THE DUCK-FOOTED HOUND

By Jim Kjelgaard

ILLUSTRATED BY MARC SIMONT

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY New York

Copyright © 1960 by Eddy Kjelgaard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form, except by a reviewer,
without the permission of the publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America
by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton, New York

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 60-9160

First Printing

Old Joe was the biggest, fightingest, craftiest coon in the Creeping Hills. No one had ever been able to catch him; not even Precious Sue, a bluetick hound peerless in tracking down coons.

But Harky felt that this autumn the hunting would be different. Old Joe was in for trouble. Precious Sue had a pup who looked like a natural-born coon hunter. With his web-footed paws he was as skillful in the water as any coon. And on land, Duckfoot had a nose that beat every other hound hollow.

Harky had a few troubles of his own. First there was school. Miss Cathby was nice, but she was a teacher. She called Old Joe a raccoon. And she said he could not live forever because he was mortal.

Then there were girls. More specifically, there was Melinda—the bossiest, uppitiest young lady for miles around. And she wanted to hunt.

Jim Kjelgaard's story of people and hounds captures all the glory and excitement of coon hunting on a crisp autumn night. Marc Simont has illustrated the story with wit and brilliance.

CONTENTS

THE DUCK-FOOTED HOUND

OLD JOE

At twenty minutes past nine on a Friday night, just after the dark of moon, an owl in the topmost branches of the huge hollow sycamore saw Old Joe come out of his den.

The ancient sycamore's trunk, rooted in gravel beside a brooding slough filled with treacherous sand bars, was five feet in diameter at the base. With only a slight taper, it rose for twenty-five feet to the first crotch. Peering down through leafless twigs and branches, the owl saw the entrance to Old Joe's den as a gaping dark hole squarely in the center of the crotch.

The owl was not aware of the precise second when the hole became filled. It was an unnerving thing, for the owl had long ago learned that it is the part of wisdom to know what comes and to recognize it when it appears, and because he was startled he fluttered his wings.

He recovered almost instantly, but remained tense and alert. A noted raider himself, the owl was the rankest of amateurs compared with the old boar coon whose masked face filled the den's entrance and whose black nose quivered as it tested the night scents.

Old Joe, the biggest, craftiest, fightingest coon in the Creeping Hills, had slept in the hollow sycamore since the frigid blasts of mid-December had draped the hills with snow and locked the ponds and creeks in ice. But it was as impossible for him to remain asleep during this January thaw as it was for the sycamore not to stir its roots and make ready to feed new sap to its budding leaves.

He came all the way out and sat in the crotch. A little more than thirty-six inches long from the end of his tapering nose to the tip of his ringed tail, he stood thirteen inches high at the shoulder and weighed a pound for every inch of length. His fur, shading from light gray to deep black, was lustrous and silky.

The owl saw beneath these external appearances and knew Old Joe for what he was: part burglar, part devil, and part imp.

The owl flew away. He knew his superior when he met him.

Old Joe, who'd seen the owl in the upper branches before that night-faring pirate knew he was coming out, did not even bother to glance up. Owls, the terror of small birds and beasts, merited only contempt from one who'd been born with a knowledge of the pirate's craft and had refined that knowledge to an art. Old Joe would happily rob the owl's nest and eat his mate's eggs when and if he could find them, and if he had nothing more important to do. This night there was much of importance that cried for his attention.

Like all raiders with enemies that plot their downfall, he'd attended to his first duty before he ever showed himself. With only his nose protruding from the den, he'd read the stories the wind carried and found nothing he must hide from, or match wits with, in any part of it. The wind had intensified his excitement and increased the urge that had awakened him and sent him forth.

Last night the wind had purred out of the north, bringing intense cold that made trees crack like cannon shots, but tonight the wind was directly out of the south. The snow blanket sagged, and damp little rivulets, from melting snow that had gathered on the upper branches, crept down the sycamore's trunk. Winter was not broken. But it was breaking, and there would never be a better reason for waking up and faring forth.

Old Joe attended to his second duty. While winter had its way in the Creeping Hills, he had slept snug and warm in the hollow trunk of the old sycamore. His fur was more disheveled than any proper coon should ever permit, and meticulous as any cat, Old Joe set to grooming himself.

The sycamore was anything but a casually chosen den. The men who lived in the Creeping Hills, small farmers for the most part, did so because they preferred the backwoods to anywhere else. For recreation they turned to hunting, and Old Joe had run ahead of too many coon hounds not to understand the whys and wherefores of such.

With a hound on his trail, any coon that did not know exactly what he was doing would shortly end up as a pelt tacked to the side of a barn and roast coon in the oven. Hounds could not climb trees, but the hunters who accompanied the hounds carried lights, guns, and axes. A coon that sought safety in a tree that had no hollow would be "shined" and either shot out or shaken out to be finished by the hounds. Most trees that were hollow were not proof against axes.

The sycamore was perfect. The slough at the bottom, with its shifting sand bars, could be navigated in perfect safety by anything that knew what it was doing. Old Joe did. Most hounds did not. Many that recklessly flung themselves into the slough, when they were hot on Old Joe's trail, had come within a breath of entering that Heaven which awaits all good coon hounds.

Even if a hound made its way to the base of the sycamore, and some had, Old Joe was still safe. Hunters who would enthusiastically fell smaller trees recoiled before this giant. The most skilled axeman would need hours to chop it down. Climbing the massive trunk, unless one were equipped with climbing tools, was impossible.

