The old raider was down in the corn, making ready to rip a shock apart and help himself to the ears, when Duckfoot rushed. With a coon scented, he forgot even the prospect of pork chop bones.
The trail led to Willow Brook. Ranging upstream, Duckfoot found where the big coon had emerged on the far bank and tried to lose his scent in a slough. Duckfoot solved that one. Running like a greyhound when he was on scent and working methodically when he was not, he went on.
Presently, far behind, he heard Glory begin to tongue. Duckfoot set himself to working out another twist in Old Joe's trail.
Beyond any doubt, it would lead to the magic sycamore.
AUTUMN NIGHT
Old Joe scrambled up his magic sycamore and tumbled into his den. Five and a half minutes later Duckfoot arrived to waken the night with his roaring. Old Joe crouched nervously in the leaf-filled den, knowing that at last he had been careless. There were various reasons for his lapse in good judgment, of which the night itself was most important. It was mild autumn, just such a night as sometimes lingered through mid-December and sometimes changed in a few hours to cold winter that brought snow and left Willow Brook ice-locked for another season.
When he started out Old Joe had an uneasy feeling that this was to be, and that tonight would be his last to prowl the Creeping Hills until the February thaw. Uncertainty as to just how far he might venture from a safe den contributed to his carelessness, and he raided Mun Mundee's because his was the only corn left standing in the shock.