ster Bill git sick. I reckon he more wore out and worried than
anything else, but he go down with de fever one day and it raining so
hard Mistress and me and Vici can't neither one go nowhar to git no
help.

We puts peach tree poultices on his head and wash him off all the
time, until it quit raining so Mistress can go out on de road, and
then a doctor man come from one of the bunches of soldiers and see
Master Bill. He say he going be all right and jest keep him quiet, and
go on.

Mistress have to tend de children and Vici have to take care of Master
Bill and look after the house, and dat leave me all by myself wid all
the rest of everything around the place.

I got to feed all the stock and milk the cows and work in the field
too. Dat the first time I ever try to plow, and I nearly git killed,
too! I got me a young yoke of oxens I broke to pull the wagon, 'cause
Vici have to use the old oxens to work the field. I had to take the
wagon and go 'bout ten miles west to a patch of woods Master Bill
owned to git fire wood, 'cause we lived right on a flat patch of
prairie, and I had to chop and haul the wood by myself. I had to git
postoak to burn in the kitchen fireplace and willow for Master Bill to
make charcoal out of to burn in his blacksmith fire.

Well, I hitch up them young oxen to the plow and they won't follow the
row, and so I go git the old oxens. One of them old oxens didn't know
me and took in after me, and I couldn't hitch 'em up. And then it
begins to rain again.

After the rain was quit I git the bucket and go milk the cows, and it
is time to water the hosses too, so I starts to the house with the
milk and leading one of the hosses. When I gits to the gate I drops
the halter across my arm and hooks the bucket of milk on my arm too,
and starts to open the gate. The wind blow the gate wide open, and it
slap the hoss on the flank. That was when I nearly git killed!

Out the hoss go through the gate to the yard, and down the big road,
and my arm all tangled up in the halter rope and me dragging on the
ground!

The first jump knock the wind out of me and I can't git loose, and
that hoss drag me down the road on the run until he meet up with a
passel of soldiers and they stop him.

The next thing I knowed I was laying on the back kitchen gallery, and
some soldiers was pouring water on me with a bucket. My arm was broke,
and I was stove up so bad that I have to lay down for a whole week,
and Mistress and