"What ya want?"
"I heard a hen squawk."
"Be right with ya."
Harky was dressed and ready, with his shotgun in his hands, when Mun came into the kitchen. Mun lighted a lantern, took his own shotgun from its rack, and led the way to the chicken house. He knelt beside the little door by which the chickens left and entered and his muffled word ripped the air.
"Look!"
Harky looked. Seeming to begin and end at the little door, the biggest coon tracks in the world were plain in the soft snow. Ten thousand butterflies churned in his stomach. It was almost as though the whole thing were his fault.
He said, "Old Joe."
Mun glanced queerly at his son, but he made no reply as he held his lantern so it lighted the tracks. Harky trotted behind his father and noted with miserable eyes where Sue's tracks joined Old Joe's. They came to the flood surging over Willow Brook, and just at the edge a whole section of ice had already caved in.
Both sets of tracks ended there.