The Walker hound stopped for a moment, panting. He heard the other members of his pack a couple hundred yards out, and knew they were still on the deer, so he decided to take a break, as befits a senior dog. The sun was barely visible over the tall pines, but he had been running, leading his pack, since a half-hour before sunrise. He turned nine the previous summer, and early season deer runs were a younger dog’s game. He happily guzzled the water from the creek that flowed slowly out of the tangled woods where the deer was trying to escape.
“Bill? Is that you?” The tri-colored Walker’s head snapped up from the water.
“Well, I’ll be! Ring, how have you been, old buddy?”
The black and tan shook his scarred and torn ears, and slurped a good drink of water.
“Man, I needed that. You know, business as usual. At least we didn’t lose weeks to hurricanes this year. That your crew out there?”
Bill cocked an ear and nodded.
“Yep. Couple new kids in there. One or two have some potential. Another one is dumb as dirt. Got a good voice, though.”
Ring flopped beside the creek. There was a nice patch of moss, and a perfect sunspot for an nap, but he hadn’t seen his old friend since last season, and wanted to catch up on the news.
“We are getting way too old for this. Oh, hold on. Bullet, get over here, boy!”
A young black and tan burst through the gallberry surrounding the old timber cut.
“Where is he?” the overgrown pup said. “Didja find him? Where’s the coon?” Bullet stopped suddenly, and the folds of flesh around his neck seemed to move forward over his eyes. “Oh, hello, sir. Who are you? Are you a coonhound?”
Bill grinned at the awkward six-month-old. Ring sighed.
“Bullet, I told you – we lost that coon in that slough back off the railroad cut. I told you to cut left, not right, and we lost him. Then you had to go chasing that possum. Our human will find us in a bit, though. I heard him honking the horn on the truck. Bill, this is Bullet.”
“Howdy, Bullet.”
“Good day, sir.”
“At least he’s polite,” Bill said.
“He knows I’ll pierce his ears if he ain’t. Bullet, get you a drink. Something you got to learn, boy, is to rest when you can. Run hard when you can’t, and take a drink every chance you get. And never pass a nice fresh deer carcass without gnawing off a steak.”
“Y’all done any good this year?” Bill shrugged.
“Taken a couple meat deer. Only one buck so far. He was a cagey one, but my human’s boy got him. That was his first.” Ring smiled and sighed.
“That’s always the kind I like to see. It’s special, you know? Bullet here, he treed the first night, and our human-boy got a nice boar coon out of it. His daddy is gonna make him a hat out of it.”
“He’ll never forget that,” Bill said.
“I heard the strangest thing the other day,” Ring said, scratching an ear. “Dang, that tick has been driving me crazy. Anyway, those people who live in the holler?”
“The ones with the donkey monster and the killer geese?” Bill laughed. Bullet lifted his ears, and his big brown eyes got wide.
“Killer whats?”
“Yeah, those,” Ring said. “Anyway, they have this little girl hound, cute thing, maybe five months old, and she got in with us the other day. She has a good nose, but gets distracted really easy, and she was lost.
“Well, Lemon – you know old Lemon? – he talked her into running with us for a while. She did pretty good, but couldn’t find her way home.”
“We’ve all been there,” Bill said.
“Yes we have, haven’t we?” Ring said, and glared at Bullet. The young hound shrugged.
“So what happened with the little girl dog? Lemon make her a momma-to-be?” Ring shook his head.
“No, no, nothing like that. She did kind of follow him and his boys home, and ended up staying with them for a few days. Told all kinds of wild tales.”
“What kind of tales?” Bullet asked, sitting up straight and cocking his head.
“Well, this little girl dog – her name is Grace, by the way – said she doesn’t have to hunt, although she wants to. Her humans feed her out of her own bowl, and she gets tablescraps and cookies, too. Her male human found her in the pen, and actually took her home in the backseat of the car. Gave her a treat and everything, made all over her. It was almost embarrassing, Lemon said.”
“Dang,” Bill said.
“On top of that, she has her own piece of furniture in the house, and what beats all is that she sleeps on the bed. All the dogs do.”
“To be sure not,” Bill snorted.
“I ain’t lying, my friend. Now is when it gets really screwy. The humans, they have some other dogs – a couple hound-mutts, a pair of Catahoula-blue ticks that chase bears – and all the dogs sleep in the house. On the bed. The lady human feeds them real cookies, not dog treats, all day long. I don’t mean Nekots from the dashboard of the truck, either. I mean real, storebought cookies.”
“What type of crazy human does such a thing?” Bill said. “Are they liberals or something?”
“That they ain’t,” a scarred redbone said as he limped out of the bushes. “They hunt and trap, and raise other animals. Y’all mind if I join you for a drink? Name’s Beau. Say, you’re Ring – you beat me by about five seconds at the last juried coon hunt. That was a good job, brother. Well done.”
“Thanks, Beau – I remember you. So, do you know these people?”
“Not personally, but their monster donkey ran me off one time. I met a deer hound named Starlight who told me about them, though. She had a sister in Bladen County, where these crazy humans used to live. Said all the hounds around knew about them. They were good for a meal or two, and would let anybody sleep in the house if they were polite. Some of them even had baths, and got the ticks groomed out of their fur.
“And we’re talking real food — Gravy Train with hot water sometimes, that type of thing. Why, the lady human had one who turned up skinny at their house, and she cooked eggs for every day while he was getting well. Can you imagine – a human cooking food for a hunting dog? It’s almost unseemly.
“There’s always bones and things around if you want something to gnaw on. And they ride in the front of the vehicle – not in a dogbox.”
“That tracks,” Ring said, nodding. “Gracie told Lemon that in the summertime, they take her to the lake, and let her sit on a chair in the water with them.”
“Yep,” Beau said, “and they take in old dogs sometimes, too, along with the ones people throw out at the end of the season.”
“I’m glad our humans are better than that,” Bullet said.
“Mine too,” Beau said. “I’m training my human today. He’s a kid, and I had to get lost for a while to teach him a lesson about listening and paying attention. Had his face stuck in his phone when he was supposed to be hunting, so I decided to disappear long enough to make him worry.”
“He have a girlfriend?” Bill asked. Beau nodded and sighed.
“Yep. Girlfriends – and boyfriends – have ruined a lot of good young hunters.” Beau pointed a paw at Bullet. “You remember that, young feller. Someday you might be old and gray like us, and have to teach a kid how to hunt. Keep them away from the opposite sex long as you can.”
A woolyworm caterpillar busily made its way between the hounds. Ring eyed it.
“Thin brown bands, thick black in the middle.”
“Hard winter,” Bill said. Beau and Ring both nodded.
“That’s gonna be rough on these old bones,” Ring said, standing and stretching. He winced and shook one hind leg. “Danged hip wants to pop out. Come on, Bullet. Let’s get back to work. Bill, good to see you. And you as well, Beau. It’s been too long.”
“Coonhunting ground is getting hard to find,” Beau said, “so I expect I’ll see you all again.”
“I’ll sniff around for you,” Bill promised.
Off in the distance, Bill heard the rest of his pack striking a hot trail.
“I better get to work myself. Maybe I’ll see you guys over at Grace’s sometime. Sounds like just the place for old hounds like us.”
