A worthy and secondary motive is to
give an idea of the old West and to preserve from oblivion a rapidly
vanishing type of pioneers.
My personal appearance can be of little interest to coming
generations, but rather what I felt, saw, and accomplished. It was
always a matter of regret to me that I was such a poor shot with a
pistol. The only two exceptions worthy of mention were mere accidents.
In my boyhood's home, in Virginia, my father killed yearly a large
number of hogs for the household needs as well as for supplying our
slave families with bacon. The hogs usually ran in the woods, feeding
and thriving on the mast, but before killing time we always baited
them into the fields and finished their fattening with peas and corn.
It was customary to wait until the beginning of winter, or about the
second cold spell, to butcher, and at the time in question there were
about fifty large hogs to kill. It was a gala event with us boys, the
oldest of whom were allowed to shoot one or more with a rifle. The
hogs had been tolled into a small field for the killing, and towards
the close of the day a number of them, having been wounded and
requiring a second or third shot, became cross. These subsequent shots
were usually delivered from a six-shooter, and in order to have it at
hand in case of a miss I was intrusted with carrying the pistol. There
was one heavy-tusked five-year-old stag among the hogs that year who
refused to present his head for a target, and took refuge in a brier
thicket.
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