Read Online All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten - Free Book Online Page A

come to my daddy and he wanted to buy one of them cows. My daddy went to Mr. Albee a few days later and asked Mr. Albee’s release about sellin the cow before he sold it, knowin that Mr. Albee had a mortgage on em. He wanted to know could he sell a certain cow to Mr. Walker. Well, Mr. Albee give him a release to sell it. And when my daddy sold that cow, he carried the money to Mr. Albee and give it to him, as the man had a mortgage on the cow. Mr. Albee took the money and then turned around and sued my daddy for sellin mortgaged property. You see, here’s the proposition—I understand a heap of things today more clear than I did in them days—if my daddy’d had the release in writin maybe he couldn’t have been messed up that way. But he only had Mr. Albee’s word, trustin him on it, and the man done him in.
    So Mr. Albee jumped up and ordered my daddy to move over there close to Chapel Ridge on one of his places. My daddy told him—he was a pretty game old man still—he weren’t goin to move over there, just weren’t goin to do it, noway. Mr. Albee jumped up and sued my daddy then for sellin mortgaged property and put him in Beaufort jail. Well, he gived my daddy a release on that cow, told my daddy he could sell it and considered it done; he ought to have been honest enough to mark the cow’s name off the book—he even had the names of the cows wrote on the mortgage. But he put my daddy in jail for sellin mortgaged property. Well, they smuggled the thing around and Mr. Jasper Clay, blood kin man to the Clays we lived close together with—these Clays overby us wanted my daddy to let Mr. Jasper Clay—he lived way up there at Gem Stone—get him out of jail. Well, my daddy agreed, not knowin definitely what he was agreein to. Mr. Jasper Clay went to Beaufort with a mind to buy my daddy out of jail. And when he got him out, he moved my daddy to Gem Stone then and put him to work on his place.
    And Mr. Jasper Clay, it was known, had killed old man Henry Kirkland, the year before my daddy moved up there—shot the old man dead. He got on his horse one day and went over to where old man Henry Kirkland was livin, on one of his places, way up yonder in Crane’s Ford beat. Old man Henry Kirkland had three boys and one daughter livin there with him and his wife. And this youngest boy of his had a pretty good book learnin—his name was Emmet—and he was keepin books, an account of everything his daddy got from Mr. Clay. Well, when it come time to settle, crops been gathered and come time to settle, Mr. Clay got on his horse and went over there. He had several mules and a saddle horse, he got on that horse and went over there to old man Henry Kirkland and got to talkin bout what he owed him and so on,
tellin
him what he owed him. Well, the old man knowed that his son had a statement too. But they didn’t never go by nothin like that, nothin but what the white man might say accordin to his figures. No nigger would show anythin against em neither. But old man Henry Kirkland called Emmet’s attention and told the boy to go in the house and get his figures and bring em out there to Mr. Clay. O, Mr. Clay didn’t like that one bit. He flew in a passion—he toted his pistol all the time—he flew in a passion over that book business and throwed that pistol on old Uncle Henry and deadened him right there.
    So, when he killed the old man on the spot, then he throwed his gun right on Emmet and shot Emmet through the lung someway, but Emmet got over it. That was old man Henry’s baby boy—he married one of the Courteney girls after that, left here and went north with her. All them Kirkland boys left this country—and some of Henry’s boys said when Mr. Clay shot their daddy, his horse reared up and almost threw him.
    Well, they put Mr. Clay in jail but he didn’t stay there very long. There was a company in Opelika that furnished Mr.