He called in the dog, and, taking his dinner bucket, climbed the fence and struck off into the woods. Now and again he would pause, put his horn to his lips, and give a long blast, then stand listening with anxious expectancy. Every thicket was searched. It was a weary tramp,—through bogs and sloshes, where the cypress knees stood up like sugar-loaves in the shallow water, or sometimes his steps were bent to some open glade, where the great oaks dropped sweet mast among the brown leaves.
The day was no longer young when a low fence came into view; beyond it stretched a levee, and at its base a glint of water showed itself through the great trees, which stretched their mighty arms as though they would embrace it.
Ung Jerry, after climbing the fence, mounted the levee and stood upon the brink of a wide and muddy river. Taking off his hat, the old man wiped the sweat from his face, then turned an observant eye upon the river, whose muddy waters were already lapping the boughs of the overhanging trees, and with a long-drawn breath exclaimed, “Bank an’ bank!”
Then, as his experienced eye noted the angry swirls near the shore and the débris borne rapidly upon the turbid current, “An’ still on de rise. She gwine be out in de low groun’s befo’ mornin’, bless de Lord; I’s been ’spectin’ she gwine play dis trick eber since de win’ set like et did.”
Then, looking at the field of standing corn upon the further shore, protected by a low levee, and seeming to be upon a lower level than the red waters of the flood, he soliloquized:—
“I’s skeared de fresh gwine ’stroy a sight o’ Mars Jones’s corn. It raly do ’pear like dat corn mout a been housed befo’ now.”
The old man’s thoughts were interrupted at this point by loud and animated barkings from Drive, and, hurrying to the spot whence they proceeded, he discovered the old hound standing in a broken gap in the fence, in a state of excitement over the numerous footprints which told that the truants had broken through and made for the river, evidently with designs upon “Mars Jones’s” cornfield.
“Here’s wha’ dey tuck de watah,” the old man remarked to the dog, as together they followed the footprints to the water’s edge. “Dat ’ere listed sow, she got mo’ sense un folks! She know ’bout Mars Jones’s corn, an’ dey ain’t no fence gwine stop dat cretur when she take a notion for to go.
“Well, well, well, de listed sow, an’ de big white hogue, an’ seben head o’ shotes done tore down de fence, an’ took deyselves ’cross de riber for to steal Mars Jones’s corn; I ’clare ’t is a disgrace. I reckon Mars Jones gwine cuss a plenty when he fine it out. It certinly is a pity for master’s creturs to do sich a low-life trick as dat. But bless de Lord,” and a look of crafty triumph came into his face, “dey’s got dey bellies full, anyhow.”
With this pleasing reflection, and the conviction that nothing more could be done for the present, the old man seated himself upon a log, opened his bucket, took out his jack-knife, and proceeded to eat his dinner, while Drive sat by, in eager readiness to snatch the morsels flung to him, ere they could reach the ground.