62 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



" Down by de run, ober dere," said the negro, pointing with his 

 finger ; " his tracks fresh as dis niggah's." 



" You mean you saw his tracks ? " 



" Yes a maussa." 



" How does he know that it is a buck ?" I asked. 



" How fur to know he 's a buck ? Haint chased dat air deers' 

 s'often fur nuttin'; 'spect I be'ent a dun gone fool!" replied 

 Jumping Lem, with some asperity. 



" Wall, if that ere is the buck that run in this range last winter, 

 I kinder guess ye '11 all have to rub your legs with bar's grease to 

 ketch him," added Mike. 



" Don't you think we can shoot him, Mike ?" asked Lou Jackson. 



" No, young woman, I don't ; thar are too many here to make 

 certain of any deer. When a man wants a deer bad, he goes alone 

 and keeps his mouth shut." 



As we rode over to inspect the tracks, I learned, partly from 

 the exclamations of the negroes, and partly from Jackson's account, 

 that this buck passed the winters in the pine woods, retiring, when 

 the mosquitoes become thick in the spring, to the cool swamps of 

 the Ouithlacouchee. It has been so often hunted, and was so 

 successful in escaping, that it became well known at the Jackson 

 plantation, and was the object of a covert superstition to all the 

 negroes, which mysterious fear rather aided his escape, for when 

 the boys saw it coming they became so frightened, they could not 

 hit forty paces off. 



On reaching the run that Lem had mentioned, we readily found 

 the tracks, and all drew up to examine them. The presentation of 

 some unknown bone to a company of savans, or the appearance of 

 a new bonnet at a country sewing society, occasions not more 

 curiosity and sage comment than does the discovery of a new track 

 in the woods. One mentions its size, another recognises old 

 peculiarities or marks, another says it was the foot of a male 

 animal, another that it was fat in flesh, and another that it was 

 going on an easy trot, and not disturbed, and what is stranger still, 

 from the small data of four marks in the damp soil, all these facts 

 arrived at are the results of careful observation, and seldom 

 incorrect. 



