I won't tell you the trouble we had beating our way on freights and
all. We went through Cleveland and Buffalo and other cities and saw
Niagara Falls. We bought things there, souvenirs and spoons and cards
and shells with pictures of the falls on them for our sisters and
mothers, but thought we had better not send any of the things home. We
didn't want to put the folks on our trail and maybe be nabbed.

We got into Saratoga as I said at night and went to the track. Bildad
fed us up. He showed us a place to sleep in hay over a shed and
promised to keep still. Niggers are all right about things like that.
They won't squeal on you. Often a white man you might meet, when you
had run away from home like that, might appear to be all right and give
you a quarter or a half dollar or something, and then go right and give
you away. White men will do that, but not a nigger. You can trust them.
They are squarer with kids. I don't know why.

At the Saratoga meeting that year there were a lot of men from home.
Dave Williams and Arthur Mulford and Jerry Myers and others. Then there
was a lot from Louisville and Lexington Henry Rieback knew but I
didn't. They were professional gamblers and Henry Rieback's father is
one too. He is what is called a sheet writer and goes away most of the
year to tracks. In the winter when he is home in Beckersville he don't
stay there much but goes away to cities and deals faro. He is a nice
man and generous, is always sending Henry presents, a bicycle and a
gold watch and a boy scout suit of clothes and things like that.

My own father is a lawyer. He's all right, but don't make much money
and can't buy me things and anyway I'm getting so old now I don't
expect it. He never said nothing to me against Henry, but Hanley Turner
and Tom Tumberton's fathers did. They said to their boys that money so