Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1883 — Whore Bears Were Thick. [ARTICLE]

Whore Bears Were Thick.

Said Major Jim: “B’an will leave when yon make it too hot for ’em, sir. When I waa doin business for old Jedge Smides, down in Madison Parish — plantation lay right on the river—Mississippi river, yon know—one night I was eittin’ on my gallery smokin’, sir —everything jest as still as er dead mule, sir. Well, first' thing I knowed I heerd a kinder noise way up ’cross the' river, and it sounded sorter low like at first, and then it kept gettin’loader and louder, twell I couldent stand it no longer, sir. I jest jumps upon my feet and says: ’Old ooman, old ooman, a hurricane’s cornin’ sure as you’re horn.’ Says she: ‘Major O.’—she always calls me Major O. when she wan’t’in a hurry —‘how in the name o’ sense can a hurricane be a cornin’ when there ain’t a cloud in the sky?’ ‘Well,’ says I, there’s the deuce to pay somewhere.’ So I picks np my doublebarrel and I breaks ont for the levee, and when I gits there.l lissen, and T hears that roarin’ ‘cross the river gittin’ louder and louder, jest like a nigger funeral, when they begin to blow the mud ont their bilers, sir. And I looked where the moon was shinin’, and I seen that whole river turnin’ black, sir, and cornin’ closer and closer up to where I was standin’. Skeared! I reckon I was skeared. Why, sir, my hair would a lifted a cotton bale. I would a put np and dusted, and I did kinder inch back er little, but I dazzen run, sir, with Susan Ann a standin’ there on that gallery. There she stood, sir, and first she’d sing ‘Old Hundred,’ and then she’d git down on her marrow bones and moan out her little prayer, and the every once in a while she’d holler out, *Jim, what is the matter?’ as if I would’nt a given six quarts of Dexter’s best jest to a half knowed what was the matter. If you’d a seed me, sir, a standin’ there havin’ one agur on top of another faster’n you could count ’em, and the cold sweat runnin’ out the holes in my boots, you’d a knowed, sir, how happy I was, sir, when I seed somethin’ black riz up out that liver and ’shuck Msself. I jest up and hollered to Susan Ann not to be carryin’ on like a moon jack and makin’ a darned fool of herself; but I had jest as well hollered at a loggerhead turkle, for Susan Ann and every nigger on that Mil had lit ont 'for the oanebreak, sir. So I jest stood there lonesome by myself, and I jest poured it into them b’ars right and left when they topped that levee and shuck themselves, twell broad daylight, sir. It looked like the whole world was full of b’ars, sir. I jest stood in my tracks and I killed thirty-eight of ’em, sir—the biggest in the drove, and when I stopped shootin’ there wasn’t a livin’ soul on that plantation ’cept me and them dead b’ars. Every nigger, sir, little and big, and Susan Ann to boot, was clean gone, sir. I got some nigger dcfgs and I ket<?hed the old ooman down on Joe’s Bayou the next day, but some of them niggers never did git baok, sir, never did. Yes, yes, b’ars will travel when you make it hot for ’em.” —Forest and Stream.