If anyone tried to climb or chop, and so far no one had, Old Joe had an escape. The west fork above the crotch probed another thirty feet into the air before its branches became too small to support a heavy coon. One solid limb leaned over a high and rocky ledge in which was the entrance to an underground tunnel. This tunnel had two exits, one leading to a tangled mass of brush and the other to a swamp. Old Joe could, as he had proved many times, drop directly from the overhanging limb into the tunnel's entrance.

So far, though most coon hunters of the Creeping Hills knew that Old Joe sometimes climbed the sycamore when he was hard-pressed, none even suspected that he stayed there. From ground level the trunk did not look hollow, and since no one had ever seen fit to climb the tree, none had ever seen the den entrance in the crotch. It was commonly supposed that once Old Joe was in the sycamore he climbed out on one of the branches overhanging the slough and dropped in.

Not all coon hunters believed that. Mellie Garson and a few others whose hounds had been good enough to trail Old Joe to the sycamore swore that once he reached the topmost branches the old coon simply sprouted wings and flew away.

The last hair finally, and perfectly, in place, Old Joe came out of the tree. This he accomplished by utilizing a natural stairway that benign providence seemed to have provided just for him.

Long ago, a bolt of lightning had split the sycamore from crotch to ground level. Over the years, save for a seam where the spreading bark had finally met, the tree had healed itself. The seam was no wider or deeper than the thickness of a man's thumb, but it was enough for Old Joe.

Bracing one handlike forepaw against the side, and bringing the other up behind it, he sought and found a grip with his rear paws and descended head first. His grip was sure, but he hadn't the slightest fear of falling anyway. Often he had fallen or jumped from greater heights, onto hard ground, without the least injury to himself.

He descended safely, as he had known he would, and when he was near the ground he halted and extended a front paw to touch the thawing snow. Old Joe chittered his pleasure.

Nature, in designing him, seemed to have started with a small bear in mind. Then she decided to incorporate portions of the beaver and otter, and at the last minute included certain characteristics of the monkey plus a few whims of her own. With a bear's rear paws and a monkey's hands, Old Joe was at home in the trees. But he found his life in the water and took a fair portion of his living from it. He had had his last swim in Willow Brook the night before it froze, and that was too long to go without a bath.

Old Joe buried both front paws in the soggy snow, then let go with his rear ones and rolled over and over. He rose with dripping fur and racing blood, not even feeling the cold.

The proper course now would be to smooth his fur by rubbing his whole body against the trunk of the nearest tree, but he was too wise to return to the sycamore. Old Joe had long since learned that he left telltale hairs wherever he rubbed, and coon hairs on a tree are an open book to even a semi-skilled woodsman. Old Joe made a belly dive into a puddle of slush, exulting in the spray that scattered.

He knew also that he was leaving tracks, but he did not care. He had no intention of returning to the sycamore tonight and perhaps not for many nights, and coon tracks meant only that a coon had passed this way. Besides, tracks would disappear when the snow melted. Hair clinging to the sycamore's bark would not.

Old Joe went happily on.

Though he had eaten nothing in almost seven weeks, he was not especially hungry, and hunger alone never would have driven him from the den tree. There was something else: an irresistible urge that he could not have denied if he would. Old Joe was on the most important and compelling of all missions, a mission that had begun when time began and would endure until time ended. On this warm night, he must go out simply because he could not stay.

With little side excursions here and there, but always heading directly into the wind, he traveled almost due south. When a bristled dog fox barred his path, Old Joe did not swerve at all. The fox bared its fangs, snapped its jaws, and at the last second, yielded the right of way.

The Creeping Hills were Joe's beat and would remain his beat. He would go where he pleased, for he feared no other wild creature. Even his distant cousins, the black bears that shared the Creeping Hills with him, had never succeeded in keeping Old Joe from where he wished to venture. The bears were bigger and stronger than he, but they could not climb so fast nor swim so far, and they did not know all the hiding places that Old Joe had discovered before his second birthday.

Old Joe was a match for anything in the Creeping Hills except hunters with guns. Hunters were to be parried with wits rather than force, since force alone could never hope to prevail against firearms. But hunters gave spice to what, at times, might have been a monotonous existence. The chase was usually as welcome to Old Joe as it was to any hounds or hunters that had ever pursued him.

Three-quarters of a mile from the sycamore, Old Joe halted and gravely examined a new scene.

The slough at the base of the sycamore remained frozen. But Willow Brook, with its due proportion of still pools and snarling riffles, had overflowed the ice that covered it and had surged up on both banks. No more than two yards from the tip of Old Joe's nose, three forlorn willow trees seemed to shiver on a high knoll that was ordinarily dry, but that was now a lonely little island besieged by the overflow from Willow Brook.

Quivering with delight, Old Joe rippled forward. He belly-splashed into the water, swam across, and climbed the knoll. He rubbed himself against each of the willows, groaning with the luxury of such a massage. Then he jumped down the other side of the knoll, plunged into the swift water that flowed over Willow Brook's ice, and without yielding an inch to the current emerged on the far bank. There he halted.

The owl that had sat in the top branches of the sycamore and watched Old Joe come out of his den had known that he was part burglar, part devil, and part imp. The owl had not known that, depending on circumstances, Old Joe could be any of these three without regard to the other two. Reaching the far bank, he was all imp.

He knew everything about the Creeping Hills, including the location of each farm, the character of the farmer and his family, the gardens planted and the crops that would grow, and the number and species of livestock.

