Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/89

Rh afore, nur never sence. I was a-livin' over in Powhattan, and the 'coon was Haskinses 'coon. They called him Haskinses 'coon, because he was 'most allus seen somewhere on ole Tom Haskinses farm. Tom's dead now, an' so is the 'coon; but the farm's thar, an' I'm here, so ye kin b'lieve this story, jist as ef it was printed on paper. It was the most confoundedest queer 'coon anybody ever see in all this whole world. An' the queerness was this: it hadn't no stripes to its tail. Now ye needn't say to me that no 'coon was ever that way, fur this 'coon was, an' that settles it. All 'coons has four or five brown stripes a-runnin' roun' their tails,—all 'cept this one 'coon uv Haskinses. An' what's more, this was the savagest 'coon anybody ever did see in this whole world. That's what sot everybody huutin' him; fur the savager a coon is, an' the more grit ther' is in him, the more's the fun when he comes to fight the dogs—fur that's whar the fun comes in. An' ther' is 'coons as kin lick a whole pack o' dogs, an' git off; and this is jist what Haskiuses 'coon did, lots o' times. I b'lieve every nigger in the county, an' pretty much half the white men, had been out huntin' that 'coon, and they'd never got him yit. Ye see he was so derned cunnin' an' gritty, that when ye cut his tree down, he'd jist go through the dogs like a wasp in a Sunday school, an' git away, as I tell ye. He must a' had teeth more'n an inch long, and he had a mighty tough bite to him. Quick, too, as a black-snake. Well, they never got him, no how; but he was often seed, fur he'd even let a feller as hadn't a gun with him git a look at him in