cutthroat. Doubtless he was the descendant of the Spanish-English
buccaneers who used to prowl the Caribbean Sea and make
headquarters at New Orleans. Beside this pirate ancestry I'll bet
he was a direct descendant of Simon Legree. He suspected that I
couldn't do much in a dyking camp, so he swarmed down on me the
second week I was there and ordered me to quit the water-carrying
job and handle a mule team and a scraper. I saw death put an arm
around my neck right then and there. But I wouldn't confess that
I couldn't drive a team.

I put the lines over my head, said "Go 'long" as I had heard
other muleteers say, and, grasping the handles of the scraper, I
scooped up a slip load of clay. My arms were strong and this was
no trick at all. But getting the load was not the whole game. The
hardest part was to let go. I guided the lines with one hand and
steadied the scraper with the other as I drove up on the dump.
Then I heaved up on the handles, the scraper turned over on its
nose and dumped the load. But that isn't all it dumped. The mules
shot ahead when the load was released, and the lines around my
neck jerked me wrong side up. The handle of the scraper hit me a
stunning blow in the face and the whole contraption dragged over
my body bruising me frightfully. I staggered to my feet with one
eye blinded by the blood that flowed from a gash in my brow.
Simon Legree cursed me handsomely and told me I was fired. I
asked him where I would get my pay, and he told me he was paying
me a compliment by letting me walk out of that camp alive. I went
to the cook shack and washed the blood off my face. I was a
pretty sick boy. The cook was a native and was kind to me.

"Boy, you're liable to get lockjaw from that cut," he said.