A sagging barbed-wire fence two yards from the edge of Willow Brook marked the border of the Mundee farm. Its proprietor was Arthur Mundee, but because no man in the Creeping Hills was ever called by his given name, his neighbors knew him as Mun. He had a thirteen-year-old son named Harold and called Harky, and a wife who had gone to her eternal peace seven years ago. Next in importance was a hound, a bluetick named Precious Sue. Mun Mundee was a coon hunter so ardent that hunting coons was almost a passion, and Precious Sue one of the few hounds that had ever tracked Old Joe to the great sycamore. This had not impressed Old Joe unduly, or created any special fear of either Mun Mundee or Precious Sue.

After a moment's concentration, Old Joe ran his tongue over his lips. Mun Mundee owned some horses, some cattle, and some pigs. He also owned some chickens. Old Joe had not been hungry when he left the sycamore, but neither had he expected an opportunity to confound Mun Mundee. Old Joe licked his lips a second time. When he thought of the chickens, he was suddenly ravenous.

He left Willow Brook and crawled under the barbed-wire fence. He did not slink or hesitate, for he had chosen his night well; the waning moon left complete darkness behind it. The Mundees would be asleep in their house and Precious Sue on the porch. Nobody hunted coons in winter.

Walking boldly, but with not so much as a whisper of sound on the thawing snow, Old Joe saw as soon as the farm came in sight that his analysis was correct. The house was dark. The Mundees and Precious Sue were asleep. Cattle and horses shuffled in their stalls and pigs grunted sleepily in their sty.

Old Joe went straight to the chicken house, and licked his lips a third time as the odor of sleeping chickens delighted his nostrils.

He did not hesitate but went straight to the small door that let the chickens in and out. It was a sliding door that could be raised or lowered, and it was a combination with which Old Joe had long been familiar. He slipped a front paw beneath the door, raised it, entered the chicken house, and let the door slide shut behind him.

The inside of Mun Mundee's chicken house, like the other chicken houses in the Creeping Hills, was familiar. Old Joe climbed to the roost, and a fat white hen clucked sleepily as she sensed something alien beside her. Almost gently Old Joe opened his mouth, closed it on the fat hen's neck, and leaped lightly to the floor with his plunder. He let himself out the same way he got in.

He was halfway back to Willow Brook when, stopping to get a better grip on the fat hen, he was careless. The hen was good for one last squawk.

One was enough. Precious Sue, sleeping on the porch, heard and correctly interpreted. A silent trailer, a hound that made no noise until quarry was bayed, she came rushing through the night.

Old Joe did not hurry, for haste was scarcely consistent with his dignity. But he had not left his den to play with a hound, and there was a simple way to be rid of Precious Sue.

Coming to Willow Brook, and still clutching his hen, Old Joe leaped in and surrendered to the water. A half mile downstream he left the brook, stopped to feast leisurely on the fat hen, and made his way to a swamp so dense and thick that even full sunlight never penetrated some parts of it.

Deep in the swamp he came to his destination, a hollow oak, a huge old tree as massive as his sycamore. Unhesitatingly he climbed the hollow, and the female coon that had chosen the oak as her winter den awoke to snarl and bite him on the nose.

Repelled, but by no means resigned, Old Joe found another den in a nearby ledge of rocks and made plans to meet the situation.

HARKY

At twenty minutes past five, just four hours before Old Joe startled the owl that watched him come out of his den, Harky Mundee peered furtively around the rear of the cow he was milking to see if his father was watching. He was. Harky sighed and went back to work.

Mun Mundee had firm opinions concerning the proper way to milk a cow or do anything else, and when other arguments failed he enforced his ideas with the flat of his hand. Harky sighed again. Old Brindle, far and away the orneriest of Mun's five cows and probably anyone else's, had teats remarkably like the fingers of a buckskin glove that has been left out in the rain and then dried in the sun. Coaxing the last squirts of milk from 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-fleeting moments with the comforting reflection that winter, after all, was one of his favorite seasons. It could not compare with autumn, when corn rustled crisply in the shock and dogs sniffed about for scent of the coons that always raided shocked corn. Nor did it equal early spring, when trout streams were ice-free and the earth still too wet for plowing.

But it was far ahead of late spring and summer, with their endless farm tasks, each of which was worse than the other. Only by exercising the greatest craft and diligence, and manfully preparing himself for the chastisement he was sure to get when he finally came home, could a man sneak away for a bit of fishing or swimming.

Harky bent his head toward Old Brindle's flank but his thoughts whisked him out of the stable into the hills.

Shotgun in hand, he'd spent a fair portion of yesterday tracking a bobcat on the snow. It was a proved fact that a man on foot cannot catch up with a bobcat that is also on foot. But it was not to be denied that all bobcats have a touch of moon madness. They knew when they were being tracked, but they also knew when the tracker ceased following, and that kindled a fire in their heads.

As long as they were tracked they were comfortable in the knowledge that they had only to keep running. When the tracker stopped, it threw the bobcat's whole plan out of gear. They imagined all sorts of ambushes, and cunning traps, and finally they worked themselves into such a frenzy that they just had to come back along their own tracks and find out what was happening. It followed that the hunter had nothing to do except rile the bobcat into a lather and then sit down and wait.

