CHAPTER VII 
THE TAMING OF OL’ BUCK 
[‘ must be admitted that, from one point of 
view, he who is to be our hero, and who came 
to'be known by the name of OI Buck, as you shall 
learn, began life rather badly. But so did Jo- 
seph; only Joseph was thrown into a pit, while 
our hero, while yet a little fawn with speckled 
flanks, fellinto one. However, the means of get- 
ting there matters to the chap at the bottom 
rather less than the means of getting out. In 
Joseph’s case, the agency that got him in was a 
band of particularly unfraternal brothers. In 
our hero’s case—and we might as well begin call- 
ing him OI Buck at once, especially as the name 
is so ludicrously inappropriate to the little fawn 
he was at the time,—the agency was a Hill Billy. 
A Hill Billy is, normally, a citizen of the com- 
monwealth who lives on a rundown-farm or cabin 
up in the mountain country where the towns were 
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