Part 13 (1/2)

”Pooh!” Melinda scoffed. ”There haven't been a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters in the Creeping Hills during the past hundred years!”

”Old Joe's been prowling that long,” Harky declared.

”Rubbis.h.!.+” said Melinda. ”He's just a big racc.o.o.n who's smart enough to climb a tree that can't be felled or climbed. Even my own father believes he's been here forever, but you should know better. You've been taught by Miss Cathby.”

Harky sneered, ”Miss Cathby don't know nothin' about nothin'.”

”Harold!” Melinda was properly shocked. ”Don't you dare talk that way about Miss Cathby!”

”Ha!” Harky crowed. ”I'll--”

The battle that might have resulted from this impact of Miss Cathby's education with the lore and legend of the Creeping Hills was forestalled when two hounds began to bay at Old Joe's sycamore. They were Thunder and Duckfoot.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE FALL OF MUN

Old Joe left his daytime den, a burrow beneath a humpbacked boulder, half an hour after nightfall. He paused for a moment in the exit he'd chosen--one of three leading from the den--to twitch his whiskers and wriggle his nose. As usual, he wanted to determine what was in the wind before going down it. There was nothing, or at least nothing that called for more than ordinary caution. Old Joe chittered contentedly to himself.

Except for the one bad night, when everything went wrong and he'd finally been chased up his big sycamore by Duckfoot, he had enjoyed a successful season indeed. Corn had been plentiful, crawfish and mussels abundant, poultry careless, and enemies few. Some of those that had threatened would have been considerably better off if they hadn't.

Notable among them was Pine Heglin's fighting dog. Smarting from that unexpected encounter, when he'd returned to steal one of Pine's guinea hens and been so desperately pressed, Old Joe had chosen his time and gone back to Pine's house one night. The dog rushed. Old Joe scooted away. After a pathetically short chase, the dog bayed him.

The dog, however, lacked a full appreciation of the properties of bees, and Old Joe had let himself be cornered on one of Pine's beehives. The dog closed, the hive tipped over, and while Old Joe scurried happily onward, the dog received a short but intensive education in the folly of tipping beehives. Bees did not bother Old Joe. Even in summer his fur was long enough to protect him, and whenever he felt like it, which was whenever he wanted some honey, he raided beehives.

Now, with a blanket of fat beneath his glossy fur, he was all ready for the wintry blasts that would send him to bed in his big sycamore.

Between now and that uncertain period when bitter winds blew, there was considerable living to be done.

On this particular night the first order of living involved something to eat, and Old Joe was in a mood for beechnuts. They were so tiny that Melinda Garson might have held fifty in the palm of her hand and still lacked a handful. But they were delicious, and along with acorns they spread a bountiful autumn table because they existed by the billion.

When frost opened the pods and wind rattled the branches of beech trees, the sound of beechnuts pattering into dry leaves was not unlike the sound of a violent rain.

Having chosen his menu for the night, Old Joe had only to decide which of many beech groves offered the easiest pickings with the greatest advantage to himself. He finally selected the one bordering Willow Brook and just opposite Mun Mundee's farm.

There were various reasons for his choice. First, the grove was in a sheltered area, which meant that its pods ripened later than those that were exposed to first frosts and heavy winds. Therefore it would not be so thoroughly picked over, and would still be dropping nuts in abundance. Second, this grove always produced a lush crop.

But Old Joe's most compelling reason for his choice was that the grove was infested with squirrels, who had been frantically gathering the beechnuts ever since they began to drop, and storing them in hollow logs, stumps, crevices, and any other place available. It was no part of Old Joe's plan to sc.r.a.pe in the leaves and gather his dinner nut by nut when a little investigation was certain to uncover a cache that might contain from half a pint to a couple of quarts of beechnuts, already gathered by some industrious squirrel.

His campaign mapped, Old Joe proceeded to execute it.

The autumn night posed its usual charms, but hunger took precedence over esthetic inclinations. Old Joe did not linger to watch starlight glinting on a pond, investigate fox fire in a swamp, or even to retrieve a nine-inch trout, wounded in combat with some bigger fish, that was feebly wriggling in the shallows. The trout was a delicacy, but so were beechnuts. Let lesser c.o.o.ns settle for less than they wanted.

Coming to a long pool, Old Joe plunged in and swam its length.

Thereafter he kept to Willow Brook. He'd seen no evidence of hunters and had no reason to suppose that any were abroad tonight. Though keeping to the water was an amateur's trick--one any good c.o.o.n hound could decipher without difficulty--leaving this break in his scent was one of Old Joe's numerous forms of insurance. If a hound should get on him, Old Joe would at least have time to plan some really intricate strategy.

Dripping wet, but not even slightly chilled, and with every sense and nerve brought wonderfully alive by his journey through ice water, Old Joe climbed the bank into the beech grove. He paused to reconnoiter.

The grove, composed entirely of ma.s.sive beech trees, bordered Willow Brook for about a quarter of a mile and gave way to spindly aspens on either side. The best beechnut hunting lay in the most sheltered area near Willow Brook, but there were other considerations.