rt was to let go.
I guided the lines with one hand and steadied the scraper with the other
as I drove up on the dump. Then I heaved up on the handles, the scraper
turned over on its nose and dumped the load. But that isn't all it
dumped. The mules shot ahead when the load was released, and the lines
around my neck jerked me wrong side up. The handle of the scraper hit
me a stunning blow in the face and the whole contraption dragged over
my body bruising me frightfully. I staggered to my feet with one eye
blinded by the blood that flowed from a gash in my brow. Simon Legree
cursed me handsomely and told me I was fired. I asked him where I would
get my pay, and he told me he was paying me a compliment by letting me
walk out of that camp alive. I went to the cook shack and washed the
blood off my face. I was a pretty sick boy. The cook was a native and
was kind to me.

"Boy, you're liable to get lockjaw from that cut," he said. "I'll put
some of this horse liniment on it and it'll heal up." He then bandaged
it with court-plaster.

"It's a long way back to New Orleans," the cook concluded. "And you
might as well have something to keep your ribs from hitting together."
He cut off a couple of pounds of raw bacon and put it in my pocket
together with a "bait" of Plowboy tobacco. And so I hit the road. When I
came to the place where my pals were working, cutting willows along the
levee, I told them of my plight.

"Never mind, boy," they said. "You go back to New Orleans and wait for
us. After we've worked our hundred days to get a hundred dollars each,
we will work a few days more to get a hundred dollars for you. Then
we'll all go north and be rich together."

I began footing it thirty-five miles to the city. I decided, like Queen
Isabella, to pawn my jewels to enable me to discover America again. I
had an old ring and I met a darky who had a quarter. He got my ring.
After tramping all day I was exhausted. I came to a negro cabin and went
in and offered the "mammy" a pound of bacon for a pound of corn pone. I
further bargained to give the first half of my other pound of bacon if
she'd cook the second half for me to eat. She cooked my share of the
bacon and set it and the corn bread on the table. I ate heartily for a
while, but after two or three slices of the bacon, I was fed up on it.
She hadn't cooked enough of the grease out of it. I began feeding this
bacon to a pickininny who sat beside me.

"Man, don't give away yo