And
we all stops in our tracks and looks at each other.
It was the voice of a hound dog--not so awful
loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and carried
to us on the wind. And then in a minute it come
agin, sharper and quicker. They yells like that
when they have struck a scent.
As we stood and looked at each other they come
a crackle in the underbrush, jest to the left of us.
We turned our heads that-a-way, jest as a nigger
man give a leap to the top of a rail fence that
separated the road from the woods. He was going
so fast that instead of climbing that fence and bal-
ancing on the top and jumping off he jest simply
seemed to hit the top rail and bounce on over, like
he had been throwed out of the heart of the woods,
and he fell sprawling over and over in the road,
right before our feet.
He was onto his feet in a second, and fur a minute
he stood up straight and looked at us--an ashes-
coloured nigger, ragged and bleeding from the under-
brush, red-eyed, and with slavers trickling from his
red lips, and sobbing and gasping and panting fur
breath. Under his brown skin, where his shirt
was torn open acrost his chest, you could see that
nigger's heart a-beating.
But as he looked at us they come a sudden change
acrost his face--he must of seen the doctor before,
and with a sob he throwed himself on his knees in
the road and clasped his hands and held 'em out
toward Doctor Kirby.
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