"Do you reckon," Harky asked, "it will fetch the coons out?"
Mun deliberated. A subject as serious as coons called for deliberation.
"I don't rightly know," he said finally. "I figger some will go on the prowl an' some won't."
It was, Harky decided, a not unreasonable answer even though it lacked the elements of true drama. Harky gulped another lungful of air and almost, but not quite, loosed the reins of his own imagination. Even seasoned hunters did not argue coon lore with Mun Mundee, but on an evening such as this it was impossible to think in prosaic terms.
They lingered near the barn and faced into the wind. Presently Harky stood there in body only. His spirit took him to Heaven.
Heaven, as translated at the moment, was the summit of a mountain ten times as high as Dewberry Knob. From his lofty eminence, Harky looked at a great forest that stretched as far as his eyes could see. Each tree was hollow and each hollow contained a coon. As though every coon had received the same signal at the same time, all came out. There were more coons than a man could hunt if he hunted every night for the next thousand years.
At exactly the right moment, this entrancing scene became perfection. Deep in the great forest, Precious Sue lifted her voice to announce that she had a coon up.
Harky made his way among the great trees toward the sound. He found Precious Sue doing her best to climb a sycamore so massive that ten men, holding each others' hands, could not come even close to encircling the trunk. When Harky shined his light into the tree he saw, not just a coon, but the king of coons. Sitting on a branch, staring down with eyes big as a locomotive's headlight, was Old Joe himself.
The fancy faded, but Harky was left with no sense of frustration because fact replaced it. Somewhere out in the Creeping Hills—the aura that surrounded him considerably enhanced by the fact that no human being knew exactly where—Old Joe really was sleeping the winter away. Suppose that he really came prowling tonight? Suppose Precious Sue really did run him up that big sycamore in the wood lot? Suppose Harky really—? Harky could no longer be silent.
"Pa," he asked, "how long has Old Joe been prowling these hills?"