One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore⁠—it was only two hundred yards⁠—and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn’t get some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever anybody was after anybody I judged it was me ⁠—or maybe Jim. I was about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives⁠—said they hadn’t been doing nothing, and was being chased for it⁠—said there was men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

“Don’t you do it. I don’t hear the dogs and horses yet; you’ve got time to crowd through the brush and get up the crick a little ways; then you take to the water and wade down to me and get in⁠—that’ll throw the dogs off the scent.”