"I pushed the pine knot ez fur ez hit would go. I set my rifle, en
pushed hit ahead of me. Got my knife where I could git hit. Went down
flat en begun to pull myself on my elbows. When I could jes peep around
a rock I seed the bear. He wuz settin' on his haunches, his head turned
alookin' at the pine knot. I picked out a spot about three inches below
his collar-bone, en never drew such a bead on anything. Then I tetched
her oft. Ye should have seed me come backward out o' there."
He waited and there was no sound in the cave. He sent the dogs in and
they would not come out at his call. He reloaded his rifle and began to
crawl in again.
"As soon as I seed him I knowed he wuz dead. I got both hands on his paw
and began to pull. He wuz heavier than I wuz, so I slid to him. I tried
ketchin' my toes in the rocks, but I couldn't hold, en I never moved
him."
He went ten miles over the mountains to get help to pull his bear out of
the cave.
The language of the people of the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge
mountains is filled with a quaintness of expression. Many of their words
and phrases that attract through their oddity were at one time in
popular use and grammatically correct. These people are clinging to the
dialect of their fathers who were Anglo-Saxons. The use of "hit" for
"it" is not confined to the mountains, but the Old English grammars give
"hit" as the neuter of the pronoun "he.
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