Читать книгу Philip of Texas - Otis James - Страница 15

I was only twelve years old, and already owned twelve ewes. Now I well knew from what I had heard sheep raisers say, that if I attended to my little flock properly, and if they met with no accident, it would be nothing marvelous if, at the end of nine years, when I should be twenty-one, my flock had increased to five thousand, or even more.

Father had hardly finished telling mother and me of what he had seen during his journey, before we began to make preparations for moving. Surely it seemed to me we were likely to have good luck, for within eight and forty hours after he returned, a man came up from Baton Rouge to buy our plantation, having heard that father was suffering with the Texas fever. Within two hours after he showed his willingness to buy our land the bargain was made, a fairly large portion of the money paid over, and mother and I knew that within twenty days we should leave the home where I was born.