It was hear that Pa and our step Ma seperated for 4 or 5 months and short time she sent Pa word if he would let her come back she would do better. Pa sent me after her. None of us children wanted her to come back though I never had a cross word with her. She had 2 children and Pa had 6. I have seen her sitting before the fire of a night, her knitting needles and tonge on a race it look like, to see which could work the fastest, she quarling about something the children had done. Pa would be reading or signing in his notebook, paying no attention to her. Sometimes he would stop and say Ma you have said enough now, but she had to have her gravel out. Pa would tell her when his children did rong to whip them, and you bet the smallest one got it. The little children and all of us children did not love Pa because of it, but he quit it when he found her out.
This year 1861 Pa set me free and I went to my uncles Dr. Greenwood at Grand Lake on the Miss. River in Chicot Co. Ark. to go to school. There was a Negro speculator there with 60 or 70 negroes for sale and the preninsity (proximity) of the war then comming on caused no sale for them, so he rented a farm and put them to work, there quarters were in sight of our house.
Every night till the bell tapped for them to go to bed you could hear the strap and a negro a beging, also every morning till the bell tapped for them to go to work, the driver whipping some of them. They was a bad set of negroes of corse when a man was buying negroes the sold him the worst they had.
One morning 2 of the negroes and 2 mules was gone . Mr Dehart asked me to stay at his house and see after them while he went after the 2 runaways. Mr Dehart told me when he left, if any of them cut up to shoot them, there was a double barrel in the room loaded with buck shot. So the next morning when Jack the driver, called John who was in charge of the plow hands, 30 in number, up to whip him, John made at him with a stick. Jack came backing toward me defending himself with his cow hide (whip). The hoe hands brought up there hoes over the evening and threw them in the yard. As I stumbled over one of them Jack hollered out " he has cut me," . I picked up a hoe and struck at John. the first lick brushed him on his side, the second lick, I knocked him to his knees and hollowed out at the same time to take him down or I would shoot him. I had 2 good pistols in my belt. "Who de hell is dat?"he says. When he found out it was me he ran, jumped over a mule and run down the road. I ran for my shot gun, got back to the edge of the galery, threw it to my face and in one more second would have sent a load of buck shot after him, but Mrs Dehart had saw me and ran out in her night clothes, threw both arms around my neck, caught the gun just in time. She said "let him go, we can catch him, Mr Nicles has good negro dogs"
We bound up Jacks arm which was split wide open from elbo to rist. I ate breakfast, then I went on with Jack in front. When we got to the gate there stood John between his plow handles. He started to run. I threw up my gun on him 40 or 50 feet from me. He stopped and says"don't shoot, I be stop". Jack ties his feet and arms around a tree, give him 3 or 4 hundred and asked me how much must he give him for trying to cut me. I told him to put on 2 or 300 more. When Dehart came home he made Jack give him 1,000 more which confined John to his bed for a month. I was, though I didn't apprehend it then, in danger I think. There had been 2 or 3 overseers killed in that country by there hands and there was 35 or 30 standing there all the time.
MR.TANTEONS PLAYS A TRICK ON ME AND I GET IT BACK ON HIM
Mr . Tantoons, the man Uncle got to build his new house, was a fine traveling meednicine (medicine show?) I complained one morning of my lips being chaped and he gave me a little bottle with something in it. He said he was using it for the same thing. I bathed my lips with it, it taste salty but I mistrusted nothing. He told me the next day it was his urin.
I in his absence, poored his out and urinated in the bottle and after he had bathed with it 2 or 3 times, I asked him which was best, mine or his. Then he grinned and said he would get even with me.
I remained with my uncles, put him up a drug store and went to reading medicine and filling prescriptions for the Dr. I did something one day that Aunt Loo did not like and when I went upstatirs she sent her cook woman up there with the broom after me. I started down the stares fast as I could and there was Aunt Loo and Dr. donans wife at the foot of the stares, with a broom each. The old negro behind me and I in front. I knew if they got me, all 3 of them, they would wal me good. So when I got 2 or 3 steps above Aunt Loo's and Dr's wife, I attempted to jump over them. Came down between them and tore both their hoap skirts off, but I got away and kept out of the way for some time.