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Show 34 WESTERN WILDS. " No, I can't say as I do. But how did lie get along ?" " " Well, there was trouble. An' bimeby I persuaded Joe if they'd get away from both their folks it would be better ; so he went to In-jeanny, and then to Illinoy. " Well, it seems like when folks get started that way they keep goin' and goin'. One place is too hot and another too cold, an' here its sickly an' there they's bad neighbors, and so on. Leastways it was that way with Joe, and finally he landed in the Half-breed Tract in Iowa. At first he could not say enough in praise of the country. Joe was a great scholar; he could write like a school-master, an' cipher as fast as he could make the figures ; but my wife had to read the letters an' answer for me. All at once we got no more letters for two or three years, and then come one with just a few lines, an' it wound up : ' I've writ so often an' got no answer, I'm discour-aged, but I'll try once more. Come an' see old Joe before he dies !' " Nothin' could a' stopped me after that. I fixed up every thing snug about home, an' got Ben, my youngest brother, to stay while I was gone, an' run down the Tennessee an' up the Mississip to St. Louis. Then I conceited I might need all my money, so I took a job on another boat to Nauvoo, where I landed all right, but soon found I'd run right into the trouble. " It was the year after the Mormon prophet was killed, an' the whole country was up a boomin'. I only knowed Joe lived back in the country somewhere on the other side, an' when I asked about roads they looked at me like I was a pirate. I had to give account of my-self half a dozen times ' fore I got out of town, an' then like enough when I'd step off I'd overhear some feller say,/ D n him, he's one of ' em, and a spy at that.' Over the river it was jist as bad. Every body was afraid of every body else they didn't know. If I went nigh a house when the men was out, liker'n not the woman ' d bolt the door an' set a dog on me, or run out toward the fields and holler for the men. Every body carried a gun, or a club, or a knife, an' I never seed so many big an' savage dogs one or two at every house ; an' they looked jist as snappy an' suspicious as the people, an' watched round close an' stuck by the women whenever a stranger come along. One man I asked a civil question about the road, an' he only grinned an' said, ' Your safest road's back towards Nauvoo; they hang horse thieves over here.' An' that night where I stopped they stood with the door open about an inch, an' made me answer a hundred questions ' fore they'd let me in. Lord, such a catekismcn I Avas put through ! an' didn't half want to let me in then. It was jist the Cherokee COUD- |