Thunder and Duckfoot, blessed with voices that would have awakened Rip Van Winkle, were presently joined by Queenie and Glory. Old Joe scratched his left ear with his right hind paw, a sure sign of nervousness. On various occasions one hound had trailed him to the sycamore, a few times there'd been two, but never before had there been four hounds at the sycamore's base.

Again Old Joe was tempted to resort to his tunnel. Again he refrained and waited for the hunters.

Harky and Melinda came. Old Joe wriggled his black nose. Harky, usually the first to arrive at any tree when a c.o.o.n was up, he knew well. His acquaintance with Melinda was only casual. He heard the pair talking.

"When he wants to get out," Harky avowed seriously, "some say he climbs out on a limb and drops back into the slough. On t'other hand, some say he grows wings and takes off like a bird."

"How silly!" Melinda exclaimed.

"Yeah?" Harky asked truculently. "Watta you know about it?"

Melinda declared scornfully, "Enough not to believe such nonsense! He has a den somewhere in that sycamore and he's in it right now! The only reason n.o.body ever found it is because everyone's been too lazy to climb!"

"And how you gonna climb?" Harky demanded.

"Just cut one of these smaller trees, brace it against the crotch of the sycamore, and shinny up it," Melinda a.s.serted.

Harky said nothing because this purely revolutionary scheme left him speechless.

Old Joe's uneasiness mounted. Though he understood no part of the conversation, he had no doubt that a new force had invaded c.o.o.n hunts.

The men who'd always come to his magic sycamore had been happy just to get there, proud of hounds able to track Old Joe so far, and amenable to the idea that neither hounds nor humans could further cope with a c.o.o.n that was part witch.

Old Joe didn't know what she was, but Melinda was definitely not a man.

The rest of the hunters arrived, but before they could begin their ritual that had to do with the invincibility of Old Joe, Melinda threw her bombsh.e.l.l.

"I was telling Harold," she said brightly, "that Old Joe has a den somewhere in this big sycamore. Why don't we fell a smaller tree, brace it against the sycamore, and shinny up to find out?"

"By gum!" Mun said.

As soon as the three men recovered from this flagrant violation of everything right and proper, Old Joe heard the sound of an axe. A tree was toppled, trimmed, and leaned against the sycamore.

"Let me go up, Pa," Harky said.

Mun a.s.serted, "If anybody's goin' to have fust look at Old Joe's den, it'll be me."

Mun and Old Joe started to climb.

"Thar he scampers!" yelled Raw Stanfield.

Old Joe continued to scamper, paying no attention whatever to the fact that, while excitement reigned, Mun fell out of the sycamore. Old Joe climbed out on the limb and tumbled into his tunnel.

Duckfoot, who'd noted the obvious escape route but was just a split second too late, tumbled in behind him. Both the tunnel and Old Joe, however, were low-built. Duckfoot, considerably farther from the ground, had to crawl where Old Joe ran.

The big c.o.o.n ran out of the tunnel and into the swamp with a safe enough lead. But the next morning's sun was two hours high before he managed to shake Duckfoot from his trail.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IMPa.s.sE

Harky Mundee shoved his fork deeply into the hay. He twisted the tines to gather the biggest possible load; as long as a man had to pitch fool hay he might as well do so in as few forkfuls as possible and get the misery over with. Then he tumbled his load down the shute into the cow stable and leaned on his fork to indulge in some sadly-needed self-criticism.

Mun sat in the house with a broken leg and that was a bad thing, though on the whole it was easier to endure than Mun's ruptured temper.

However, Mun's temper was an abstract affair that might erupt at any moment, while a broken leg was distinctly concrete. Harky told himself that anything so indisputably tangible should never beset Mun.

Still, hadn't it been wrought by providence? If Mun had not tried to climb Old Joe's sycamore, he wouldn't have fallen. If he had not fallen, he wouldn't have a broken leg. He should not have such a thing, but he had it, and by all the rules of logic Harky should have achieved the ultimate ideal.

