Amateur hounds, and some that were not amateurs, nearly always drowned when the battle took this turn, but to Sue it was kindergarten stuff. Rather than struggle to surface for a breath of air, she yielded and let herself sink. The coon, no doubt congratulating himself on an absurdly easy victory, let go. Sue came up beneath him, nudged him with her nose to lift him clear of the water, clamped her jaws on his neck, and marked another star on her private scoreboard.
Of such heady stuff were her dreams made, and dreams sustained her throughout the long winter, spring, and summer, when as a rule she did not hunt. She could have hunted. There were bears, foxes, bobcats, and a variety of other game animals in the Creeping Hills. All were beneath the notice of a born coon hound who knew as much about coons as any mortal creature can and who didn't want to know anything else.
The squawking chicken brought her instantly awake. The wind was blowing from the house toward Willow Brook, so that she could get no scent. But she pin-pointed the sound, and she'd heard too many chickens squawk in the night not to know exactly what they meant. Seconds later she was on Old Joe's trail.
She knew the scent, for she had been actively hunting for the past five years and had run Old Joe an average of six times a year. But she saw him in a different light from the glow in which he was bathed by Mun and Harky Mundee. To them he was part coon and part legend. To Sue, though he was the biggest, craftiest, and most dangerous she had ever trailed, he was all coon and it was a point of honor to run him up a tree.
When she came to Willow Brook, she saw the flood surging over the ice and recognized it for the hazard it was. But except when they climbed trees or went to earth in dens too small for her to enter, Sue had never hesitated to follow where any coon led. She jumped in behind Old Joe, and fate, in the form of the south wind, decided to play a prank.
Ice over which Old Joe had passed safely a couple of seconds before cracked beneath Sue. The snarling current broke the one big piece into four smaller cakes and one of them, rising on end, fell to scrape the side of Sue's head. Had it landed squarely it would have killed her. Glancing, it left her dazed, but not so dazed that she was bereft of all wit.
Sue had swum too many creeks and ponds, and fought too many coons in the water, not to know exactly how to handle herself there. Impulse bade her surrender to the not at all unpleasant half dream in which she found herself. Instinct made her fight on.
Swept against unbroken ice, she hooked both front paws over it. Then she scraped with her hind paws and, exerting an effort born of desperation, fought her way back to the overflow surging on top of the ice. Once there, still dazed and exhausted by the battle to save herself, she could do nothing except keep her head above flood water that carried her more than two miles downstream and finally cast her up on the bank.
For an hour and a half, too weak even to stand, Sue lay where the water had left her. Then, warned by half-heard but fully sensed rumblings and grindings, she alternately walked and crawled a hundred yards farther back into the forest and collapsed at the base of a giant pine. With morning she felt better.
Still shaky, but able to walk, she stood and remembered. Last night Old Joe had come raiding. She had followed him to Willow Brook and lost the trail there, thus leaving unfinished business that by everything a coon hound knew must be finished. Sue returned to Willow Brook and sat perplexedly down with her tail curled about her rear legs.