hind so high that his head could not be seen. He scaled two high rail 
fences, barely touching them, and all the time screaming at the top of 
his voice. I didn’t see anything to be afraid of but my nigger seemed 
to look at it from a different angle. 
One day Jim and I were down to my father’s still house, which 
was about a mile from the dwelling house, when four men drove up 
dressed in blue clothes trimmed in brass buttons; they poured out all 
the beer mash and whisky. The hogs and cows pounced on it, con¬ 
sidering it a fine feed; they all got drunk and fell around the same as 
drunken men do. When I asked my father if he was running a wild¬ 
cat still he ignored my question. 
My first hunting days were with Jim, hunting the rusty lizards. 
I used to take Jim and get him to walk on one side and I would walk 
on the other of an old rail fence. When a lizard Would show up I 
would throw a rock at him; should I miss he would turn toward Jim’s 
side of the fence and Jim would rock the lizard until one of us would 
knock him out. We would then string our lizards, take them home and 
call them our squirrels. This hunting we kept up off and on for two 
or three years, until one day I missed the lizard with the rock and 
struck my nigger on the head, cutting a big gash clear to the bone. 
Naturally he set up a howl and by the time we got to the house his 
white shirt was red with blood. Old Cindy, his mother, came out, 
threw her hands in the air and said, “Law, nigga, what is de matta?’ r 
Jim, almost too freightened to speak, pointed an accusing finger at me 
and between screams told of me hitting him with the rock. Old Cindy 
shook a threatening finger as she warned, “You chilluns let dis be de 
las’ time youuns goes huntin’ lizards; dat boy will kill you wid a rock 
some day.” This, of course, ended our lizard hunting, thereafter we 
chose the safer sport of hunting rabbits with dogs. 
There was old Guard, who T had never quite forgiven for biting 
my ear, though it was well deserved; old Drum, a long-eared hound, 
and old Music and her pups. 
We would take these dogs day after day and hunt rabbits. I 
remember one day the dogs treed a rabbit in a sink hole where there 
— 2 — 
