OCR Text |
Show 38 WESTERN WILDS. " Took a little trip out there." " Little trip ! It is considered a pretty big one. Did you go for gold ? " " Some'at, but more on account o' the boys." " Your brothers again?" " No, my own boys. You might say I went to keep them from goin', for I suspicioned it was all foolishness, from the start. I reckon you don't remember the big excitement. No? Well, it swept all Tennessee like a fire in prairie grass. I first heard it one day at Man-chester, when the Whigs had a pole- raisin' along o' the election o' old Zach Taylor, an' a man jist from Noo York spoke, an' said old Zach had conquered for us a country with more gold in it than any nation on earth had. Pretty soon the news come thick. They said men j ust dug gold out o' the rocks thousands in a day. You ought to heard the stories that was told for solemn facts. One man said a feller dug out one lump worth eight hundred thousand dollars, an' as he set on it, a feller come by with a plate o' pork an' beans, an' he offered him fifty thousand for it, an' the feller stood him off for sev-enty- five thousand. It was in the Nashville paper, an' so every body in our parts believed it. " Then every loose- footed man wanted to go. Some jist throwed down their tools an' started ; an' some men that was tied with families, actually set down an' cried ' cause they couldn't go. My boys was as crazy as the rest. But they was only sixteen an' eighteen, an' I seed it wouldn't do. So I said : ' Boys, let me go, an' I'll let you know in time,' an' then I bound ' em to take care o' their mother till I sent for ' em. It would a' been ruination for them young innocent boys to go off with such a lot o' men. Jest as soon as the Tennessee was up so boats could run over Muscle Shoals, a company of forty of us shipped teams an' started, an' landed at Independence, Missouri, the last o' March. The whole country was under water, but our fellers was crazy to git on ; so they hitched up and started right across the Kaw an' into the Delawares' country. But it was all foolishness to start so early. Accident after accident we had. The mud was thicker an' stickier every day, an' all the creeks was up ; but the men kept up a hoopin' an' swearin', an' often had to double teams, an' sometimes we'd stick an' pull out two or three wagon tongues ' fore we'd get through. I never seed men so crazy to git on. They whipped an' yelled, an' wouldn't listen to reason. They was plenty started three weeks after us, an' passed us on the road. An' what was strange, the trains that laid by an' kept Sunday, got to Californy first. You wouldn't believe it, but I've heard hundreds say the same thing. |