It was the year 186 ­, and, Christmas-day falling on a Sunday, Saturday was given as the first day of the holidays.  It had been a fine Fall; the cover was good, and old hares were plentiful.  It had been determined some time before Christmas that we would have a big hare-hunt on that day, and the “boys” ­that is, the young darkies ­came to the house from the quarters, prepared for the sport, and by the time breakfast was over they were waiting for us around the kitchen door.

Breakfast was always late about Christmas time; perhaps, the spareribs and sausages and the jelly dripping through a blanket hung over the legs of an upturned table accounted for it; and on, this Christmas eve it was ten by the tall clock in the corner of the dining-room before we were through.

When we came out, the merry darkies were waiting for us, grinning and showing their shining teeth, laughing and shouting and calling the dogs.  They were not allowed to have guns; but our guns, long old single-barrels handed down for at least two generations, had been carried out and cleaned, and they were handing them around, inspecting and aiming them with as much pride as if they had been brand-new.  There was only one exception to this rule:  Uncle “Limpy-Jack,” so called because he had one leg shorter than the other, was allowed to have a gun.  He was a sort of professional hunter about the place.  No lord was ever prouder of a special privilege handed down in his family for generations.

The other boys were armed with stout sticks and made much noise.  Uncle Limpy-Jack was in this respect also the only exception; he was grave as became a “man” who was a hunter by business, and “warn’t arter no foolishness.”  He allowed no one to touch his gun, which thus possessed a special value.  He carried his powder in a gourd and his shot in an old rag.

The pack of dogs I have described, fully recruited, were hanging around, growling and snarling, sneaking into the kitchen and being kicked out by Aunt Betty and her corps of varicolored assistants, largely augmented at the approach of Christmas with its cheer.  The yelping of the mongrel pack, the shouts and whoops of the boys, and the laughter of the maids or men about the kitchen and back-yard, all in their best clothes and in high spirits, were exhilarating, and with many whoops and much “hollering,” we climbed the yard fence, and, disdaining a road, of course, set out down the hill across the field, taking long strides, each one bragging loudly of what he would do.

Let me see:  there were John and Andrew and Black Peter, and Bow-legged Saul, and Milker-Tim, and Billy, and Uncle Limpy-Jack, and others now forgotten, and the three white boys.  And the dogs, “Olé Rattler,” and “Olé Nim-rod,” who had always been old by their names, and were regarded with reverence akin to fetich-worship because they were popularly supposed to be able to trail a hare.  It was a de-lusion, I am now satisfied; for I cannot recall that they ever trailed one certainly three feet.  Then there were the “guard dawgs”:  “Hector,” brindled, bob-tailed, and ugly, and “Jerry,” yellow, long-tailed, and mean; then there was “Jack,” fat, stumpy, and ill-natured; there were the two pointers, Bruno and Don, the beauties and pride of the family, with a pedigree like a prince’s, who, like us, were taking a holiday hunt, but, unlike us, without permission; “Rock,” Uncle Limpy-Jack’s “hyah dawg,” and then the two terriers “Snip” and “Snap.”  We beat the banks of the spring ditch for form’s sake, though there was small chance of a hare there, because it was pasture and the banks were kept clean.  Then we made for the old field beyond, the dogs spreading out and nosing around lazily, each on his own hook.  Whether because of the noise we made and their seeking safety in flight, or because they were off “taking holiday" as the negroes claimed, no hares were found, and after a half-hour our ardor was a little dampened.  But we soon set to work in earnest and began to beat a little bottom lying between two hills, through which ran a ditch, thickly grown up with bushes and briers.  The dead swamp-grass was very heavy in the narrow little bottom along the sides, and was matted in tufts.  The dogs were scattered, and prowling around singly or in couples; and only one of the pointers and Snip were really on the ditch.  Snip showed signs of great industry, and went bobbing backward and forward through a patch of heavy matted grass.  In any other dog this might have excited suspicion, even hope.  There are, however, some dogs that are natural liars.  Snip was one of them.  Snip’s failing was so well known that no attention was paid to him.  He gave, indeed, a short bark, and bounced up two or three times like a trap-ball, looking both ways at once; but this action only called down upon him universal derision.

