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Show A WESTERN CHARACTER. 43 was my troubles to them ? The boys was fur gone, an' no medicines an' nothin' to help ' em could be got It was a might o' comfort, though, to see ' em ' fore they died, an' take back some keepsakes to their mother. Oh, stranger, that war was a powerful sight o' trouble to us all ! " They was buried, along with hundreds of others, an' I was gettiu' ready to start back, when up steps a chap, an' sez he, ' Old man, we want you can't spare a man now that can shoot.' An' I jist had a chance to send word home, an' then took the place my oldest boy had ; an' nigh a year after, when that regiment give in to old Sherman, I was one of the thirty- six all that was left of a big regiment. " * * * I found my folks at a neighbors, but on my place they wasn't a stick nor a rail. I hadn't the heart to try it there agin. We got word that my wife's mother had died in the Cherokee Nation, an' left a good claim ; so I turned over the Tennessee land to my son- in-law ( he married my only girl), an' had him take the other grand- chil-dren, too, an' he outfitted us for the Nation. " My wife proved up on her Cherokee blood, an' I was let in under their law as bein' married to a Cherokee that had head- rights, an' we took her mother's place. Nice fixed up, too, it was, on Grand River, jist across from Fort Gibson, an' there my grandsons that come with us made two crops, an' then all at once the troubles about the Chero-kees started up again. I turned cold ' round the heart when I heard it I did want rest so bad. Then I looked back only forty years, to the time when all the country, from Tennessee here, was wild, an' President, Congress, an' all said if the Cherokees would only come out here they wouldn't be bothered for ages an' ages, an' now this country's older ' n Tennessee was then. Neither did any man own his land in the Cherokee Nation; it was common, an' we owned jist the improve-ments. So I took a good long look at the matter, an' sez I, l Once more, Natie, dear ( that's my wife), we've got to go once more ; this is too good a country for Injins to keep if white men want it, an' you can swear they will long ' fore we die.' " So I traded that claim for this piece up here, an' my grandsons stuck, an' I guess we'll get along. What I dread more'n any thing is another war." " Why, what reason have you to dread it ?" t( t Burnt child,' you know. All my life I've been a man of peace, an' yet every fuss that come up hurt me. Three times I've been broke up an' ruined by wars an' troubles I had no hand in briugiu' on. Don't you think they'll keep peace while I live?" |