30. September 2011 · Comments Off on Evening With the Authors in Lockhart · Categories: Ain't That America?, Geekery, General, Local, Old West, Veteran's Affairs, World

Yea these many months ago, I was invited by the organizers to be one of those authors in a fund-raising event to benefit the Clark Library. This is the oldest functioning public library existing in Texas; and since Texas was not generally conducive to the contemplative life and public institutions such as libraries until after the Civil War, generally – this means it is a mere infant of a library in comparison to institutions in other places. But I was thrilled to be invited, and to find out that Stephen Harrigan is one of the other authors. There were two elements in his book, Gates of the Alamo which I enjoyed terrifically when I finally read it. (Well after finishing the Trilogy, since I didn’t want to be unduly influenced in writing about an event by another fiction-writers’ take on it.) First, he took great care in setting up the scene – putting the whole revolt of the Texians in the context of Mexican politics; the soil out of which rebellion sprouted, as it were. (And he also touched on the matter of the Goliad as well.) Secondly, he had a main character who experienced the Texian rebellion against Mexico as a teenaged boy and who then lived into the 20th century. I liked the way that it was made clear that this all happened not that long ago, that it was possible for someone to have been a soldier in Sam Houston’s army, and live to see electrical street lighting, motorcars, and moving pictures.

That just appealed to me, for as another author friend pointed out – we are only a few lifetimes ago from the memories of great events. For instance – my mother, who is now in her eighties; suppose that when she was a child of eight or ten, she talked to the oldest person she knew. Suppose that in 1938, that oldest person was ninety, possibly even a hundred. That oldest person that my mother knew would have been born around 1830 to the late 1840s; such a person would clearly remember the Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, possibly even the California Gold Rush and the emigrant trail, the wars with the Plains Indians. Now, suppose that the oldest person that my mother knew and talked to as a child and supposing that person as a child of eight or ten had then talked to the oldest person they knew – also of the age of eighty to ninety in the 1840s . . . that oldest person would have been born in 1750-1760. That oldest person, if born on these shores would remember the Revolution, the British Army occupying the colonies, Lexington and Concord, General Washington crossing the Delaware. All of that history, all of those memories, in just three lifetimes – three easy jumps back into time! Nothing worked better to establish how close we are to events.

Anyway, I am looking forward to this – and since my daughter and I will drive up to Lockhart around midday Saturday, and the event doesn’t even get started until early evening, we are planning to go to the Kreuz Market and prove to ourselves that it really is one of the five best BBQ places in Texas. And she wants to check out any thrift stores and estate sales going on.

(Reposted to allow comments – that old punctuation in the post title bites again)

29. August 2011 · Comments Off on Here We Go Round and Round · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

So here, we go, all around the mulberry bush, now that the all-in-one hardbound version of the Adelsverein Trilogy is about to be launched. I had intended this as a first step . . . no, actually this was the second step in having my books come out through Watercress Press in second editions. (The first step was Watercress publishing Daughter of Texas early this spring.) I had planned to transition Truckee’s Trail, followed by the single-volume paperback versions of the Trilogy gradually over the coming months, but as it turns out, I can’t be with two publishers at once. Never mind that the Trilogy was originally done by two of them – one micro-house edited and marketed, and another, a slightly larger establishment did print and distribution . . . but anyway, the result is that Truckee and the single volumes of the Trilogy are from today only available as Nook and Kindle editions for the next month or two. Which is not that much of a hassle, since the all-in-one print edition will be available after Thursday on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and the Kindle edition of Truckee has been downloaded like hotcakes for the last couple of months. Since it was my first adventure in historical fiction, it was also top on my priority list to do a second edition. There were things that desperately needed to be fixed, and the senior editor at Watercress has been just itching to get her hands on it anyway. It’s my first priority to get the second edition of it out there in print, as soon as absolutely possible, so nobody panic at not being able to get a copy, unless from one of those venders who have gotten them second-hand and have it actually in their physical inventory.

So, that’s where that stands – and, hey, all the readers who have Kindles and Nooks? Carry on – tell your friends and pass the good word.

