Part 3 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 c.o.o.ns, and every c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n, a big old boar that was having a merry time raiding Mun Mundee's shocked corn until Sue rudely interrupted. The c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n s.h.i.+fted abruptly from full flight to full stop. It was a new maneuver to Sue. She jumped clear over the c.o.o.n and rolled three times before she was able to recover.

By the time she was ready to resume battle, the c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n executed a time-hallowed maneuver, sacred to all experienced c.o.o.ns 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 c.o.o.n, 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 c.o.o.n hound who knew as much about c.o.o.ns 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 c.o.o.n and part legend. To Sue, though he was the biggest, craftiest, and most dangerous she had ever trailed, he was all c.o.o.n 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 c.o.o.n 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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.pe 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 c.o.o.ns 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 c.o.o.n 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 ma.s.sive 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.