if I don't kill him. He dare not come in here. I would like to see him come in here," drawing from his coat pocket a revolver, and cocking it. "By , you may come in here now. Come in here, come in here! Do you here that?" (revolving the pistol rapidly). " damn me, if I don't kill you, if you come near the door."
This continued without remonstrance for some time, when he lay down, asking his companion for a light for his pipe, and continuing the noisy conversation until we fell asleep. The previous talk had been much of knife and pistol fights which had taken place in the county. The same boy was obliging and amiable the next morning, assisting us to bring in and saddle the horses at our departure.
One of the men here was a Yankee, who had lived so long in the Slave States that he had added to his original ruralisms a very complete collection of Southernisms, some of which were of the richest we met with. He had been in the Texas Rangers, and, speaking of the West, said he had been up round the head of the Guadaloupe "heaps and cords of times," at the same time giving us a very picturesque account of the county. Speaking of wolves, he informed us that on the San Jacinto there were "any dimensions of them." Obstinacy, in his vocabulary, was represented by "damnation cussedness." He was unable to conceive of us in any other light than as two peddlers who had mistaken their ground in coming here.
At another house where we stopped (in which, by the way, we ate our supper by the light of pine knots blazing in the chimney, with an apology for the absence of candles), we heard some conversation upon a negro of the neighbourhood, who had been sold to a free negro, and who refused to live with him, saying he wouldn't be a servant to a nigger. All agreed that he was right, although the man was well known
