“Not a durn thing,” said granpap. “I jest ’lowed I’d drap out.” To show his scorn of subterfuge, he got up and took a few firm steps, then sat down, white with pain but grinning with triumph. “I’d give my coat an’ shirt to go with the boys,” said Snead. “Ef I hadn’t struck on that sore knee I could ’a’ kept up all right.” “Reckon I couldn’t,” said granpap. “When I got old I knowed it. Time ain’t slipped nothin’ on me.” “Well, I ain’t give in yit,” Snead asserted, his yellow-brown eyes shimmering. “These woods’ll be my back yard as long as I’m topside o’ earth, an’ when I’m under it I’ll rattle the dirt ef I can.” “I’d do a lot myself,” said granpap, “ef I could do it with my tongue.” Snead’s retort was lost in the returning tumult. The racers were coming back with a rush that made us think of scurrying to refuge. Sam afterward related what had happened. “When I got out of the thicket,” he said, “I started over the rocks like a jumpin’ spider. Thet ol’ devil went straight like he was goin’ round the mountain, but the dogs kept bearin’ down on his upper side an’ brought him up under a cliff that he hadn’t counted on meetin’. He had to turn on ’em then, but they wouldn’t rush in an’ he wouldn’t rush out. The foam was flyin’ an’ Buck was all bloody. Them tusks had scraped some sense into him, an’ he was standin’ off, yappin’ an’ yowin’. Little ol’ Bub was jumpin’ up an’ down an’ wantin’ like fire to go in, but he knowed better. ‘All we can do,’ I says to Len when the boys come up, ‘is to hold the feller here till Ben comes with ol’ Drum.’ An’ about that time the b’ar decided to come out an’ give them dogs a skeer. You run me in here, he thinks, an’ by golly I’ll run ye out. An’ he lit fer ’em. You never seen dogs so skeert. An’ that’s why we all come back. ’Cause that thing wanted to. He jest rid the saplin’s after them dogs. It was the masterest sight, him goin’ over ever’thing like he had wings in his insides.” He was “riding the saplings” when we saw him, but we had no time for leisurely observation. We were in the most open strip of the brush and this was the highway for the chase. The dogs seemed divided between fear and shame. They rushed forward with their tongues out, but every few rods would fling their heads back as if to turn on their pursuer; then at sight of him they would give an apparently dying screech and flee forward again. “Scroonch up to that poplar,” called Snead, “an’ they’ll pass us.” The poplar was an immense one, five feet through at the butt, and was only three or four yards from us; but we had barely time to cross the distance and crowd against the tree before the wild runners flew by. I felt that the earth must be moving; that the whole mountain was a penumbration of that black, vaulting body; the air ought to bleed, torn by those merciless tusks.