Harky had waited. But he must have done something wrong, or perhaps the bobcat he followed had not been sufficiently moonstruck. Though it had come back, it had not been so anxious to find Harky that it forgot everything else. Harky had glimpsed it across a gully, two hundred yards 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 had caught him coming back with it. The hiding that followed—Mun used a hickory gad instead of the flat of his hand—was something a man wouldn'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 a rock. Beneath it, shiny-bright as they had been the day the forgotten bandit buried them, was a whole sack full of gold pieces. At once Harky hurried into town and bought a rifle, not an old 38-55 like his father's but 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 you but 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," he said.

"Lemme see."

Mun sat down beside Old Brindle and Harky sighed with relief. When Mun Mundee could not get the last squirt from a cow, it followed that the cow was indeed stripped. But Mun, conditioned by experience, never completely 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 of the softening wind. It seemed that a man could never get enough of that kind of air. Mun closed and latched the barn door and Harky turned to him.

"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 the prowl an' some won't."

It was, Harky decided, a not unreasonable answer even though it lacked the elements of true drama. Harky gulped another lungful of air and almost, but not quite, loosed the reins of his own imagination. Even seasoned hunters did not argue coon lore with Mun Mundee, but on an evening such as this it was impossible to think in prosaic terms.

They lingered near the barn and faced into the wind. Presently Harky stood there in body only. His spirit took him to Heaven.

Heaven, as translated at the moment, was the summit of a mountain ten times as high as Dewberry Knob. From his lofty eminence, Harky looked at a great forest that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Each tree was hollow and each hollow contained a coon. As though every coon had received the same signal at the same time, all came out. There were more coons than a man could hunt if he hunted every night for the next thousand years.

At exactly the right moment, this entrancing scene became perfection. Deep in the great forest, Precious Sue lifted her voice to announce that she had a coon up.

Harky made his way among the great trees toward the sound. He found Precious Sue doing her best to climb a sycamore so massive that ten men, holding each others' hands, could not come even close to encircling the trunk. When Harky shined his light into the tree he saw, not just a coon, but the king of coons. Sitting on a branch, staring down with eyes big as a locomotive's headlight, was Old Joe himself.

The fancy faded, but Harky was left with no sense of frustration because fact replaced it. Somewhere out in the Creeping Hills—the aura that surrounded him considerably enhanced by the fact that no human being knew exactly where—Old Joe really was sleeping the winter away. Suppose that he really came prowling tonight? Suppose Precious Sue really did run 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 full ninety seconds Mun did not answer. Then he said seriously:

"A right smart time, Harky. There's them'll tell you that even if a coon don't get trapped, or shot, or dog kil't, or die no death 'fore his time, he'll live only about ten years anyhow. I reckon that may be so if you mean just ordinary coons. Old Joe, he ain't no ordinary coon. My grandpa 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 the Crossroads, which he did whenever he couldn't get out of it, he had acquired some education. But he had also acquired some disturbing information. Miss Cathby, who taught all eight grades, was a very earnest soul dedicated to the proposition that the children in her care must not grow up to wallow in the same morass of mingled ignorance and superstition that surrounded their fathers and mothers.

Miss Cathby had pointed out, and produced scientific statistics to prove, that the moon was nothing more than a satellite of the earth. As such, its influence over earth dwellers was strictly limited. The moon was responsible for tides and other things about which Miss Cathby had been very vague because she didn't know. But she did know that the moon could not affect birth, death, or destiny.

Old Joe had been the subject of another of Miss Cathby's lectures. He was just a big coon, she said, though she mispronounced it "raccoon." It was absurd even to think that he had been living in the Creeping Hills forever. Old Joe's predecessor had also been just a big raccoon. Since Old Joe was mortal, and like all mortals must eventually pass to his everlasting reward, his successor would be in all probability the next biggest raccoon.

Harky conceded that she had something to offer. But it also seemed that Mun had much on his side, and on the whole, Mun's conception of the real and earnest life was far more interesting than Miss Cathby's. She got her information from books that were all right but sort of small. Mun took 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 years past 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's chewin' 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. His great-grandfather had settled the Mundee farm fifty-one years ago. He was thirteen. Thirteen from fifty-one left thirty-eight years that Mundees had lived on the farm before Harky was even born.

Confusion gave way to mingled awe and pride. Old Joe was not the only tradition in the Creeping Hills. The Mundees were fully as famous and had as much right to call themselves old-timers. For that matter, so did Precious Sue. The last of a line of hounds brought to the Creeping Hills by Mun's grandfather, her breed was doomed unless Mun found a suitable mate for her. But better to let the breed die than to offer Precious Sue an unworthy mate.

Mun said, "Reckon we'd best get in."

"Yes, Pa."

Side by side they started down the soggy path toward the house. Precious Sue left her bed on the porch and came to meet them.

She was medium-sized, and her dark undercoat was dappled with bluish spots, or ticks. Shredded ears bore mute testimony to her many battles with 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 emaciated alligator.

For all the coon hunters of the Creeping Hills cared she could have been an alligator, as long as she continued to perform with such consummate artistry on a coon's track. Though a casual observer might have deduced that Precious Sue had trouble just holding herself up, she had once disappeared for forty-eight hours. Mun finally found her under the same tree, and holding the same coon, that she must have run up two hours after starting. She was one of the very few hounds that had ever forced Old Joe to seek a refuge in his magic sycamore, and no hound could do more.

Unfortunately, she lived under a curse. The only pup of what should have been 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 the moon. Therefore, she had a streak of wildness that must assert itself whenever the moon was dark. If she were run at such times, she must surely 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 him up 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 you a'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 of yours."

