“I am comfortable here,” said Ezra. “Being comfortable comes from not wanting much. Folks up in town will tell you that I’m worthless and I suppose I am, but who are they to measure worth? They say I do some drinking and that is the honest truth. Couple of times a year I go off on a bender, but I never hurt no one. I never cheated anyone that I can think of.
I’ve never told a lie. I have one real bad failing. I talk too much, but that comes from hardly ever seeing anyone to talk with. When someone does come visiting, it seems that I can’t stop. But enough of that. You came to hear about Ranger’s pal.”
“Asa never told me that creature was Ranger’s pal.”
“Oh, he’s Ranger’s pal all right.”
“But you and Ranger hunt him.”
“Maybe at one time, but not any more. In my younger days, I was a hunter and a trapper. But I haven’t done any of either for several years. I hung up my traps with a feeling of shame that I had ever used them. I still knock over a squirrel every now and then for stew and a rabbit or a grouse. I still hunt some, but only as the Indians hunted: for meat to fill the pot. There are times when I don’t even do that, when I stay my hand. I suppose that as a predator, I have the right to hunt — at least, that is what I tell myself — but I do not have the license to kill, without cause or reason, my brothers of the woods.
Of all the hunting, I liked coon hunting best. Have you ever hunted coon?”
“No, I never have,” said Rila. “I’ve never hunted anything.”
“You hunt coon only in the fall. The dog runs the coon until he puts him up a tree, then you try to locate him in the tree and shoot him. Mostly for his pelt, or, what is worse, for the sport of it — if you can call killing sport. Although when I killed coon, I killed not for the pelt alone, but for eating, too. There are people who believe that coon are not fit to eat, but, I tell you, they are wrong. It’s not the hunting though; it’s the crispness of the autumn night, the sharp briskness of the air, the smell of fallen leaves, the closeness that you feel with nature. That and the thrill of the hunt; for I do admit there is a thrill in hunting.
“But there finally came a time, when Ranger was a pup — and he’s an old dog now — that I quit killing coon. I did not quit the hunting, but I quit the killing.
Ranger went out of nights and we hunted coon. When he put one up a tree, I would hunt it out and aim the gun at it, but I did not pull the trigger. Hunting without shooting, without killing. Ranger didn’t understand at first, but finally he did. I thought that not killing, I might ruin him, but he understood. Dogs can understand a lot if you are patient with them.
“So we hunted without killing, Ranger and I, and, in time, I became aware that there was one coon which led us a sterner chase than any of the others. He knew all the tricks of the hunted and many nights, Ranger was unable to bring him to a tree. Oftener and oftener we ran him, as if he delighted in the chase as much as we — an old buck coon that had become our equal or more than our equal and who was using us as much as we were using him, laughing at us all the while, playing games with us. I admired him, of course. You are compelled to admire a worthy opponent who plays the game as skillfully, or perhaps more skillfully, than you do. But I became a bit angry at him, as well. He was just too good; he was making fools of us. So, finally, not by any conscious decision, but by degrees, I found myself ready, in regard to this particular coon, to abandon my rule to never kill another coon. If Ranger could tree and hold him and I could find him in the tree, I’d kill him and prove, once and for all, which was the better, he or us. You understand that coon hunting is done only in the fall, but that was not true with this particular coon. Many times, in other months of the year, Ranger ran him alone, and there were nights when I’d go out as well. It became a never-ending game between Ranger and the coon, and occasionally I joined in, no matter what the season.”
“How are you sure it was a coon?” asked Rila.
“Ranger might have been running something else — a fox, a wolf.”
Ezra said stiffly, “Ranger would never have hunted anything but a coon. He’s a coon hunter; he comes of a long line of coon dogs.”
I said to Rila, “Ezra’s right. A coon dog is a coon dog. If he runs a rabbit or a fox, he’s worthless as a coon dog. ”
“So you never saw this coon,” Rita said to Ezra, “and you never killed him.”
“But I did. See him, I mean. It was one night, several years ago. Ranger put him up near morning, four o’clock or so, and I finally spotted him, a shape against the sky, crouched on a limb near the top of the tree, making himself flat against the limb, hoping he’d not be seen. I raised the gun, but I was breathing so hard from my run that I couldn’t take good aim.
The muzzle just kept going around and around in little circles. So I lowered the gun and waited until I was breathing easier and he stayed there, crouched on his limb. He must have known that I was there, but he never stirred. Then, finally, I raised the gun again and the aim was steady. I had my finger on the trigger, but I never pulled it. It must have been a minute that I had him in the sights and my finger on the trigger, ready to pull, but I didn’t pull. I don’t know what happened. Looking back on it, I imagine I thought of all the nights of running and how it would be all gone if I pulled the trigger. How, instead of a respected opponent, I’d have no more than a furry body, and how neither one of us again could have the fun of hunting or of being hunted. I don’t remember thinking this, but it must have been what I thought, and when I was at the end of thinking, I brought the gun down. When I put the gun down, the coon up in the tree turned his head and looked at me.
“Now, here’s a funny thing. The tree was tall and the coon was well up in its top. The night was not exactly dark — the sky was brightening with the coming dawn — but the coon was still too far away and the night still too dark to see distinctly the face of any coon. And yet, when he turned his head, I saw his face and it was not a coon’s face. It was more like a cat’s face, although it was not a cat’s face, either. It had whiskers like a cat and even from the distance where I stood, I could see the whiskers. Its face was fat and round and still — this is awful hard to tell and make it sound reasonable — and still it was a sort of bony face, like a skull that was fleshed out. Its eyes were big and round, unblinking, like an owl’s eyes. I should have been scared out of my britches. But I wasn’t. 1 just stood there, looking back at this catlike face, surprised, of course, but not as surprised as I might have been. I believe that all along, without admitting it to myself, without saying it out loud, I had known this thing we had been chasing wasn’t any coon. Then it grinned at me. Don’t ask me how it grinned or how I knew it grinned. I saw no teeth, I’m certain, but I knew it grinned. It had the feeling of a grin. Not a grin at having beaten me and Ranger, but a grin of good fellowship, a grin that said, ‘Haven’t we been having an awful lot of fun?’ And so, I tucked my gun underneath my arm and beaded back for home, with Ranger following me.”
“There’s one thing wrong,” said Rila. “You said that Ranger is a coon dog and will hunt nothing but a coon.”
“That puzzled me, too,” said Ezra. “There were times when I wondered an awful lot about it. That’s why, I suppose, I wouldn’t admit to myself that it wasn’t any coon, even when I must have known it wasn’t. But since that night I told you about, Ranger has run him many times, and sometimes I’ve joined in for the simple fun of it. I’ve seen old Catface around the place, peering at me from a bush or tree, and when he knows I see him, he always grins at me.