19. August 2011 · Comments Off on Indians · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter drew my attention to this story in the UK Daily Mail, with considerable amusement; both for the breathless sense of excitement about the headline – about something that was very, very old news to students of Texas history – and the matchless idiocy reflected in some of the resulting comments – the kind of crystalline pure idiocy that one can only gain from learned every darned thing they know about the aboriginal inhabitants of North America from having watched Dances With Wolves. I’ve always given handsome credit to that bit of cinema as excellent and almost anthropologically detailed peep into the world of the Northern plains Sioux in the mid-1860s . . . did anyone else ever notice how all the tribes-folk are always doing something, while carrying on a conversation in the side? Almost without exception, they are working at something. Pay no attention to the plot, just watch the people. Anyway, this bit of Brit excitement seems have been inspired by this book – which came out over a year ago, and is pretty fascinating on it’s own. Reading the story and the comments exasperated me yet again, reminding me of my own particular exasperations with the popular culture version of the American frontier. As far as movies and television go, pretty much the whole 19th century west of the Mississippi is a big-one-size-one-location-just-post-Civil-War generic blur. And all the Indians in these generic Western adventures were also pretty much generic, too . . . which means that historical knowledge gleaned from TV and movie westerns is – to be kind – not to be relied upon.

Because the tribes varied enormously as to culture and capabilities, as any anthropologist will tell you. I’m not one myself, but I have had to read pretty thoroughly in the course of writing about the American west – and that is one of the things that emerges almost at once; the various Tribes fell into a wide range of cultural and technological levels. This range went all the way from the hunting/gathering peoples, like the various divisions in California (who being in a temperate and generous land did very well) and in the deserts of the Great Basin (the Utes and Paiutes did rather less well) to the Cherokee of the southeast who farmed, traded, and swiftly adopted an alphabet for their language, and embraced printing presses and higher education. In between these two extremes were those tribal divisions who farmed, like the Mandan and others of the Ohio-Mississippi-Missouri River basin, and the sedentary tribes of the Southwest; the Hopi and Navaho – farmers, weavers, potters and basket-weavers . . . all of whom, at somewhat of a squint, were not all that remote, technology-wise, from the white settlers, although one thing they did have in common was a lack of resistance to the diseases which Europeans brought with them.

And then there were the hunter/gatherer tribes of the high plains, those who were the first to take full advantage of the horse . . . the horse, which ironically, had been brought into North America by the Spanish. The various Sioux divisions, the Kiowa, and most especially the Comanche – became peerless horsemen and hunters. They took the plains as their own, hunting the vast herds of buffalo who made their home there – all the land between the mountains and forests to the north and west, the Mississippi on the east, and nearly as far as the Gulf Coast to the south. For nearly two hundred years, the horse-tribes of the plains took it all for theirs, and lived for the hunt . . . and for war.

No, war did not come with the white settlers – it had been there all along, for the various tribes warred vigorously, frequently and with every evidence of keen enjoyment upon each other; for the rights to camp and hunt on certain tracts, for booty and slaves, for vengeance and sometimes just for the pure enjoyment. The Comanche warred with such brutal efficiency on the Apache, that the eastern Lipan Apache were nearly wiped out, and pushed them, along with the Tonkawa, into alliance with the new-come Texian settlers. But for about fifteen years, the Penateka Comanches held a peace treaty with Texas German settlers – as allies against other enemies – a peace treaty which held for a lot longer than anyone might have expected, which goes to show that reality is almost always stranger than fiction. From the mid-1830s on, the Comanche’s enemies in Texas, Lipan and Tonkawa warriors served with the Texas Rangers on various battlefields against the Comanche. In the Northern plains, the Sioux likewise warred with the Crow – with the result that the Crows were very pleased to serve with the US Army in the west, as scouts, guides and fighters. During the Civil War itself, the Cherokee split into Union and Confederate factions. Indeed, one soon gains the impression from the accounts of early explorers encountering various tribes and peoples, that those peoples were most interested in enlisting the European and American explorers – with their strange new gunpowder technology – as allies against their traditional tribal enemy. This all made a very much more complicated and nuanced picture. Individuals and tribal groups reacted in practically as many different ways that there were individuals and groups; the whole spectrum of adaptation, resistance, and acquiescence, or even in combination and in sequence. The stories are endlessly varied, with heroes and villains, triumph and heartbreak aplenty . . . on all sides.

(Crossposted at my book blog)

28. July 2011 · Comments Off on What? The End of the Week Already? · Categories: General, Old West, Wild Blue Yonder, Working In A Salt Mine...

I’m sorry, people – I am just swamped, with two huge paying projects with deadlines … OMG .. in a day or so, since this is Thursday.
I’ll be back on Monday. Stuff happening, got a raffle for tee – shirts going. Particulars at my book blog, here.

This is all courtesy of some lovely peole at www.ooshirts.com!

