ough as heaven is my judge I am an innocent man
and not deserving of the full penalties of the law and leaving behind
me a family that must starve and yet hadn't had a thing to do with it,
which is the whole truth and I can swear to it."
So he did it. He had a little wee bit of steamboating, and some
stage-coaching, but all the rest of the way was horseback, and it took
him three weeks to get to Washington. He saw lots of land and lots of
villages and four cities. He was gone 'most eight weeks, and there never
was such a proud man in the village as he when he got back. His travels
made him the greatest man in all that region, and the most talked about;
and people come from as much as thirty miles back in the country, and
from over in the Illinois bottoms, too, just to look at him--and there
they'd stand and gawk, and he'd gabble. You never see anything like it.
Well, there wasn't any way now to settle which was the greatest
traveler; some said it was Nat, some said it was Tom. Everybody allowed
that Nat had seen the most longitude, but they had to give in that
whatever Tom was short in longitude he had made up in latitude and
climate. It was about a stand-off; so both of them had to whoop up their
dangerous adventures, and try to get ahead THAT way. That bullet-wound
in Tom's leg was a tough thing for Nat Parsons to buck against, but he
bucked the best he could; and at a disadvantage, too, for Tom didn't set
still as he'd orter done, to be fair, but always got up and sauntered
around and worked his limp while Nat was painting up the adventure that
HE had in Washington; for Tom never let go that limp when his leg got
well, but practiced it nights at home, and kept it good as new right
along.
Nat's adventure was like this; I don't know how true it is; maybe he got
it out of a paper, or somewhere, but I will say this for him, that he
DID know how to tell it. He could make anybody's flesh crawl, and he'd
turn pale and hold his breath when he told it, and sometimes women and
girls got so faint they couldn't stick it out. Well, it was this way, as
near as I can remember:
He come a-loping into Washington, and put up his horse and shoved out to
the President's house with his letter, and they told him the President
was up to the Capitol, and just going to start for Philadelphia--not a
minute to lose if he wanted to catch him. Nat 'most dropped, it made him
so sick. His horse was put up, and he didn't know what to do. But
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