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Duck-Footed Hound

<h2>IMPASSE</h2> Harky Mundee shoved his fork deeply into the hay. He twisted the tines to gather the biggest possible load; as long as a man had to pitch fool hay he might as well do so in as few forkfuls as possible and get the misery over with. Then he tumbled his load down the shute into the cow stable and leaned on his fork to indulge in some sadly-needed self-criticism. Mun sat in the house with a broken leg and that was a bad thing, though on the whole it was easier to endure than Mun's ruptured temper. However, Mun's temper was an abstract affair that might erupt at any moment, while a broken leg was distinctly concrete. Harky told himself that anything so indisputably tangible should never beset Mun. Still, hadn't it been wrought by providence? If Mun had not tried to climb Old Joe's sycamore, he wouldn't have fallen. If he had not fallen, he wouldn't have a broken leg. He should not have such a thing, but he had it, and by all the rules of logic Harky should have achieved the ultimate ideal. With his leg splinted and bound, Mun's current living space was restricted to the chair upon which he sat all day long and the cot upon which he lay all night long. Harky had been prudent enough to remove from the sweep of his father's arms all sticks of fire wood, dishes, hatchets, knives, and anything else Mun might throw. Let Mun roar as he might (and did, whenever Harky was in the house), roaring broke no bones. For the first time since he could remember, Harky had no need to outwit his father in order to do as he pleased. Of course there were some tasks one did not avoid. Livestock was incapable of caring for itself, and Harky was too close to the earth to let any living creature suffer for lack of attention. It was far better to butcher it, an idea Harky had played with, but no matter how long the winter might be, two people couldn't eat six cows, four pigs, and sixty-nine chickens. There'd always be the horses left anyway. Grimacing as he did so, Harky pitched another forkful of hay down the chute. Livestock should really be taught to eat coon meat so a man, with complete freedom of conscience, might spend all his time hunting coons. Maybe, if cows ate something besides hay, they wouldn't be such fools. Harky thought suddenly of the last time he'd attended Miss Cathby's school, and shuddered. One of Miss Cathby's unswerving goals embraced assailing the minds of her students with literature other than that which their fathers might exchange behind the barn, and to that end there was a daily reading. Most of it was not unendurable; all Harky had to do was think about coons and look as though he were paying attention. On this particular day, however, he had been unable to think about coons and was forced to listen while Miss Cathby read a poem all about new-mown hay on a bright June day. Harky shuddered again and pitched furiously until he had all the cows could eat. He jammed his fork into the hay and scrambled down the ladder to the barn floor. Formal education could mean the ruin of a man if he didn't watch out. Miss Cathby had enthused about the poem and its author, but in the first place, hay was not harvested in June. It wasn't even ripe until July, and whoever wrote so touchingly of new-mown hay had never stood under a furnace-hot sun and pitched any. Duckfoot, who had been waiting in the chaff on the barn floor, sidled up to Harky. Harky let his dangling hand caress the big dog's ears, and he tried to do some thinking about Duckfoot. But thoughts of hay just naturally started him to thinking about corn, and the Mundee corn was still in the field where it had been shocked. Therein lay a major point of friction between Mun, who demanded that it be brought in, and Harky, who wouldn't bring it. He'd long had his own sensible ideas concerning the proper way to run a farm, and bringing in shocked corn did not come under the category of sense. There were arguments pro and con, and pro was summed up by the fact that if it was not properly harvested, there'd be neither corn for winter feeding of pigs and chickens nor husks for bedding. This argument, Harky admitted, was not without a certain validity. But opposed to it was such an overwhelming weight of evidence that any value it might possess was puny indeed. Though unattended corn could not suffer as neglected animals would, Harky would endure untold agony if he first had to haul it to the barn and then husk it. If pigs and chickens had nothing to eat they could always be eaten, thus solving the twin problems of caring for them and satisfying one's own appetite. Corn in the shock lured coons, but not even Old Joe could break into a corn crib. The corn would stay in the shock. It was, or should have been, a cause for leaping in the air, clicking one's heels together, and whooping with joy. Unafflicted by any such desire, Harky stirred nervously and wondered at himself. There was no special age at which a man started slipping, and if he found no delight in ignoring tasks Mun ordered him to do, he was already far gone. Suddenly it occurred to Harky that there had been no particular pleasure since that night, a week ago, when they had Old Joe up and Mun fell out of the sycamore. Harky hadn't even wanted to go coon hunting, and then he knew. Knowing, he trembled. Coon hunters of the Creeping Hills had flourished since the first hunter brought the first hound because they did things properly, and the proper doing was inseparably bound to a proper respect for the art they pursued. There just hadn't been any trouble. Until the first time a girl horned in. Raw Stanfield and Butt Johnson had helped carry Mun home. Then, understanding the fearful consequences of Melinda's heresy, they'd summoned Queenie and Thunder to heel and hadn't been seen since. Shaken from the tips of his toes to the ends of his shaggy hair, Harky needed another fifteen minutes before he could muster strength to start milking. Melinda had put a hex on all of them that night she stood beneath Old Joe's sycamore, with Old Joe