Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/101

Rh was a dog ready fur him. An' then they had it lively, an' the other dogs they jumped in, an' thar was a purty big splashin' an' plungin' an' bitin' in that thar creek; an' I was jist a-goin to push through an' holler fur the other fellers to come an' see the fun, when that thar 'coon he got off! He jist licked them dogs—the meanest dogs we had along—an' put fur the other bank, an' that was the end o' him. 'Coons is a good deal like folks—it don't pay to call none uv 'em fools till ye 're done seein' what they're up to.

"Well, as I tell ye, we was then nigh the crick; but soon as we lef' the widder's woods we struck off from it, fur none uv us, 'specially the niggers, wanted to go nigh 'Lijah Parker's. Reckon ye don't know 'Lijah Parker. Well, he lives 'bout three mile from here on the crick; an' he was then, an' is now, jist the laziest man in the whole world. He had two or three big red oaks on his place thet he wanted cut down, but was too durned lazy to do it; an' he hadn't no money to hire anybody to do it, nuther, an' he was too stingy to spend it ef he'd had it. So he know'd ther' was a-goin to be a 'coon-hunt one night; an' the evenin' before he tuk a 'coon his boy'd caught in a 'possum-trap, an' he put a chain aroun' its body, and pulled it through his woods to one of his red oak trees. Then he let the 'coon climb up a little ways, an' then he jerked him down ag'in, and pulled him over to another tree, and so on, till he'd let him run up three big trees. Then his boy got a box, an' they put the 'coon in an' carried him home. Uv course, when the dogs come inter his woods—an' he know'd they was a-goin to do