At twenty minutes past nine on a Friday night, just after the dark of moon, an owl in the topmost branches of the huge hollow sycamore saw Old Joe come out of his den.

The ancient sycamore's trunk, rooted in gravel beside a brooding slough filled with treacherous sand bars, was five feet in diameter at the base. With only a slight taper, it rose for twenty-five feet to the first crotch. Peering down through leafless twigs and branches, the owl saw the entrance to Old Joe's den as a gaping dark hole squarely in the center of the crotch.

The owl was not aware of the precise second when the hole became filled. It was an unnerving thing, for the owl had long ago learned that it is the part of wisdom to know what comes and to recognize it when it appears, and because he was startled he fluttered his wings.

He recovered almost instantly, but remained tense and alert. A noted raider himself, the owl was the rankest of amateurs compared with the old boar coon whose masked face filled the den's entrance and whose black nose quivered as it tested the night scents.

Old Joe, the biggest, craftiest, fightingest coon in the Creeping Hills, had slept in the hollow sycamore since the frigid blasts of mid-December had draped the hills with snow and locked the ponds and creeks in ice. But it was as impossible for him to remain asleep during this January thaw as it was for the sycamore not to stir its roots and make ready to feed new sap to its budding leaves.

He came all the way out and sat in the crotch. A little more than thirty-six inches long from the end of his tapering nose to the tip of his ringed tail, he stood thirteen inches high at the shoulder and weighed a pound for every inch of length. His fur, shading from light gray to deep black, was lustrous and silky.

The owl saw beneath these external appearances and knew Old Joe for what he was: part burglar, part devil, and part imp.

The owl flew away. He knew his superior when he met him.

Old Joe, who'd seen the owl in the upper branches before that night-faring pirate knew he was coming out, did not even bother to glance up. Owls, the terror of small birds and beasts, merited only contempt from one who'd been born with a knowledge of the pirate's craft and had refined that knowledge to an art. Old Joe would happily rob the owl's nest and eat his mate's eggs when and if he could find them, and if he had nothing more important to do. This night there was much of importance that cried for his attention.

Like all raiders with enemies that plot their downfall, he'd attended to his first duty before he ever showed himself. With only his nose protruding from the den, he'd read the stories the wind carried and found nothing he must hide from, or match wits with, in any part of it. The wind had intensified his excitement and increased the urge that had awakened him and sent him forth.

Last night the wind had purred out of the north, bringing intense cold that made trees crack like cannon shots, but tonight the wind was directly out of the south. The snow blanket sagged, and damp little rivulets, from melting snow that had gathered on the upper branches, crept down the sycamore's trunk. Winter was not broken. But it was breaking, and there would never be a better reason for waking up and faring forth.

Old Joe attended to his second duty. While winter had its way in the Creeping Hills, he had slept snug and warm in the hollow trunk of the old sycamore. His fur was more disheveled than any proper coon should ever permit, and meticulous as any cat, Old Joe set to grooming himself.

The sycamore was anything but a casually chosen den. The men who lived in the Creeping Hills, small farmers for the most part, did so because they preferred the backwoods to anywhere else. For recreation they turned to hunting, and Old Joe had run ahead of too many coon hounds not to understand the whys and wherefores of such.

With a hound on his trail, any coon that did not know exactly what he was doing would shortly end up as a pelt tacked to the side of a barn and roast coon in the oven. Hounds could not climb trees, but the hunters who accompanied the hounds carried lights, guns, and axes. A coon that sought safety in a tree that had no hollow would be "shined" and either shot out or shaken out to be finished by the hounds. Most trees that were hollow were not proof against axes.

The sycamore was perfect. The slough at the bottom, with its shifting sand bars, could be navigated in perfect safety by anything that knew what it was doing. Old Joe did. Most hounds did not. Many that recklessly flung themselves into the slough, when they were hot on Old Joe's trail, had come within a breath of entering that Heaven which awaits all good coon hounds.