14. July 2011 · Comments Off on Deep in the Heart – Chapter 12 · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

(Another excerpt from the work in progress – soon to be finished with the first draft! And I am featured today at the book-blog Royalty Free Fiction … a blog for historical fiction about characters who aren’t kings and queens and that…)

Chapter 12 – Returns

Mr. Burnett’s messenger to Carl in Bexar, sent by one of Captain Coleman’s volunteers, through the good offices of the local alcade returned to Austin the day before Alois Becker was buried in a ground of Margaret’s selecting: just a little way from the stump of the great oak tree, on a patch of level ground. The messenger reported that Sergeant Becker was off on a long patrol with the Ranger Company, around the borders of the Comanche-haunted Llano country, and perhaps even venturing deep into it. He and his men would likely not return for many months. Margaret had rather expected something of the sort. At least this absolved her of any responsibility to ask her brother for advice and consent regarding Alois Becker’s funeral and the disposition of his property – and of any necessity for considering his wishes on the matter. Indeed, Margaret suspected that her brother would have as little or the same care for the burial of their father as he would in the dispatch of a dead cat or dog into the nearest midden-pit – and that if he was not present, then he would not have to make a pretense of feelings that he did not have, or embarrass her by a openly displaying a lack of them.

“I that he may rest near the apple trees,” she had said to Mr. Burnett, and to Mr. Waller and those others who came to pay their respects to a man who, while never being well-liked among his fellow citizens, had something of respect for having been an early settler of the region. “He cared so tenderly for the apple trees – and we may tend his grave easily.” As no one else is likely to, for the love of him, she thought, as she and the boys walked back to the house, on that first afternoon, when she had talked of a grave for Opa on his own property, and they had gone down to inspect that place, a little below the top of the hill upon which the house sat. Mama would have – but Mama’s grave was under an oak tree near Harrisburg, that branched up in four great limbs. The best part of your father – died with your mother, Race had said. All those years since then, the act of living for Alois Becker had been merely existence, a habit, the motion and pretense of living, without the heart of it. And Margaret thought, with a twist of unease in her own breast – was all of her life and the manner of her living it since Race had gone from her, merely a well-established habit? Was she truly alive and loving, caring for her sons and her household, caring for her town and her friends, and not just some peculiar automaton, walking through the days and the necessary tasks out of habit and obligation? That question plagued her, all through the hours and days following Alois Becker’s passing, although she had some moments of savage amusement, upon realizing that she had no need to go into black for her father; she had already been wearing the customary colors of mourning for her husband – as much as these customs could be uphold on the frontier.

I am tired of it, she thought, as she walked back from the grave Alois Becker had been put to rest, and the earth above mounded up. She would have a fine stone carved, of course, and perhaps a little fencing put around the place, to keep the cattle and horses from trampling over where he lay for eternity. I am tired of it. I want to go towards living my life in hope. I want to not be afraid. I want to build the house as I want it to be, to live in it as I think fit to live. Horace walked at her side, Peter at her other with his hand in hers. The boarders and townsfolk who had attended the brief ceremonies followed behind: Mr. Waller, Richard Bullock and his family, Captain Coleman, Angelina Eberly and her family, Mr. Ware, stumping gamely along on his wooden foot.
She and Hetty had laid out the usual spread of cakes, of bread and cold meats for the mourners, on several tables set out on the porch. There were dozens of saddle horses, tied to the rails of the little corral in back, any number of traps and carriages, although most had preferred to walk from their houses nearby. So taken up with the demands of hospitality was she that Margaret had hardly taken notice of the hollow, thudding sound that the clods of earth made against the coffin; they had not the heartrending effect upon her that she had felt, upon burying Mama, in that lonely grave just outside of Harrisburg.

“So, what will ye do, Mrs. Vining? Will you be hiring anyone to work the land, then?” Angelina Eberly tucked into a platter of vegetable pickles, biscuits and sliced ham, in a shady corner of the porch. Shrewd old storm-crow, Margaret thought, with a mix of annoyance tempered with affection. She must be rejoicing at the thought of eating food that she has not cooked herself. Margaret was exhausted – she had been receiving the condolences of all of the mourners for much of the afternoon. Now – much as she had expected – the gathering had turned into rather a convivial one, with friends gathering with like-minded friends, here and there in the parlors or on the porch, enjoying the cool breeze that wafted through the trees, and the distant view of the river, as the afternoon sun slanted through new leaves and turned the water to quicksilver. Hetty had firmly taken upon herself the duties of keeping the various dishes and platters generously filled, commanding Margaret to play the part of the hostess and move among the guests. Margaret had done so, until her feet hurt – so did her hand, from having it so comfortingly pressed – and her face ached from having to keep it in the same demure expression. Now she found it a pleasure to sit in the corner and converse with Mrs. Eberly, whose blunt speech and decided opinions had the merit of being both original and amusing – if now and again more startlingly frank than Margaret thought was acceptable at her table.

