Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains | Page 3

Crutches
CHAPTER 43.
Poor Jones Makes His Last Fight--He Died Among a Lot of the Devils
He Had Slain--End of Thirty-one Years of Hunting, Trapping and
Scouting
CHAPTER 44.
A Grizzley Hunts the Hunter--Shooting Seals in Alaskan Waters--I
Become a Seattle Hotel Keeper and the Big Fire Closes Me Out--Some
Rest--The Old Scout's Lament
CHAPTER I.
A BOY ESCAPES A TYRANT AND PAYS A DEBT WITH A
HORNET'S NEST--MEETS KIT CARSON AND BECOMES THE
OWNER OF A PONY AND A GUN.
The old saying that truth is stranger than fiction is emphasized in the
life of every man whose career has been one of adventure and danger in
the pursuit of a livlihood. Knowing nothing of the art of fiction and but
little of any sort of literature; having been brought up in the severe
school of nature, which is all truth, and having had as instructor in my
calling a man who was singularly and famously truthful, truth has been
my inheritance and in this book I bequeath it to my readers.
My name is William F. Drannan, and I was born on the Atlantic ocean
January 30, 1832, while my parents were emigrating from France to the
United States.
They settled in Tennessee, near Nashville, and lived upon a farm until I
was about four years old. An epidemic of cholera prevailed in that
region for some months during that time and my parents died of the
dread disease, leaving myself and a little sister, seven months old,

orphans.
I have never known what became of my sister, nor do I know how I
came to fall into the hands of a man named Drake, having been too
young at that time to remember now the causes of happenings then.
However, I remained with this man, Drake, on his plantation near The
Hermitage, the home of Gen. Andrew Jackson, until I was fifteen.
Drake was a bachelor who owned a large number of negro slaves, and I
was brought up to the age mentioned among the negro children of the
place, without schooling, but cuffed and knocked about more like a
worthless puppy than as if I were a human child. I never saw the inside
of a school-house, nor was I taught at home anything of value. Drake
never even undertook to teach me the difference between good and evil,
and my only associates were the little negro boys that belonged to
Drake, or the neighbors. The only person who offered to control or
correct me was an old negro woman, who so far from being the revered
and beloved "Black Mammy," remembered with deep affection by
many southern men and women, was simply a hideous black tyrant.
She abused me shamefully, and I was punished by her not only for my
own performances that displeased her, but for all the meanness done by
the negro boys under her jurisdiction.
Naturally these negro boys quickly learned that they could escape
punishment by falsely imputing to me all of their mischief and I was
their scape-goat.
Often Drake's negro boys went over to General Jackson's plantation to
play with the negro boys over there and I frequently accompanied them.
One day the old General asked me why I did not go to school. But I
could not tell him. I did not know why. I have known since that I was
not told to go and anyone knows that a boy just growing up loose, as I
was, is not likely to go to school of his own accord.
I do not propose to convey to the reader the idea that I was naturally
better than other boys, on the contrary, I frequently deserved the rod
when I did not get it, but more frequently received a cruel drubbing
when I did not deserve it, that, too, at the hands of the old negro crone

who was exceedingly violent as well as unjust. This, of course,
cultivated in me a hatred against the vile creature which was little short
of murderous.
However, I stayed on and bore up under my troubles as there was
nothing else to do, so far as I knew then, but "grin and bear it." This
until I was fifteen years old.
At this time, however ignorant, illiterate, wild as I was, a faint idea of
the need of education dawned upon me. I saw other white boys going to
school; I saw the difference between them and myself that education
was rapidly making and I realized that I was growing up as ignorant
and uncultured as the slave boys who were my only attainable
companions.
Somehow I had heard of a great city called St. Louis, and little by little
the determination grew upon me to reach that wonderful place in some
way.
I got