"My master settled here at a place called Malone, on the Hondo River. He went into the stock business. Our house there was a little, old picket house with a grass roof over it out of the sage grass. The bed was made with a tick of shucks and the children slept on the floor. The boss had just a little lumber house. Later on he taken us about 20 miles fu'ther down on the Hondo, the Old Adams Ranch, and he had a rock house.
"I was about six years old then. I had some shoes, to keep the thorns outa my feet, and I had rawhide leggin's. We just had such clothes as we could get, old patched-up clothes. They just had that jeans cloth, homemade clothes.
"I was with George Reedes 10 or 12 years. It was my first trainin' learnin' the stock business and horse breakin.' He was tol'able good to us, to be slaves as we was. His brother had a hired man that whipped me once, with a quirt. I've heard my father and mother tell how they whipped 'em. They'd tie 'em down on a log or up to a post and whip 'em till the blisters rose, then take a paddle and open 'em up and pour salt in 'em. Yes'm, they whipped the women. The most I remember about that, my father and sister was in the barn shuckin' co'n and the master come in there and whipped my sister with a cowhide whip. My father caught a lick in the face and he told the master to keep his whip offen him. So the master started on my father and he run away. When he finally come in he was so wild his master had to call him to get orders for work, and finally the boss shot at him, but they didn't whip him any more. Of course, some of 'em whipped with more mercy. They had a whippin' post and when they strapped 'em down on a log they called it a 'stroppin' log.'
"I remember they tasked the cotton pickers in Mississippi. They had to bring in so many pounds in the evenin' and if they didn't they got a whippin' for it. My sister there, she had to bring in 900 pounds a day. Well, cotton was heavier there. Most any of 'em could pick 900 pounds. It was heavier and fluffier. We left the cotton country in Mississippi, but nobody knew anything about cotton out here that I knew of.
"I've heard my parents say too, them men that had plantations and a great lot of slaves, they would speculate with 'em and would have a chain that run from the front ones to the back ones. Sometimes they would have 15 or 20 miles to make to get them to the sale place, but they couldn't make a break. Where they expected to make a sale, they kept 'em in corrals and they had a block there to put 'em up on and bid 'em off. The average price was about $500, but some that had good practice, like a blacksmith, brought a good price, as high as $1,500.
"I heard my mother and father say they would go 15 or 20 miles to a dance, walkin', and get back before daylight, before the 'padderollers' got 'em. The slaves would go off when they had no permission and them that would ketch 'em and whip 'em was the 'padderollers.' Sometimes they would have an awful race.
"If they happened to be a slave on the plantation that could jes' read a little print, they would get rid of him right now. He would ruin the niggers, they would get too smart. The' was no such thing as school here for culluds in early days. The white folks we was raised up with had pretty good education. That's why I don't talk like most cullud folks. I was about grown and the' was an English family settled close, about half a mile, I guess. They had a little boy, his name was Arthur Ederle, and he come over and learned me how to spell 'cat' and 'dog' and 'hen' and such like. I was right around about 20 years old. I couldn't sign my name when I was 18 years old.
"I can remember one time when I was young, I saw something I couldn't 'magine what it was, like a billygoat reared up on a tree. But I knew the' wasn't a billygoat round there near, nor no other kinds of goats. It was in the daytime and I was out in a horse pasture, I was jes' walkin' along, huntin', when I saw that sight. I guess I got within 50 steps of it, then I turned around and got away. I never did think much about a ghost, but I think it could be possible.
"I don't remember scarcely anything about the war because I was so little and times was so different; the country wasn't settled up and everything was wild, no people, hardly. Of course, my life was in the woods, you might say, didn't hardly know when Sunday come.
"The northern soldiers never did get down in here that I know of. I know once, when they was enlisting men to go to battle a whole lot of 'em didn't want to fight and would run away and dodge out, and they would follow 'em and try to make 'em fight. They had a battle up here on the Nueces once and killed some of 'em. I know my boss was in the bunch that followed 'em and he got scared for fear this old case would be brought up after the war. The company that followed these men was called Old Duff Company. I think somewhere around 40 was in the bunch that they followed, but I don't know how many was killed. They was a big bluff and a big water hole and they said they was throwed in that big water hole.