     1 The hares, according to the negroes, used to take holidays
     and would not go into traps in this season; so the only way
     to get them was by hunting them.

Just then, however, a small boy pointed over to the top of the hill calling, “Look-a yander,” and shouts arose, “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!”

Sure enough, there, just turning the hill, went a “molly cotton,” bouncing.  In a second we were all in full chase and cry, shouting to each other, “whooping” on the dogs, and running with all our might.  We were so carried away by the excitement that not one of us even thought of the fact that she would come stealing back.

No negro can resist the inclination to shout “Dyah she go!” and to run after a hare when one gets up; it is involuntary and irresistible.  Even Uncle Limpy-Jack came bobbing along for a while, shouting, “Dyah she go!” at the top of his voice; but being soon distanced he called his dog, Rock, and went back to beat the ditch bank again.

The enthusiasm of the chase carried us all into the piece of pine beyond the fence, where the pines were much too thick to see anything and where only an occasional glimpse of a dog running backward and forward, or an instinctive “oun-oun!” from the hounds, rewarded us.  But “molly is berry sly,” and while the dogs were chasing each other around the pines, she was tripping back down through the field to the place where we had started her.

We were recalled by hearing an unexpected “bang” from the field behind us, and dashing out of the woods we found Uncle Limpy-Jack holding up a hare, and with a face whose gravity might have done for that of Fate.  He was instantly surrounded by the entire throng, whom he regarded with superb disdain and spoke of as “you chillern.”

“G’ on, you chillern, whar you is gwine, and meek you’ noise somewhar else, an’ keep out o’ my way.  I want to git some hyahs!”

He betrayed his pleasure only once, when, as he measured out the shot from an old rag into his seamed palm, he said with a nod of his head:  “Y’ all kin run olé hyahs; de olé man’ shoots ’em.”  And as we started off we heard him muttering: 

     “Olé Molly Hyah,
     What yo’ doin’ dyah? 
     Settin’ in de cornder
     Smokin’ a cigah.”

We went back to the branch and began again to beat the bushes, Uncle Limpy-Jack taking unquestioned the foremost place, which had heretofore been held by us.

Suddenly there was a movement, a sort of scamper, a rash, as something slipped out of the heavy grass at our feet and vanished in the thick briers of the ditch bank.  “Dy ah she go!” arose from a dozen throats, and gone she was, in fact, safe in a thicket of briers which no dog nor negro could penetrate.

The bushes were vigorously beaten, however, and all of us, except Uncle Limpy-Jack and Milker-Tim, crossed over to the far side of the ditch where the bottom widened, when suddenly she was discovered over on the same side, on the edge of the little valley.  She had stolen out, the negroes declared, licking her paws to prevent leaving a scent, and finding the stretch of hillside too bare to get across, was stealing back to her covert again, going a little way and then squatting, then going a few steps and squatting again.  “Dyah she go!” “Dyah she go!” resounded as usual.

Bang! ­bang! ­snap! ­bang! went the four guns in quick succession, tearing up the grass anywhere from one to ten yards away from her.  As if she had drawn their fire and was satisfied that she was safe, she turned and sped up the hill, the white tail bobbing derisively, followed by the dogs strung out in line.

Of course, all of us had some good excuse for missing, Uncle Limpy-Jack’s being the only valid one ­that his cap had snapped.  He made much of this, complaining violently of “dese yere wuthless caps!” With a pin he set to work, and he had just picked the tube, rammed painfully some grains of powder down in it, and put on another cap which he had first examined with great care to impress us.  “Now, let a olé hyah git up,” he said, with a shake of his head.  “She got man ready for her, she ain’t got you chil-lern.”  The words were scarcely spoken when a little darkey called out, “Dyah she come!” and sure enough she came, “lipping” down a furrow straight toward us.  Uncle Limpy-Jack was on that side of the ditch and Milker-Tim was near him armed only with a stout well-balanced stick about two feet long.  As the hare came down the hill, Uncle Jack brought up his gun, took a long aim and fired.  The weeds and dust flew up off to one side of her, and she turned at right angles out of the furrow; but as she got to the top of the bed, Milker-Tim, flinging back his arm, with the precision of a bushman, sent his stick whirling like a boomerang skimming along the ground after her.

