the horses before we gets to the place.

The Davenport plantation was way north of Linden, Texas, up in the Red
River country. That's where I stayed for thirty-eight year. There I
was drug through the hackles by the meanest master that ever lived.
The Mistress was the best white woman I ever knew but Master Presley
used his whip all the time, reason or no reason, and I got scars to
remember by!

I remembers the house. A heavy log house with a gallery clear across
the front. The kitchen was back of the house. I work in there and I
live in there. It wasn't built so good as the Master's house. The cold
winds in the winter go through the cracks between the logs like the
walls was somewheres else, and I shivers with the misery all the time.

The cooking got to be my job. The washing too. Washday come around
and I fills the tub with clothes. Puts the tub on my head and walks
half a mile to the spring where I washes the clothes. Sometimes I run
out of soap. Then I make ash soap right by the spring. I learns to be
careful about streaks in the clothes. I learns by the bull whip. One
day the Master finds a soapy streak in his shirt. Then he finds me.

The Military Road goes by the place and the Master drives me down the
road and ties me to a tree. First he tears off the old shirt and then
he throws the bull whip to me. When he is tired of beating me more
torture is a-coming. The salt water cure. It don't cure nothing but
that's what the white folks called it. "Here's at you," the Master
say, and slap the salt water into the bleeding cuts. "Here's at you!"
The blisters burst every time he slap me with the brine.

Then I was loosened to stagger back into the kitchen. The Mistress
couldn't do nothing about it 'cept to lay on the grease thick, with a
kind word to help stop the misery.

Ration time was Saturday night. Every slave get enough fat pork, corn
meal and such to last out the week. I reckon the Master figure it to
the last bite because they was no leavings over. Most likely the
shortage catch them!

Sometimes they'd borrow, sometimes I'd slip somethings from out the
kitchen. The single women folks was bad that way. I favors them with
something extra from the kitchen. Then they favors me--at night when
the overseer thinks everybody asleep in they own places!

I was always back to my kitchen bed long before the overseer give the
get-up-knock. I hear the knock, he hear me answer. Then he blow the
horn and shout the lou