The part of the pack that was on pa’s trail began to close in on pa, and I said:  “Pa, if you don’t want to be dog meat, it is up to you to climb, and you better get a move on, or I shall be an orphan mighty quick, ’cause the dogs are starving.”  Pa made a couple of quick jumps, and grabbed a limb of a hickory tree, and was pulling himself up and repeating prayers, when the leading dog reached up his nose and smelled pa’s shoes, when the intelligent animal gave a bark and a yell to the other dogs, as much as to say:  “That’s the identical cuss.  Eat him alive.”

He grabbed about a double handful of the cloth of pa’s clothes right below where his suspenders button on and held on, and shook pa real hard, but the cloth was tough and didn’t tear.  Pa suddenly seemed to be endowed with superhuman strength, for he drew himself up on the limb and raised the dog from the ground, and all the pack came around the tree and set up a howl that scared pa so the perspiration rolled off him, and he had a chill so he shook like the ague.

Pa yelled to the planter, who was holding up the fat lady and said:  “Here, Mr. Confederate, I am not a union prisoner, and I want you to unlock your dog’s jaws, and free me, ’cause I can’t hold up a 90-pound dog by my suspenders much longer.  If this is southern hospitality, I don’t want to be entertained no more.”  The planter leaned the fat lady against a tree, and took the dog by the hind legs and pulled him off.

[Illustration:  “Here, Mr. Confederate, I Am Not a Union Prisoner.”]

The planter yelled to the negroes to come down and help handle the dogs, but just then the boy who started the dogs on the trail, at my request, came up whistling, with a dog whip in his hand, and all the dogs surrounded him, and he made them lay down and roll over.  All of the scared people came down from their perches in the trees, and surrounded the boy and the dogs, and the dogs panted and lolled, as though they had been having a nice run for their money.  The old planter asked his boy how the dogs had happened to get loose, and that fool boy told the whole thing, how I had asked him to let the pack run, and how I had put anise seed in the shoes of pa, the giant and the fat lady.  Then you ought to have seen what they did to me.  The planter said they usually had a lynching when the dogs made a run, but that was impossible in this case, so he suggested that they make me run the gauntlet.  I didn’t know what running the gauntlet was, but after pa had told me he should disown me from that moment, I said I was willing to run any gauntlet, so they all cut switches and formed in two lines, and let me run down between them.  I thought it would be fun, but when I started and every last man gave me a cut across the end of my back with a hickory switch, I yelled murder, and run between the giant’s legs and tackled him like football I toppled him over against the next man, and that man hit the giant in the stomach, and everybody began to fight, and the festivities broke up.