black to abide upon the
plantation raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing
will be required of him. He can cheat a white man or a black, steal
in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in marriage or out of
it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly
shoot every wild thing that can be eaten, if only he raises the
cotton and the corn. But the white sportsmen of the South have never
willingly granted the shooting privilege in its entirety, and hence
this story. They have told him to trap the rabbits, pot the robins,
slaughter the doves, kill the song birds, but to spare the white
sportsman's game, the aristocratic little bobwhite quail.

In the beginning not so much damage to southern game interests could
be accomplished by our colored man and brother, however decided his
inclinations. He had no money, no ammunition and no gun. His weapons
were an ax, a club, a trap, and a hound dog; possibly he might own
an old war musket bored out for shot. Such an outfit was not adapted
to quail shooting and especially to wing shooting, with which
knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about
with his hound dog and his war musket; he couldn't possibly kill the
quail. And so Uncle Ike's grandson loafed and pottered about in the
fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing so much harm to the
quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill
as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on.
The negro belongs to a primitive race of people and all such races
have keener eyes than white men whose fathers have pored over lines
of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its form, the
squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the grass.
The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he
distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a tree top
he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden
squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge grass told him of
a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all
the skill of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills
without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was
growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white man was
bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn when he might
as well exact it all. And t