HARKY
At twenty minutes past five, just four hours before Old Joe startled theowl that watched him come out of his den, Harky Mundee peered furtivelyaround the rear of the cow he was milking to see if his father waswatching. He was. Harky sighed and went back to work.
Mun Mundee had firm opinions concerning the proper way to milk a cow ordo anything else, and when other arguments failed he enforced his ideaswith the flat of his hand. Harky sighed again. Old Brindle, far and awaythe orneriest of Mun's five cows and probably anyone else's, had teatsremarkably like the fingers of a buckskin glove that has been left outin the rain and then dried in the sun. Coaxing the last squirts of milkfrom her probably was not so hard as squeezing apple juice from a rock,but it certainly ran a close second.
Since there was no alternative, Harky beguiled the anything-but-fleetingmoments with the comforting reflection that winter, after all, was oneof his favorite seasons. It could not compare with autumn, when cornrustled crisply in the shock and dogs sniffed about for scent of thecoons that always raided shocked corn. Nor did it equal early spring,when trout streams were ice-free and the earth still too wet forplowing.
But it was far ahead of late spring and summer, with their endless farmtasks, each of which was worse than the other. Only by exercising thegreatest craft and diligence, and manfully preparing himself for thechastisement he was sure to get when he finally came home, could a mansneak away for a bit of fishing or swimming.
Harky bent his head toward Old Brindle's flank but his thoughts whiskedhim out of the stable into the hills.
Shotgun in hand, he'd spent a fair portion of yesterday tracking abobcat on the snow. It was a proved fact that a man on foot cannot catchup with a bobcat that is also on foot. But it was not to be denied thatall bobcats have a touch of moon madness. They knew when they were beingtracked, but they also knew when the tracker ceased following, and thatkindled a fire in their heads.
As long as they were tracked they were comfortable in the knowledge thatthey had only to keep running. When the tracker stopped, it threw thebobcat's whole plan out of gear. They imagined all sorts of ambushes,and cunning traps, and finally they worked themselves into such a frenzythat they just had to come back along their own tracks and find out whatwas happening. It followed that the hunter had nothing to do except rilethe bobcat into a lather and then sit down and wait.
Harky had waited. But he must have done something wrong, or perhaps thebobcat he followed had not been sufficiently moonstruck. Though it hadcome back, it had not been so anxious to find Harky that it forgoteverything else. Harky had glimpsed it across a gully, two hundredyards away and hopelessly beyond shotgun range. If only he had a rifle--
He hadn't any, and the last time he'd sneaked Mun's out his father hadcaught him coming back with it. The hiding that followed--Mun used ahickory gad instead of the flat of his hand--was something a manwouldn't forget if he lived to be older than the rocks on Dewberry Knob.Harky lost himself in a beautiful dream.
Walking along Willow Brook, he accidentally kicked and overturned arock. Beneath it, shiny-bright as they had been the day the forgottenbandit buried them, was a whole sack full of gold pieces. At once Harkyhurried into town and bought a rifle, not an old 38-55 like his father'sbut a sleek new bolt action with fancy carving on breech and forearm.When he brought it home, Mun asked, rather timidly, if he might use it.No, Pa, Harky heard himself saying. It's not that I care to slight youbut this rifle is for a hunter like me.
The shining dream was shattered by Mun's, "You done, Harky?"
Harky looked hastily up to see his father beside him. "Yes, Pa," hesaid.
"Lemme see."
Mun sat down beside Old Brindle and Harky sighed with relief. When MunMundee could not get the last squirt from a cow, it followed that thecow was indeed stripped. But Mun, conditioned by experience, nevercompletely approved of anything Harky did.
"We'll close up for the night," he said.
Harky scooted out of the barn ahead of his father and gulped lungfuls ofthe softening wind. It seemed that a man could never get enough of thatkind of air. Mun closed and latched the barn door and Harky turned tohim.
"It's a thaw wind!" he said rapturously.
"Yep."
"Not the big thaw, though."
"Nope."
"Do you reckon," Harky asked, "it will fetch the coons out?"
Mun deliberated. A subject as serious as coons called for deliberation.
"I don't rightly know," he said finally. "I figger some will go on theprowl an' some won't."
It was, Harky decided, a not unreasonable answer even though it lackedthe elements of true drama. Harky gulped another lungful of air andalmost, but not quite, loosed the reins of his own imagination. Evenseasoned hunters did not argue coon lore with Mun Mundee, but on anevening such as this it was impossible to think in prosaic terms.
