THE BEAR HUNT 10

Well, they got him often me at last and got him quieted down, and then they washed me off and give me a drink, and I felt better. But even with that drink I never felt so good but what I felt hit was my duty to my honour to call him outside the back yard, as the fellow says. No, sir. I know when I did make a mistake and guessed wrong; Major de Spain wasn't the only man that caught a bear on that hunt; no, sir.

I be dog, if it had been daylight, I'd a hitched up my Ford and taken out of there. But hit was midnight, and besides, that nigger, Ash, was on my mind then. I had just begun to suspect that hit was more to this business than met the naked eye. And hit wasn't no good time then to go back to the kitchen then and ask him about hit, because Luke was using the kitchen. Major had give him a drink, too, and he was back there, making up for them two days he hadn't etc, talking a right smart about what he aimed to do to such and such a sona bitch that would try to play his darn jokes on him, not mentioning no names; but mostly laying himself in a new set of hiccups, though I ain't going back to see.

So I waited until daylight, until I heard the niggers stirring around in the kitchen; then I went back there. And there was old Ash, looking like he always did, oiling Major's boots and setting them behind the stove and then taking up Major's rifle and beginning to load the magazine. He just looked once at my face when I come in, and went on shoving cartridges into the gun.

"So you went up to the mound last night," I says. He looked up at me again, quick, and then down again. But he never said nothing, looking like a darned old frizzle-headed ape. "You must know some of them folks up there," I says.

"I knows some of um," he says, shoving cartridges into the gun.

"You know old John Basket?" I says.

"I knows some of um," he says, not looking at me.

"Did you see him last night?" I says. He never said nothing at all. So then I changed my tone, like a fellow has to do to get anything outside a nigger. "Look here," I says. "Look at me." He looked at me. "Just what did you do up there last night?"

"Who, me?" he says.

"Come on," I says. "Hit's all over now. Mr. Provine has done got over his hiccups and we done both forgot about anything that might have happened when he got back last night. You never went up there just for fun last night. Or maybe hit was something you told them up there, told old man Basket. Was that hit?" He had done quit looking at me, but he never stopped shoving cartridges into that gun. He looked quick to both sides. "Come on," I says. "Do you want to tell me what happened up there, or do you want me to mention to Mr. Provine that you was mixed up in hit some way?" He never stopped loading the rifle and he never looked at me,

but I be dog if I couldn't almost see his mind working. "Come on," I says. "Just what was you doing up there last night?"

Then he told me. I reckon he knew hit wasn't no use to try to hide hit then; that if I never told Luke, I could still tell Major. "I jest dodged him and got there first and told them he was a new revenue agent coming up there tonight, but that he warn't much and that all they had to do was to give um a good skeer and likely he would go away. And they did and he did."

"Well!" I say. "Well! I always thought I was pretty good at joking folks," I says, "but I take a back seat for you. What happened?" I says. "Did you see hit?"

"Never much happened," he says. "They jest went down the road a piece and atter a while hyer he come a-hickin' en a-blumpin' up the road with the lantern and the gun. They took the lantern and the gun away from him and took him up upon topper the mound and talked the Injun language at him for a while. Den they piled up some wood en fixed him on hit so he could git loose in a minute, en den one of them come up the hill with the fire, en he done the rest."

"Well!" I says. "Well, I'll be eternally darned!" And then all on a sudden hit struck me. I had done turned and was going out when hit struck me, and I stopped and I says, "There's one more thing I want to know. Why did you do hit?"

Now he set there on the wood box, rubbing the gun with his hand, not looking at me again. "I was just helping you kyo him of the hiccups."

"Come on," I says. "That wasn't your reason. What was hit? Remember, I got a right smart I can tell Mr. Provine and Major both now. I don't know what Major will do, but I know what Mr. Provine will do if I was to tell him."

And he set there, rubbing that ere rifle with his hand. He was kind of looking down, like he was thinking. Not like he was trying to decide whether to tell me or not, but like he was remembering something from a long time back. And that's exactly what he was doing, because he says: "I ain't skeered for him to know. One time they was a picnic. Hit was a long time back, nigh twenty years ago. He was a young man den, and in the middle of the picnic, him en he brother and nudder white man I forgot his name they rid up with the pistols out and catch us niggers one at a time en burned our collars off. Hit was him that burnt mine."

"And you waited all this time and went to all this trouble, just to get even with him?" I

says.

"Hit warn't that," he says, rubbing the rifle with his hand.

"Hit was the collar. Back in them days a top nigger hand made two dollars a week. I paid for bits fer that collar. Hit was blue, with a red picture of the race betwixt the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee running around hit. He burnt hit up.

I makes ten dollars a week now. And I just wish I knew where I could buy another collar like that un fer half of hit.

I wish I did."

THE END