"Why--What do ya mean, Pa?"

"You know blasted well what I mean," Mun growled. "You didn't do but half the first row."

"Oh," Harky might have been a patient teacher instructing a backward pupil. He gestured toward tall trees that, in a couple of hours, would keep the sun from the far half of the corn patch. "The sun, Pa. It's high and warm now, but it'll be high and hot time I get this first half done. Then I can work in shade."

Mun scowled, suspecting a trick and reasonably sure there was one, but unable to fly in the face of such clear-cut logic. If he thought of it, he conceded, he'd plan to hoe the corn that way himself. As he turned on his heel and started walking away, he flung another warning over his shoulder.

"I hope ya don't aim to scoot off an' go fishin'."

"Oh no, Pa!"

Suddenly, because he'd have to hoe only half the corn patch, Harky's burdens became half as heavy. It had worked, as he'd hoped it would, and the most tangled knot in his path was now smooth string. Of course he was not yet clear. But even Mun could not watch him constantly, and once he was near enough the woods to duck into them, Harky would be satisfied with a ninety-second start.

Two hours later, having hoed his way to the edge of the woods, Harky dropped his hoe and started running.

When Mun Mundee would shortly be on one's trail one must ignore nothing, and all this had been planned, too. Harky took the nearest route to Willow Brook.

So far so good, but strictly amateur stuff. Mun, who'd need no blueprint to tell him where Harky had gone, would also take the shortest path to Willow Brook. Harky put his master strategy into effect.

Coming to a patch of mud on the downstream side of a drying slough, Harky ran straight across it the while he headed upstream. He emerged on a patch of new gra.s.s that held no tracks, leaped sideways to a boulder, and hop-skipped across Willow Brook on exposed boulders. Reaching the far side, he ran far enough into the forest to be hidden by foliage and headed downstream.

With the comfortable feeling of achievement that always attends a job well done, Harky slowed to a walk. Mun, hot in pursuit and even more hot in the head, would see the tracks leading upstream. Thereafter, for at least a reasonable time, he would stop to think of nothing else. By the time he did, and searched all the upstream hiding places, Harky would be a couple of miles down. He knew of several pools that had their full quota of fish, and that were so situated that a man could lie behind willows, fish, and see a full quarter of a mile upstream the while he remained unseen.

His heart light and his soul at peace, Harky almost started to whistle.

He thought better of it.

Mun Mundee never had mastered the printed word. But his eyes were geared to tracks and his ears to the faintest noises. If Harky whistled, he might find his fishing suddenly and rudely interrupted. The softest-footed bobcat had nothing on Mun when it came to silent stalks.

More than once, when Harky thought his father was fuming at home, Mun had risen up beside him and applied the flat of his hand where it did the most good.

Harky contented himself with dancing along, and he never thought of the reckoning that must be when he returned home tonight, because in the first place tonight was a long ways off. In the second, there were always reckonings of one sort or another. A man just had to take care he got his reckoning's worth.

Harky halted and stood motionless as any boulder on Dewberry k.n.o.b. A doe with twin fawns, and none of the three even suspecting that they were being watched, moved delicately ahead of him. Harky frowned.

It was a mighty puzzling thing about deer, and indeed, about all wild creatures. Except for very young poultry, a man could tell at a glance whether most farm animals were boys or girls, and that was that. He could never be sure about wild ones, largely because he could never come near enough, and there might be something in Mellie Garson's theory that the young of all wild creatures were alike, a sort of neuter gender, until they were six months old. Then they talked it over among themselves and decided which were to be males and which females. Thus they always struck a proper balance.

It was a sensible system if Mellie were correct, though Harky was by no means sure that he was. Neither could he be certain Mellie was wrong, and as the doe and her babies moved out of sight, Harky wondered what s.e.x the two fawns would choose for themselves when they were old enough to decide. Two does maybe, or perhaps two bucks, though it would be better if one were a doe and the other a buck. Both were needed, and the Creeping Hills without deer would be nearly as barren as they would without c.o.o.ns.

When the doe and her babies were far enough away so that there was no chance of frightening them--a man never would get in rifleshot of a buck if he scared it while it was still a fawn--Harky went on down the creek.

He stopped to watch a redheaded woodp.e.c.k.e.r rattling against a dead pine stub. He frowned. The next job Mun had slated for him was putting new shingles on the chicken house, and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r's rattling was painfully similar to a pounding hammer moving at about the same speed that Mun would expect Harky to maintain.

Obviously finding something it did not like, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r stopped rattling, voiced a strident cry, and flew away. It was a bad omen, and Harky's frown deepened. He'd seen himself in the woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Just as the bird had come to grief, so Harky was sure to meet misfortune if he tried shingling the chicken house.

He'd have to think his way out of that ch.o.r.e, too. But the shingling was still far in the future, and the only future worth considering was embodied in what happened between now and sundown. Troubles could be met when they occurred.