Tim with a yell rushed at her and picked her up, shouting, “I got her!  I got her!”

Then Uncle Limpy-Jack pitched into him:  “What you doin’ gittin’ in my way!” he complained angrily.  “Ain’ you got no better sense ’n to git in my way like dat!  Did n’ you see how nigh I come to blowin’ yo’ brains out!  Did n’ you see I had de hyah when you come pokin’ yer wooly black head in my way!  Ef I had n’ flung my gun off, whar ’d you ‘a’ been now!  Don’ you come pokin’ in my way ag’in!”

Tim was too much elated to be long affected by even this severity, and when he had got out of Uncle Jack’s way he sang out: 

     “Olé Molly Hyah,
     You’ ears mighty thin. 
     Yes, yes, yes,
     I come a-t’ippin’ thoo de win’!”

So far the honors were all Uncle Jack’s and Milker-Tim’s, and it was necessary for the rest of us to do something.  Accordingly, the bottom having been well hunted, the crowd struck out for an old field over the hill, known as “the long hillside.”  It was thick in hen-grass and broom-straw, and sloped down from a piece of pine with a southern exposure on which the sun shone warm.  We had not reached it before a hare jumped out of a bush near Charlie.  In a few moments, another bounced out before one of the dogs and went dashing across the field.  Two shots followed her; but she kept on till at last one of the boys secured her.

We were going down the slope when Peter called in great excitement,

“Heah a olé hyah settin’ in her haid.  Come heah, Dan, quick!  Gi’ me your gun; lé’ me git him!”

This was more than Dan bargained for, as he had not got one himself yet.  He ran up quickly enough, but held on tightly to his gun.

“Where is he?  Show him to me:  I ’ll knock him over.”

As he would not give up the gun, Peter pointed out the game.

“See him?”

“No.”

“Right under dat bush ­right dyah” (pointing).  “See him?  Teck keer dyah, Don, teck keer,” he called, as Don came to a point just beyond.  “See him?” He pointed a black finger with tremulous eagerness.

No, Dan did not see, so he reluctantly yielded up the gun.

Peter took aim long and laboriously, shut both eyes, pulled the trigger, and blazed away.

There was a dash of white and brown, a yell, and Don wheeled around with his head between his forepaws stung by the shot as “molly” fled streaking it over the hill followed only by the dogs.

Peter’s face was a study.  If he had killed one of us he could not have looked more like a criminal, nor have heard more abuse.

Uncle Limpy-Jack poured out on him such a volume of vituperation and contempt that he was almost white, he was so ashy.

Don was not permanently hurt; but one ear was pierced by several shot, which was a serious affair, as his beauty was one of his good points, and his presence on a hare-hunt was wholly against the rules.  Uncle Limpy-Jack painted the terrors of the return home for Peter with a vividness so realistic that its painfulness pierced more breasts than Peter’s.

Don was carried to the nearest ditch, and the entire crowd devoted itself to doctoring his ear.  It was decided that he should be taken to the quarters and kept out of sight during the Christmas, in the hope that his ear would heal.  We all agreed not to say anything about it if not questioned.  Uncle Limpy-Jack had to be bribed into silence by a liberal present of shot and powder from us.  But he finally consented.  However, when Met, in a wild endeavor to get a shot at a stray partridge which got up before us, missed the bird and let Uncle Limpy-Jack, at fifty yards, have number-six pellets in the neck and shoulder, Peter’s delinquency was forgotten.  The old man dropped his gun and yelled, “Oh!  Oh!” at the top of his voice.  “Oh!  I ’m dead, I ’m dead, I ’m dead.”  He lay down on the ground and rolled.

Met was scared to death and we were all seriously frightened.  Limpy-Jack himself may have thought he was really killed.  He certainly made us think so.  He would not let anyone look at the wound.

Only a few of the shot had gone in, and he was not seriously injured, but he vowed that it was all done on purpose, and that he was “going straight home and tell Marster,” a threat he was only prevented from executing by us all promising him the gold dollars which we should find in the toes of our stockings next morning.