The Duck-footed Hound Part 4

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 c.o.o.ns 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 c.o.o.ns."

The second declared, "If it's Rafe's, it'll hunt c.o.o.ns. 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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

HARKY GOES FIs.h.i.+NG

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 c.o.o.n.

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 c.o.o.n 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 G.o.ds 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, b.u.t.t 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 c.o.o.n 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 sh.e.l.l 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 c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.ns. Also, it tasted good when stripped milky from the stalk and either boiled or roasted.

However, the c.o.o.ns 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. h.e.l.lo, Pa!"

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