had made a few trips
I got to like it, and even though I could have been free any night
myself, I figgered I wasn't getting along so bad so I would stay on Mr.
Tabb's place and help the others get free. I did it for four years.

"I don't know to this day how he never knew what I was doing; I used to
take some awful chances, and he knew I must have been up to something; I
wouldn't do much work in the day, would never be in my house at night,
and when he would happen to visit the plantation where I had said I was
goin' I wouldn't be there. Sometimes I think he did know and wanted me
to get the slaves away that way so he wouldn't have to cause hard
feelins' by freein 'em.

"I think Mr. Tabb used to talk a lot to Mr. John Fee; Mr. Fee was a man
who lived in Kentucky, but Lord! how that man hated slavery! He used to
always tell us (we never let our owners see us listenin' to him, though)
that God didn't intend for some men to be free and some men be in
slavery. He used to talk to the owners, too, when they would listen to
him, but mostly they hated the sight of John Fee.

"In the night, though, he was a different man, for every slave who came
through his place going across the river he had a good word, something
to eat and some kind of rags, too, if it was cold. He always knew just
what to tell you to do if anything went wrong, and sometimes I think he
kept slaves there on his place 'till they could be rowed across the
river. Helped us a lot.

"I almost ran the business in the ground after I had been carrying the
slaves across for nearly four years. It was in 1863, and one night I
carried across about twelve on the same night. Somebody must have seen
us, because they set out after me as soon as I stepped out of the boat
back on the Kentucky side; from that time on they were after me.
Sometimes they would almost catch me; I had to run away from Mr. Tabb's
plantation and live in the fields and in the woods. I didn't know what a
bed was from one week to another. I would sleep in a cornfield tonight,
up in the branches of a tree tomorrow night, and buried in a haypile the
next night; the River, where I had carried so many across myself, was no
good to me; it was watched too close.

"Finally, I saw that I could never do any more good in Mason County, so
I decided to take my freedom, too. I had a wife by this time, and one
night we quietly slipped across and headed for Mr. Rankin's bell and
light. It looked like we had to go