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Show A WESTERN CHARACTER. 27 The broad, red sun was just dipping into the prairie horizon, when a gray haze overspread the landscape, creeping up from the sluggish stream. The old man waved his hand toward it with the brief but expressive phrase, " break- bone fever," and we retired to the cabin and evening fire. As we filled and lighted the inevitable cob pipe, com-mon in the South- west, I spoke of Andrew Jackson's love of the same, and his Tennessee habits, whereat my host broke out with sudden ani-mation : " Ah, you're from Tennessee, a'nt you?" " Not exactly," was my reply, " but I know and like the State." " Well, I was raised there, right on the banks of the Tennessee, but I was born just over the line in Alabama. Yes, sir, sixty- four years ago, in Glen Cove, I tuck my first view of life. Nicest climate in this world, sir, and bad as I've seen it tore up since, I don't want no better country." " But how came you to leave, if it was so good a country?" " Well, a good many things happened; sort o' riled the current and spiled me for a steady life, though I'm pretty well anchored now, for a fact;" and glancing at his distorted limbs, he relapsed into speechless-ness, puffing at his cob pipe, and waiting, Indian fashion, for the talk to break out naturally. Hot youth was more impatient of time, and I asked : " If no offense, what caused you to leave that country for this ? " " Well, I did'nt leave there for here; that would be too big a change. They was many haps and mishaps between. It happened along o' family matters and the war. You see they was five brothers of us and one sister, me the oldest; and mammy sort q' give the rest in my charge. Poor mammy, she never seed any of us old enough to be sure of." " But how about your father?" " Well, daddy was a little onsettled ; along o' trips down into the Cherokee country and tradin with the Injins in fact he let his little finger ride his thumb too often, and his eyesight weakened on it." This was a delicate allusion to his father's intemperance, given in the figurative language of the South- west. " Fact, he took me down among the Injins in Geawjay and North Alabama one trip fine country that, too; altogether too fine for the Injins to keep if the whites wanted it but daddy went- off at last, and that was the how of my first trip. He went off on a broad- horn. You don't know what a broad- horn is. No? Well, it's a flat- boat of the old rig ; and the men come back without him. Them days they com- |