"And how you gonna climb?" Harky demanded.
"Just cut one of these smaller trees, brace it against the crotch of the sycamore, and shinny up it," Melinda asserted.
Harky said nothing because this purely revolutionary scheme left him speechless.
Old Joe's uneasiness mounted. Though he understood no part of the conversation, he had no doubt that a new force had invaded coon hunts. The men who'd always come to his magic sycamore had been happy just to get there, proud of hounds able to track Old Joe so far, and amenable to the idea that neither hounds nor humans could further cope with a coon that was part witch.
Old Joe didn't know what she was, but Melinda was definitely not a man. The rest of the hunters arrived, but before they could begin their ritual that had to do with the invincibility of Old Joe, Melinda threw her bombshell.
"I was telling Harold," she said brightly, "that Old Joe has a den somewhere in this big sycamore. Why don't we fell a smaller tree, brace it against the sycamore, and shinny up to find out?"
"By gum!" Mun said.
As soon as the three men recovered from this flagrant violation of everything right and proper, Old Joe heard the sound of an axe. A tree was toppled, trimmed, and leaned against the sycamore.
"Let me go up, Pa," Harky said.
Mun asserted, "If anybody's goin' to have fust look at Old Joe's den, it'll be me."