“Ah! then you can tell us something about it, and I would be obliged to you if you would. Been out west about Antonio? Ranchering’s a good business, eh, out west there? Isn’t it? Make thirty per cent. by it, eh? I hear so. Should think that would be a good business. How much capital ought a man to have to go into ranchering, good, eh? So as to make it a good business?”
He was a middle-aged, well-dressed man, devouring tobacco prodigiously; nervous and wavering in his manner; asking questions, a dozen at a breath, and paying no heed to the answers. He owned a plantation in the bottoms, and another on the upland; the latter was getting worn out, it was too unhealthy for him to live in the bottoms, and so, as he said, he had had “a good notion to go into ranchering. Just for ease and pleasure.”
“Fact is, though, I’ve got a family, and this is no country for children to be raised in. All the children get such foolish notions. I don’t want my children to be brought up here. Ruins everybody. Does sir, sure. Spoils ’em. Too bad. ’Tis so. Too bad. Can’t make anything of children here, sir. Can’t sir. Fact.”
He had been nearly persuaded to purchase a large tract of land at a point upon a certain creek where, he had been told, was a large court-house, an excellent school, etc. The waters of the creek he named are brackish, the neighbouring country is a desert, and the only inhabitants, savages. Some knavish speculator had nearly got a customer, but could not quite prevail on him to purchase until he examined the country personally, which it was his intention soon to do. He gave me no time to tell him how false was the account he had had, but went on, after describing its beauties and advantages—
“But negro property isn’t very secure there, I’m told. How is’t? Know?”
“Not at all secure, sir; if it is disposed to go, it will go: the only way you could keep it would be to make it always contented to remain. The road would always be open to Mexico; it would go when it liked.”
“So I hear. Only way is, to have young ones there and keep their mothers here, eh? Negroes have such attachments, you know. Don’t you think that would fix ’em, eh? No? No, I suppose not. If they got mad at anything, they’d forget their mothers, eh? Yes, I suppose they would. Can’t depend on niggers. But I reckon they’d come back. Only to be worse off in Mexico—eh?”
“Nothing but——”
“Being free, eh? Get tired of that, I should think. Nobody to take care of them. No, I suppose not. Learn to take care of themselves.”
Then he turned to our host and began to ask him about his neighbours, many of whom he had known when he was a boy, and been at school with. A sorry account he got of most. Generally they had run through their property; their lands had passed into new hands; their negroes had been disposed of; two were now, he thought, “strikers” for gamblers in Natchez.