The Long Hillside | Page 3

the ditch. Snip showed signs of great
industry, and went bobbing backward and forward through a patch of
heavy matted grass. In any other dog this might have excited suspicion,
even 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