Most of the new-fledged negro sportsmen were content to hunt the little cat squirrels that were plentiful in the wooded swamps and the oak and hickory knolls, but Simon was ambitious and habitually hunted the beautiful fox squirrels, grays and blacks, wary creatures, rarely met with and found only among tall pines—sometimes in the long leaf palustris of the ridges, but oftener in the great “loblollies” skirting the bays, the height of the trees and the Spanish moss that clustered thick about their towering tops, making them safe retreats, once reached. One of these big squirrels would sometimes be surprised on or near the ground, offering a shot before he got far up the tall trunks which he always ascended rapidly with a great clatter of claws on the bark, cunningly keeping on the off side from the hunter, but never slackening speed till a fork or one of the higher branches was reached, upon which he would flatten out and keep absolutely still. Even a boy then knew it was wasting precious powder and shot to attempt to make him break sanctuary, but not so old Okra. He had implicit faith and infinite pride in the shooting powers of his old “muskick,”—“Ole Betsey, him cya’ shot fuh sowl,” and he would crack away as long as his ammunition lasted, at a gray or black spot at the tip-top of some forest giant; often indeed, at a dead squirrel, for these “foxes” have an exceedingly inconsiderate habit of digging their claws so deeply into the bark that they hang on after death and are hard to dislodge. Often the boy hunter roaming the woods, day-dreaming of the buck or big gobbler that was always about to spring up just ahead of him, to fall gloriously to his little single barrel, would hear at intervals the heavy “duhbaw!” of Simon’s ordnance and know that the indefatigable old sinner was, like most of us, reaching up after the unattainable.
Curiosity to learn how he was faring would sometimes overcome caution, for Simon always begged for powder, and his ingratiating “Mass—— so freehan’,” seldom failed to coax from the flask part of the boy’s scanty store, but woe to the scanty store if Simon was permitted to “po’rum.” “Berry well den, suh, you po’rum,” and into the deeply cupped palm of the avaricious hand he held out, the precious powder would trickle. Simon never stinted his gun, and as long as the donor would pour, the recipient had no scruples about drams running into ounces. Whatever you poured into his hand went into the gun, and when she responded in recalcitrance to a double charge, sending her owner staggering back among the gallberry bushes, he would grin proudly and remark, “Him duh tell we tengky fuh wuh we g’em. Betsey him hab uh hebby belly fuh powder.”
One crisp winter’s day, Simon and his half-grown son, “Boyzie,” were encountered on a high pineland plateau dotted with a chain of shallow, sedgy ponds. Suddenly, from the marge of a pond a hundred yards away, the plume-like tail of a big gray fox squirrel was seen waving jerkily over the ground as he ran for the timber. The party gave chase and succeeded in putting him up in a clump of tall long-leaf saplings before he could reach the big trees. Simon’s eyes shone like brown pebbles through the sunlit waters of a shallow brook. His slouch was gone and he was all alertness, apprehension.
“Weh him, Boyzie? Weh him?”
“Yuh him, Pa! Yuh him! Shum! Shum!”
“Duhbaw!” boomed Betsey, and Simon reeled from the recoil as the load cut the top from a sapling down which the squirrel raced to the ground and scampered off for a big pine not far away, rushing up the trunk in long spirals. “Watch’um, Boyzie! Don’ tu’n yo’ yeye loose off’um ’tell I git Betsey load’,” and Simon hurriedly rammed down his charge with many furtive glances at the watching sentinel to see that he didn’t “tu’n ’e yeye loose.” Extracting from a greasy rag a huge copper cap of the grandfather’s hat pattern, he fitted the nipple and cocked his musket, as strenuous an operation as pulling the trigger, for at half-cock Betsey’s hammer leaned back like the head of a strutting gobbler, while at the full, the cup yawned toward the heavens like the crater of a miniature Mauna Loa. Circling the pine he tried to locate the squirrel now lying flat in a crotch near the crown of the long-leaf, his long tail hanging down while his body was securely hidden. Boyzie pointed out the drooping tail. “Dey him, pa, dey him, but ’e too fudduh. You cyan’ reach’um.”
“Who? Dat squerril? Watch’um!” The piece was raised, two sinewy fingers clutched the trigger with a jerk that would have disconcerted any aim, and the hammer, describing a parabola, fell upon the cap which exploded with a report like a parlor rifle, but Betsey’s muzzle remained glum and silent.
“’S’mattuh, Betsey? You got ’ooman name en’ you ent got ’ooman mout’? You cyan’ talk? De debble!” Another cap was fitted, another hopeful aim taken and another futile “paow!” echoed among the pines. Simon, now having only two caps left, accepted the suggestion that priming might help. He also accepted the powder which he poured with a liberal hand down the capacious nipple and rammed home with a lightwood splinter.
“Now watch’um come down.” Another careful sight at the tantalizing tail up aloft, another “popped” cap with a little blue smoke from the priming, and a sorely puzzled squirrel hunter.
“Witch mus’ be pit bad mout’ ’puntop Betsey. I ’spec’ ’e done cunjuh.”