auling cotton, sometimes five or six, maybe eight bales on a wagon. You
see, them steamboats used to run all up and down that river. I think
this cotton went out to market at New Orleans and went right out into
the Gulf.

"Our house was a log cabin with a log chimney da'bbed with mud. The
cabin was covered with grass for a roof. The fireplace was the kind of
stove we had. Mother cooked in Dutch ovens. Our main meal was corn bread
and milk and grits with milk. That was a little bit coarser than meal.
The way we used to cook it and the best flavored is to cook it
out-of-doors in a Dutch oven. We called 'em corn dodgers. Now ash cakes,
you have your dough pretty stiff and smooth off a place in the ashes and
lay it right on the ashes and cover it up with ashes and when it got
done, you could wipe every bit of the ashes off, and get you some butter
and put on it. M-m-m! I tell you, its fine! There is another way of
cookin' flour bread without a skillet or a stove, is to make up your
dough stiff and roll it out thin and cut it in strips and roll it on a
green stick and just hold it over the coals, and it sure makes good
bread. When one side cooks too fast, you can just turn it over, and have
your stick long enough to keep it from burnin' your hands. How come me
to learn this was: One time we were huntin' horse stock and there was
an outfit along and the pack mule that was packed with our provisions
and skillets and coffee pots and things--we never did carry much stuff,
not even no beddin'--the pack turned on the mule and we lost our skillet
and none of us knowed it at the time. All of us was cooks, but that old
Meskin that was along was the only one that knew how to cook bread that
way. Sometimes we would be out six weeks or two months on a general
round-up, workin' horse stock; the country would just be alive with
cattle, and horses too. We used to have lots of fun on those drives.

"I tell you, I didn't enjoy that 'court' at night. They got so tough on
us you couldn't spit in camp, couldn't use no cuss words--they would
sure 'put the leggin's on you' if you did!"

Uncle Ben hitched his chair, and with much chuckling, recalled the
"kangaroo court" the cowboys used to hold at night in camp. These
impromptu courts were often all the fun the cowboys had during the long
weeks of hunting stock in the open range country.

"Oh, it was all in fun. Just catch somebody so we could hold court! They
would have two or three as a jury.