ail--my goodness! You could get a bunch of these blue top-knot quail
rounded up in a bunch of pear and, if they was any rocks, you could kill
every one of 'em. If you could hit one and get 'im to fluttering the
others would bunch around him and you could kill every one of 'em with
rocks.

"We lived very neighborly. When any of the neighbors killed fresh meat
we always divided with one another. We all had a corn patch, about three
or four acres. We did not have plows; we planted with a hoe. We were
lucky in raisin' corn every year. Most all the neighbors had a little
bunch of goats, cows, mares, and hogs. Our nearest market was forty
miles, at old Brownsville. When I was a boy I wo'e what was called
shirt-tail. It was a long, loose shirt with no pants. I did not wear
pants until I was about ten or twelve. The way we got our supplies, all
the neighbors would go in together and send into town in a dump cart
drawn by a mule. The main station was at Brownsville. It was thirty-five
miles from where they'd change horses. They carried this mail to
Edinburg, and it took four days. Sometimes they'd ride a horse or mule.
We'd get our mail once a week. We got our mail at Brownsville.

"The country was very thinly settled then and of very few white people;
most all Meskins, living on the border. The country was open, no fences.
Every neighbor had a little place. We didn't have any plows; we planted
with a hoe and went along and raked the dirt over with our toes. We had
a grist mill too. I bet I've turned one a million miles. There was no
hired work then. When a man was hired he got $10 or $12 per month, and
when people wanted to brand or do other work, all the neighbors went
together and helped without pay. The most thing that we had to fear was
Indians and cattle rustlers and wild animals.

"While I was yet on the border, the plantation owners had to send their
cotton to the border to be shipped to other parts, so it was transferred
by Negro slaves as drivers. Lots of times, when these Negroes got there
and took the cotton from their wagon, they would then be persuaded to go
across the border by Meskins, and then they would never return to their
master. That is how lots of Negroes got to be free. The way they used to
transfer the cotton--these big cotton plantations east of here--they'd
take it to Brownsville and put it on the wharf and ship it from there. I
can remember seeing, during the cotton season, fifteen or twenty teams
h