The Long Hillside | Page 3

hope. There are, however, some dogs that are natural liars. Snip was one of them. Snip's failing was so well known that no attention was paid to him. He gave, indeed, a short bark, and bounced up two or three times like a trap-ball, looking both ways at once; but this action only called down upon him universal derision.
1 The hares, according to the negroes, used to take holidays and would not go into traps in this season; so the only way to get them was by hunting them.
Just then, however, a small boy pointed over to the top of the hill calling, "Look-a yander," and shouts arose, "Dyah she go!" "Dyah she go!" "Dyah she go!"
Sure enough, there, just turning the hill, went a "molly cotton," bouncing. In a second we were all in full chase and cry, shouting to each other, "whooping" on the dogs, and running with all our might. We were so carried away by the excitement that not one of us even thought of the fact that she would come stealing back.
No negro can resist the inclination to shout "Dyah she go!" and to run after a hare when one gets up; it is involuntary and irresistible. Even Uncle Limpy-Jack came bobbing along for a while, shouting, "Dyah she go!" at the top of his voice; but being soon distanced he called his dog, Rock, and went back to beat the ditch bank again.
The enthusiasm of the chase carried us all into the piece of pine beyond the fence, where the pines were much too thick to see anything and where only an occasional glimpse of a dog running backward and forward, or an instinctive "oun-oun!" from the hounds, rewarded us. But "molly is berry sly," and while the dogs were chasing each other around the pines, she was tripping back down through the field to the place where we had started her.
We were recalled by hearing an unexpected "bang" from the field behind us, and dashing out of the woods we found Uncle Limpy-Jack holding up a hare, and with a face whose gravity might have done for that of Fate. He was instantly surrounded by the entire throng, whom he regarded with superb disdain and spoke of as "you chillern."
"G' on, you chillern, whar you is gwine, and meek you' noise somewhar else, an' keep out o' my way. I want to git some hyahs!"
He betrayed his pleasure only once, when, as he measured out the shot from an old rag into his seamed palm, he said with a nod of his head: "Y' all kin run ole hyahs; de ole man' shoots 'em." And as we started off we heard him muttering:
"Ole Molly Hyah, What yo' doin' dyah? Settin' in de cornder Smokin' a cigah."
We went back to the branch and began again to beat the bushes, Uncle Limpy-Jack taking unquestioned the foremost place, which had heretofore been held by us.
Suddenly there was a movement, a sort of scamper, a rash, as something slipped out of the heavy grass at our feet and vanished in the thick briers of the ditch bank. "Dy ah she go!" arose from a dozen throats, and gone she was, in fact, safe in a thicket of briers which no dog nor negro could penetrate.
The bushes were vigorously beaten, however, and all of us, except Uncle Limpy-Jack and Milker-Tim, crossed over to the far side of the ditch where the bottom widened, when suddenly she was discovered over on the same side, on the edge of the little valley. She had stolen out, the negroes declared, licking her paws to prevent leaving a scent, and finding the stretch of hillside too bare to get across, was stealing back to her covert again, going a little way and then squatting, then going a few steps and squatting again. "Dyah she go!" "Dyah she go!" resounded as usual.
Bang!--bang!--snap!--bang! went the four guns in quick succession, tearing up the grass anywhere from one to ten yards away from her. As if she had drawn their fire and was satisfied that she was safe, she turned and sped up the hill, the white tail bobbing derisively, followed by the dogs strung out in line.
Of course, all of us had some good excuse for missing, Uncle Limpy-Jack's being the only valid one--that his cap had snapped. He made much of this, complaining violently of "dese yere wuthless caps!" With a pin he set to work, and he had just picked the tube, rammed painfully some grains of powder down in it, and put on another cap which he had first examined with great care to impress us. "Now, let a ole hyah git up," he said, with a shake of his head. "She got man ready for her, she ain't got you