“There’s hardly any of it left to make it worth-while, save for a hay-field and another of corn. I expect that I shall hire someone to come and plow it in the spring. My father farmed out of habit, I believe – and only just enough for household needs. We’ll keep the garden, and the milk-cows, of course, but I will probably sell the draft oxen.”
“Aye, and I am not sure that he thought all that much of it himself, any more.” Mrs. Eberly shook her black-bonneted head. “Poor man – he got so worn-looking, these past two or three years. In his prime, he must have been a handsome, well-set up man.”
“He was,” Margaret answered, “and more than that – he was magnificent. When I was a child; I used to think that Papa looked like the illustration of a king or a god, in the old storybooks.”
“It’s a tragedy, getting’ old,” Mrs. Eberly sighed, gustily. “But I tell you what, Miz Vining – it’s a sight better ‘n the alternative.” Margaret left unspoken the first thought that she had – which was that the worst curse of growing old often deprived one of the company and affection of those whom you loved and loved you most dearly. Mrs. Eberly still had children, grandchildren and even step-children living, so Margaret supposed that she had the love of those to keep her warm in the evening of life. But for Papa, that fire had gone out, years ago. Mama and Rudi had gone before him into eternity. If there was any comfort for Margaret in contemplating Papa’s last moments, it lay in the hope that he had been reunited with them at last; which left herself, her sons and Carl on the shores of this present world, to fend for themselves. Margaret found that rather ironic. That was what Papa had done throughout much of his, anyway.
“He loved my mother so very much,” she answered at last, “and my brother Rudi, who fell at Goliad. I fear he was a broken man, after that loss. I believe he would have rejoiced in his heavenly reunion with them – which is why I am not myself left desolate with grief. Papa has gone to be with those which he truly loved. I cannot help but think that he would have seen departing from this life as a blessing and relief.”
“Aye, you’re right, Miz Vining – so it would have been.” Mrs. Eberly took another bite out of the biscuit and ham upon her plate. “Maybe it was for the best. He was difficult, and that we all know well. It was to your credit, to have been so patient with his ways for these years. But still, where does that leave you, Miz. Vining? You cared for him in his declining years – what are you left in his will? Pardon me for speaking so bluntly – but I can not help noticing that it was your efforts which kept his estate on a level plane and a roof over all of your heads. If your father had a comfortable home in his last years, that was entirely of your work and your doing. I would not sit by and see you done out of your rights. What has he left, and what did he leave of it to you? I know that brother of yours, he’s a good lad and a brave Ranger, and he would stand to inherit something, I am sure – but where has he been for you, all these years. I won’t hear that he has inherited the larger portion, for that will not be fair at all . . . an’ pardon me for speaking so blunt an’ speaking out of turn, if you’ll forgive me, Miz Vining – but it’s a man’s world, unless we stick up for ourselves and stick together. I am a woman who would see justice done, right and proper!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Eberly,” Margaret answered, rather touched by Mrs. Eberly’s concern. “You have no need for concern. Papa did not have a will, outlining any share of his property to us . . .”
“Jus’ like a man,” Mrs. Eberly snorted, “Think he’s going to live forever! So, you and your brother share equally. Well, that’s only fair, I suppose . . . less’n he comes back with a new wife, an’ wants his share in the house! What then, I ask you?”
“I have consulted with Mr. Ford,” Margaret answered, sedately. “For he practices law, as well as medicine – and he has advised me. Papa owned several town-lots . . . as well as this house and the property surrounding. There was also a large sum of currency, which Papa had in payment from the State, when he sold all the rest. He never spent it – we found it among his things.”

Margaret and Hetty, and John Ford had gingerly made inventory of those few personal things which Alois Becker had kept, in a small box under his bed in the kitchen. They had made a pitiful showing: a small pocket-watch and a silver pen-knife, and a very old Bible in German with a tattered cover. There was a fat wallet of currency – that payment for the land, which he had received and hardly spent anything of, two deeds for a pair of town-lots, bought at auction under the oak tree on the day that Austin had been established – and which one day might be as valuable as the land upon which the homestead stood. There were also two folded papers, sighed by Erastus Smith, and an officer whose name Margaret could not call to mind, one testifying to the service of Alois Becker as a scout for the Army during the war, and another certifying that he had participated with great distinction in the battle at San Jacinto.
“You should be able to apply for a tract of land, on the basis of his service,” Mr. Ford had remarked upon reading them. Margaret set that thought aside; yes, the widows of the Gonzales men who fell at the Alamo had all been awarded land-tracts, for the faithful service of their husbands. At the very bottom of the box was a small thing of cob-web fine linen, folded small: an elaborately ruffled woman’s house-bonnet of the old-fashioned cut, which Margaret had recognized as being Mama’s; a ghostly scent of the verbena sachet which Mama had favored still clung to it, although it had mostly taken on the musty-paper odor of the paper currency and the property deeds. Margaret had sat back on her heels on the kitchen floor, and thought on how her father had lived as a monk, during those last years of his life. He had his farming tools, the apple trees, two or three ragged shirts and a hunting coat . . . but so little which was personally his, in the way that Race Vining’s books had been his. He was buried in the best of his clothes, and Margaret had burned the rest, as they were so ragged she wouldn’t have given them to a beggar . . . nor did she wish to cut them into strips to braid a rug out of. She did not want Papa to haunt her house, any more than he did already.

