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The dogs were just about to lose their track, and Mr. Richard was losing his patience fast. I shifted my weight from side to side and tried to kick some feeling back into my numb toes. In February, when the clock gets close to midnight, the wind that comes whistling through the hardwood timber sends a shiver down a man’s back. We were standing on the edge of Muckaloon Creek, a small tendril of water that travels slowly through canebrakes and cypress on its way to the Yocona River, the biggest body of water around Tula, Miss., and the bank where we stood was slippery with frozen mud. Ice crystals had been forced out of the ground by the freezing and thawing turns that the water had taken. After three hours of bumping and splashing in and out of the creek, we were convinced that our three experienced hounds had jumped something besides a coon. There was nothing we could do but wait.

“They must be running a cat, Larry,” Mr. Richard said.

“Yes sir,” I answered with another shiver. “They must be. Something’s sure got ’em messed up.”

We were tired from fighting our way through wicked patches of briers and buckvine that tore at our hands and faces. The only way to get through the worst places was to back in, letting our thick coats take the thorns. Mr. Richard’s waders had a hole punched in the right knee and had already been in water higher than that several times. I could hear ice water squishing between his toes every time he took a step, but he didn’t complain.

The year was 1968, and as a high-school junior, I had to attend school the next day. Richard Grimes had to be on his job at the state highway department at seven o’clock sharp. Old Rock, Mr. Richard’s white-footed redbone, was having a hard time following the track. Whenever his voice rolled through the big timber, it sounded unsure and questioning. Red, his littermate, and Smokey, my young bluetick, were chiming in and helping when they could.

“Boy,” he said, “your mama’s liable to skin my head for keeping you out this late on a school night.”

“Aw, she won’t say nothing,” I said, even though I knew she probably would. My English grades were directly affected by the number of times we took the dogs out during the week. They dropped low enough during my senior year that my teachers denied me a diploma, but at that point in my life, I honestly believe I loved coonhunting as much as any man could. The voices of the dogs as they tore through a cotton patch or creek bottom, going all out, so close you could hear their bodies crashing through the brush, filled me with a thrill like no other endeavor, certainly not homework or school.

The dogs were running a little better now and moving away, so we walked on down in the bottom to get closer. They finally got it straightened out and got a pretty good race going, and we just stood and listened for a while. I knew it had to be past midnight by now, but I didn’t say anything. I’d learned a long time before that when you went coonhunting, there were no set hours. You might catch one in an hour and you might stay out until daylight. It all depended on the dogs.

The trees around us were tall and dark. Their naked branches were outlined against the blanket of stars above them. The dogs suddenly stopped running and the woods were quiet for a few seconds. Then Old Rock opened up with a steady, hammering chop that said, Treed!

“That’s it, Larry,” Mr. Richard said.

“Yes sir, I believe it is. Old Smokey’s even barking a little.”

“Let’s get to ’em,” he said, and we headed that way.

Our six-volt lanterns picked out a narrow trail of light through the frozen woods. In places, the mud was hard as rocks. The dogs’ voices got louder as we got closer and they started barking harder when they saw our lights coming through the darkness. Rock was treed solid with his two white feet up on the trunk of a huge old slick-barked oak. It was covered with vines that climbed all the way to the top and twined and twisted among the limbs. Smokey and Red barked a few times, but Rock was our main tree dog. The walls of Mr. Richard’s den were covered with trophies that that old dog had won in club hunts against some pretty stiff competition.

The temperature must have been hovering in the 20s by that time, and I tried not to think about the warm spot in my bed next to my little brother, Darrell. Instead I turned my light up into the darkness, trying to shine the coon’s eyes.