THE BEAR-HUNT. 185 



he felt certain that his man had gone straight home ; so he 

 went by rail to within forty miles of the place, and then hired 

 a horse to ride the rest of the way, telling the people of the 

 place where he got the horse what he was going for. The 

 man had done as he expected ; so he seized him, put him 

 on a horse, and was bringing him in to the railway, when, as 

 he expressed it, " The boys met me and we put him up." I 

 asked what that meant, on which he leant forward, and 

 pointing to his horse, which was still standing saddled at the 

 fence, he asked us if we could see a raw-hide lariat on the 

 saddle, and on our saying that we could, he said, " Well, that 

 is what we put him up with." They, it seems, had hung him 

 to a tree. When we asked his reason for so doing, he said 

 that since the war it had been almost impossible to get a negro 

 punished, the usual plan being to send any who had committed 

 a crime to a black regiment, and that therefore in this case 

 they had taken the law into their own hands. He added that 

 when we had been longer in the country we should often hear 

 of troublesome negroes having disappeared, and of having gone 

 on a visit >to their friends in the north, which meant in reality 

 that they had gone underground. 



The following morning we started, about twenty men on 

 horseback, for the bear-hunt, Estes and two or three more 

 going in one direction while we went in another, the idea 

 being to beat up to us. One of the party, who was an old 

 hand at this kind of thing, placed us, telling us to fire at 

 nothing but bears. For some time not a sound was heard, but 

 after waiting more than an hour I heard the dogs coming, and 

 then a shot, followed by another, and all was still. It seemed 

 an age before I heard them again, and when I did they seemed 



