At the very door of the dwelling commenced a fish-trap dam; and on the trap stood a stalwart fellow in a red flannel shirt, and pantaloons that were merely breeches—the legs being torn off entirely.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Wait till we pass him, and I’ll tell you.”
We tumbled onward a few yards.
“That’s Jim Ed’ards; he loves cat-fish, some! Well, he does! Don’t do nothin’ but ketch ’em. Some of the boys says he’s got slimy all over, like unto a cat—don’t know about that; all I know is, we ketcht one in the seine, that weighed over forty pounds. Thar was a mocassin tuk out of it longer than my arm. And nobody wouldn’t have it then, but Jim. As we was goin’ home, Jim a totin’ the fish—ses I, ‘Jim, you ain’t agwine to eat that cat, surely!’
“Ses he, ‘Pshaw! that mocassin warn’t nothin’.’
“Ses I, ‘Jim, enny man that’ll eat that cat, would eat a bull-frog.’
“And with that, he knocked me down and liked to a killed me: and that was the reason I didn’t want to tell you about him twell we’d passed him.”
As we neared a pretty little island, on which were a house and two or three acres in cultivation:
“Thar,” said Dick, “is Dock Norris’s settlement. I guess he won’t ‘play horse’ agin in a hurry. He claims ’Possum Trot for his beat, but we’d all rather he’d take Turpingtine.”