front yard and says, 'Mens and womens, you are
today as free as I am. You are free to do as you like, 'cause the damned
Yankees done 'creed you are. They ain't a nigger on my place what was
born here or ever lived here who can't stay here and work and eat to the
end of his days, as long as this old place will raise peas and goobers.
Go if you wants, and stay if you wants.' Some of the niggers stayed and
some went, and some what had run away to the North come back. They allus
called, real humble like, at the back gate to Missie Adeline, and she
allus fixed it up with Massa Oll they could have a place.

"Near the close of the war I seed some folks leavin' for Texas. They
said if the Fed'rals won the war they'd have to live in Texas to keep
slaves. So plenty started driftin' their slaves to the west. They'd pass
with the womens ridin' in the wagons and the mens on foot. Some took
slaves to Texas after the Fed'rals done 'creed the breakin' up.

"Long as I lived I minded what my white folks told me, 'cept one time.
They was a nigger workin' in the fiel' and he kept jerkin' the mules and
Massa Oll got mad, and he give me a gun and said, 'Go out there and kill
that man.' I said, 'Massa Oll, please don't tell me that. I ain't never
kilt nobody and I don't want to.' He said, 'Cato, you do what I tell
you.' He meant it. I went out to the nigger and said, 'You has got to
leave this minute, and I is, too, 'cause I is 'spose to kill you, only I
ain't and Massa Oll will kill me.' He drops the hanes and we run and
crawled through the fence and ran away.

"I hated to go, 'cause things was so bad, and flour sold for $25.00 a
barrel, and pickled pork for $15.00 a barrel. You couldn't buy nothin'
lessen with gold. I had plenty of 'federate money, only it wouldn't buy
nothin'.

"But today I is a old man and my hands ain't stained with no blood. I is
allus been glad I didn't kill that man.

"Mules run to a ter'ble price then. A right puny pair of mules sold for
$500.00. But the Yankees give me a mule and I farmed a year for a white
man and watched a herd of mules, too. I stayed with them mules till four
o'clock even Sundays. So many scoundrels was goin' 'bout, stealin'
mules.

"That year I was boun' out by 'greement with the white man, and I made
$360.00. The bureau come by that year lookin' at nigger's contracts, to
see they didn't git skunt out their rightful wages. Missie Adeline and
Massa Oll didn't stay mad at me and every Sunday