The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) by Robert Lewis Taylor

he reckons you drowneded?”
    I was sure of it, I said, but it didn’t matter because I intended to push right on to St. Louis and find him. In a way, I was telling the truth, because I knew my father had a letter of introduction to a friend of my mother’s family, a Pierre Chouteau, who was one of the biggest traders in St. Louis, or so they said.
    “Maw expect you back soon?”
    “Not so you could notice it—we were counting on two years at least.”
    He seemed satisfied with these answers, and we worked until noon, when we went back to the house and had some more side-meat, this time with compone and collards. In the afternoon we carried down the saplings, and he loaded me up till my knees buckled, after which he kept asking me boneheaded things like: “Tired?” “Wears you out, does it?” and “Appear to be much of a heft?”
    I
was
tired by now, and it was in my mind to damn him and his saplings to perdition, but something about him, a shadow of meanness in his dark, broody face, made me think this mightn’t work out very well. The more I mulled him over, the better convinced I was that he had something up his sleeve, so after supper, as soon as they mentioned how late it was, I volunteered to get a fresh bucket of water. Once outside, I streaked to the well and raised two or three wails from the wheel, then tiptoed back and peered in the window, listening hard. They had their heads together, as thick as three in a bed.
    “I can easy get him bound out, Agather,” he was saying. “Thejudge’ll take my word against his’n, and besides that, he’s counting on my vote. We need somebody on the place, and this boy’s stout I put him to the test. He ain’t real bright between the ears, but if it’s hauling you want, why teach a jackass to sing? He’ll do, or I’m mistook—it’s the chance of a lifetime.”
    So that was it! Here I’d been playing him for a dunce, and he’d been using me for bait, all the time. He was going to apprentice me, and bind me out to him for maybe seven years, the way they did, and I’d have to like it or lump it.
    As soon as I could, I said I was ready for bed—they had given me a blanket and told me to sleep in the loft on the straw—but the woman picked up the bucket and says, “I thought you went out for water.”
    Confound the luck, in my anxiousness to overhear them, I’d forgotten to fill it. The man flashed me a suspicious look, and they exchanged a glance that gave me goose-pimples, but I spoke up and said, “I stumped my toe coming in, and the water splashed out, but I thought there was enough left to drink. Here, I’ll get some more.”
    “Leave it lay,” he said; then he added irritably, “Git on along up—there’s work to be done tomorrow.”
    I didn’t need to be told twice. I skinned up the ladder and made a show of slapping down the straw and scrunching up a bed. Then I heard one of them blow out the lamp, and I waited for them to begin breathing heavy, so sleepy I was near about dead. But they were restless. Twice I could hear them talking, and once I heard the man get up and drink out of the bucket.
    Suddenly I snapped awake—the moon was up; I had dozed off for no telling how long. I was in a sweat for fear I was too late; that I would be an indentured servant and punished by law if ever I broke away. I crept to the trap door—all dark below—and started down the ladder, skipping the fourth rung from the top, which was loose and creaked—I’d counted on the way up—and padded silently across the room. If Ferd had had trouble getting to sleep before, he was making up for lost time now. His mouth was wide open and he was dredging up noises that sounded like a pig stuck in a rail fence.The woman, a shapeless lump beside him, was having a dream, something about how hard the ploughing was, for I heard her threaten to take a spade to Gomer, which was the name of their mule.
    Out in the smokehouse, I borrowed some matches and a piece of sowbelly,