d he would be
gone three or four days at a time, but I never did know what kind of
trading it was.

About the time he come home to stay I seen the first Ku Klux I ever
seen one night. I was going down the road in the moonlight and I heard
a hog grunting out in the bushes at the side of the road. I jest walk
right on and in a little ways I hear another hog in some more bushes.
This time I stop and listen, and they's another hog grunts across the
road, and about that time two mens dressed up in long white skirts
steps out into the road in front of me! I was so scared the goose
bumps jump up all over me 'cause I didn't know what they is! They
didn't say a word to me, but jest walked on past me and went on back
the way I had come. Then I see two more mens step out of the woods and
I run from that as fast as I can go!

I ast Miss Kate what they is and she say they Ku Klux, and I better
not go walking off down the road any more. I seen them two, three
times after that, though, but they was riding hosses them times.

I stayed at Mr. John's place two more years, and he got so grumpy and
his wife got so mean I make up my mind to run off. I bundle up my
clothes in a little bundle and hide them, and then I wait until Miss
Kate take the children and go off somewhere, and I light out on foot.
I had me a piece of that hard money what Master Dr. Alexander had give
me one time at Christmas. I had kept it all that time and nobody
knowed I had it, not even Joanna. Old Doctor told me it was fifty
dollars, and I thought I could live on it for a while.

I never had been away from that place, not even to another plantation
in all the four years I was with the Deesons, and I didn't know
which-a-way to go, so I jest started west.

I been walking about all evening it seem like, and I come to a little
town with jest a few houses. I see a nigger man and ask him whar I can
git something to eat, and I say I got fifty dollars.

"What you doing wid fifty dollars, child? Where you belong at,
anyhow?" He ask me, and I tell him I belong to Master John Deeson, but
I is running away. I explain that I jest bound out to Mr. John, but
Dr. Alexander my real master, and then that man tell me the first time
I knowed it that I aint a slave no more!

That man Deeson never did tell me, and his wife never did!

Well, dat man asked me about the fifty dollars, and then I found out
that it was jest fifty cents!

I can't begin to tell about all the hard time