When Harky was opposite the pool where Precious Sue had jumped the almost black c.o.o.n, he turned at right angles. It was scarcely discreet to go all the way and show one's self at the edge of Willow Brook, for though Mun should have been lured upstream, he might have changed his mind and come down.

As soon as he could see the pool through the willows that bordered it, Harky turned and sighted on the white birch in which Sue had finally treed the c.o.o.n.

He was about to start toward it but remained rooted. Suddenly he heard Precious Sue growl. Not daring to believe, but unwilling to doubt his own ears, Harky turned back to the pool.

He peered through the willows and saw the pup.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

DUCKFOOT

By some mischance, one of the willows bordering the pool grew at a freakish angle. A two-pound sucker, probably c.o.o.n-mauled or osprey-dropped somewhere upstream, had washed down and anch.o.r.ed beneath the misshapen tree. Its white belly was startlingly plain in the clear water.

When Harky came on the scene, the pup was trying to get that sucker.

Harky almost called, certain that he had finally found Precious Sue.

Then he knew his error. The pup was marked exactly like Sue, and at first glance it seemed exactly the size of Sue. But though it was big for its age, and was further magnified by the water in which it swam, undoubtedly it was a puppy.

Since wild horses couldn't have torn him away, Harky stayed where he was and watched.

The pup couldn't possibly have scented the fish, for the water would kill scent. Therefore he must have seen it and known what he was looking at. Now, despite a certain awkwardness that was to be expected in a pup, he seemed as comfortably at home in the water as Old Joe was in Mun Mundee's chicken house.

He made a little circle, head c.o.c.ked to one side so that he might peer downward as he swam. For a moment he held still, paws moving just enough to keep him from drifting in the gentle current. Then he dived.

Smooth as a fishing loon, the pup went down headfirst and straight to his objective. Reaching the anch.o.r.ed sucker, he swiped at it with a front paw. The sucker did not move. The pup, who did not seem to know that he was where no dog should be and trying what no dog should try, made another attempt. Failing a second time, he tried a third.

Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, Harky voiced the astonishment that he had not dared express while the pup was in hearing:

"Jinglin' all peelhaul! Sue's pup for sure!"

There couldn't be the slightest doubt. A hound pup was one thing. A hound pup that looked exactly like Sue, down to the last blue tick, might leave room for argument. But there was no disputing the lineage of a hound pup that even growled exactly like Sue. Harky had heard her do it a hundred times, always when she was frustrated by something or other.

Once more his feeling had served him well. Sue had not drowned in Willow Brook that black night when she was so hot on Old Joe's trail. However, neither had she followed him across. As close as she'd been, she'd have treed him sure. Even though Old Joe would have taken care to climb a tree with one or more escape routes, Sue would have barked as soon as she got him up. Harky and Mun, who'd lingered near the broken ice for the better part of an hour, would have heard her bark.

Something had happened, and though Harky did not know what it was, he suspected that the broken ice provided the proper clue. If it had broken under Sue, and evidently it had, perhaps she'd been hurt. Somehow or other she'd made it across Willow Brook and the breakup had kept her there. Trapped, unable to come home, she'd gone wandering in search of a mate. She'd found one.

Which one? A hound obviously, and a big one, but Harky knew every hound this side of Willow Brook, and neither the blood nor the characteristics of any were evident in the pup. It must have been a c.o.o.n hound, for none except c.o.o.n hounds had reason to work in the water, and the pup combined Sue's aquatic skill with some other hound's genius. A hound that could not only dive, but apparently was capable of remaining submerged for as long as it chose, was a marvel fully as astounding as the two-headed calf that had been born to Mellie Garson's mule-footed cow.

It was what one might expect from a mule-footed cow, Mun opined, and anyway the calf lived only a few hours. The pup was not only alive, but Harky himself was watching it. This day, he told himself, would long be remembered in the annals of the Creeping Hills.

The pup, finally needing air, glided up through the water as gracefully as a trout rising to a fly. Not knowing whether he'd spook, Harky held very still. But he could not control his imagination, and, after the pup dived, what held him down? Fish were able to do as they pleased because, as everyone knew, they gulped water to make themselves heavy when they wanted to go down and spit it out to eject ballast when they wanted to come up. Loons, grebes, and some species of ducks had mastered the same trick. But the only animals that knew it, probably because they spent so much time in the water that they could see for themselves what the fish did, were beavers and muskrats.

Harky had a sudden feeling. Far and away the greatest c.o.o.n hound ever to run the Creeping Hills, Precious Sue would never run again. If she were alive, she'd be with the pup. But Harky's new feeling had to do with the thought that the pup was destined to become even greater than his mother.

The pup growled once more. Harky rubbed his eyes, certain that he was hearing Sue. He looked away and back again before he convinced himself that he was watching the pup.

Swimming so smoothly that there was scarcely a ripple in his wake, the pup made another circle. Harky's heart pumped furiously as he realized what was happening.