ch am her dead sister's
husband, Old Man Denman give me and two my sisters to Miss Lizzie and he
gives two more my sisters to he son. Us goes with Miss Lizzie to the
Cramer place and lives in the back yard in a little room by the back
door.

"Everything fine and nice there till one day Miss Lizzie say to me,
'Julia, go down to the well and fetch me some water,' and I goes and I
seed in the road a heap of men all in gray and ridin' hosses, comin' our
way. I runs back to the house and calls Miss Lizzie. She say, 'What you
scairt for?' I tells her 'bout them men and she say they ain't gwine
hurt me none, they jus' wants some water. I goes back to the well and
heared 'em talk 'bout a fight. I goes back to the house and some of the
mens comes to the gate and says to Mr. Cramer, 'How're you, Creame?' He
say, 'I's all right in my health but I ain't so good in my mind.' They
says, 'What the matter, Creame?' He say, 'I want to be in the fight so
bad.'

"When they goes I asks Miss Lizzie what they fightin' 'bout and she say
it am 'bout money. That all I knows. Right after that Mr. Cramer goes
and we don't never see him no more. Word come back from the fightin' he
makes some the big, high mens mad and they puts chains 'round he ankles
and make him dig a stump in the hot sun. He ain't used to that and it
give him fever to the brain and he dies.

"When Mr. Cramer goes 'way, Miss Lizzie takes us all and goes back to
Old Man Denman's. The sojers used to pass and all the whoopin' and
hollerin' and carryin' on, you ain't never heered the likes! They
hollers, 'Who-o-o-o, Old Man Denman, how's your chickens?' And they
chunks and throws at 'em till they cripples 'em up and puts 'em in they
bags, for cookin'. Old Man Denman cusses at 'em somethin' powerful.

"My sister Mandy and me am down in the woods a good, fur piece from the
house and us keeps heerin' a noise. My brother comes down and finds me
and say, 'Come git your dinner.' When I gits there dinner am top the
gate post and he say they's sojers in the woods and they has been
persecutin' a old woman on a mule. She was a nigger woman. I gits so
scairt I can't eat my dinner. I ain't got no heart for victuals. My
brother say, 'Wait for pa, he comin' with the mule and he'll hide you
out.' I gits on the mule front of pa and us pass through the sojers and
they grabs at us and says, 'Gimme the gal, gimme the gal.' Pa say I
faints plumb 'way.

"Us heered guns shootin' round and 'bout all