Mun Mundee had firm opinions concerning the proper way to milk a cow or do anything else, and when other arguments failed he enforced his ideas with the flat of his hand. Harky sighed again. Old Brindle, far and away the orneriest of Mun's five cows and probably anyone else's, had teats remarkably like the fingers of a buckskin glove that has been left out in the rain and then dried in the sun. Coaxing the last squirts of milk from her probably was not so hard as squeezing apple juice from a rock, but it certainly ran a close second.
Since there was no alternative, Harky beguiled the anything-but-fleeting moments with the comforting reflection that winter, after all, was one of his favorite seasons. It could not compare with autumn, when corn rustled crisply in the shock and dogs sniffed about for scent of the coons that always raided shocked corn. Nor did it equal early spring, when trout streams were ice-free and the earth still too wet for plowing.
But it was far ahead of late spring and summer, with their endless farm tasks, each of which was worse than the other. Only by exercising the greatest craft and diligence, and manfully preparing himself for the chastisement he was sure to get when he finally came home, could a man sneak away for a bit of fishing or swimming.
Harky bent his head toward Old Brindle's flank but his thoughts whisked him out of the stable into the hills.
Shotgun in hand, he'd spent a fair portion of yesterday tracking a bobcat on the snow. It was a proved fact that a man on foot cannot catch up with a bobcat that is also on foot. But it was not to be denied that all bobcats have a touch of moon madness. They knew when they were being tracked, but they also knew when the tracker ceased following, and that kindled a fire in their heads.
As long as they were tracked they were comfortable in the knowledge that they had only to keep running. When the tracker stopped, it threw the bobcat's whole plan out of gear. They imagined all sorts of ambushes, and cunning traps, and finally they worked themselves into such a frenzy that they just had to come back along their own tracks and find out what was happening. It followed that the hunter had nothing to do except rile the bobcat into a lather and then sit down and wait.
Harky had waited. But he must have done something wrong, or perhaps the bobcat he followed had not been sufficiently moonstruck. Though it had come back, it had not been so anxious to find Harky that it forgot everything else. Harky had glimpsed it across a gully, two hundred yards away and hopelessly beyond shotgun range. If only he had a rifle—
He hadn't any, and the last time he'd sneaked Mun's out his father had caught him coming back with it. The hiding that followed—Mun used a hickory gad instead of the flat of his hand—was something a man wouldn't forget if he lived to be older than the rocks on Dewberry Knob. Harky lost himself in a beautiful dream.
Walking along Willow Brook, he accidentally kicked and overturned a rock. Beneath it, shiny-bright as they had been the day the forgotten bandit buried them, was a whole sack full of gold pieces. At once Harky hurried into town and bought a rifle, not an old 38-55 like his father's but a sleek new bolt action with fancy carving on breech and forearm. When he brought it home, Mun asked, rather timidly, if he might use it. No, Pa, Harky heard himself saying. It's not that I care to slight you but this rifle is for a hunter like me.
The shining dream was shattered by Mun's, "You done, Harky?"