When he climbed a knoll and was able to hear nothing, he no longer doubted. Queenie and Glory were casting for the trail, and Old Joe was the only coon that could keep Queenie puzzled this long. Harky halted.
"Old Joe sure enough," he said out loud.
"Don't you think," Melinda asked calmly, "that we should go directly to his big sycamore?"
Harky jumped like a shot-stung fox. He blinked, not daring to believe she'd kept pace with him but unable to discredit his own eyes. Suddenly he felt far more the plodding turtle than the speeding deer, but he extricated himself as neatly as Old Joe foiled a second-rate hound.
"If I hadn't slowed down on accounta you," he said belligerently, "I'd of been at Old Joe's tree by now."
Melinda said meekly, "I know you were running slowly, Harold, but you needn't have. I could have gone much faster."
Harky gulped and felt his way. Melinda, he decided, must have brought her rabbit's foot with her and probably she'd rolled in a whole field of four-leaf clovers. Beyond any doubt, she'd also observed the phases of the moon and conducted herself accordingly.
"What do you know about Old Joe's sycamore?" he asked.
"What everyone knows," she said casually. "Old Joe runs to it every time he's hard pressed by hounds."
"He's probably lost a thousand hounds and two thousand hunters at that tree," Harky said.