"Hadn't you ought to tie her up?" Harky questioned.

"Sue can't abide ties and no coon'll come here tonight," Mun said decisively. "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 window listening to the song of the south wind. Sometimes he couldn't even figure himself.

There'd been last fall, when they jumped the big buck out of Garson's slashing. Mun and Mellie Garson had taken its trail, but Harky had a feeling about that buck. He'd felt that it would head for the rhododendron thicket on Hoot Owl Ridge, and that in getting there it would pass Split Rock. Harky went to sit on Split Rock. Not twenty minutes later, the buck passed beside him. It was an easy shot.

Old Joe would not come tonight because Mun said he wouldn't. But Harky was unable to rid himself of a feeling that he would, and he was uneasy when he finally went to bed.

He slept soundly, but Harky had never been able to figure his sleep either. Often he awakened with a feeling that something was due to happen, and it always did. When the wild geese flew north or south, or a thunder 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 something very 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 padded to 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 Mun came into the kitchen. Mun lighted a lantern, took his own shotgun from its rack, and led the way to the chicken house. He knelt beside the little door by which the chickens left and entered and his muffled word ripped the air.

"Look!"

Harky looked. Seeming to begin and end at the little door, the biggest coon tracks in the world were plain in the soft snow. Ten thousand butterflies churned in his stomach. It was almost as though the whole thing were his fault.

He said, "Old Joe."

Mun glanced queerly at his son, but he made no reply as he held his lantern so it lighted the tracks. Harky trotted behind his father and noted with miserable eyes where Sue's tracks joined Old Joe's. They came to the flood surging over Willow Brook, and just at the edge a whole section of ice had already caved in.

Both sets of tracks ended there.

SUE

After Mun and Harky entered the house, Precious Sue crawled into her nest on the porch. The nest was an upended wooden packing case with a door cut in front and a strip of horse blanket hanging over the door to keep the wind out. The nest was carpeted with other strips of discarded horse blanket.

On cold nights, Sue shoved the dangling strip over the door aside with her nose, went all the way in, let the horse blanket drop, and cared little how the wind blew. Tonight, after due observance of the canine tradition that calls for turning around three times before lying down, she stuck her nose under the blanket, lifted it, and went to sleep with her body inside but her head out. Her blissful sigh just before she dozed off was her way of offering thanks for such a comfortable home.

It was not for Sue to understand that in more ways than one the dog's life might well be the envy of many a human. She had never wondered why she'd been born or if life was worth living; she'd been born to hunt coons, and every coon hunter, whether biped or quadruped, found life eminently worth living.

Though she often dreamed of her yesterdays, they were always pleasant dreams, and she never fretted about her tomorrows.

Five seconds after she went to sleep, Sue was reliving one of her yesterdays.

She was hot after a coon, a big old boar that was having a merry time raiding Mun Mundee's shocked corn until Sue rudely interrupted. The coon was a wanderer from far across the hills, and last night, with three hounds on his trail, he had wandered unusually fast. When he finally came to Mun's corn, he was hungry enough to throw caution to the winds. And he knew nothing about Precious Sue.

He did know how to react when she burst upon him suddenly. Running as though he had nothing on his mind except the distance he might put between Sue and himself, the coon shifted abruptly from full flight to full stop. It was a new maneuver to Sue. She jumped clear over the coon and rolled three times before she was able to recover.

By the time she was ready to resume battle, the coon was making fast tracks toward a little pond near the cornfield. With a six-foot lead on Sue, he jumped into the pond. When Sue promptly jumped in behind him, the coon executed a time-hallowed maneuver, sacred to all experienced coons that are able to entice dogs into the water. He swam to and sat on Sue's head.

Amateur hounds, and some that were not amateurs, nearly always drowned when the battle took this turn, but to Sue it was kindergarten stuff. Rather than struggle to surface for a breath of air, she yielded and let herself sink. The coon, no doubt congratulating himself on an absurdly easy victory, let go. Sue came up beneath him, nudged him with her nose to lift him clear of the water, clamped her jaws on his neck, and marked another star on her private scoreboard.

Of such heady stuff were her dreams made, and dreams sustained her throughout the long winter, spring, and summer, when as a rule she did not hunt. She could have hunted. There were bears, foxes, bobcats, and a variety of other game animals in the Creeping Hills. All were beneath the notice of a born coon hound who knew as much about coons as any mortal creature can and who didn't want to know anything else.

The squawking chicken brought her instantly awake. The wind was blowing from the house toward Willow Brook, so that she could get no scent. But she pin-pointed the sound, and she'd heard too many chickens squawk in the night not to know exactly what they meant. Seconds later she was on Old Joe's trail.

She knew the scent, for she had been actively hunting for the past five years and had run Old Joe an average of six times a year. But she saw him in a different light from the glow in which he was bathed by Mun and Harky Mundee. To them he was part coon and part legend. To Sue, though he was the biggest, craftiest, and most dangerous she had ever trailed, he was all coon and it was a point of honor to run him up a tree.

When she came to Willow Brook, she saw the flood surging over the ice and recognized it for the hazard it was. But except when they climbed trees or went to earth in dens too small for her to enter, Sue had never hesitated to follow where any coon led. She jumped in behind Old Joe, and fate, in the form of the south wind, decided to play a prank.

