Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains | Page 4

that decided me to leave at once, without waiting to further improve my financial condition. I was getting to be too big a boy to be beaten around by that old wretch, and having no ties of friendship, and no one being at all interested in me, I was determined to get away before my tormentor could get another chance at me.
I would go to St. Louis, but I must get even with the old hag before starting. I did not wish to leave in debt to anyone in the neighborhood and so I cudgeled my brain to devise a means for settling old scores with my self-constituted governess.
Toward evening I wandered into a small pasture, doing my best to think how I could best pay off the black termagant with safety to myself, when with great good luck I suddenly beheld a huge hornet's nest, hanging in a bunch of shrubbery. My plan instantly and fully developed. Quickly I returned to the house and hastily gathered what little clothing I owned into a bundle, done up in my one handkerchief, an imitation of bandanna, of very loud pattern. This bundle I secreted in the barn and then hied me to the hornet's nest. Approaching the swinging home of the hornets very softly, so as not to disturb the inmates, I stuffed the entrance to the hornet castle with sassafras leaves, and taking the great sphere in my arms I bore it to a back window of the kitchen where the black beldame was vigorously at work within and contentedly droning a negro hymn.
Dark was coming on and a drizzly rain was falling. It was the spring of the year, the day had been warm and the kitchen window was open. I stole up to the open window. The woman's back was toward me. I removed the plug of sassafras leaves and hurled the hornet's nest so that it landed under the hag's skirts.
I watched the proceedings for one short moment, and then, as it was getting late, I concluded I had better be off for St. Louis. So I went away from there at the best gait I could command.
I could hear my arch-enemy screaming, and it was music to my ears that even thrills me yet, sometimes. It was a better supper than she would have given me.
I saw the negroes running from the quarters, and elsewhere, toward the kitchen, and I must beg the reader to endeavor to imagine the scene in that culinary department, as I am unable to describe it, not having waited to see it out.
But I slid for the barn, secured my bundle and started for the ancient city far away.
All night, on foot and alone, I trudged the turnpike that ran through Nashville. I arrived in that city about daylight, tired and hungry, but was too timid to stop for something to eat, notwithstanding I had my four dollars safe in my pocket, and had not eaten since noon, the day before.
I plodded along through the town and crossed the Cumberland river on a ferry-boat, and then pulled out in a northerly direction for about an hour, when I came to a farm-house. In the road in front of the house I met the proprietor who was going from his garden, opposite the house, to his breakfast.
He waited until I came up, and as I was about to pass on, he said: "Hello! my boy. where are you going so early this morning?"
I told him I was on my way to St. Louis.
"St. Louis?" he said. "I never heard of that place before. Where is it?"
I told him I thought it was in Missouri, but was not certain.
"Are you going all the way on foot, and alone?"
I answered that I was, and that I had no other way to go. With that I started on.
"Hold on," he said. "If you are going to walk that long way you had better come in and have some breakfast."
You may rest assured that I did not wait for a second invitation, for about that time I was as hungry as I had ever been in my life.
While we were eating breakfast the farmer turned to his oldest daughter and said:
"Martha, where is St. Louis?"
She told him it was in Missouri, and one of the largest towns in the South or West. "Our geography tells lots about it," she said.
I thought this was about the best meal I had ever eaten in my life, and after it was over I offered to pay for it, but the kind- hearted old man refused to take anything, saying: "Keep your money, my boy. You may need it before you get back. And on your return, stop and stay with me all night, and tell us all about St.