With his leg splinted and bound, Mun's current living s.p.a.ce was restricted to the chair upon which he sat all day long and the cot upon which he lay all night long. Harky had been prudent enough to remove from the sweep of his father's arms all sticks of fire wood, dishes, hatchets, knives, and anything else Mun might throw. Let Mun roar as he might (and did, whenever Harky was in the house), roaring broke no bones. For the first time since he could remember, Harky had no need to outwit his father in order to do as he pleased.

Of course there were some tasks one did not avoid. Livestock was incapable of caring for itself, and Harky was too close to the earth to let any living creature suffer for lack of attention. It was far better to butcher it, an idea Harky had played with, but no matter how long the winter might be, two people couldn't eat six cows, four pigs, and sixty-nine chickens. There'd always be the horses left anyway.

Grimacing as he did so, Harky pitched another forkful of hay down the chute. Livestock should really be taught to eat c.o.o.n meat so a man, with complete freedom of conscience, might spend all his time hunting c.o.o.ns.

Maybe, if cows ate something besides hay, they wouldn't be such fools.

Harky thought suddenly of the last time he'd attended Miss Cathby's school, and shuddered.

One of Miss Cathby's unswerving goals embraced a.s.sailing the minds of her students with literature other than that which their fathers might exchange behind the barn, and to that end there was a daily reading.

Most of it was not unendurable; all Harky had to do was think about c.o.o.ns and look as though he were paying attention. On this particular day, however, he had been unable to think about c.o.o.ns and was forced to listen while Miss Cathby read a poem all about new-mown hay on a bright June day.

Harky shuddered again and pitched furiously until he had all the cows could eat. He jammed his fork into the hay and scrambled down the ladder to the barn floor.

Formal education could mean the ruin of a man if he didn't watch out.

Miss Cathby had enthused about the poem and its author, but in the first place, hay was not harvested in June. It wasn't even ripe until July, and whoever wrote so touchingly of new-mown hay had never stood under a furnace-hot sun and pitched any.

Duckfoot, who had been waiting in the chaff on the barn floor, sidled up to Harky. Harky let his dangling hand caress the big dog's ears, and he tried to do some thinking about Duckfoot. But thoughts of hay just naturally started him to thinking about corn, and the Mundee corn was still in the field where it had been shocked.

Therein lay a major point of friction between Mun, who demanded that it be brought in, and Harky, who wouldn't bring it. He'd long had his own sensible ideas concerning the proper way to run a farm, and bringing in shocked corn did not come under the category of sense.

There were arguments pro and con, and pro was summed up by the fact that if it was not properly harvested, there'd be neither corn for winter feeding of pigs and chickens nor husks for bedding. This argument, Harky admitted, was not without a certain validity. But opposed to it was such an overwhelming weight of evidence that any value it might possess was puny indeed.

Though unattended corn could not suffer as neglected animals would, Harky would endure untold agony if he first had to haul it to the barn and then husk it. If pigs and chickens had nothing to eat they could always be eaten, thus solving the twin problems of caring for them and satisfying one's own appet.i.te. Corn in the shock lured c.o.o.ns, but not even Old Joe could break into a corn crib.

The corn would stay in the shock.

It was, or should have been, a cause for leaping in the air, clicking one's heels together, and whooping with joy. Unafflicted by any such desire, Harky stirred nervously and wondered at himself. There was no special age at which a man started slipping, and if he found no delight in ignoring tasks Mun ordered him to do, he was already far gone.

Suddenly it occurred to Harky that there had been no particular pleasure since that night, a week ago, when they had Old Joe up and Mun fell out of the sycamore. Harky hadn't even wanted to go c.o.o.n hunting, and then he knew.

Knowing, he trembled. c.o.o.n hunters of the Creeping Hills had flourished since the first hunter brought the first hound because they did things properly, and the proper doing was inseparably bound to a proper respect for the art they pursued. There just hadn't been any trouble.

Until the first time a girl horned in.