Even if a hound made its way to the base of the sycamore, and some had, Old Joe was still safe. Hunters who would enthusiastically fell smaller trees recoiled before this giant. The most skilled axeman would need hours to chop it down. Climbing the massive trunk, unless one were equipped with climbing tools, was impossible.

If anyone tried to climb or chop, and so far no one had, Old Joe had an escape. The west fork above the crotch probed another thirty feet into the air before its branches became too small to support a heavy coon. One solid limb leaned over a high and rocky ledge in which was the entrance to an underground tunnel. This tunnel had two exits, one leading to a tangled mass of brush and the other to a swamp. Old Joe could, as he had proved many times, drop directly from the overhanging limb into the tunnel's entrance.

So far, though most coon hunters of the Creeping Hills knew that Old Joe sometimes climbed the sycamore when he was hard-pressed, none even suspected that he stayed there. From ground level the trunk did not look hollow, and since no one had ever seen fit to climb the tree, none had ever seen the den entrance in the crotch. It was commonly supposed that once Old Joe was in the sycamore he climbed out on one of the branches overhanging the slough and dropped in.

Not all coon hunters believed that. Mellie Garson and a few others whose hounds had been good enough to trail Old Joe to the sycamore swore that once he reached the topmost branches the old coon simply sprouted wings and flew away.

The last hair finally, and perfectly, in place, Old Joe came out of the tree. This he accomplished by utilizing a natural stairway that benign providence seemed to have provided just for him.

Long ago, a bolt of lightning had split the sycamore from crotch to ground level. Over the years, save for a seam where the spreading bark had finally met, the tree had healed itself. The seam was no wider or deeper than the thickness of a man's thumb, but it was enough for Old Joe.

Bracing one handlike forepaw against the side, and bringing the other up behind it, he sought and found a grip with his rear paws and descended head first. His grip was sure, but he hadn't the slightest fear of falling anyway. Often he had fallen or jumped from greater heights, onto hard ground, without the least injury to himself.

He descended safely, as he had known he would, and when he was near the ground he halted and extended a front paw to touch the thawing snow. Old Joe chittered his pleasure.

Nature, in designing him, seemed to have started with a small bear in mind. Then she decided to incorporate portions of the beaver and otter, and at the last minute included certain characteristics of the monkey plus a few whims of her own. With a bear's rear paws and a monkey's hands, Old Joe was at home in the trees. But he found his life in the water and took a fair portion of his living from it. He had had his last swim in Willow Brook the night before it froze, and that was too long to go without a bath.

Old Joe buried both front paws in the soggy snow, then let go with his rear ones and rolled over and over. He rose with dripping fur and racing blood, not even feeling the cold.

The proper course now would be to smooth his fur by rubbing his whole body against the trunk of the nearest tree, but he was too wise to return to the sycamore. Old Joe had long since learned that he left telltale hairs wherever he rubbed, and coon hairs on a tree are an open book to even a semi-skilled woodsman. Old Joe made a belly dive into a puddle of slush, exulting in the spray that scattered.

He knew also that he was leaving tracks, but he did not care. He had no intention of returning to the sycamore tonight and perhaps not for many nights, and coon tracks meant only that a coon had passed this way. Besides, tracks would disappear when the snow melted. Hair clinging to the sycamore's bark would not.

Old Joe went happily on.

Though he had eaten nothing in almost seven weeks, he was not especially hungry, and hunger alone never would have driven him from the den tree. There was something else: an irresistible urge that he could not have denied if he would. Old Joe was on the most important and compelling of all missions, a mission that had begun when time began and would endure until time ended. On this warm night, he must go out simply because he could not stay.

With little side excursions here and there, but always heading directly into the wind, he traveled almost due south. When a bristled dog fox barred his path, Old Joe did not swerve at all. The fox bared its fangs, snapped its jaws, and at the last second, yielded the right of way.