They lingered near the barn and faced into the wind. Presently Harkystood there in body only. His spirit took him to Heaven.
Heaven, as translated at the moment, was the summit of a mountain tentimes as high as Dewberry Knob. From his lofty eminence, Harky looked ata great forest that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Each treewas hollow and each hollow contained a coon. As though every coon hadreceived the same signal at the same time, all came out. There were morecoons than a man could hunt if he hunted every night for the nextthousand years.
At exactly the right moment, this entrancing scene became perfection.Deep in the great forest, Precious Sue lifted her voice to announce thatshe had a coon up.
Harky made his way among the great trees toward the sound. He foundPrecious Sue doing her best to climb a sycamore so massive that ten men,holding each others' hands, could not come even close to encircling thetrunk. When Harky shined his light into the tree he saw, not just acoon, but the king of coons. Sitting on a branch, staring down with eyesbig as a locomotive's headlight, was Old Joe himself.
The fancy faded, but Harky was left with no sense of frustration becausefact replaced it. Somewhere out in the Creeping Hills--the aura thatsurrounded him considerably enhanced by the fact that no human beingknew exactly where--Old Joe really was sleeping the winter away. Supposethat he really came prowling tonight? Suppose Precious Sue really didrun him up that big sycamore in the wood lot? Suppose Harky really--?Harky could no longer be silent.
"Pa," he asked, "how long has Old Joe been prowling these hills?"
A man who would speak of coons must think before he spoke. For a fullninety seconds Mun did not answer. Then he said seriously:
"A right smart time, Harky. There's them'll tell you that even if a coondon't get trapped, or shot, or dog kil't, or die no death 'fore histime, he'll live only about ten years anyhow. I reckon that may be so ifyou mean just _ordinary_ coons. Old Joe, he ain't no ordinary coon. Mygrandpa hunted him, an' my pa, an' me, an' you've hunted him. Old Joe,he's jest about as much of a fixture in these hills as us Mundees."
Harky pondered this information. When he went to school down at theCrossroads, which he did whenever he couldn't get out of it, he hadacquired some education. But he had also acquired some disturbinginformation. Miss Cathby, who taught all eight grades, was a veryearnest soul dedicated to the proposition that the children in her caremust not grow up to wallow in the same morass of mingled ignorance andsuperstition that surrounded their fathers and mothers.
Miss Cathby had pointed out, and produced scientific statistics toprove, that the moon was nothing more than a satellite of the earth. Assuch, its influence over earth dwellers was strictly limited. The moonwas responsible for tides and other things about which Miss Cathby hadbeen very vague because she didn't know. But she did know that the mooncould not affect birth, death, or destiny.
Old Joe had been the subject of another of Miss Cathby's lectures. Hewas just a big coon, she said, though she mispronounced it "raccoon." Itwas absurd even to think that he had been living in the Creeping Hillsforever. Old Joe's predecessor had also been just a big racco
on. SinceOld Joe was mortal, and like all mortals must eventually pass to hiseverlasting reward, his successor would be in all probability the nextbiggest raccoon.
Harky conceded that she had something to offer. But it also seemed thatMun had much on his side, and on the whole, Mun's conception of the realand earnest life was far more interesting than Miss Cathby's. She gother information from books that were all right but sort of small. Muntook his lore from the limitless woods.
"How long have us Mundees been here?" Harky asked.
"My grandpa, your great-grandpa, settled this very farm fifty-one yearspast come April nineteen," Mun said proudly.
"Where did he come from?"
"He never did say," Mun admitted.
"Didn't nobody ask?"
"'Twas thought best not to ask," Mun said. "Blast it, Harky! What'schewin' on you? Ain't it enough to know where your grandpa come from?"
"Why--why yes."
Confused for the moment, Harky went back to fundamentals. Hisgreat-grandfather had settled the Mundee farm fifty-one years ago. Hewas thirteen. Thirteen from fifty-one left thirty-eight years thatMundees had lived on the farm before Harky was even born.
Confusion gave way to mingled awe and pride. Old Joe was not the onlytradition in the Creeping Hills. The Mundees were fully as famous andhad as much right to call themselves old-timers. For that matter, so didPrecious Sue. The last of a line of hounds brought to the Creeping Hillsby Mun's grandfather, her breed was doomed unless Mun found a suitablemate for her. But better to let the breed die than to offer Precious Suean unworthy mate.
