to say how I managed to procure some Indian corn-meal
for my horse, and the addition of a very tough piece of dried beef to my
own meagre breakfast. I conclude the reader will be as eager to escape
from his society as I was myself; nor had I ever thrown him into such
unprofitable acquaintanceship, were there other means of explaining
how first I wandered from the right path, and by what persuasions I was
influenced in not returning to it.

If Gabriel's history was not very entertaining, it was at least short,
so far as its catastrophe went. He was a Kentucky "bounty man," who had
taken into his head to fight a duel with a companion with whom he was
returning from New York. He killed his antagonist, buried him, and
was wending his way homeward with the watch and other property of the
deceased, to restore to his friends, when he was arrested at Little
Rock, and conveyed to jail. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced
to death, but made his escape the night before the execution was to have
taken place. His adventures from the Arkansas River till the time he
found himself in Texas were exciting in a high degree, and, even with
his own telling, not devoid of deep interest. Since his location in the
One-star Republic, he had tried various things, but all had failed
with him. His family, who followed him, died off by the dreadful
intermittents of the bush, leaving him alone to doze through the
remainder of existence between the half-consciousness of his fall and
the stupid insensibility of debauch. There was but one theme could
stir the dark embers of his nature; and when he had quitted _that_, the
interest of life seemed to have passed away, and he relapsed into his
dreamy indifference to both present and future.

How he contrived to eke out subsistence was difficult to conceive.
To the tavern he had been almost the only customer, and in succession
consumed the little stores his poor wife had managed to accumulate. He
appeared to feel a kind of semi-consciousness that if "bears did not
fall in his way" during the winter, it might go hard with him; and he
pointed to four mounds of earth behind the log-hut, and said that "the
biggest would soon be alongside of 'em."

As the heat of midday was too great to proceed in, I learned from him
thus much of his own story, and some particulars of the road to Bexar,
whither I had now resolved on proceeding, since, according to his
opinion, that afforded me a far better chance of com