an old war musket bored out for shot. Such an outfit was not adapted
to quail shooting and especially to wing shooting, with which
knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about
with his hound dog and his war musket; he couldn't possibly kill the
quail. And so Uncle Ike's grandson loafed and pottered about in the
fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing so much harm to the
quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill
as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on.
The negro belongs to a primitive race of people and all such races
have keener eyes than white men whose fathers have pored over lines
of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its form, the
squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the grass.
The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he
distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a tree top
he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden
squirrel, and the quiver of a single stem of sedge grass told him of
a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all
the skill of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills
without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was
growing sulky, too, with the knowledge that the white man was
bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn when he might
as well exact it all. And this he shortly did, as we shall see.

The time came when cotton went up to sixteen cents a pound and
single breech-loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The
negro had money now, and the merchants--these men who had said let
the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton and corn--sold him the
guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South.
Then shortly a wail went up from the sportsmen, "The niggers are
killing our quail." They not only were killing them, but most of the