, and bent its head to lick up beechnuts along with shredded leaves, dirt, and anything else that happened to be in the way. Farther on was a buck with ma.s.sive antlers, then a whole herd of deer. A family of skunks had come to share the bounty, and a little c.o.o.n that hadn't yet learned the proper technique of harvesting beechnuts made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in skill.

Old Joe bothered none. The bear and the deer were too big, the skunks too pungent, and he couldn't be bothered with callow little c.o.o.ns.

Anyhow, there was plenty for all. Old Joe came to the slough and sat up to turn his pointed nose to each of the four winds. Detecting nothing that might interrupt his dinner, he fell to hunting.

Towering high over the slough, touching branches across it as though they were shaking hands, the beech twigs rattled dryly as the wind shook them and beechnuts pattered in the leaves or made tiny splashes in the slough. Old Joe, with no disdain for the many nuts he might have gathered but a hearty contempt for the work involved in gathering them, went directly to a moss-grown stump.

He sniffed it. Then he nibbled it. Finally, half sitting and half crouching, he felt all around it with both front paws. The moss was soft and the stump rotting, but nowhere was there a crack or crevice in which a provident squirrel, antic.i.p.ating the winter to come, might have concealed any beechnuts.

In no way disheartened, Old Joe went from the stump to a gray-backed boulder and explored that. Again he failed. On his third try, fortune smiled.

At the very edge of the slough, possibly because its deep roots were imbedded in constantly-wet earth, a great beech had been partially toppled by a high wind that screamed through the grove. One ma.s.sive root lay on top of the ground and snaked along it for three feet before probing downward again.

Beneath this root Old Joe found the hidden treasure trove of what must have been the most industrious squirrel in the Creeping Hills. At least a gallon of beechnuts were packed in so tightly that it was necessary to pry the first ones loose. Old Joe settled himself to partaking of the squirrel's h.o.a.rd.

Opportunity, which knocked often but rarely in such lavish measure, had better be welcomed instantly and swiftly or there was some danger that the squirrel might yet partake of some of the nuts. But though Old Joe was industrious, it just wasn't his night.

He'd eaten about a fifth of the squirrel's cache when the bear he'd previously circled raced to the slough, splashed across it, and with a great rattling of stones and rustling of leaves ran up the hill and disappeared in the night.

Old Joe came instantly to attention. The bear, a big one, was frightened. Big bears did not easily take fright, therefore something was now in the beech grove that had not been present when Old Joe arrived.

A moment later, Duckfoot rushed him. Keener scented than any of the other three hounds, Duckfoot had been the first to discover that a c.o.o.n was indeed in the beech grove and he acted accordingly.

Old Joe rolled down the bank into the slough and started swimming. On such dismal occasions his mind was automatically made up, so that there was no need to linger and determine a proper course of action. He swam fast, but at the same time he exercised discretion. A terrified young c.o.o.n would have splashed and rippled the water, and thus marked his path of flight for any hound that was not blind. With everything except his eyes and the very tip of his nose submerged, Old Joe swam silently.

It had been a case of mutual recognition and Old Joe never deluded himself. With Duckfoot again on his trail, the only safe tree was his big sycamore. Emerging at the head of the slough, Old Joe ran up the trickle that fed it, scrambled down the far side of the upended rocks, raced through a swamp, and took the shortest possible route back to Willow Brook. He'd just reached and jumped into the brook when any lingering plans he might have had for foiling Duckfoot were put firmly behind him.

Back where the hunters were gathered, Glory and Queenie began to sing.

Though he'd never been run by Glory, Queenie was the slower and noisier half of a formidable team, and Thunder would be along presently. There was no time to waste. Swimming the pools and running the riffles, and knowing that neither these nor any other tactics would baffle Thunder and Duckfoot for very long, Old Joe sacrificed strategy for haste.

Panting like a winded dog, he sprang into the slough at the base of his sycamore, swam it, and climbed.

He tumbled into his den, sighed gratefully, and waited for whatever came next.

It was Duckfoot and Thunder. Running neck and neck, the inexperienced puppy and the tested veteran reached the sycamore at exactly the same second and wakened the night with their voices.

Old Joe stirred uneasily. Though this was not the first time he had been trailed to his magic sycamore, never before had he been so hotly pursued. He was on the point of leaving his den, climbing farther up the sycamore and escaping through his tunnel, but Old Joe restrained himself. He'd always been safe here and he was too smart to panic.

Besides, if the worst came to the worst, he could still use the tunnel.