up, and declared so loftily that the sycamore was not a magic tree but merely one that hunters were too lazy to chop or climb, and that Old Joe was nothing more than a big, wise, and rather interesting coon. That accounted for the broken leg of Mun, the aloofness of Raw Stanfield and Butt Johnson, and the unhappiness of Harky. He sat down to milk, but he was still so jarred by the dreadful tidings he'd just imparted to himself that when Old Brindle kicked the pail over Harky didn't even threaten her with a club. Affairs were already in a state so hopeless that nothing Old Brindle did could complicate them further. Not even if she kicked Harky's brains out. He finished the milking and the other chores and latched the barn door. Duckfoot trailed behind him as he walked toward the house, but Harky did not have even his usual friendly pat for the hound's head when they came to the porch. Duckfoot, who'd shed most of his puppyish ways, crawled disconsolately into his sleeping box. Gloom remained Harky's companion. Fifty-one years ago, or approximately at the beginning of time, his great-grandfather had settled this very farm. There'd been Mundees on it since, and hounds of the lineage of Precious Sue, and all of them had hunted Old Joe. Now the spell was broken because a mere girl, who had been taught by Miss Cathby, who didn't know anything about anything, had considered it right to trifle with spells. Harky recalled the night Melinda had brought Glory to the coon hunt. He had, he remembered, hoped Melinda would fall in the mud and had promised to stamp on her head if she did. He could not help thinking that that had been a flash of purest insight, and that all would now be favorable if Melinda had fallen in the mud and had her head stamped on. Harky turned the door knob and made his decision as he did so. The new and radical, as represented by Melinda and Miss Cathby, must go. The old and steadfast, as embodied in the immortality of Old Joe and the probability that Duckfoot's father was really a duck, must be restored to the pedestal from which it had toppled. But Harky needed Mun's advice, and he was so intent on the problem at hand that he only half heard his father's greeting. "So ya finally come back, eh? Of all the blasted, lazy, pokey, turtle-brained warts on the face of creation, I jest dunno of a one wust than you!" Harky said, "Yes, Pa." Startled, but too much under the influence of his own momentum to stop suddenly, Mun demanded, "Didja git the corn in?" "No, Pa." The fires in Mun's brain died. Harky, who should have been sassing him back, was meekly turning the other cheek. Despite Mun's frequently and violently expressed opinions concerning the all-around worthlessness of his offspring, Harky was his son and the sole hope of the coon-hunting branch of the clan Mundee. "Ya sick, Harky?" Mun asked suspiciously. "No, Pa." "Then what is chawin' on ya?" "Tell me again when my great-grandpappy come here," Harky requested. Mun said, "Nigh onto fifty-two years past." "That's a heap o' time, ain't it?" Harky asked. "A smart heap o' time," Mun declared proudly. "Not many famblys knows as much about themselfs as us Mundees." "You sure," Harky went on, "that Sue come to no good end on account she run in the dark o' the moon?" Mun shrugged. "What else?" "And Duckfoot's pappy was a duck?" Mun looked puzzled. "Think I'd lie, Harky?" "No, Pa," Harky said hastily. "Just tell me again that all us Mundees been on the trail of Old Joe." "How kin ya ponder?" Mun asked. "My grandpappy told my pappy, who told me, who told you, that Old Joe's been hunted by every Mundee." "What do you think of Old Joe's big sycamore?" Harky questioned. "It's a witch tree," Mun said seriously. "I ain't rightly been able to figger if'n Old Joe takes wings an' flies off it or if'n he does jump in the slough. But I'm sure that if'n Old Joe gits in his witch tree naught can harm him." "Ha!" Harky exclaimed. "Now we know!" "Know what?" Again Mun was puzzled. "All," Harky declared. "Mellie Garson gets mule-kicked; Melinda brings Glory to horn in on our hunt; we get Old Joe up in his sycamore; Melinda says it ain't no witch tree and Old Joe's naught but a big coon; you believe her and try to climb; you bust your leg; Raw and Butt don't want no more part of us—and," Harky wailed, "I can't even take pleasure on account you can't make me fetch the corn in!" "By gum!" Mun said, "you got it!" "Sure I got it," Harky asserted. "Why'd you let Melinda horn in on our coon hunt, Pa?" "I don't rightly know," Mun admitted. "I wa'n't of no mind to have her, an' I know Raw'n Butt wa'n't. But she was of a mind to go, an' gol ding it, when a woman's of a mind to do somethin', they do it!" "I would of stomped on her head if she'd fell in the mud," Harky assured his father. "I know," Mun meditated, "an' it wa'n't a poor notion. But, gol ding it, men just don't mistreat wimmen." "I still don't know why," said Harky. "Nor I," Mun admitted. "They jest don't an' that's all. Your ma, she didn't weigh mor'n half what I do, but she's the only mortal critter ever made me take to the woods." "Are women ornery all the time?" Harky questioned. "'Bout half," Mun said. "Rest o' the time, well, they're wimmen." "What else do you know about 'em, Pa?" "Durn little," Mun confessed. "What ya drivin' at anyhow, Harky?" "Melinda put a spell on us," Harky said. "But it ain't all her doing. Miss Cathby showed her how." "I never thought of that," said Mun. "Never ag'in do I make ya go to school, Harky." "Good," Harky said. "But I got to get that spell off." "How do ya aim to go about it?" Mun questioned. "I'll ask Melinda to fetch Glory on another coon hunt," Harky declared. "We'll run Old Joe up his sycamore again. Then I'll climb the tree and make her climb with me. She'll eat mud when she finds out there ain't no den." "Harky!" Mun said joyously. "Your great-grandpappy would be right proud of the way you talk!" <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus28.jpg" alt=""/></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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