“Mr. Ford advised that we split the land into equal portions,” she explained now to Mrs. Eberly. “The town-lots are, or would be equal in value to this house. The sum in notes that my father was paid for his land is easily enough apportioned. And I have kept a good account of the cost of improvements that I made to it. I love my brother very dearly, but if he should choose the house over the town-lots, then his portion of Papa’s estate would be debited for the cost of improvements that I made to it . . . out of my own earnings. Mr. Ford has drawn up and had witnessed the necessary papers,” Margaret added, and Mrs. Eberly set aside her plate, and clapped her hands together,
“Mrs. Vining, you have not wasted your time, in renting to legislators,” she exclaimed, “That is looking after your interests very fairly, indeed. I should not have worried so, that you would be done out of your rights and fair share.”
“Certainly not,” Margaret answered, with serene confidence. “It was very kind of you to take such a concern, Mrs. Eberly. If there is a petticoat government in Austin, then I think you must be the uncrowned queen of it, and your rule is gracious and far-seeing! But I have always been good at looking after my family. I believe that we must either see to ourselves and our families, or leave this place. For myself, I had no choice: My husband was invalid, my father mad, and my brother . . . has long chosen to take his place among the ranks of our defenders – from which he may eventually return . . . or not. I wish that I had not needed to acquire and practice such efficiencies, but there you have it. This is where we live. There exist in this world women who must, or perhaps have been made to feel that their duty and obligation to custom oblige them to sit in the parlor with their hands folded, and expect the men of their kin to make their pathway smooth in all respects. I am not among them.”
“No,” acknowledged Mrs. Eberly, in what seemed to Margaret to be a rather regretful tone of voice. “Would have been nice for us, if it were; no bothers, no worries – everything taken from your shoulders . . . sitting in the parlor all the morning long, taking calls from visitors . . . eh, it would have been restful, wouldn’t it?”
“It would have been boring,” Margaret answered, firmly, and Mrs. Eberly laughed and answered, “Miz Vining, there are some days when I would like boring, would like it very much, indeed.”
“And then you think, of how very pleasing it is, to arrange your affairs and your household, and the tenor of your day in the manner which best pleases you,” Margaret answered, “And I think that I would soon become tired of helpless dependency. It does not do our men any favors, to have a helpless seraglio of one inhabitant, hanging uselessly around their necks, week in and week out.”
“You never struck me as bein’ the helpless type,” Mrs. Eberly answered. “Just as well, then.”
“I prefer, I think – the animating contest of freedom, rather than the tranquility of servitude,” Margaret answered, “As would, I believe, any woman of character and education. There is much to be said for being a widow with control of property.”
“Aye, well,” and Mrs. Eberly sighed. “You are very well right – but still, ‘tis nice to have a man about the place, sometimes. You know, Mr. Ward has been seriously courting Sue Bean – I hear they’re to be married at mid-summer. She’s over the moon in love . . . well, it must be love, then! Poor man, with him lacking an arm, and a leg as well. I hope she keeps him happy, so I do.”
“And away from cannon,” Margaret answered, very dryly. “He cannot afford loosing another limb.”
“Well, two more, but he ought to try and keep hold of that smaller limb that a man has!” Mrs. Eberly chuckled, rather knowingly, “and that bein’ the main bit that keeps a wife happy, after all.”
“I’m sure they will be very happy,” Margaret thought she made a good pretense of having missed the point of Mrs. Eberly’s jest. “Mr. Ward is a very fine and upstanding man – I am certain that he will take care of her, and the children.”
“Still, and all,” Mrs. Eberly mused, “He’s had his bad times, I am sure – and I am equally sure that his experiences must affect him – just as your father’s experiences did him. I am not certain I would want to marry a man who bore the burden of such bad fortune – or to advise any daughter of mine to do so.”
“If she loves him,” Margaret answered, “truly and deeply – then she will not see those pitiably misfortunate scars of the flesh and mind. She will see only his good character, his finer qualities, and make her decision as her heart bids her.”
“Oh, she’s young, yet.” Mrs. Eberly answered, and Margaret thought to herself that she was also young – considered next to Mrs. Eberly. Now Mrs. Eberly’s keen eyes went past Margaret, to a late arrival, a tall and rather slovenly-attired man who had just ridden up to the area before the house. He took off his hat, and sat blinking, as he sat upon his horse, surveying the gathering. He looked familiar to Margaret in some ways, rough, well-whiskered and clad in the cheap and durable clothes of a workman, and then as he ventured tentatively,
“Is this my welcome-home party? I did not expect such.”

