SUE
After Mun and Harky entered the house, Precious Sue crawled into her nest on the porch. The nest was an upended wooden packing case with a door cut in front and a strip of horse blanket hanging over the door to keep the wind out. The nest was carpeted with other strips of discarded horse blanket.
On cold nights, Sue shoved the dangling strip over the door aside with her nose, went all the way in, let the horse blanket drop, and cared little how the wind blew. Tonight, after due observance of the canine tradition that calls for turning around three times before lying down, she stuck her nose under the blanket, lifted it, and went to sleep with her body inside but her head out. Her blissful sigh just before she dozed off was her way of offering thanks for such a comfortable home.
It was not for Sue to understand that in more ways than one the dog's life might well be the envy of many a human. She had never wondered why she'd been born or if life was worth living; she'd been born to hunt coons, and every coon hunter, whether biped or quadruped, found life eminently worth living.
Though she often dreamed of her yesterdays, they were always pleasant dreams, and she never fretted about her tomorrows.
Five seconds after she went to sleep, Sue was reliving one of her yesterdays.
She was hot after a coon, a big old boar that was having a merry time raiding Mun Mundee's shocked corn until Sue rudely interrupted. The coon was a wanderer from far across the hills, and last night, with three hounds on his trail, he had wandered unusually fast. When he finally came to Mun's corn, he was hungry enough to throw caution to the winds. And he knew nothing about Precious Sue.
He did know how to react when she burst upon him suddenly. Running as though he had nothing on his mind except the distance he might put between Sue and himself, the coon shifted abruptly from full flight to full stop. It was a new maneuver to Sue. She jumped clear over the coon and rolled three times before she was able to recover.
By the time she was ready to resume battle, the coon was making fast tracks toward a little pond near the cornfield. With a six-foot lead on Sue, he jumped into the pond. When Sue promptly jumped in behind him, the coon executed a time-hallowed maneuver, sacred to all experienced coons that are able to entice dogs into the water. He swam to and sat on Sue's head.