Mellie contemplated scooping up more pebbles for more sharpshooting, but where was the fun when he just couldn't miss? Glumly he reviewed the sin for which he must one day answer.
He should not, he told himself, ever have sent Melinda to take Glory on the coon hunt. But how was he to know they'd get Old Joe up in his magic sycamore? Could he possibly have had forewarning of the fact that Melinda would not only question the witchery of Old Joe and his magic tree, but infect the minds of her male companions with her own skepticism? Could anyone guess that the hallowed traditions of the Creeping Hills coon hunters would topple simply because a girl took part in a coon hunt?
Mellie shook his head sadly. Melinda, not exactly a woman, was not exactly a girl either. She was, Mellie told himself, old enough to cast the monkey wrench that usually lands in the gears whenever women intrude on affairs that by every law of God and nature belong exclusively to men.
The wreckage had been fearful indeed; Mun Mundee laid up with a broken leg; Raw Stanfield and Butt Johnson afraid to show their faces on the lower reaches of Willow Brook; Harky Mundee mad as a trapped mink; and Melinda explaining blithely that hunting raccoons was indeed good sport.
Mellie buried his face in his hands and shook with anguish. He was not, he told himself honestly, as ashamed as he should be because he had thrown such a destructive bomb among the Creeping Hills coon hunters. But that a Garson, even a female Garson, should refer to the art of coon hunting as mere "good sport" shook the very foundations of everything in which Mellie had faith.
Glory, who had been dozing in the sun, rose and prowled restlessly over to snuffle at the woodpile. Mellie regarded her with an experienced eye.
Melinda might lack a true appreciation of coon hunting, but she'd certainly given him a thorough rundown on Glory. A slow starter and slow hunter, Melinda had said, and she tongued on the trail. But she was steady as a church and true as a homing pigeon. She was every bit as good as Queenie, and with a little experience she'd be better. A year from now, any coon Glory got on would be treed or run to earth.
Mellie had a sudden, uncomfortable feeling that he himself could not have found out so much about Glory in just one hunt. Or if he had, he'd be inclined to doubt until Glory proved herself. But he'd accepted Melinda's evaluation without the slightest question, and now as he looked at Glory he knew a rising uneasiness.
A good thing was never to be taken for granted, and there was much that could happen to any hunting hound; Mellie had only to remember Precious Sue. Though he fervently hoped she wouldn't, Glory might go the same way, and where would he find another coon hound of equal quality? There was only one source.
However, there was a great deal involved. It was blasphemy even to think in terms of ordinary coon dogs when Glory was simultaneously in mind. There were only two hounds on Willow Brook worthy of her, Thunder and Duckfoot. Things being as they were, even if all else were equal, it was unlikely that Butt Johnson would bring either his hound or himself within nine miles of the Garsons, or anything that belonged to the Garsons.