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

a few odd jobs of work, now and then, from the neighbors and in a
little while I had accumulated four dollars, which seemed a great deal
of money to me, and I thought I would buy about half of St. Louis, if I
could only get there. And yet I decided that it would be just as well to
have a few more dollars and would not leave my present home, which,
bad it was, was the only one I had, until I had acquired a little more
money. But coming home from work one evening I found the old
negress in an unusually bad humor, even for her. She gave me a cruel
thrashing just to give vent to her feelings, and 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