rd in
his own right, and told him the only trouble about these great
plantations in the south was the wild dogs that inhabited the mountains,
that would not hesitate to attack a man if they got good and hungry, but
there was no danger to him, because he was a good sprinter, and could
outrun a jack rabbit. The giant wanted to go back to the house, 'cause
he said he didn't want to run no foot race with hounds, and he had seen
the sign to beware of the dogs. I never ought to have done it, 'cause
the fat woman looks as though she was built a purpose for apoplexy, but
I told her as a friend, not to load herself down with nuts, but to
travel light, so if the wild dogs came down to raid the plantation she
could crawl in a hole out of sight till the dogs had eaten some of the
men. She came near fainting right there, before the dogs got busy.

There were about 20 negroes throwing clubs at the nuts, and everybody
was having a big time. The trapeze performers were squirreling up among
the limbs, when suddenly, in the distance came the bay of the pack of
bloodhounds, and every negro turned pale, and got ready to climb a tree.
The planter stopped to listen, and when one of the managers of the show
asked him what was the matter, he said: "You can search me, sah. If that
is my pack of hounds a crime has been committed, and the sheriff has
started the pack on the trail of the criminal, sah, because the dogs are
never turned loose, except for business."

Then the planter yelled to the niggers, and said: "If any of youall are
guilty of crime, you best get scarce, or pick out your tree, and get up
it mighty sudden, 'cause the hounds haven't been fed lately." Every
colored man picked a tree, and the hounds kept coming, finally showing
up jumping the fence, and entering the woods, and the planter cut a club
to beat off the dogs. Pa looked as innocent as John Wanamaker's picture
addressing a Sunday school, the giant saw the dogs and started for a
tall tree, and the fat lady said she couldn't find any hole big enough
to hide in, and "the idea," if there were not men enough to protect a
lady.

Well, I never expected to see anything so fine as the way those hounds
run with their noses to the ground, scattered in three packs one pack on
the trail of each of the three whose shoes I had doctored. When they got
near us they broke up and went around everywhere that pa and the giant
and the fat lady had walked, and fell over each other, but finally