Every time I stopped swinging the ax, she would raise her head and look at me.
IX
BY LATE EVENING THE HAPPY TUNE I HAD BEEN WHISTLING was forgotten. My back throbbed like a stone bruise. The muscles in my legs and arms started quivering and jerking. I couldn't gulp enough air to cool the burning heat in my lungs. My strength was gone. I could go no further.
I sat down and called my dogs to me. With tears in my eyes, I told them that I just couldn't cut the big tree down.
I was trying hard to make them understand when I heard someone coming. It was Grandpa in his buggy.
I'm sure no one in the world can understand a young boy like his grandfather can. He drove up with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile on his whiskery old face.
'Hello! How are you gettin* along?' he boomed.
'Not,so good, Grandpa,' I said. 'I don't think I can cut it down. It's just too big. I guess I'll have to give up.'
'Give up!' Grandpa barked. 'Now I don't want to hear you say that. No, sir, that's the last thing I want to hear. Don't ever start anything you can't finish.'
'I don't want to give up, Grandpa,' I said, 'but it's just too big and my strength's gone. I'm give out.'
'Course you are,' he said. 'You've been going at it wrong. To do work like that a fellow needs plenty of rest and food in his stomach.'
'How am I going to get that, Grandpa?' I asked. 'I can't leave the tree. If I do, the coon will get away.'
'No, he won't,' Grandpa said. 'That's what I came down here for. I'll show you how to keep that coon in the tree.'
He walked around the big sycamore, looking up. He whistled and said, 'Boy, this is a big one all right.'
'Yes, it is, Grandpa,' I said. 'It's the biggest one in the river bottoms.'
Grandpa started chuckling. 'That's all right,' he said. 'The bigger they are the harder they fall.'
'How are you going to make the coon stay in the tree, Grandpa?' I asked.
With a proud look on his face, he said, 'That's another one of my coon-hunting tricks; learned it when I was a boy. We'll keep him there all right. Oh, I don't mean we can keep him there for always, but he'll stay for four or five days. That is, until he gets so hungry he just has to come down.'
'I don't need that much time,' I said. 'I'm pretty sure I can have it down by tomorrow night.'
Grandpa looked at the cut. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Even though it is halfway down, you must remember you've been cutting on it half of one night and one day. You might make it, but it's going to take a lot of chopping.'
'If I get a good night's sleep,' I said, 'and a couple of meals under my belt, I can do a lot of chopping.'
Grandpa laughed. 'Speaking of meals,' he said, 'your ma is having chicken and dumplings for supper. Now we don't want to miss that, so let's get busy.'
'What do you want me to do, Grandpa?' I asked.
'Well, let's see,' he said. 'First thing we'll need is some sticks about five feet long. Take your ax, go over in that canebrake, and get us six of them.'
I hurried to do what Grandpa wanted, all the time wondering what in the world he was going to do. How could he keep the coon in the tree?
When I came back, he was taking some old clothes from the buggy, 'Take this stocking cap,' he said. 'Fill it about half-full of grass and leaves.'
While I was doing this, Grandpa walked over and started looking up in the tree. 'You're pretty sure he's in that hollow limb, are you?' he asked.
'He's there all right, Grandpa,' I said. 'There's no other place he could be. I've looked all over it and there's no other hollow anywhere.'
