Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/95

Rh at all, fur he's real dead in a minute, and it's hardly wuth while fur him to take the trouble uv puttin' on the sham. Sometimes a 'possum'll hang by his tail to the limb of a tree, an' ye kin knock him down without cuttin' the tree down. He's not a game beast, as I tell ye. But they aint allus killed on the spot. I've seed niggers take a long saplin' an' make a little split in it about the middle of the pole, an' stick the end of a 'possum's long rat- tail through the split an' carry him home. I've seed two niggers carryin' a pole that a-way, one at each end, with two or three 'possums a-haugin' frum it. They take 'em home and fatten 'em. I hate a 'possum, principally fur his tail. Ef it was curled up short an' had a knot in it, it would be more like a pig's tail, an' then it would seem as ef the thing was meant to eat. But the way they have it, it's like nothing in the whole world but a rat's tail.

"So, as I tell ye, ef thet was a 'possum thet we treed nex', ther' wasn't no fight, an' some of the niggers got some meat. But after that—I remember it was about the middle o' the night—we got off again, this time really arter Haskinses 'coon. I was dead sure of it. The dogs went diff'rent, too. They was jist full o' fire an' blood, an' run ahead like as ef they was mad. They know'd they wasn't on the track of no common 'coon, this time. As fur all uv us men, black an' white, we jist got up an' got arter them dogs, an' some o' the little fellers got stuck in a swamp, down by a branch that runs out o' Haskinses woods into Widder Thorp's corn-field; but we didn't stop fur nuthin', an' they never ketched up. We kep' on