“Swim it!” Mobile panted. “Git across dis creek, fer Gawd’s sake!”
They leaped into the stream and dragged their exhausted bodies up the opposite bank just as the raging dogs stopped at the water’s edge on the bank they had just left.
Mobile ran to a hickory sapling as large around as his arm.
“He’p me break dis off, men,” he screamed. “We got to fight ’em!”
With the strength of desperation, the three men wrenched at the sapling, snapped it off at the roots, broke it in a proper length for a club, and as quickly as possible selected and prepared two others like it.
“Look out, niggers!” Mobile howled. “Dey’s gittin’ ready to swim across! Kill eve’y dog as quick as his front feet touches the land on dis side. Whatever happens, git dem big, black, long-eared debbils fust!”
While he was speaking two of the bloodhounds leaped from the bank and came toward them, swerving not an inch before the threatening clubs.
Mobile stepped to the edge of the water and stood poised to strike, his crazed eyes glaring at one of the swimming dogs, the features of his face quivering with spasms of pain and exhaustion. Then the hickory descended, and the immense dog sank under the water with a startled grunt.
Mobile and Pap both ministered to the other bloodhound which followed its mate to the bottom of the bayou.
Then the whole pack, deer-dogs, fox-hounds, hog-dogs, and mongrels, making the swamp hideous with their howls and yelps, sprang into the stream.