Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/123

 grown fond of him. Jenny mule would stand for hours every night and whinny for him.

In November, Bolivar, his mate—the horse I had paid one hundred and forty dollars for not nine months before—got into the wheat, became foundered, and died.

While freighting from Oristown, in December, one of a team of dapple grays fell and killed himself. So in three months I lost three horses that had cost over four hundred dollars, and the last had not even been paid for. I had only three left, the other dapple gray, Jenny mule, and "Old Grayhead," the relic of my horse-trading days. I had put in a large crop of wheat the spring before and had threshed only a small part of it before the cold winter set in, and the snow made it quite impossible to complete threshing before spring.

That was one of the cold winters which usually follow a wet summer, and I nearly froze in my little old soddy, before the warm spring days set in. Sod houses are warm as long as the mice, rats, and gophers do not bore them full of holes, but as they had made a good job tunneling mine, I was left to welcome the breezy atmosphere, and I did not think the charming nurse would be very happy in such a mess "nohow." The thought that I was not mean enough to ask her to marry me and bring her into it, was consoling indeed.

Since I shall have much to relate farther along concerning the curious and many sided relations that existed between Calias, Megory, and other contending and jealous communities, let me drop this and return to the removal of Calias to Megory.

The Nicholson Brothers had already installed an