Part 5 (1/2)

”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 fis.h.i.+n'.”

”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 gra.s.s 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.b. 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 s.e.x 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 c.o.o.ns.

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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r rattling against a dead pine stub. He frowned. The next job Mun had slated for him was putting new s.h.i.+ngles on the chicken house, and the woodp.e.c.k.e.r'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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r. Just as the bird had come to grief, so Harky was sure to meet misfortune if he tried s.h.i.+ngling the chicken house.

He'd have to think his way out of that ch.o.r.e, too. But the s.h.i.+ngling 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 c.o.o.n, 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.