n to a handful of close-wove
bresh an' stunted timber an' allows that this maraudin' cat-o-mount is
hidin' thar; they sees him go skulkin' in.

"'Gents, I ain't above admittin' that the news puts my heart to a
canter. I'm brave; but conflicts with wild an' savage beasts is to me
a novelty an' while I faces my fate without a flutter, I'm yere to say
I'd sooner been in pursoot of minks or raccoons or some varmint whose
grievous cap'bilities I can more ackerately stack up an' in whose merry
ways I'm better versed. However, the dauntless blood of my grandsire
mounts in my cheek; an' as if the shade of that old Trojan is thar
personal to su'gest it, I searches forth a flask an' renoos my sperit;
thus qualified for perils, come in what form they may, I resolootely
stands my hand.

"'Thar's forty dogs if thar's one in our company as we pauses at the
Skinner crossroads. An' when the Crittenden yooth returns, he brings
with him the Rickett boys an' forty added dogs. Which it's worth a
ten-mile ride to get a glimpse of that outfit of canines! Thar's every
sort onder the canopy: thar's the stolid hound, the alert fice, the
sapient collie; that is thar's individyool beasts wherein the hound, or
fice, or collie seems to preedominate as a strain. The trooth is
thar's not that dog a-whinin' about our hosses' fetlocks who ain't
proudly descended from fifteen different tribes, an' they shorely makes
a motley mass meetin'. Still, they're good, zealous dogs; an' as
they're going to go for'ard an' take most of the resks of that panther,
it seems invidious to criticise 'em.

"'One of the Twitty boys rides down an' puts the eighty or more dogs
into the bresh. The rest of us lays back an' strains our eyes. Thar
he is! A shout goes up as we descries the panther stealin' off by a
far corner. He's headin' along a hollow that's full of bresh an' baby
timber an' runs parallel with the pike. Big an' yaller he is; we can
tell from the slight flash we gets of him as he darts into a second
clump of bushes. With a cry--what young Crittenden calls a "view
halloo,"--we goes stampedin' down the pike in pursoot.

"'Our dogs is sta'nch; they shore does themse'fs proud. Singin' in
twenty keys, reachin' from growls to yelps an' from yelps to shrillest
screams, they pushes dauntlessly on the fresh trail of their terrified
quarry. Now an' then we gets a squint of the panther as he skulks from
one copse to another jest ahead. Which he's goin