"Sue can't abide ties and no coon'll come here tonight," Mun said decisively. "Least of all, Old Joe."
"But if he does—" Harky began.
"Harky!" Mun thundered. "He won't!"
"Yes, Pa."
Long after he was supposedly in bed, Harky stood before his open window listening to the song of the south wind. Sometimes he couldn't even figure himself.
There'd been last fall, when they jumped the big buck out of Garson's slashing. Mun and Mellie Garson had taken its trail, but Harky had a feeling about that buck. He'd felt that it would head for the rhododendron thicket on Hoot Owl Ridge, and that in getting there it would pass Split Rock. Harky went to sit on Split Rock. Not twenty minutes later, the buck passed beside him. It was an easy shot.
Old Joe would not come tonight because Mun said he wouldn't. But Harky was unable to rid himself of a feeling that he would, and he was uneasy when he finally went to bed.
He slept soundly, but Harky had never been able to figure his sleep either. Often he awakened with a feeling that something was due to happen, and it always did. When the wild geese flew north or south, or a thunder storm was due to break, Harky knew before he heard anything. This night he sat up in bed with a feeling that he would hear something very soon.
He heard it, the muffled squawk of a hen. On a backwoods farm, at night, a squawking hen means just one thing. Harky jumped out of bed and padded to the door of his father's bedroom.
"Pa."