Free The Boar by Joe R. Lansdale Page B

ain’t no experienced hog dogs in these parts.”
    Uncle Pharaoh leaned on his crutches and looked at us for a long time, only I could tell he wasn’t really seeing us. He was considering.
    “This ain’t like running no squirrel,” Uncle Pharaoh said.
    “No sir,” I said, “we know that. We ain’t got no thoughts that it’ll be easy and we ain’t going to be silly about it. What we need is expert advice on how to kill Old Satan. Then we’re going to go out there and do it.”
    Uncle Pharaoh cracked a toothless smile. “I wish I had you boys’ legs, but I’m sure glad I ain’t as dumb. Old Satan, he’s the meanest critter I ever seen, and I’ve killed bears in Tennessee and once helped a fellow hunt down a hog-eating gator in Louisiana. This here’s a bad critter.”
    “You saying you ain’t gonna help us?” I asked.
    “I’m saying you be talking mighty big now, but when that Old Satan come out of the woods on you, him running fast as an old buck deer and mad as a bull, it’s a lot different than shooting some old lamp-blinded coon out of a tree.” He paused. “You boys bound and determined?”
    “Yes sir,” I said.
    He nodded his old head, and it looked to me that it might just fall off his neck. “Let’s go out to the smokehouse so we can talk. You boys gonna have to be learned something about wild hog hunting.”

Three
    Uncle Pharaoh lit a lamp, closed the door of the smokehouse, and settled himself down on a bag of sweet taters. Abraham and I squatted on the ground. Big, netted, sweet-smelling hams hung over our heads and their aroma was so thick it almost made me dizzy. It sure made me hungry.
    “Thing you got to remember,” Uncle Pharaoh started, “is this. You ain’t dealing with no farm hog. This ain’t even no everyday wild hog. This here is a devil hog. Smartest critter I ever seen. Hogs is smarter than dogs, and this hog is smarter than other hogs. This hog is also crazy. He’s got the devil in him, like some folks gets. The way Old Man Turner got it that time.”
    Old Man Turner was one of the big river bottom stories. He’d always been a good fellow, a family man. One day he got up to go kill chickens, came back in the house with the axe and killed everyone in his family, then went down to the river and drowned himself. No one ever knew what set him off like that.
    “This hog,” Uncle Pharaoh went on, “is like that only he ain’t gonna drown hisself. He just gonna keep on hurting and killing till someone or something kills him.”
    “That something is going to be us,” Abraham said.
    “You just listen, boy, I ain’t through talking. Now here’s how that Old Satan will do. He lives upriver, back there where the woods is the thickest and so’s the food. He eat anything. Other animals, bark off trees, you if he can.
    “You boys take all the hounds we got and you hit up his trail. It gonna be kind of cold from last night, but not so much they ain’t gonna follow. Them dogs, they gonna act crazy cause they ain’t never chased no wild hog before. That trail they’re following gonna seem nutty, but it ain’t. All over the place, that’s the way that hog gonna run cause he ain’t right in the head. But he’s gonna go back into the deeps of them woods, back in there so deep you gonna need a cane knife to chop your way through.
    “Now them dogs, they gonna get to that hog first and they gonna close in on him, and he’s gonna let them. But they ain’t gonna turn him back toward your guns. Old Satan, he’s too smart for that. He’s gonna keep leading them dogs deeper into the bottoms, and then, when them dogs ain’t expecting it, he’s gonna turn and raise a ruckus. They ain’t gonna be able to move him another inch in any direction if he don’t want to go. He’s gonna pull up tight somewhere, and then he’s gonna whup them dogs like a stepchild. That’s all gonna happen so fast those dogs ain’t gonna have time to raise much sand. It’ll be over before