did hurt me. You see, the Mexkins
carry loads on their heads, but they fix a rag around their heads some
way to help balance it. But I never did. I jes' set it up on my head and
carried it that way. Oh, we used to carry water! My goodness! My mother
said it was the Indian in me--the way I could carry water.

"When we were first married and moved to the Adams ranch, we used to
come here to Uvalde to dances. They had square dances then. They hadn't
commenced all these frolicky dances they have now. They would have a
supper, but they had it to sell. Every fellow would have to treat his
girl he danced with.

"I can remember when my grandfather lived in a house with a dirt floor,
and they had a fireplace. And I can remember just as well how he used to
bake hoecakes for us kids. He would rake back the coals and ashes real
smooth and put a wet paper down on that and then lay his hoecake down on
the paper and put another paper on top of that and the ashes on top. I
used to think that was the best bread I ever ate. I tried it a few
times, but I made such a mess I didn't try it any more. One thing I have
seen 'em make, especially on the ranch. You take and clean a stick and
you put on a piece of meat and piece of fat till you take and use up the
heart and liver and sweetbread and other meat and put it on the stick
and wrap it around with leaf fat and then put the milk gut, or marrow
gut, around the whole thing. They call that _macho_ (mule), and I tell
you, it's good. They make it out of a goat and sheep, mostly.

"Another thing, we used to have big round-ups, and I have cooked great
pans of steak and mountain orshters. Generally, at the brandin' and
markin', I cooked up many a big pan of mountain orshters. I wish I had a
nickel for ever' one I've cooked, and ate too! People from up North have
come down there, and, when they were brandin' and cuttin' calves there,
they sure did eat and enjoy that dinner.

"The men used to go up to the lake, fishin', and catch big trout, or
bass, they call 'em now; and we'd take big buckets of butter--we didn't
take a saucer of butter or a pound; we taken butter up there in buckets,
for we sure had plenty of it--and we'd take lard too, and cook our fish
up there, and had corn bread or hoe cakes and plenty of butter for
ever'thing, and it sure was good. I tell you--like my husband used to
say--we was livin' ten days in the week, then.

"When we killed hogs, the meat from last winter was hung o