Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/100

90 pay no 'tention to him, but jist started off ag'in. Ther' is niggers as b'lieve the debbil gits after people that hunt 'possums, but Uncle Pete never b'lieved that when he was a-goin' to git the 'possum. Ther' wasn't no chance fur him this night, but he had to come along all the same, as I tell ye.

"'Twa'n't half an hour arter we started ag'in afore we found a 'coon, but 'twa'n't Haskinses 'coon. We was near the crick, when the dogs got arter him, an' inste'd o' gittin' up a tree, he run up inter the roots uv a big pine thet had been blown down, and was a-layin' half in the water. The brush was mighty thick jist here; an' some uv us thought it was another 'possum, an' we kep' back most uv the dogs, fur we didn't want 'em to carry us along that creek-bank arter no 'possum. But some o' the niggers, with two or three dogs, pushed through the bushes, and one feller clurn up inter the roots uv the tree, an' out jumped Mr. 'Coon. He hadn't no chance to git off any other way than to clim' down some grape-vines that was a-hangin' from the tree inter the water. So he slips down one o' them, an' as he was a-hangin' on like a sailor a-goin' down a rope, I got a look at him through the bushes, an' I see plain enough by the light-wood torch thet he wa'n't Haskinses 'coon. He had the commonest kinds o' bands on his tail.

"Well, that thar 'coon he looked like he was about the biggest fool uv a coon in this whole world. He come down to the water, as ef he thought a dog couldn't swim, an' ef that's what he did think he foun' out his mistake as soon as he teched the water, fur thar