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Show 28 WESTERN WILDS. raonly walked back from Noo Orleens thro' the Injin country. All they said was he had lost all his money, and swore he'd never come back till he could come full- handed. Mammy was ailin' then, and after that she never seemed to pick up any ; and the day I was sixteen she called me close to the bed and she said : ' Willy, you go find him, and bring him back, for when he dies he'll never be easy ' cept beside me/ and then she laid on me the charge of all the other five and, stranger, I can't somehow talk about that time, but just a week after they was only me and Myra and the four little boys left. I tell you it was a sad time. I've only seen one worse and that was in the war. " I hadn't time to cry much, for I had a family on my hands and mighty little to go on except the place. We all worked and made a crop, and then I fixed things up . a little, and got a neighbor to take the place mighty nice people they was then in old Tennessee and I started to find dad." " What ! went to find your father at that age ? " " Yes," said the old man simply, " mammy had said so, and of course it had to be done. Daddy had been gone a year, when I took a broad- horn to Noo Orleens, and when I was paid off on the levee, I was the worst lost man you ever did see. In the middle of the thickest woods in the world wasn't a circumstance to it. Such crowds and crowds of people, and ships and boats and stores, and men all rushing here and yander, enough to distract you. Why, they wan't more'n one man in four understood a word I said. In all my life I'd never heard of any language but white- man and Injin, and there was I'ortagee. Mexican, Gumbo, French and Coaster, talkin' every thing, and all mixed up. My head was a swimmin just off the boat, you know and sometimes I half reckoned I'd walked right out o' the Ark and into the brick- yard at the Tower o' Babel ; for I'd read o' that anyhow, and might a' known how things would be in Noo Or-leens if I'd a thought. But says I to myself, no time to cry now; I'm here. So I went about asking every man that understood me if he'd seed a man named Hiram Darnell. Well, some of ' em cussed me, and most paid no attention to me; but bimeby one chap says: ' Oh, yes, I know Mr. Darnell ; he's up on Chapitooley Street a chawin' rags for a paper mill.' And another said : ' He was at the pipe-works, and they was trainin' him to go through a drain- pipe,' and all such stuff. " Well, I was that green I hunted the pipe- works, and there they sent me to a leather store to buy ' strap- oil,' and told me a lot more stuff. Then I walked all over the city, miles an' miles an' miles, |