Ice over which Old Joe had passed safely a couple of seconds before cracked beneath Sue. The snarling current broke the one big piece into four smaller cakes and one of them, rising on end, fell to scrape the side of Sue's head. Had it landed squarely it would have killed her. Glancing, it left her dazed, but not so dazed that she was bereft of all wit.

Sue had swum too many creeks and ponds, and fought too many coons in the water, not to know exactly how to handle herself there. Impulse bade her surrender to the not at all unpleasant half dream in which she found herself. Instinct made her fight on.

Swept against unbroken ice, she hooked both front paws over it. Then she scraped with her hind paws and, exerting an effort born of desperation, fought her way back to the overflow surging on top of the ice. Once there, still dazed and exhausted by the battle to save herself, she could do nothing except keep her head above flood water that carried her more than two miles downstream and finally cast her up on the bank.

For an hour and a half, too weak even to stand, Sue lay where the water had left her. Then, warned by half-heard but fully sensed rumblings and grindings, she alternately walked and crawled a hundred yards farther back into the forest and collapsed at the base of a giant pine. With morning she felt better.

Still shaky, but able to walk, she stood and remembered. Last night Old Joe had come raiding. She had followed him to Willow Brook and lost the trail there, thus leaving unfinished business that by everything a coon hound knew must be finished. Sue returned to Willow Brook and sat perplexedly down with her tail curled about her rear legs.

During the night, while she slept, the ice had gone out as she'd been warned by its first rumblings. She had heard nothing else, but she saw ice cakes that weighed from a few pounds to a few tons thrown far up on either bank. The moving ice had jammed a half mile downstream, and in effect had created a temporary but massive dam. Harky Mundee could toss a stone across Willow Brook's widest pool in summer, but a beaver would think twice before trying to swim it now.

With some idea that she had been carried downstream, Sue put her nose to the ground and sniffed hopefully for five hundred yards upstream. It was no use. Everything that normally had business along Willow Brook had fled from the breaking ice. Sue had no idea as to how she would find Old Joe's trail or even what she should do next.

She whined lonesomely. Old Joe had eluded her again, which was no special disgrace because there'd always be a next time. Since she could not hunt, it would be ideal if she could return to the Mundee farm, but she was afraid to try swimming the flood.

Nosing about, Sue found a two-pound brown trout that had been caught and crushed in the grinding ice and cast up on the bank. She ate the fish, and with food her strength returned. With strength came a return of hound philosophy.

Since there was little point in fighting the unbeatable, and because flooded Willow Brook held no charms, Sue wandered back into the forest. Ordinarily she would have stayed there, eating whatever she could find and returning to the Mundee farm after the flood subsided. But again fate, or nature, or whatever it may be that plays with the lives of human beings and coon hounds, saw fit to intervene.

Sue had been born to hunt coons and she was dedicated to her birthright, but the All-Wise Being who put the moon in the sky did so in the interests of all romance. Sue yearned to meet a handsome boy friend.

To conceive a notion was to execute it, and Sue began her search. She had often hunted this area. For miles in any direction, on the far side of Willow Brook, was wilderness. She did not know of any farmer, or even any trapper, who might have a dog. But she had a sublime faith that if only she kept going, she would find her heart's desire.

Three days later, after passing up three farms that unfortunately were staffed with lady dogs, Sue approached a fourth. It was little better than a wilderness clearing, with a tiny barn, a couple of sheds, and a one-room house. But Sue was not interested in the elite side of human living, and the great black and tan hound that came roaring toward her was handsome enough to make any girl's heart miss a beat.

Sue waited coyly, for though to all outward appearances the huge hound was intent only on tearing her to pieces, she knew when she was being courted. They met, touched noses, wagged tails, and Sue became aware of the man who appeared on the scene.

He was a young man built on the same general proportions as a Percheron stallion, and he hadn't had a haircut for about six months or a shave for at least three years. But he knew a good hound when he saw one and he had long since mastered the art of putting hounds at ease. His voice was laden with magic when he called,

"Here, girl. Come on, girl. Come on over."

Because she was hungry, and saw nothing to distrust in the shaggy young giant, but largely because the great black and tan hound paced amiably beside her, Sue obeyed. She buried her nose in the dish of food the young man offered her and started gobbling it up.

So wholeheartedly did Sue give herself to satisfying her hunger that the rope was about her neck and she was tied before she was even aware of what had happened.

Paying not the least attention to the big bluebottle fly that buzzed her nose, Sue stretched full-length and dozed in the sun. Trees that had been bare when she came to Rafe Bradley's were full-leafed. Flowers bloomed beneath them. Birds had long since ceased chirping threats to each other and had settled down to the serious business of building nests and raising families.

First impressions of Rafe Bradley's farm were more than borne out by subsequent developments. Rafe kept a good horse, but it was for riding rather than plowing. Besides the horse, Rafe's domestic livestock consisted of some pigs that ran wild in the woods until Rafe wanted pork, which he collected with his rifle.

Rafe, his horse, and his big hound had left early this morning to take care of some important business in the woods. Since Rafe's only important business was hunting something or other, it followed that he was hunting now. Sue raised her head and blinked at the green border around the clearing.

Mun Mundee had told Harky that Sue could not abide a rope, and she couldn't. But the rope was there, it had not been off since the day Rafe put it there, and Sue could choose between giving herself a permanently sore neck by fighting the rope and submitting. She did what a sensible hound would do.

If Rafe had not tied her, his big hound would have been sufficient attraction to keep her around for at least a few days. After that, she might have fallen in with life as it was lived at Rafe's and been happy to remain.

