linch an' the fightin'
begins.

"'It ain't no time when the circumf'rence of trouble spreads. Bud
Ingalls makes a pass at me pers'nal, an' by way of reeprisal I smashes
a stewpan on him. Bud's head goes through the bottom, like the clown
through them paper hoops in a cirkus, the stewpan fittin' down 'round
his neck same as one of them Elizbethan ruffs. The stewpan ockyoopies
so much of Bud's attention that I gets impatient, an' so, tellin' him
I ain't got no time to wait, I leaves him strugglin' with that
yootensil, an' strolls off down to the Hawgthief whistlin' "Sandy
Land."

"'It's dark as the inside of a cow, an' somehow I misses the dugout;
but bein' stubborn, an' plumb sot about gettin' home, I wades in an'
begins to swim. The old Hawgthief is bank full, but I'd have made
t'other side all right if it ain't that, as I swims out from onder the
overhangin' branch of a tree, somethin' drops into the water behind
me, an' comes snarlin' an' splashin' an' spittin' along in pursoote. I
don't pay much heed at the jump, but when it claws off my nigh
moccasin, leavin' a inch-deep gash in my heel, I glances back an'
perceives by the two green eyes that I've become an object of
comsoomin' int'rest to a pa'nter, or what you-all out yere calls a
mountain lion, an' we-uns back in Tennessee a catamount.'

"'But a panther won't swim,' reemonstrates Tutt.

"'Arizona catamounts won't,' returns old Stallins, 'thar bein' no
rivers to speak of. But in Tennessee, whar thar's rivers to waste,
them cats takes to the water like so many muskrats.

"'When I finds that thar's nothin' doggin' me but a catamount, I heads
all casyooal for whar a tree's done been lodged midstream, merely
flingin' the reemark over my shoulder to the catamount that, if he
keeps on annoyin' me, he'll about pick up the makin's of a maulin'.
As I crawls out on the bole of the lodged tree, I can hear the
catamount sniggerin', same as if he's laughin' me to scorn, an' this
yere insultin' contoomely half-way makes me mad. Which I ain't in the
habit of bein' took lightly by no catamount.

"'Drawin' myse'f out o' the water, I straddles the bole of my tree,
an' organizes for the catamount, who's already crawlin' after me.
T'arin' off a convenient bough the thickness of your laig, I arranges
myse'f as a reeception committee for visitin' catamounts, an' by way
of beginnin' confers on my partic'lar anamile sech a bat over the
snout that he falls back into the drink, an'