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If I possess any physical accomplishment in which I have confidence it is my fleetness of foot. At that time an Indian runner could not have escaped me, much less a clumsy, long-heeled negro. I knew that if I could once more got my eyes upon the black, I would soon overhaul him; but therein lay the difficulty.
The common class of the people here, I should say, were Spanish and negro mixed, and they seem to get along pretty well; but the country is not suitable for white people. It seems to have been made on purpose for donkeys, parrots and long-heeled negroes.
Cowboys in sombreros and long-heeled boots, with kerchiefs knotted about their necks, careered on swift ponies in and out of the little towns or met the newcomers on the river road. They rode in a fashion new to Mose, with toes pointed straight down, the weight of their bodies a little on one side. They skimmed the ground like swallows, forcing their ponies mercilessly.
My long-heeled cowhides, "wife's shoes," for which I had exchanged a uniform waistcoat with a cotton-wooled old darky on the banks of the Saluda, were about parting soles from uppers, and I kept the twain together by winding my feet with stout cords. At supper an extra ration was given us.
But," said he, evading the subject with his usual dexterity, "we deal only in niggers and those thick-skulled, crooked-shanked, flat-footed, long-heeled, wooly-headed gentlemen, don't seem fit for much else but slavery, I do suppose. They ain't fit to contrive for themselves.
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