The Duck-footed Hound

by Jim Kjelgaard

  HARKY GOES FISHING

  When Mun sent him out to hoe corn, Harky knew better than to protest orevade. An outright refusal would instantly bring the flat of Mun's handagainst the nearest part of Harky's anatomy that happened to be inreach. Evasion would rouse Mun's suspicions, and like as not bring asurveillance so close that Harky would find escape impossible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Mellie Garson hadn't seen Sue. Though Mellie had not seen her, herecognized a genuine emergency and joined the hunt for her. So did RawStanfield, Butt Johnson, Bear Pen Crawford, Pine Heglin, and MuleDomster. After two weeks it was sadly concluded that Precious Sue hadindeed placed herself beyond hope of redemption when she took after OldJoe in the dark of the moon. The searchers gathered in Mun Mundee'skitchen, decided that Sue's mortal remains would come to rest anundetermined number of miles down Willow Brook, since it was impossibleto tell where the breakup would carry her, and they drank a solemn toastto 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 theside nearest the house. Mun Mundee would have reason to wonder if Harkyevinced too much interest in starting near the woods. As he began thefirst row, which was thirty yards long when one was not hoeing it andthirty miles when one was, Harky mentally reviewed his caches of fishingtackle.

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

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

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

  Well, there were plenty of worms to be had by probing in moist earthnear pools and sloughs. The trouble with them was that they wereaccustomed to water, and they did not wriggle much when draped on a hookand lowered into it. Garden worms, on the other hand, were so shocked byan unfamiliar environment that they wriggled furiously and attractedbigger 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. Hissoul ached. Of all the vegetables calculated to bedevil human beings, hedecided, growing corn was the worst.

  He tried to find solace by thinking of the good features of corn, andhappily alighted on the fact that it attracts coons. Also, it tastedgood when stripped milky from the stalk and either boiled or roasted.However, the coons would come anyhow. If there was no corn, they'd stillbe attracted by the apples in Mun's orchard. And if the Mundees had nocorn, 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: howcan humans be so foolish?

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

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

  It was a bold move, and Harky's heart began to flutter the instant hemade it, but the situation called for bold moves. Harky did not breakthe rhythm of his hoeing or look up when he heard Mun approach, and hemanaged 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 buthalf the first row."

  "Oh," Harky might have been a patient teacher instructing a backwardpupil. He gestured toward tall trees that, in a couple of hours, wouldkeep the sun from the far half of the corn patch. "The sun, Pa. It'shigh and warm now, but it'll be high and hot time I get this first halfdone. Then I can work in shade."

  Mun scowled, suspecting a trick and reasonably sure there was one, butunable 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 onhis heel and started walking away, he flung another warning over hisshoulder.

  "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'sburdens became half as heavy. It had worked, as he'd hoped it would, andthe most tangled knot in his path was now smooth string. Of course hewas not yet clear. But even Mun could not watch him constantly, and oncehe was near enough the woods to duck into them, Harky would be satisfiedwith a ninety-second start.

  Two hours later, having hoed his wa
y to the edge of the woods, Harkydropped 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 toWillow Brook.

  So far so good, but strictly amateur stuff. Mun, who'd need no blueprintto tell him where Harky had gone, would also take the shortest path toWillow 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 ona patch of new grass that held no tracks, leaped sideways to a boulder,and hop-skipped across Willow Brook on exposed boulders. Reaching thefar side, he ran far enough into the forest to be hidden by foliage andheaded downstream.

  With the comfortable feeling of achievement that always attends a jobwell done, Harky slowed to a walk. Mun, hot in pursuit and even more hotin the head, would see the tracks leading upstream. Thereafter, for atleast a reasonable time, he would stop to think of nothing else. By thetime he did, and searched all the upstream hiding places, Harky would bea couple of miles down. He knew of several pools that had their fullquota of fish, and that were so situated that a man could lie behindwillows, fish, and see a full quarter of a mile upstream the while heremained 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 gearedto tracks and his ears to the faintest noises. If Harky whistled, hemight find his fishing suddenly and rudely interrupted. Thesoftest-footed bobcat had nothing on Mun when it came to silent stalks.More than once, when Harky thought his father was fuming at home, Munhad risen up beside him and applied the flat of his hand where it didthe most good.

  Harky contented himself with dancing along, and he never thought of thereckoning that must be when he returned home tonight, because in thefirst place tonight was a long ways off. In the second, there werealways reckonings of one sort or another. A man just had to take care hegot his reckoning's worth.

  Harky halted and stood motionless as any boulder on Dewberry Knob. A doewith twin fawns, and none of the three even suspecting that they werebeing watched, moved delicately ahead of him. Harky frowned.

  It was a mighty puzzling thing about deer, and indeed, about all wildcreatures. Except for very young poultry, a man could tell at a glancewhether most farm animals were boys or girls, and that was that. Hecould never be sure about wild ones, largely because he could never comenear enough, and there might be something in Mellie Garson's theory thatthe young of all wild creatures were alike, a sort of neuter gender,until they were six months old. Then they talked it over amongthemselves and decided which were to be males and which females. Thusthey always struck a proper balance.

  It was a sensible system if Mellie were correct, though Harky was by nomeans 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 whatsex the two fawns would choose for themselves when they were old enoughto decide. Two does maybe, or perhaps two bucks, though it would bebetter if one were a doe and the other a buck. Both were needed, and theCreeping Hills without deer would be nearly as barren as they wouldwithout coons.

  When the doe and her babies were far enough away so that there was nochance of frightening them--a man never would get in rifleshot of a buckif 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 pinestub. He frowned. The next job Mun had slated for him was putting newshingles on the chicken house, and the woodpecker's rattling waspainfully similar to a pounding hammer moving at about the same speedthat Mun would expect Harky to maintain.

  Obviously finding something it did not like, the woodpecker stoppedrattling, voiced a strident cry, and flew away. It was a bad omen, andHarky's frown deepened. He'd seen himself in the woodpecker. Just as thebird had come to grief, so Harky was sure to meet misfortune if he triedshingling the chicken house.

  He'd have to think his way out of that chore, too. But the shingling wasstill far in the future, and the only future worth considering wasembodied in what happened between now and sundown. Troubles could be metwhen they occurred.

  When Harky was opposite the pool where Precious Sue had jumped thealmost black coon, he turned at right angles. It was scarcely discreetto go all the way and show one's self at the edge of Willow Brook, forthough Mun should have been lured upstream, he might have changed hismind 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 finallytreed the coon.

  He was about to start toward it but remained rooted. Suddenly he heardPrecious Sue growl. Not daring to believe, but unwilling to doubt hisown ears, Harky turned back to the pool.

  He peered through the willows and saw the pup.