Rafe had tied her, and for that he could not be forgiven. Sue lived for the day she would be free to return to Mun Mundee. With an abiding faith that everything would turn out for the best if only she was patient, Sue was sure that day would come. Until it did, she might as well sleep.

The bluebottle fly, tiring of its futile efforts to annoy her, buzzed importantly off in search of a more responsive victim. Sue opened one bloodshot eye then closed it again. She sighed comfortably, went back to sleep, and was shortly enjoying a happy dream about another coon hunt.

When the sun reached its peak she rose, lapped a drink from the dish of water Rafe had left for her, and sought the shade of her kennel. Rafe would return with evening. She would be fed, sleep in her kennel, and tomorrow would be another day.

Rafe did not come with twilight. The rope trailing beside her like a rustling worm, Sue came out of her kennel and whined. She was not lonesome for Rafe, but she was hungry. Sue paced anxiously for as far as the rope would let her go.

Whippoorwills, flitting among the trees at the borders of the clearing, began their nightly calling. She lapped another drink and resumed her hungry pacing. Then, just before early evening became black night, the whippoorwills stopped calling. A moment later it became apparent that someone was coming.

Their arrival was heralded by an unearthly clatter and rattling that puzzled Sue until they entered the clearing. Then she saw that they were two men in a car, a marvelous vehicle held together with hay wire and composed of so many different parts of so many different cars that even an expert would have had difficulty determining the original make. The car quivered to a halt and one of the two men bellowed at the dark house,

"Rafe! Hey, Rafe! Whar the blazes be ya, Rafe?"

There was a short silence. The second man broke it with a plaintive,

"Kin ya tie that? First night in two years coons raid our ducks, Rafe an' that hound of his gotta be chasin'!"

"He would," the first man growled.

The second's roving eye lighted on the kennel and then noticed Sue. "Thar's another hound."

"Ya don't know," the first said, "that it'll hunt coons."

The second declared, "If it's Rafe's, it'll hunt coons. I'm goin' to git it."

"Keerful," the first man warned. "That Major hound'll take the arm off anybody 'cept Rafe what tries to touch it."

"Le's see what this'n does."

The second man left the hybrid car and approached Sue, who waited with appeasing eyes and gently wagging tail. When the man laid his hand on her head, Sue licked his fingers.

"Tame's a kitten," the man declared jubilantly. "I'll fetch her."

He untied the rope, and the instant she was free, Sue slipped aside and raced toward the woods. Not in the least affected by the anguished, "Here, doggie! Come on back, doggie!" that rose behind her, she entered the forest at exactly the same point she'd left it to meet Rafe Bradley's hound.

The cries faded and only the whisper of the wind kept her company as Sue traveled on. Suddenly there was a great need that had not existed before to put distance between herself and Rafe Bradley's clearing. Sue traveled until near morning, then crawled gratefully beneath the thick branches of a wind-toppled pine. She turned around and around to smooth a bed.

The sun was just rising when her pup was born.

Almost five months after she left it, Precious Sue came once again into her own land. Where she had once been gaunt, she was now little more than a skeleton. But the pup that frisked beside her, and was marked exactly like her, was fat and healthy enough. There just hadn't been enough food for two.

Precious Sue fell, and the pup came prancing to leap upon her, seize her ear, and pull backwards while it voiced playful growls. Sue got up. Head low, staggering, she labored over a fallen sapling that the pup leaped easily. She reached the top of the hill she was trying to climb.

From the summit, she saw Willow Brook sparkling like a silver ribbon in the sunshine. Just beyond were the buildings of the Mundee farm. Sue sighed happily, almost ecstatically, and lay down a second time.

She did not get up.

HARKY GOES FISHING

When Mun sent him out to hoe corn, Harky knew better than to protest or evade. An outright refusal would instantly bring the flat of Mun's hand against the nearest part of Harky's anatomy that happened to be in reach. Evasion would rouse Mun's suspicions, and like as not bring a surveillance so close that Harky would find escape impossible.

Campaigns must be planned. When Mun said, "You go hoe the corn," Harky answered meekly, "Yes, Pa," and he did his best to seem enthusiastic as he shouldered the hoe and strode off toward the cornfield.

The field was a full three hundred yards from the house, and if one were fleet enough of foot, one might throw one's hoe down the instant one arrived and simply start running. Harky had long ago learned the futility of such tactics.

Mun was winded like a bear, gifted with the speed of a greyhound, and he knew all the hiding places Harky might be able to reach if all he had was a three-hundred-yard start. He knew some that were even farther away. When it came to finding his son, Harky sometimes believed, Mun had a nose fully as keen as Precious Sue's when she was sniffing out a coon.

Sue provided an interesting diversion of thought as Harky marched manfully toward the cornfield. Neither she nor Old Joe had been seen since that fateful night in February, and though of course Old Joe seemed to be immortal, available evidence indicated that Sue had been swept under the ice and drowned in Willow Brook.

It could be, but Harky had a feeling about Sue. She couldn't have been more than a couple of jumps behind when Old Joe jumped into Willow Brook, and if one had escaped, why hadn't both? Though there was always a possibility that the ice had held for Old Joe and broken for Sue, in Harky's opinion, the current where the ice broke should not have been too strong for a swimmer of Sue's talent.

Naturally the catastrophe had not gone unchallenged. Except for essential tasks, farm work ended the day after Sue disappeared. As Mun explained it, a body could always get more cows or pigs, or even another farm. But there was only one coon hound like Precious Sue.

