108 THE HIVE OF THE BEE-HUNTER. 
eccentric men that had a singular ambition to runa 
boat where no one else could—he was fond of being ‘a 
great discoverer on a small scale. In one of his eccen- 
tric humors, Captain Raft run the Emperor up Red 
River, as the pilot observed, about “a feet,” which in 
the southwest, means several hundred miles. 
Among the passengers upon that occasion was old 
Zeb Marston, a regular out-and-outer frontiersman, who 
seemed to spend his whole life in settling out of the way 
places, and locating his family in sickly situations. Zeb 
was the first man that “ blazed’ a tree in Hagle Town, 
on the Mountain Fork, and he was the first man that ever 
choked an alligator to death with his hands, on the Big 
Cossitot. He knew every snag, sawyer, nook and corner 
of the Sabine, the Upper Red River, and their tributa- 
ries, and when “bar whar scace,”’ he was wont to declare 
war on the Cumanchos, and, for excitement, ‘“‘ used them 
up terribly.” 
But to our story—Zeb moved on Red River, settled 
in a low, swampy, terrible place, and he took it as a 
great honor that the Emperor passed his cabin ; and, at 
every trip the boat made, there was tumbled out at Zeb’s 
yard a barrel of new whiskey, (as regularly as she passed,) 
for which was paid the full value in cord wood. 
Now, Captain Raft was a kind man, and felt disposed 
to oblige every resident that lived on his route of travel; 
but:it was unprofitable to get every week to Zeb’s out- 
of-the-way place, and as he landed the fifteenth barrel, 