“Well, bless my soul, if it isn’t Doctor Williamson!” Mrs. Eberly exclaimed. She added, in a much louder voice, “Say, look well, all ye – it’s Doctor Williamson, come home from Perote!” and at her words, all within earshot paid attention to the gawky scarecrow of a man, clumsily dismounting from what was obviously a hired nag, who held the reins in his hand and looked around as if he wondered what on earth he should do with them . . . indeed, and what happened in far Mexico, and by what miracle had he arrived here, upon this sorry mount? Gratifyingly, he was soon at the center of a circle of men, being warmly congratulated, as everyone exclaimed their relief and questioned him regarding his experiences, slapping his dusty shoulders with approval and enthusiasm of such a hearty sort that it appeared as if he might soon collapse underneath it. Margaret caught the attention of Johnny and Horace, who had been supporting her all this day with all the grave and careful courtesy of his twelve years.
“Go and take the horse from Doctor Williamson, unsaddle the poor beast and let him out into the pasture for a while.”
“The doctor looks very ill, Mama,” Horace answered, “D’you supposed he was tortured in Perote; with horrible instruments, and hung about with chains?”
“No, I do not think he was,” Margaret said, “for he did not write to me, complaining of such. The poor man – all he was tortured by was the loss of liberty! I think he was just tired from the journey, for he must have come such a long way! And Johnny – if he has brought anything with him, take it up to the room. Remember, we have moved his things to the little room upstairs . . .” But before Horace could even move from Margaret’s side, Mr. Burnett’s man, Hurst, had appeared as if by magic, and with efficient courtesy relieved Dr. Williamson of his horse and the small baggage it contained – mainly Dr. Williamson’s sadly battered medical satchel.” Margaret came down from the porch and through the crowd of men, which parted for her like her vision of the Red Sea parting before Moses, until she came to the doctor, still looking as baffled as he usually did in social situations.

“I am so very glad that you are free, and come home to us!” she exclaimed, and captured one of his hands in hers. “You must be exhausted, after your journey – we would have made a welcome twice as warm as this, if we had even known that you were on your way . . . Johnny, take the bag from Hurst,” she added, as her sons gathered around her, looking at Dr. Williamson with awed respect – and on the part of Peter, no little amount of puzzlement. “We have put those things of yours that you left with us, into one of the little rooms, upstairs. Do you remember the way – or do you want one of us to show you? There has been so much that has happened, since you went to San Antonio.”
“I did not think there would be so much of a crowd,” Dr. Williamson answered, peering around, in that baffled manner which suggested that he had misplaced his glasses again. “I . . . I sent a letter to you from Perote, to tell you that we were released . . . I can only think that it must have gone astray. Or that I we traveled so rapidly as to outdistance the post…”
“No matter – we are overjoyed to see you, and welcome you home,” Margaret answered, and Dr. Williamson hesitantly raised her hand to his lips for a brief kiss.
“As much as a home that I have,” he said, simply – and Margaret interpreted his baffled expression. The doctor had never liked small changes within the household, and adjusted to them with reluctance. Now, she wondered if it had been right, in moving his possessions to the upper and more private room, at the top of the house.
“We had not received any letter from you, or indeed any news of the release of the Perote captives,” Margaret said, “But you are all the more welcome – for this is the day that we have buried my father. He died, three days ago – of a cerebral stroke…”
“Is that a medical diagnosis?” Dr. Williamson inquired; his weathered face bright with sudden interest. “I would not have judged so without I had performed a dissection…”
“That was the judgement of Mr. Ford, who was in practice in San Augustine,” Margaret answered hastily. How very awkward, that Dr. Williamson had returned on the same day as Papa’s burial; there had been so much that had happened, over the last two years. Margaret had confided much of her concerns in her letters to him, been frank, humorous, and sometimes needful of reassurance in her letters – and in all, the doctor had responded in much the same nature. And now, they were face to face again, not separated by miles and prison walls. Somehow the written words had wrought a connection that was simply not there, in face to face conversation. In her mind’s eye, she had a picture of him that just did not match his present appearance and presence – and she briefly wondered if he had not created a worshipfully roseate image of her in return. But he was still a trusted friend, a guest under her roof – for she thought of it now as decidedly as hers, rather than her father’s roof – a guest of long-standing, a friend and physician to Race Vining.

