Jim Boyd is the only other man here that's got a rig with
springs under it. The aristocracy of Monterey County, a lot of it, will
ride plugs or shank's mares. You're getting up among 'em, Jakey, my boy.
Never thought of this when you were in jail, did you?"
Nobody can realize how this talk made me suffer; and yet I kind of liked
it. I suffered more than ever, because I had not seen Virginia for a
long time for several reasons. I quit singing in the choir in the fall,
when it was hard getting back and forth with no horses, and the heavy
snow of the winter of 1855-6 began coming down.
It was a terrible winter. The deer were all killed in their stamping
grounds in the timber, where they trod down the snow and struggled to
get at the brush and twigs for forage. The settlers went in on snowshoes
and killed them with clubs and axes. We never could have preserved the
deer in a country like this, where almost every acre was destined to go
under plow--but they ought to have been given a chance for their lives.
I remember once when I was cussing[12] the men who butchered the pretty
little things while Magnus Thorkelson was staying all night with me to
help me get my stock through a bad storm--it was a blizzard, but we had
never heard the word then--and as I got hot in my blasting and
bedarning of them (though they needed the venison) he got up and grasped
my hand, and made as if to kiss me.
[12] "Cussing" and "cursing" are quite different things, insists the
author.
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