Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/91

Rh 'em didn't get back home till arter dark, Saturday. That was the way we used to hunt.

"Well, I got up my party, and we went out arter Haskinses 'coon. We started out pretty soon arter supper. Ole Tom Haskins himself was along, because, uv course, he wanted to see his 'coon killed; an' ther' was a lot of other fellers that you wouldn't know ef I was to tell ye the'r names. Ye see, it was 'way down at the lower end of the county that I was a-livin' then. An' ther' was about a dozen niggers with axes, an' five or six little black boys to carry light-wood. There was no less than thirteen dogs, all 'coon-hunters.

"Ye see, the 'coon-dog is sometimes a hound, an' sometimes he isn't. It takes a right smart dog to hunt a 'coon; and sometimes ye kin train a dog, thet aint a reg'lar huntin'-dog, to be a fust-rate 'coon-dog, pertickerlerly when the fightin' comes in. To be sure, ye want a dog with a good nose to him to roller up a 'coon; but ye want fellers with good jaws and teeth, and plenty of grit, too. We had thirteen of the best 'coon-dogs in the whole world, an' that was enough fur any one 'coon, I say; though Haskinses 'coon was a pertickerler kind of a 'coon, as I tell ye.

"Pretty soon arter we got inter Haskinses oak woods, jist back o' the house, the dogs got on the track uv a 'coon, an' after 'em we all went, as hard as we could skoot. Uv course we didn't know that it was Haskinses 'coon we was arter; but we made up our minds, afore we started, thet when we killed a. 'coon and found it wasn't Haskinses 'coon, we'd jist keep on till we did find him. We didn't 'spect to