“You should rest a little from your long journey,” she advised him, “In the room set aside for you, where we placed all the possessions you left with us. Wash, and change into your own clean clothes – then come downstairs and greet your friends.” She clasped his hand between hers, overtaken by a sudden feeling of affection and concern. He looked so baffled, so lost. “It is a blessing that you are free, and returned to us . . . Peter – my dear little duckling – will you show Dr. Williamson up to the little room? You remember – the doctor who cared for your Papa?” To her vague distress, her youngest son shook his head – no, he did not recall. Doctor Williamson had been a prisoner in Perote for almost half of his life. “He is our very dear friend,” she whispered to her son. “He is very tired, and he has had a very long journey – and I must stay with the guests who have come to honor your Opa. Show him into the little room, opposite yours’ and Miss Hetty’s, at the top of the stairs. All of his things are there; we made it very pleasant for him.”
“Yes, Mama,” Peter answered manfully, and turned to Dr. Williamson. “If you would kindly follow me, sir – I will show you to your quarters.” Margaret concealed a smile. It seemed that Peter had been coached by someone, someone well-accustomed to the ways of courtesy and hospitality – possibly Hurst, for she had often observed her youngest son deep in conversation with Mr. Burnett’s manservant during the last few days.

“I will see you then, among the guests,” Margaret pressed Dr. Williamson’s hand between hers once again – intending that slight embrace to be a comfort and encouragement. He still appeared somewhat lost and baffled, above and beyond his usual way. “You are among friends, now – and most welcome,” she added, impulsively going upon tip-toes and brushing his bearded cheek with her lips. “And I am glad above all to see you safe. Welcome home!”
And with that, Peter led him upstairs, just as Hurst led his poor bony livery-stable horse in the other direction. Margaret turned now to the care of her guests – oh, so many of them there were, lingering on a spring afternoon. She was glad of that, for the evidence it gave of Alois Becker being held in the high respect of his fellows, or at least – affection for her, as his daughter. But then, any reason for a gathering – be it election day, or the celebration of the victory at San Jacinto, or even just a funeral – was embraced eagerly; it had been so when she was a girl in Gonzales. With the keen judgement of a hostess, she had sensed that this particular gathering had been revived, transformed from a wake to a more joyous celebration. She looked into the kitchen, where Hetty was just adding some more wood to the fire. Two pans of biscuits sat on the table, ready for the baking.
“Oh, good,” Margaret said, “I was just thinking of more biscuits – and Dr. Williamson likes them so.”
“Aye, ‘tis a miracle,” Hetty shielded her hand with a thick fold of her apron, and closed the firebox door. “And so unexpected, Marm – we had not even made up the bed, in the little room! I took up a jug of water and some towels, for Peter said the Doctor wished to wash after his journey, but I was distracted an’ all–”
“Oh, dear – I’ll see to it, then, Hetty. It will only take a moment.” Margaret filled her arms with clean sheets and blankets from the cupboard underneath the stair-landing where they kept such things. She made her way up the stairs, thinking that she would only take a few minutes from her guests, and that surely the doctor would have changed into his own clothes and joined the others by now. There was no sound coming from behind the door, which stood half-open, so she went in with the linens . . . but he was there, standing before the opened window, as if arrested by the very sight of the sky outside, an open razor in one hand, and half the bristle scraped from his chin.

