Glory rose to meet them when they went out on the porch. Harky paused just long enough to listen, and went on. Now he was fairly certain that Duckfoot was again on Old Joe, for an ordinary coon would have been up, within hearing, before this. Without a backward glance, Harky moved toward the shocked corn.
Glory trotted away and began to tongue as she found scent. She ran directly to Willow Brook, was silent as she cast for the trail, and resumed tonguing when she found it. Harky determined her direction.
"They're on Old Joe again," Melinda pronounced. "We'll save time by going directly to his big sycamore."
Disdaining to answer, for he had been on the point of dazzling Melinda with this very suggestion, Harky started to run. He no longer deluded himself that he was the rushing wind, or even a racing deer, for the last time he'd entertained such notions Melinda had accused him of running slowly. But he knew a direct route to Old Joe's witch tree and a blackberry thicket on the way.
He crashed through it, holding the .22 and the axe across his chest and a little in front to divert the whipping canes, and he grunted with satisfaction when he heard Melinda gasp. Harky steered a course to Willow Brook.
There was a log there, a fallen pine that spanned a shallow pool, and it made an adequate bridge except during flood time. Harky held the lantern high, jumped on the log, and at once began a wild effort to keep his footing.
The night had turned colder. Running, he hadn't noticed the lower temperature or thought the log would be ice coated. His luck held. Harky danced to the far bank, jumped off the log, and continued running.
Duckfoot was tonguing at Old Joe's magic sycamore. Presently Glory joined him. Harky wondered. Duckfoot, who had been roaring constantly and furiously, suddenly began to yap like a puppy, and Glory trilled her tree bark. It seemed that even hounds were bewitched when girls horned in on coon hunts, but they had Old Joe up once again.
Reaching the sycamore, Harky discovered the two hounds alternately barking up the tree and cavorting around each other, with far more emphasis on the latter. A sudden suspicion entered Harky's mind. It was a good thing Duckfoot had run ahead of Glory or neither would have reached Old Joe's witch tree.
Harky felled a smaller tree. The lesser branches he sliced off at the trunk, the larger ones he stubbed to serve as hand- and foot-holds. With some effort, he leaned his ladder tree against the sycamore and turned to Melinda. The time for explaining was here.