About this time the planter took the lead, and they all went across a pasture into the woods, and began knocking nuts off the trees.  All through the woods there were signs:  “No Tresspassing,” and “Beware of the Dogs,” but the planter said to never mind the signs.  I told the boy to let the dogs loose on the trail in about half an hour, and I went along with the folks, and I told pa I had seen a pack of bloodhounds that would eat people alive, and if he heard hounds barking to run like a whitehead and climb a tree.  I got with the giant, who is a coward in his own right, and told him the only trouble about these great plantations in the south was the wild dogs that inhabited the mountains, that would not hesitate to attack a man if they got good and hungry, but there was no danger to him, because he was a good sprinter, and could outrun a jack rabbit.  The giant wanted to go back to the house, ’cause he said he didn’t want to run no foot race with hounds, and he had seen the sign to beware of the dogs.  I never ought to have done it, ’cause the fat woman looks as though she was built a purpose for apoplexy, but I told her as a friend, not to load herself down with nuts, but to travel light, so if the wild dogs came down to raid the plantation she could crawl in a hole out of sight till the dogs had eaten some of the men.  She came near fainting right there, before the dogs got busy.

There were about 20 negroes throwing clubs at the nuts, and everybody was having a big time.  The trapeze performers were squirreling up among the limbs, when suddenly, in the distance came the bay of the pack of bloodhounds, and every negro turned pale, and got ready to climb a tree.  The planter stopped to listen, and when one of the managers of the show asked him what was the matter, he said:  “You can search me, sah.  If that is my pack of hounds a crime has been committed, and the sheriff has started the pack on the trail of the criminal, sah, because the dogs are never turned loose, except for business.”

Then the planter yelled to the niggers, and said:  “If any of youall are guilty of crime, you best get scarce, or pick out your tree, and get up it mighty sudden, ’cause the hounds haven’t been fed lately.”  Every colored man picked a tree, and the hounds kept coming, finally showing up jumping the fence, and entering the woods, and the planter cut a club to beat off the dogs.  Pa looked as innocent as John Wanamaker’s picture addressing a Sunday school, the giant saw the dogs and started for a tall tree, and the fat lady said she couldn’t find any hole big enough to hide in, and “the idea,” if there were not men enough to protect a lady.

Well, I never expected to see anything so fine as the way those hounds run with their noses to the ground, scattered in three packs one pack on the trail of each of the three whose shoes I had doctored.  When they got near us they broke up and went around everywhere that pa and the giant and the fat lady had walked, and fell over each other, but finally one pack went to the tall tree where the giant had climbed to the first limb, and stood on their hind legs and barked a salute to him.  He trembled so I was afraid he would fall off, but he wound his arms and legs around the tree, and began to cry.  The planter told him whatever crime he had committed it was all up with him.