"Didn't nobody ask?"
"'Twas thought best not to ask," Mun said. "Blast it, Harky! What's chewin' on you? Ain't it enough to know where your grandpa come from?"
"Why—why yes."
Confused for the moment, Harky went back to fundamentals. His great-grandfather had settled the Mundee farm fifty-one years ago. He was thirteen. Thirteen from fifty-one left thirty-eight years that Mundees had lived on the farm before Harky was even born.
Confusion gave way to mingled awe and pride. Old Joe was not the only tradition in the Creeping Hills. The Mundees were fully as famous and had as much right to call themselves old-timers. For that matter, so did Precious Sue. The last of a line of hounds brought to the Creeping Hills by Mun's grandfather, her breed was doomed unless Mun found a suitable mate for her. But better to let the breed die than to offer Precious Sue an unworthy mate.
Mun said, "Reckon we'd best get in."
"Yes, Pa."
Side by side they started down the soggy path toward the house. Precious Sue left her bed on the porch and came to meet them.
She was medium-sized, and her dark undercoat was dappled with bluish spots, or ticks. Shredded ears bore mute testimony to her many battles with coons. Though she ate prodigious meals, every slatted rib showed, her paunch was lean, and knobby hip bones thrust over her back. Outwardly, Precious Sue resembled nothing so much as an emaciated alligator.
For all the coon hunters of the Creeping Hills cared she could have been an alligator, as long as she continued to perform with such consummate artistry on a coon's track. Though a casual observer might have deduced that Precious Sue had trouble just holding herself up, she had once disappeared for forty-eight hours. Mun finally found her under the same tree, and holding the same coon, that she must have run up two hours after starting. She was one of the very few hounds that had ever forced Old Joe to seek a refuge in his magic sycamore, and no hound could do more.