“‘Well, what do ye speak for, then, you black cuss?’ Then he catches hold on me, and drags me out, and beats me with a club, till _I was dead for arnest, enemost_; and then, lookin’ at the hole in the tree, he turns to me, lyin’ on the ground, and says, ‘Next time I’ll bore a hole through _you_, you black son of a bitch. Now drive that team, and straight, tu, or you’ll catch a junk of lead into you.’
“Well, I hobbled along, and we ploughed all day; and come night, I boohooed and cried a good deal, and the children gits round me, and asks, ‘What’s the matter, Peter?’ I tells ’em, ‘Master’s been a poundin’ on me, and then he shot arter me, and I don’t know what he will do next.’ Julia speaks, and says, ‘I declare it’s a wonder the devil don’t come and take father off.’
“He orders the family not to give me any supper; but arter he’d gone to bed, the gals comes along, and one on ’em treads on my toe, and gin me the wink, and I know’d what it meant; and so I goes into the wood-house, and finds a good supper laid on a beam, where I’d got many a good bite; and went off to bed with a heavy heart.
“But, as I hate to be a tellin’ bloody stories all the time, I’ll jist give you a short one ’bout a bear; for I was as mighty a hand for bears as ever ye see.
“One night I went along arter my cows into the woods, a whistlin’ and a singin’ along, with the rifle on my shoulder, a listenin’ for my cow-bell, but couldn’t hear nothing on it; and so on I goes a good ways, and hears nothin’ yit; and I’d hearn old-fashioned people say, you must clap your ear down on the ground to hear your cow-bell, and I did, and I hears it away towards the house; and so for home I starts; and it gits to be kind’a duskish; and the first thing I hears or sees, was right afore me, a great _big black bear_, that riz right up out of the scrub-oaks, and stood on his hind feet; and I was so scart, I didn’t know how to manage the business; and there I stood atwixt two evils; one way I was ‘fraid of the dark, and t’other I was ‘fraid of the bear; and finally, I starts and runs from him, and he jist then down on his legs and put arter me. Well, I turns round and faces him, and he riz up on his hind feet agin’, and kind’a growled. Atwixt me and him, there was a small black oak staddle, and thinks I to myself, if I can git to that, I can hold my gun steady ’nough to shoot him; but then I was afeard I shouldn’t _kill him_; and if I didn’t he’d _kill me_. However, I starts for the staddle; and he kind’a growled, and wiggled his short tail, and seemed to be tickled to think I was a comin’ towards him. As quick as I got up to the staddle, I cocked my piece, and aimed right at his brisket, atwixt his fore legs, as near as I could, and fired—_and run_; and never looked behind me, to see whether I’d killed my adversary or not, and put for the house as fast I could. Well, up I come to the house, so short-winded, that I puffed and blowed like a steamboat; and old master says he, ‘What you shot, nigger?’