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Show 30 WESTERN WILDS. Here the old man fell into such a protracted reverie, that I ven-tured to recall him to the Arkansas and his father. " Oh, yes, I clean forgot. Well, in a year dad was so much better that we started home, takin' a job on another boat to Noo Orleens to shorten up the walk a little." The calm way in which he spoke of shortening the walk from Fort Gibson to East Tennessee, was wonderfully suggestive. If it had been around the world, he would have entered on it with the same reso-lution, as something that was not to be talked about, but done. " When we got to Noo Orleens and got paid oif, we fixed up with some clean clothes, lookin' real human again, and started home. But it seemed like every thing was agin us. The trail then led away from the river, and sort o' north and east, nearly straight toward the bend o' the Tennessee. We worried along with heat, for it was late, till we struck the edge of the Injun country, where we found every thing all tore up. I never got the hang of it exactly ; but the States was a pressin' the Injins to go, an' some wanted to an' some didn't; and the Choctaws they was a fussin' with their agents, an' the Cherokees a flghtin' with one another, an' there was murder an' robbery an' horse-stealin' all over the country, an' their light- horse companies out arrestiii' every body that passed on the roads. Ho\ v I got along I don't know. Every time I laid down in an Injun cabin it seemed to me I'd have my throat cut ' fore mornin'; but dad talked the lingo like a born Injin, so they couldn't come no tricks in our hearin', an' every night I dreamed I saw mammy, an' she looked kind o' glad, an-' though she said nothin', her looks meant plain enough : ' Don't cry, Willy, you'll get home all right.' " But when we got to the Cherokee country it was worst of all. They was two parties in the tribe, Rossites and Ridgites, and just then the Rossites got up an' murdered a chief named Mclntosh an' a lot of other Ridgites, an' swore that every Injun that said ' go' should be served the same way. They stopped us, an' wouldn't let us go through at all. They pow- wowed around with us for two months; then come along some that knowed Daddy, an' they said he should go or they'd have blood. So it was settled that I was to stay an' him go on, an' if it proved we was all right, I was to be let go in so long a time. When the time come they turned me loose, an' I started north on the first road I struck. But I was powerfully out o' conceit with the redskins, an' the first two nights I slept out. " It was then September, an' the next day, when I thought I was near the Tennessee, all at once I took so cold I seemed like I'd chill to |