"Hope ya fall in the mud, an' I'll stomp on your head if ya do!" Harky said.
"Harky!" This time Mun voiced a full-throated roar. "Mind your tongue!"
"Le's get coon huntin'," Raw Stanfield choked. "Le's do anything long's we git out of here!"
OLD JOE UP
Raw Stanfield with the lantern, Butt Johnson with a torch for shining treed coons and a .22 rifle for plinking them out of the trees, Mun with his coon-hunting axe, Melinda with serene self-assurance, and Harky with a miserable feeling that it couldn't be very long now before the whole world went to pot, they set off through the night.
Misery was Harky's only feeling. If he had another, he told himself sourly, he wouldn't dare put stock in it. When girls horned in on coon hunts anything could happen and it probably would.
Harky comforted himself with thoughts of what can happen on coon hunts. He had a soul-satisfying vision of a cold, wet, mud-spattered, and hungry Melinda wandering through the night pleading for Harky to come to her succor. Harky heard, but he let her wander until the last possible second. Then, just as she was about to sink into mud from which she would never rise had it not been for valiant Harky, he lifted her to her feet, took her home, and scuffed scornful feet on Mellie Garson's threshold.