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Show A WESTERN CHARACTER 29 I HUNTED THE P1PK-WOKKS." lookin' close at every body I seed, an' it seemed to me I seed every body but dad. In less'n a month all my money was gone, an' I felt awful streaked. But I lit on another feller who told me the right track, and we did find out where dad had worked awhile; but he was gone, and finally the police said he wan't in Noo Orleens now. So I went to work on the levee a while haulin' and pitch in', but it was awful hot then. A feller's shadder at noon was right ' tween his feet, and ' fore long I struck an ole pard o' dads, and found he'd gone away up Red River, in the new country. So I went deck- hand on a boat up Red River, and they was nothing like so many folks up there, an' people more civil ; an' I traced him all through Arkan-saw toward the Injin country. But it took a mi^ oht of time. Sometimes I worked and some-times I walked, and at last got where there was no houses hardly, and many a time I was alone all day in the woods, and more'n once nearly lost in the big swamps. At last I got into a more open country and some new settlements about Fort Smith, and then I fell in with some Cher-okees, and sure enough they knowed dad. " You see, a lot o' Cherokees moved out there away back before Jackson come in first time, and dad had his old liking for the tribe, and had fell in with them, and away up in the timber I found him at last. But, law, how he was changed ! He come out of a cabin and looked at me as if I was a stranger. What with hot weather and whisky and the trouble and yaller fever, he wasn't just clear in his mind, and what to do I didn't know. But I'd learnt something by that time, so I watched around and got him fixed up a little, and with a good family, an' I went to work again. The Cherokees was fixin' up considerably, an' I made a pretty good job at rough carpentering; and there I worked a whole year." " You must have been rather home- sick by that time." " Well, I was a little anxious about the boys. Myra was nearly fifteen when I left ; then come Joe, thirteen ; him I played with, an' had more to do with than any of the boys. Many's the hour we've fished an' hunted along the Tennessee. Poor Joe! I've seen the time since when I wished he was a boy agin, but," with a sud-den burst of triumph, " I stuck by him to the last, as I'd promised mammy." |