Mun said, "Reckon we'd best get in."
"Yes, Pa."
Side by side they started down the soggy path toward the house. PreciousSue left her bed on the porch and came to meet them.
She was medium-sized, and her dark undercoat was dappled with bluishspots, or ticks. Shredded ears bore mute testimony to her many battleswith coons. Though she ate prodigious meals, every slatted rib showed,her paunch was lean, and knobby hip bones thrust over her back.Outwardly, Precious Sue resembled nothing so much as an emaciatedalligator.
For all the coon hunters of the Creeping Hills cared she could have_been_ an alligator, as long as she continued to perform with suchconsummate artistry on a coon's track. Though a casual observer mighthave deduced that Precious Sue had trouble just holding herself up, shehad once disappeared for forty-eight hours. Mun finally found her underthe same tree, and holding the same coon, that she must have run up twohours after starting. She was one of the very few hounds that had everforced Old Joe to seek a refuge in his magic sycamore, and no houndcould do more.
Unfortunately, she lived under a curse. The only pup of what should havebeen an abundant litter, a bad enough thing if considered by itself,Precious Sue had been born on a wild night at the wrong time of themoon. Therefore, she had a streak of wildness that must assert itselfwhenever the moon was dark. If she were run at such times, she mustsurely meet disaster. But as Precious Sue met and fell in beside them,Harky thought only of his dream.
"Do you think Old Joe will prowl tonight?" he asked his father.
"What you drivin' at, Harky?"
"I was thinking Old Joe might prowl, and come here, and Sue will run himup that sycamore in the woodlot, and--"
"Harky!" Mun thundered. "Heed what you say!"
"Huh?" Harky asked bewilderedly.
Mun shook a puzzled head. "I can't figger you, Harky. I can't figger youa'tall. This is the dark of the moon!"
"I forgot," Harky said humbly.
"I reckon you ain't allus at fault for what runs on in that head ofyours."
"Hadn't you ought to tie her up?" Harky questioned.
"Sue can't abide ties and no coon'll come here tonight," Mun saiddecisively. "Least of all, Old Joe."
"But if he does--" Harky began.
"Harky!" Mun thundered. "He won't!"
"Yes, Pa."
Long after he was supposedly in bed, Harky stood before his open windowlistening to the song of the south wind. Sometimes he couldn't evenfigure himself.
There'd been last fall, when they jumped the big buck out of Garson'sslashing. Mun and Mellie Garson had taken its trail, but Harky had afeeling about that buck. He'd felt that it would head for therhododendron thicket on Hoot Owl Ridge, and that in getting there itwould pass Split Rock. Harky went to sit on Split Rock. Not twentyminutes later, the buck passed beside him. It was an easy shot.
Old Joe would not come tonight because Mun said he wouldn't. But Harkywas unable to rid himself of a feeling that he would, and he was uneasywhen he finally went to bed.
He slept soundly, but Harky had never been able to figure his sleepeither. Often he awakened with a feeling that something was due tohappen, and it always did. When the wild geese flew north or south, or athunder storm was due to break, Harky knew before he heard anything.This night he sat up in bed with a feeling that he would hear somethingvery soon.
He heard it, the muffled squawk of a hen. On a backwoods farm, at night,a squawking hen means just one thing. Harky jumped out of bed and paddedto the door of his father's bedroom.
"Pa."
"What ya want?"
"I heard a hen squawk."
"Be right with ya."
Harky was dressed and ready, with his shotgun in his hands, when Muncame into the kitchen. Mun lighted a lantern, took his own shotgun fromits rack, and led the way to the chicken house. He knelt beside thelittle door by which the chickens left and entered and his muffled wordripped the air.
"Look!"
Harky looked. Seeming to begin and end at the little door, the biggestcoon tracks in the world were plain in the soft snow. Ten thousandbutterflies churned in his stomach. It was almost as though the wholething were his fault.
He said, "Old Joe."
Mun glanced queerly at his son, but he made no reply as he held hislantern so it lighted the tracks. Harky trotted behind his father andnoted with miserable eyes where Sue's tracks joined Old Joe's. They cameto the flood surging over Willow Brook, and just at the edge a wholesection of ice had already caved in.
Both sets of tracks ended there.
The Duck-footed Hound Page 2
