“No.” There was a quiet assurance in Patience’s tone. “We’ve made no sound. It isn’t us they hear. It’s that coon. They’ll race over to that tree and bay up at it if the men’ll let ’em, and I think they will.”
“And then they’ll get on our scent and—and it will all be over!” Marion’s teeth were chattering in spite of her.
That this was a possibility she had not thought of was told by the long moment of silence before the mountain girl spoke.
“Well, they might,” she whispered, measuring her words, “but a hound’s a hound, and all hounds love to bay a coon tree. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Waiting out there in the dark forest with every least sound, the flutter of a bird or the movement of some small living thing in the grass at their feet giving them a start, was not the easiest thing in the world. Indeed, Marion found it almost the hardest.
Now and again there came the call of the coon, then the booming of the hounds.
“Why don’t they let them go?” Patience murmured impatiently. “If they don’t; if—”
She paused in the midst of a sentence to listen. Then in a joyous whisper she exclaimed:
“There! There they go!”
It was true. As Marion strained her ears she caught the sound of the hounds tearing away through the brush.