“When he found they wouldn’t hunt no how he could fix it, he begin a cussin’. He didn’t know I was thar. If he had er suspicioned it, he’d no more swore than he’d dar’d to kiss my Sal on er washin’ day; for you see both on us belonged to the same church, and Ike was class-leader. I thought I should er flummuxed! The dogs they sidled back, an’ Ike he cussed; an’ I lay down an’ rolled an’ laughed sorter easy to myself, ’til I was so full I thort I should er bust my biler. I never see ennything so funny in all my life! There was I layin’ down behind er log, fit to split, an’ there was the dogs with their tails the wrong eend down, and there was Ike a rarin’ an’ er pitchin’—er rippin’ an’ er tarrin’—an’ er cussin’ wus nor a steamboat cap’n! I tell you it fairly made my har stan’ on eend. I never see er customer so riled afore in all my born days. Yes I did too, once—only once. It was that feller Arch Coony, what used to oversee for old Ben Roach. Didn’t you know that ar’ hossfly? He’s a few! well he is. Jewhilliken, how he could whip er nigger! and swar! whew! Didn’t you ever hear him swar? I tell you, all the sailors and French parrots in Orleans ain’t a patchin’ to him. I hearn him let hisself out one day, and he was a caution to sinners, an’ what was wus, it was all ’bout nothin’, for he warn’t mad a wrinkle. But all that ain’t neither here nor thar. “But, as I was sayin’ afore, the dogs they smelt bar sine, an’ wouldn’t budge a peg, an arter Ike had almost cussed the bark off’n a dogwood saplin’ by, he lent his old flint-lock rifle up agin it, and then he pealed off his old blanket an’ laid her down, too. I diskivered mischief was er cumin’, for I never see a critter show rathy like he did. Torectly I see him walk down to the creek bottom, ’bout fifty yards from where his gun was, and then he ’gin pickin’ up rocks an’ slingin’ um at the dogs like bringer! Cracky! didn’t he linkit into um? It minded me of David whalin’ Goliath, it did! If you’d er seed him, and hearn them holler, you’d er thought he’d er knocked the nigh sites off’n every mother’s son of ’em!