Mun scoffed at such notions. He pointed out that Duckfoot was still a puppy who, as far as anyone knew, had never been on a c.o.o.n's trail. So what could he know about running c.o.o.ns, especially Old Joe? Harky was indulging in another pipe dream even to think that a puppy, any puppy, would tree a c.o.o.n and stay at the tree for a week. Precious Sue herself wouldn't have stayed that long.

Harky knew only that Duckfoot was lean as a blackberry cane when he finally came home and that he kept looking off into the forest. If he hadn't treed a c.o.o.n, he certainly acted as though he had.

In sudden panic Harky realized that he had a scant four minutes left. He began to run, and he burst into Miss Cathby's school just as the last bell was tolling laggards to their desks.

The school was a one-room affair flanked by a woodshed half as big as the school proper. Inside were the regulation potbellied stove, six rows of five desks each, a desk for Miss Cathby, and a plain wooden bench upon which the various cla.s.ses seated themselves when called to recite.

Behind Miss Cathby's desk was the blackboard. If it was not the ultimate in educational facilities, it was a vast improvement over the no school at all that had been at the Crossroads until three years ago.

When Harky ran in, his fellow pupils were seated.

The first grade, consisting of the younger daughters of Mellie Garson and Raw Stanfield, and the youngest sons of b.u.t.t Johnson and Mule Domster, was the largest. Thereafter the grades decreased numerically but with an increasing feminine contingent. Boys old enough to help out at home could hardly be expected to waste time in school. Melinda and Mary Garson were the fifth grade, Harky the sixth, and Mildred and Minnie Garson the seventh and eighth.

Miss Cathby smiled pleasantly when Harky came in.

"Good morning, Harold," she greeted.

"Good morning, ma'am," Harky mumbled.

"Is your father's harvest in, Harold?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Harky, who knew his name was Harold but wished Miss Cathby didn't know, squirmed and longed to drop through the floor. With the only other male who even approached his age being Mule Domster's ten-year-old son, he was indeed surrounded.

Miss Cathby, who knew several things not written in textbooks, understood and let him alone. Harky fixed his eyes on the back of twelve-year-old Melinda Garson's slender neck. He calculated the exact spot where a spitball would have the ultimate effect, then decided that it wasn't worth his while to throw one.

The first grade was called for recitation. Solacing himself with the thought that Mun's enthusiasm for booklore seldom endured more than three weeks, Harky escaped in a dream. He had his shotgun, Duckfoot was hot on a c.o.o.n's trail, and presently they heard his tree bark. Mun and Harky made their way to the tree.

"Harky," said Mun, "git your light beam on that c.o.o.n."

Harky made ready to shine the treed c.o.o.n. The words were repeated and he came rudely awake to discover that Miss Cathby was speaking.

"Harold," she said, "are you dreaming so soon?"

"Yes, ma'am," Harky said meekly.

"Well come down here. The sixth grade is called to recite."

Harky rose and shuffled unhappily to the recitation bench. He slumped down, head bent, shoulders hunched, fists in pockets. Never again, he thought, would he have any part in caging a c.o.o.n. Not even to train Duckfoot. He knew now what cages are like.

"Have you been keeping up with your studies?" Miss Cathby asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Harky.

"Which books have you been using?" queried Miss Cathby.

"Same ones I used last year," Harky mumbled.

Miss Cathby frowned prettily. Harky's last year's books were for the fifth grade; Harky had started in the fourth solely because he'd been too old to begin in the first. Miss Cathby's frown deepened.

She knew that, with the best of luck, Harky would be under her influence for a maximum four weeks. But Miss Cathby's fragile body harbored a will of granite. If she combined guile with persistence, four weeks were enough to turn this youngster from the heathenish ways of his ancestors and show him at least a glimmer of the one true light.

"Very well," she said pleasantly. "We'll review your last year's arithmetic. If a farmer harvests thirty tons of hay, sells two thirds and feeds the remainder, how much will he feed?"

Harky shuffled nervous feet and stared past her at the blackboard. "I never could figger that one, Miss Cathby."

Miss Cathby said, "It isn't difficult."

"Parts ain't," Harky admitted. "But parts are. He'll sell twenty tons, always reckoning he can find somebody to buy. The rest just shrivels me up."

Miss Cathby sighed. As soon as she proved to her own satisfaction that these backwoods boys were not morons, they proved her wrong. Anyone able correctly to deduce two thirds of thirty should be able to subtract twenty from thirty. A firm adherent of the idea that sugar entices flies where vinegar will not, Miss Cathby applied the sugar.

"Come, Harold," she coaxed. "If you have thirty potatoes and give twenty away, how many will you have left?"

"Ten," Harky said promptly. "But we was talking about tons of hay, not potatoes, and that ain't what crosses me up."

"What is it that you do not understand?" Miss Cathby pursued.

"What kind of critter a remainder is and how much hay does it eat?"

The fifth, seventh, and eighth grades, as represented by the sisters Garson, filled the room with giggles. Miss Cathby rapped for order and evolved a cunning plan to win Harky's interest and favor by discussing something he did know.

"Do you have a good racc.o.o.n hound for the coming season, Harold?"

Miss Cathby composed herself to listen while Harky launched an enthusiastic, and minutely detailed, description of the misadventures of Precious Sue and the wiles of Old Joe. He needed eighteen minutes to reach the thrilling climax, the discovery of Duckfoot and,

"His Pa's a duck," he said seriously.

"A duck!" Miss Cathby gasped.

"Not just a barnyard duck and not just a wild duck," Harky explained patiently. "It was some big old duck, maybe older'n Old Joe himself, that's been setting back in the woods just hoping Sue would come along."

Miss Cathby's eyes glowed with a true crusader's zeal. In all the time Harky had spent in school and all the time he would spend there, she could not hope to impart more than the rudiments of an education. But here was a heaven-sent opportunity to strike at the very roots of the ignorance and superst.i.tion that barred his march toward a more enlightened life. Miss Cathby saw past the boy to the father who would be. Strike Harky's chains and he would voluntarily free his children.

"That's impossible, Harold," she began.

Warming to her subject, she sketched the Garden of Eden, traced the history of mankind, disposed of witches and witch hunters in a few hundred well-chosen words, explained the laws of genetics, and finished with conclusive proof that a c.o.o.n hound cannot mate with a duck.

Harky listened, not without interest. When it came to telling stories, he conceded, Miss Cathby was even better than Mun and almost as good as Mellie Garson. Nor was she shooting wholly in the dark; Harky himself did not believe that Duckfoot had been sired by a duck. But there was something wanting.

For a moment he could not define the lack. Then, happily, he thought of another of Pine Heglin's ideas. If apples were stored so they could not roll, Pine decided, there would be fewer bruised apples. Forthwith he constructed some latticeworks of willow withes, arranged them as shelves, and stored his apples on them. But Pine had forgotten that some apples are big and some small. The small ones fell through the lattices and the big ones became jammed in them. All were bruised, and rotted quickly, with the result that Pine had no apples at all.

Miss Cathby's lecture was like that, Harky decided. She would find an exact niche for Old Joe, Duckfoot, Mun, everything in the world, and she'd never stop to think that few things really belonged in exact niches. Her ideas just didn't have room to grow in. Mun's did.

"Can you prove to me, Harold, that there is any such creature as this witch duck?" Miss Cathby finished.

"No ma'am," said Harky, and he forebore to mention that neither could she prove there wasn't.