But Sam was quicker than the boar. With one motion he leaped three feet from the ground, and with arms abnormally long seized the limb of a tree that stretched above him, drawing his body up accordion-fashion and hanging there like a half-opened jackknife. The boar dashed under him and on toward me. I resigned life resentfully. My passion for union with earth was spent. There was nothing but ignominy in being trampled into the ground and muddily tusked. Drum saved me. I saw him at the boar’s side trying to reach his ear. The boar whirled in defense, and Len cried: “Run, God A’mighty, run!” I supposed he meant me, but I couldn’t move. I had to see whether Drum got that ear or not. My arm was grabbed and I was viciously shaken. “Ain’t you got a bit o’ sense?” That didn’t seem to matter, but when I had been pulled to safety I managed to say: “Thank you, Len, I guess I’ll--faint.” Which I did, but it was not a desperate lapse. I was up in a few minutes, watching the game between Drum and the boar, and commenting on it in a meekly diminished voice. It was worth seeing. Drum clearly understood his difficulty. He was to get his teeth into the boar’s ear and keep his own body safely guarded from the tossing tusks. They shuttled back and forth, for every time that Drum was near getting a hold the boar would whirl in an effort to drive his tusk into the dog, and this would cause a face-about for both of them. I did not see how the game of wits and muscle could end except by the exhaustion of one or the other; and the boar was doubtless using his last strength. It seemed shockingly unfair for Drum to come so fresh to the contest. “Be right still; be right still,” Len would say, though nobody needed the adjuration, all being tense and motionless. “Drum’s gittin’ him winded. He’ll land in a minute. Be right still.” I understood what he meant by “landing” when Drum finally sailed upward and dropped down on the boar’s back just behind his ears. “He’s got him!” shouted Sam. “Git yer sticks, ever’body. I’ll grab his leg. Y’all be ready to come in, er he’ll tear me up ef Drum’s holt breaks.” But this time Drum held on, and the boar spun round and round helplessly. It seemed death to approach him, but Sam got behind a rock, lay down, and reached out a long arm, ready to grab a flying hind leg if it should come near. “Len, you an’ pap git the noose over his nose. Where’s that Burl? Let him an’ Ben hold my legs.” But Burl called from a prudent distance: “He ain’t winded yit. You’d all better keep out.” “Dern yer white skin,” said Sam, “git back to yer dry-goods box in Asheville. Ben, you an’ Ted ketch holt o’ my legs.” They obeyed, bracing their feet against the rock, getting ready, it appeared, to pull Sam in two. Len, holding a big club, took the dangerous position of granpap’s guard in his attempts to noose the boar. Snead was to tie another rope about the leg if Sam succeeded in grabbing it.