I took it to Tom's father, a blacksmith. Young Shane probably received a more severe punishment that night than I could have given him. After that, I had no more trouble.
At this time there was great excitement between North and South, caused principally by the troubles resulting from the settlement of Kansas and the many conflicts between those who were taking slaves there and those who were determined it should be a free State. The negroes became so excited the legislature passed a law making it a felony for any person to teach a negro how to read or write. The new statute also prohibited free negroes from living in the State, and set a date on which all free negroes who had failed to choose a master would be sold into slavery.
One Sunday, a large free negro blacksmith about twenty-eight or thirty years old came into Judge Waddell's office and asked me if it were true that he would have to choose a master or be sold into slavery. I told him it was. He then asked me to be his master, that he might avoid being sold to another. For many reasons I declined, though I could have sold him for a thousand dollars. As he had means, I advised him to go where he would not be sold. I never knew what became of him.
During the winter there were four or five times as many fires in adjacent counties as there had ever been before. It was generally believed that Northern abolition influence had been communicated to the negroes, and that they were trying to terrorize their masters. Consequently, a law was passed forbidding negroes to remain out at night, and authorizing anyone to arrest and take to jail more than two negroes found together.
I remained in McKinney about a year, when the Butterfield Overland Mail was chartered from St. Louis to San Francisco, an eighteen-day journey, with daily service each way. El Paso was a promising Mexican settlement, and would probably be the half-way house, and eventually a place of some importance. I therefore bid Judge Waddell good-bye and started for El Paso. Before going, however, I visited my father, going with a Mr. Ditto of Kentucky through the Cherokee Nation, where we bought a small drove of very beautiful little Indian ponies, and drove them to St. Louis and sold them. I remained a month or so with my father and, upon returning to Texas, on my father's advice, took my brother Will to McKinney, and he took up school teaching where I left off.
El Paso Experiences
The journey to El Paso, where I arrived on the eighth of May, 1858, was through the most desolate country, with Indians on all sides, some hostile and some friendly. Coyotes and other wild animals abounded, but most interesting were the numerous buffalo east of the Pecos. There were literally millions. I have seen the plains black with them and, when moving, which they did at a kind of lope or gallop, I have felt the earth tremble under the impress of their heavy shoulders. When we encountered one of these moving herds, so impetuous in its advance no obstacle could resist it, we would turn the coach horses in the direction of its flight and the passengers would dismount and fire their guns to scare the buffalo away.
At a station, near the Pecos River, that had been robbed by the Indians, we had to remain two or three days, until we received fresh horses. The Indians had carried off all the eatables, except some corn and sugar, and we parched and ground the corn into meal with the coffee mill and boiled it with sugar to keep us alive until relief came.