“Ah, I could recount many a thing of the kind to you,” said I, leading the way towards the hut, “but my throat is so dry, and I feel so confoundedly weary just now—”
“That's cider,” said he, pointing to the crock.
I did n't wait for a more formal invitation, but carried it to my lips, and so held it for full a couple of minutes.
“Ye wor drouthy,—that's a fact!” said he, peering into the low watermark of the vessel.
“You hav'n't got any more bread?” said I, appropriating his own.
“If I had n't, ye 'd not have got that so easy, lad!” said he, with a grin.
“And now for my mare; you see she's a good one—”
“Good as if she belonged to a richer master!” said he, with a peculiar leer of the eye. “I know her well! knowed her a foal! Ah, Charry, Miss! do you forget the way to take off your saddle with your teeth?” and he patted the creature with a nearer approach to kindness than I believed he was capable of.
I will not dwell upon the little arts I employed to conciliate my friend Gabriel, nor stop to say how I managed to procure some Indian corn-meal for my horse, and the addition of a very tough piece of dried beef to my own meagre breakfast. I conclude the reader will be as eager to escape from his society as I was myself; nor had I ever thrown him into such unprofitable acquaintanceship, were there other means of explaining how first I wandered from the right path, and by what persuasions I was influenced in not returning to it.
If Gabriel's history was not very entertaining, it was at least short, so far as its catastrophe went. He was a Kentucky “bounty man,” who had taken into his head to fight a duel with a companion with whom he was returning from New York. He killed his antagonist, buried him, and was wending his way homeward with the watch and other property of the deceased, to restore to his friends, when he was arrested at Little Rock, and conveyed to jail. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death, but made his escape the night before the execution was to have taken place. His adventures from the Arkansas River till the time he found himself in Texas were exciting in a high degree, and, even with his own telling, not devoid of deep interest. Since his location in the One-star Republic, he had tried various things, but all had failed with him. His family, who followed him, died off by the dreadful intermittents of the bush, leaving him alone to doze through the remainder of existence between the half-consciousness of his fall and the stupid insensibility of debauch. There was but one theme could stir the dark embers of his nature; and when he had quitted that, the interest of life seemed to have passed away, and he relapsed into his dreamy indifference to both present and future.