I went outside and whistled for the boys to come back. They come. They
would always obey me. I told them to carry the man I had hit out. He was
still lying there. Through all the fuss and uproar, he had been lying
there across the doorway. Carried him out, and threw him on the
sidewalk. My eldest son said the man said, 'Holloway, don't hit me no
more.'

"I didn't, but if I had known who he was then, I would have gone out and
cut his throat. He was old Colonel Troutman's son. There was just two
hours difference in our birth. Me and him both nursed from the same
breast. We grew up together and were never separated until we were
thirteen (beginning of the war). Many people thought we were brothers. I
had fought for him and he had fought for me. When he wasn't at my house,
I was at his, and his father partly raised me. That's the reason I don't
trust white people.

"We had a big dog that everyone was scared of. We always kept him
chained up. I unchained the dog, and took the boys and we went out in
the woods. It was cold; so we made a fire under a tall sapling.

"Near daylight, I said, 'The dog sees something, but we can't see what
it is.' The eldest son said, 'Pappy, if you get astride the dog, and
look the way he's looking, you can see what he sees.'

"I got astride him and looked, and finally way off through the trees and
the branches and leaves, I saw six men riding through the woods on
horseback. I took the guns away from the boys and put the pistol and
shotgun under the leaves at my feet. I made the boys separate and hide
in the brush at a good distance from me and from each other. I made the
dog lie down beside me. Then I waited.

"When the men came near me and were about to pass on looking for me, I
hailed them. I told them to stop right where they were or I'd drop them
in their tracks. It was Colonel Troutman and five other of the old men
from town out hunting me.

"Colonel Troutman said, 'We just wanted to talk to you Holloway.'

"I said, 'Stand right where you are and talk.'

"After some talk, I let them come up slowly to a short distance from me.
The upshot of the whole thing was that they wanted me to go back to town
with them to 'talk' over the matter. They allowed I hadn't done nothin'
wrong. But Colonel Troutman's man was hurt bad, and some of the young
men in the mob had had their legs broke. And they were all young men
from the town, boys that knew me and were friendly to me in the daytime.
Still