house New Years
day he would come after me on his horse and run me every step of the way
home. It was nearly twenty-five miles. He said he would give me the
worst whooping I ever got in my life. I was going back, scared not to be
back. Had no other place to live.

"When New Year day come the white man locked me up in a room in his
house and I stayed in there two days. They brought me plenty to eat. I
slept in there with their children. Mr. Cargo never come after me till
March. He didn't see me when he come. It started in raining and cold and
the roads was bad. When he come in March I seen him. I knowed him. I lay
down and covered up in leaves. They was deep. I had been in the woods
getting sweet-gum when I seen him. He scared me. He never seen me. This
white man bound me to his wife's friend for a year to keep Mr. Cargo
from getting me back. The woman at the house and Mr. Cargo had war
nearly about me. I missed my whoopings. I never got none that whole
year. It was Mrs. Brown, twenty miles from Dardanelle, they bound me
over to. I never got no more than the common run of Negro children but
they wasn't mean to me.

"When I was at Cargo's, he wouldn't buy me shoes. Miss Betty would have
but in them days the man was head of his house. Miss Betty made me
moccasins to wear out in the snow--made them out of old rags and pieces
of his pants. I had risings on my feet and my feet frostbite till they
was solid sores. He would take his knife and stob my risings to see the
matter pop way out. The ice cut my feet. He cut my foot on the side with
a cowhide nearly to the bone. Miss Betty catch him outer sight would
doctor my feet. Seem like she was scared of him. He wasn't none too good
to her.

"He told his wife the Freemens Bureau said turn that Negro girl loose.
She didn't want me to leave her. He despised nasty Negroes he said. One
of them fellows what come for me had been to Cargo's and seen me. He was
the Negro man come to show Patsy's husband and his share cropper where I
was at. He whooped me twice before them deer hunters. They visited him
every spring and fall hunting deer but they reported him to the Freemens
Bureau. They knowed he was showing off. He overtook me on a horse one
day four or five years after I left there. I was on my way from school.
I was grown. He wanted me to come back live with them. Said Miss Betty
wanted to see me so bad. I was so scared I lied to him and said yes to
all he said. He wanted to come ge