The Creeping Hills were Joe's beat and would remain his beat. He would go where he pleased, for he feared no other wild creature. Even his distant cousins, the black bears that shared the Creeping Hills with him, had never succeeded in keeping Old Joe from where he wished to venture. The bears were bigger and stronger than he, but they could not climb so fast nor swim so far, and they did not know all the hiding places that Old Joe had discovered before his second birthday.

Old Joe was a match for anything in the Creeping Hills except hunters with guns. Hunters were to be parried with wits rather than force, since force alone could never hope to prevail against firearms. But hunters gave spice to what, at times, might have been a monotonous existence. The chase was usually as welcome to Old Joe as it was to any hounds or hunters that had ever pursued him.

Three-quarters of a mile from the sycamore, Old Joe halted and gravely examined a new scene.

The slough at the base of the sycamore remained frozen. But Willow Brook, with its due proportion of still pools and snarling riffles, had overflowed the ice that covered it and had surged up on both banks. No more than two yards from the tip of Old Joe's nose, three forlorn willow trees seemed to shiver on a high knoll that was ordinarily dry, but that was now a lonely little island besieged by the overflow from Willow Brook.

Quivering with delight, Old Joe rippled forward. He belly-splashed into the water, swam across, and climbed the knoll. He rubbed himself against each of the willows, groaning with the luxury of such a massage. Then he jumped down the other side of the knoll, plunged into the swift water that flowed over Willow Brook's ice, and without yielding an inch to the current emerged on the far bank. There he halted.

The owl that had sat in the top branches of the sycamore and watched Old Joe come out of his den had known that he was part burglar, part devil, and part imp. The owl had not known that, depending on circumstances, Old Joe could be any of these three without regard to the other two. Reaching the far bank, he was all imp.

He knew everything about the Creeping Hills, including the location of each farm, the character of the farmer and his family, the gardens planted and the crops that would grow, and the number and species of livestock.

A sagging barbed-wire fence two yards from the edge of Willow Brook marked the border of the Mundee farm. Its proprietor was Arthur Mundee, but because no man in the Creeping Hills was ever called by his given name, his neighbors knew him as Mun. He had a thirteen-year-old son named Harold and called Harky, and a wife who had gone to her eternal peace seven years ago. Next in importance was a hound, a bluetick named Precious Sue. Mun Mundee was a coon hunter so ardent that hunting coons was almost a passion, and Precious Sue one of the few hounds that had ever tracked Old Joe to the great sycamore. This had not impressed Old Joe unduly, or created any special fear of either Mun Mundee or Precious Sue.

After a moment's concentration, Old Joe ran his tongue over his lips. Mun Mundee owned some horses, some cattle, and some pigs. He also owned some chickens. Old Joe had not been hungry when he left the sycamore, but neither had he expected an opportunity to confound Mun Mundee. Old Joe licked his lips a second time. When he thought of the chickens, he was suddenly ravenous.

He left Willow Brook and crawled under the barbed-wire fence. He did not slink or hesitate, for he had chosen his night well; the waning moon left complete darkness behind it. The Mundees would be asleep in their house and Precious Sue on the porch. Nobody hunted coons in winter.

Walking boldly, but with not so much as a whisper of sound on the thawing snow, Old Joe saw as soon as the farm came in sight that his analysis was correct. The house was dark. The Mundees and Precious Sue were asleep. Cattle and horses shuffled in their stalls and pigs grunted sleepily in their sty.

Old Joe went straight to the chicken house, and licked his lips a third time as the odor of sleeping chickens delighted his nostrils.

He did not hesitate but went straight to the small door that let the chickens in and out. It was a sliding door that could be raised or lowered, and it was a combination with which Old Joe had long been familiar. He slipped a front paw beneath the door, raised it, entered the chicken house, and let the door slide shut behind him.

The inside of Mun Mundee's chicken house, like the other chicken houses in the Creeping Hills, was familiar. Old Joe climbed to the roost, and a fat white hen clucked sleepily as she sensed something alien beside her. Almost gently Old Joe opened his mouth, closed it on the fat hen's neck, and leaped lightly to the floor with his plunder. He let himself out the same way he got in.