After providing necessaries, Dick gave the settlers an invitation to come up and help the stranger to raise a cabin. All agreed to be thar on the next Saturday, and homeward he started. On his arrival, Sam was cooking the evening meal of wild game and corn bread, all the time expatiating to the guests what a good man “Massa Dick” was, and particularly impressing upon their minds that he, (Sam,) was “Massa Dick's 'strordinary niggah!” Sam's efforts at amusement failed upon the strangers, for one was quietly weeping, while the other wore a scowl of anger. Dick noticed their looks on entering, and endeavoured to cheer them—
“Don't look down hearted, strangers,” said he, “you aint among Ingins ef you are near 'em—thar aint a spot in the universal yearth calkilated to make you feel better than whar you are now. Sam and me never felt bad sence we located here,—only when the Ingins penned us in the cabin fur three days, while all our bar meat was hangin' on the outside.”
“It's this cussed woman,” answered the stranger,
“that makes me feel bad—she's etarnally whimperin' about bein' so fur from home—I wish she was in h—ll!”
“Stop that, stranger,” said Dick, in a determined tone; “the love I have for an old Kentucky mother won't permit me to see or hear one of her sex abused beneath my cabin roof, ef it is in the wilderness,—I don't like red skins, none of 'em, but even a squaw couldn't be abused here!”
“Well, I'm done,” was the reply. “I'll git a cabin of my own, and then I guess I'll do as I please.”
“No you won't,” said Dick; “ef you stay in these diggins and abuse her, you're in a hotter place than whar you jest now wished her.”
It may be supposed that the host and his guest retired, the first night of their meeting, with no favourable impression of each other; and while Sam and his master were making all right for the night, the former ventured to remark—
“Dar aint much good in dat white man, Massa Dick.”
“Not a heap, Sam,” was his master's reply; “but he shan't pisin us long with his company;” and with this comfortable resolve they turned in for the night.