Mun was not unduly optimistic when he began the search, for after all Sue had run in the dark of the moon. But the fact that Sue was doomed by the gods did not prevent Mun's pressing the hunt with utmost vigor. Mun and Harky traveled up Willow Brook and down, visiting every neighbor for nine miles in one direction and eleven in the other.

Mellie Garson hadn't seen Sue. Though Mellie had not seen her, he recognized a genuine emergency and joined the hunt for her. So did Raw Stanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, Pine Heglin, and Mule Domster. After two weeks it was sadly concluded that Precious Sue had indeed placed herself beyond hope of redemption when she took after Old Joe in the dark of the moon. The searchers gathered in Mun Mundee's kitchen, decided that Sue's mortal remains would come to rest an undetermined number of miles down Willow Brook, since it was impossible to tell where the breakup would carry her, and they drank a solemn toast to the memory of a great coon hound.

And Harky still had a feeling.

He reached the cornfield, and, as though his heart were really in it, started hoeing at the right place. The right place, naturally, was the side nearest the house. Mun Mundee would have reason to wonder if Harky evinced too much interest in starting near the woods. As he began the first row, which was thirty yards long when one was not hoeing it and thirty miles when one was, Harky mentally reviewed his caches of fishing tackle.

Upstream, thirty steps north, eight east, and ten south from a round rock above the first riffle, which in turn was above the first pool where a snapping turtle with a pockmarked shell lived, a line and three hooks were hidden in a hollow stump. Downstream, on a straight line between the pool where Precious Sue had jumped an almost black coon and the white birch in which she'd bayed it, a line and two hooks were concealed in last year's nest of a song sparrow.

Harky worried about that cache. It had been all right two days ago because he'd seen it, and most birds had already nested. But some would nest a second time, and the ruins of this old nest might be summarily appropriated for a new one. His line would disappear, too, and like as not his hooks. Birds were not particular as long as they had something to hold their nest together. As soon as he found another place not likely to attract Mun's eye, perhaps he'd better move his tackle from the nest. Good hooks and line were not so easy come by that a man could get reckless with them.

Leaning slightly forward, the position in which Mun thought the wielder of a hoe would do most work, and slanting his hoe at the angle Mun favored, Harky sighed resignedly as the blade uncovered a fat and wriggling earthworm. He did not dare pick it up and put it in his pocket—Harky had never seen the need of bait containers—for there were times when Mun seemed to have as many eyes as a centipede had legs, and an eagle's sight in all of them. If he saw Harky put anything in his pocket—and he would see—he'd be present on the double.

Well, there were plenty of worms to be had by probing in moist earth near pools and sloughs. The trouble with them was that they were accustomed to water, and they did not wriggle much when draped on a hook and lowered into it. Garden worms, on the other hand, were so shocked by an unfamiliar environment that they wriggled furiously and attracted bigger fish.

The sun grew hot on Harky's back, but his body was too young, too lithe, and too well-conditioned, to rebel at this relatively light labor. His soul ached. Of all the vegetables calculated to bedevil human beings, he decided, growing corn was the worst.

He tried to find solace by thinking of the good features of corn, and happily alighted on the fact that it attracts coons. Also, it tasted good when stripped milky from the stalk and either boiled or roasted. However, the coons would come anyhow. If there was no corn, they'd still be attracted by the apples in Mun's orchard. And if the Mundees had no corn, neighbors who did would be glad to share with them. Meanwhile, this patch must be hoed a few million times.

Harky pondered a question that has bemused all great philosophers: how can humans be so foolish?

Working at that rhythmic speed which Mun considered ideal for hoeing corn, missing not a single stroke, Harky went on. Discontent became anguish, and anguish mounted to torture, but Harky knew that the wrong move now might very well be ruinous. Like all people with great plans and strong opposition, he must suffer before he gained his ends. But he'd suffer only half as much if the master strategy he'd worked out did not fail him.

Exactly halfway across the first row, Harky turned and started back on the second.

It was a bold move, and Harky's heart began to flutter the instant he made it, but the situation called for bold moves. Harky did not break the rhythm of his hoeing or look up when he heard Mun approach, and he managed to look convincingly astonished when Mun asked,

"What ya up to, Harky?"

Harky glanced up quickly. "Oh. Hello, Pa!"

"I said," Mun repeated, "what ya up to?"

"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 grass 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 Knob. 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 sex 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 coons.

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 woodpecker 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 woodpecker'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 woodpecker 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 woodpecker. 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 chore, 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 coon, 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 coon.

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.

DUCKFOOT

By some mischance, one of the willows bordering the pool grew at a freakish angle. A two-pound sucker, probably coon-mauled or osprey-dropped somewhere upstream, had washed down and anchored 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 cocked 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 anchored 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 coon hound, for none except coon 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 coon 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.

The pup, who probably had tried to retrieve the fish a dozen times, was not working blindly. Having learned from past mistakes, he was planning this new attempt in a brand new way. Rather than go straight down, he turned, swam four feet away, then turned again and dived at a forty-five degree angle.

This time he aimed at the willow stalk rather than the anchored fish. He struck with his shoulder so hard that the willow's topmost leaves rattled, but the stalk moved aside and the fish floated free.

Floating slowly upward, the fish was within three inches of the surface when it was seized by a swift little current and whisked away. Breaking water exactly where the sucker should have been, the pup was bewildered. But he remained at a loss for only a split second.