“To your bisness out here wi’ Hick Holt. I don’t want to know it, out o’ any curiosity o’ my own—that’s sartin, stranger.”
“You are welcome to know all about it. Indeed, it was my intention to have told you before we parted—at the same time to ask you for some advice about the matter.”
Without further parley, I communicated the object of my visit to Mud Creek—concealing nothing that I deemed necessary for the elucidation of the subject. Without a word of interruption, the young hunter heard my story to the end. From the play of his features, as I revealed the more salient points, I could perceive that my chances of an amicable adjustment of my claim were far from being brilliant.
“Well—do you know,” said he, when I had finished speaking, “I had a suspeecion that that might be your bisness? I don know why I shed a thort so; but maybe ’twar because thar’s been some others come here to settle o’ late, an’ found squatters on thar groun—jest the same as Holt’s on yourn. That’s why ye heerd me say, a while ago, that I shedn’t like to buy over his head.”
“And why not?” I awaited the answer to this question, not without a certain degree of nervous anxiety. I was beginning to comprehend the counsel of my Nashville friend on the ticklish point of pre-emption.
“Why, you see, stranger—as I told you, Hick Holt’s a rough customer; an’ I reckon he’ll be an ugly one to deal wi’, on a bisness o’ that kind.”
“Of course, being in possession, he may purchase the land? He has the right of pre-emption?”
“’Taint for that. He ain’t a-goin’ to pre-empt, nor buy neyther; an’ for the best o’ reezuns. He hain’t got a red cent in the world, an’ souldn’t buy as much land as would make him a mellyun patch—not he.”
“How does he get his living, then?”
“Oh, as for that, jest some’at like myself. Thar’s gobs o’ game in the woods—both bar an’ deer: an’ the clarin’ grows him corn. Thar’s squ’lls, an’ ’possum, an’ turkeys too; an’ lots o’ fish in the crik—if one gets tired o’ the bar an’ deer-meat, which I shed niver do.”