"I'm right glad to see you, Mr. Eddring," said Colonel Blount, extending
his hand. The two, without plan, wandered over toward the shade of the
evergreen, and presently seated themselves at the board-pile.

"Well, Colonel Blount," said the visitor, "I reckon you must have had a
good hunt."

"Yes, sir, there ain't a ba'h in the Delta can get away from those dogs.
We run this fellow straight on end for ten miles; put him across the
river twice, and all around the Black Bayou, but the dogs kept him hot
all the time, I'm telling you, for more than five miles through the cane
beyond the bayou."

"Who got the shot, Colonel?" asked Eddring--a question apparently most
unwelcome.

"Well, I ought to have had it," said Blount, with a frown of
displeasure. "The fact is, I did take a flying chance from horseback,
when the ba'h ran by in the cane half a mile back of where they killed
him. Somehow I must have missed. But man! you ought to have heard that
pack for two hours through the woods. It certainly would have raised
your hair straight up. You ever hunt ba'h, sir?"

"A little, once in a while, when I have had the time. You see, a
railroad man can't always choose."

"Railroad man?" said Colonel Blount. A sudden gloom fell upon his ruddy
face. "Railroad man, eh? Well, I wish you was something else. Now, I
helped get that railroad through this country--if it hadn't been for me,
they never could have laid a mile of track through here. But now, do you
know what they done did to me the other day, with their damned old
railroad?"

"No, sir, I haven't heard."

"Well, I'll tell you--Bill! Oh, _Bill_! Go into the house and get me
some ice; and go pick some mint and bring it here to this gentleman and
me--Say, do you know what that railroad did? Why, it just killed the
best filly on my plantation, my best running stock, too. Now, I was the
man to help get that railroad through the Delta, and I--"

"Well, now, Colonel Blount," said the other, "the road isn't a bad sort
of thing for you all down here, after all. It relieves you of the river
market, and it gives you a double chance to get out your cotton. You
don't have to haul your cotton twelve miles back to the boat any more.
Here is your station right at your door, and you can load on the cars
any day you want to."

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right. But how about this killing of
my stock?"

"Well, that's so," said the other, facing the point and ruminatingly
biting