“Oh – I thought you had gone downstairs,” Margaret exclaimed in surprise; surprise which turned almost immediately to concern. She dropped the linens and blanket on the shuck mattress of the bed. “Doctor – are you unwell? Is there something the matter?”
“No . . . that is . . .” he looked at the razor in his hand as if wondering how it came to be there. “I was thinking that . . . it was so very strange to look out of an unbarred window. And that this is not a dream, or Perote was but a nightmare. But it was real.”
“It was real,” Margaret answered. Danny Fritchie had said much of the same thing, and she thought that Dr. Williamson appeared to be pitiably lost, as if he had well and permanently lost his glasses. “And it was a horrible place – but you are free, now.”
“Free,” he said the word tentatively, as if he did not quite believe. “Free of one set of chains, but not another.” He had not made a motion to continue shaving, or to change from the rough clothing that he had worn for travel, although he had unbuttoned his collar and cuffs, and draped a towel across his shoulders. Margaret clicked her tongue.
“I cannot imagine what set of chains you mean,” she said, and began spreading out the sheet, fitting it over the mattress.
“No, you would not,” he answered, and Margaret’s heart was wrung. Danny Fritchie had held his baby daughter, and wept as though his heart was about to break, remembering the deaths of his friends on the Salado, and her brother Carl had looked out at the stars and wrapped silence around him, unable to sleep within walls for years, upon his return from Goliad. With his sleeves turned back, she could see the scars of healed sores that encircled his wrists like cruel bracelets. Men held their hurts inside; she hoped desperately that those scars were the very least of his. She smoothed a second sheet over the bed, spread out the blanket and turned the sheet back, all while Dr. Williamson made no further motion to complete his toilette. Something ailed the man – Margaret could not think what it might be, save that he might be uncertain about where his things – those books and extra clothing that he had left behind. She and Hetty and the boys had lugged them all upstairs and arranged them pleasingly in the little room.
“We brushed your good coat, and aired all the other things often,” she said, attempting to encourage him. She had guests downstairs, and she had told Hetty she would only be a moment. “Here – I will set them out for you.” The little room held a chest of narrow drawers, into which she had placed all of his clothing save the coat. The faint scent of verbena rose from the shirt and trousers that she arrayed on the newly-made bed. Margaret loved the odor of verbena – a liking for which she credited to Mama’s fondness for it. There was a black neck-cloth in the topmost drawer, and she laid that out as well. He was still looking into the distance, of the aspect of Austin, seen over the row of apple-trees, which still held some faint white clouds of bloom among the tender new green leaves.
“You have been very good to me,” he said at last. “You wrote to me . . . those letters were welcome. They were . . .”
“You were my husband’s friend,” she answered, firmly. What was the matter with him, she thought – with considerable impatience. She was needed downstairs, and his friends and fellow-citizens, they would be waiting to talk to him, to ask him questions about his experiences in Perote, and for news of those last few held there. “Here are your clothes. I wrote to you because you were our friend – and I thought of you with particular fondness, for tending my husband . . . and you were in such desperate need of a confidant . . .”
“I’d have gone mad, without your letters, and those others from my friends,” the expression on his craggy face was one of desolation, and she recalled again, how her brother could not bear to remain confined within walls. He and Rudi and the others taken after Coleto Creek had spent a week of imprisonment in the Goliad chapel – so crowded that the fit men and boys had slept on their feet, leaning against the walls and each other, for lack of room.

“I’m only happy that my poor scribbles were of comfort to you,” Margaret said. “And I would confess that yours were of comfort to me, as well. Sometimes I have felt very alone, even with Hetty and my friends and the boys as my solace. When I was in distress or in confusion . . . and there were so many times when I was, in these last two years – it relieved my heart no end, to have a confidant, someone whom I could pour out my worries.” Now, she feared that she might have been too frank, for it seemed that Dr. Williamson was struggling with a powerful emotion, which held him speechless. She had already settled the pillow in a clean slip at the head of the bed. Now she came around the foot of the bed, to where Dr. Williamson was still standing, irresolute, between the wash-stand with the scrap of mirror-glass hung up over it, and the window, with the razor in his hand. “You are my dear friend, also. Do not doubt that – but you have those friends and men of Austin downstairs, waiting for you to come down. Here,” she took the straight-razor from his hand, “You are nearly finished – this little bit. Hold still – there.” She capably scraped the last of bristle from his cheek, and taking the end of the towel, wiped off the remaining soap, noting almost in passing that his eyes were grey, and that she needed to reach up a little way, for he was taller than Race had been. “I have put out your clean clothes, Dr. Williamson. Put them on, and come down. Hetty will be taking a batch of fresh biscuits out of the oven. You always liked her biscuits.”
“They were always very fine,” he answered, at last, and Margaret touched her fingers to her lips, and then brushed his cheek with her fingertips. He was a dear man, but so absent-minded, and she supposed that the confusion of his home-coming – for this was about the only home that he had – must have left him as temporarily at a loss as Danny Fritchie had been. Things had changed, in his absence over the last two years, and he was not a man who dealt well with changes.

“There – I have given a distant kiss to you. You are ready to be seen in public, as soon as you put on your clean clothes. Five minutes – that is what I shall tell your friends.”
“Friends?” he sounded rather baffled, uncertain, and Margaret concealed a sigh. What was the matter with him? Honestly, it was as if his experience in Perote had turned all his mind to jelly. And Margaret knew that he had a keen mind, if at times a rather eccentric one.
“Yes – you have friends, waiting to welcome you home. They came for Papa’s burial, but they have remained to welcome you,” she said, in the same kind of encouraging tone that she used to urge her sons, when the were small, rather than terrify them into compliance with her wishes with a show of authority – what Hetty called her ‘Maeve-face’ – the look of an imperious queen, whose wishes were not to be casually ignored. But perhaps she had a bit of the ‘Maeve-face’ on her at that minute, for Dr. Williamson looked at her, really looked at her as if he understood at long last, and answered,
“Then I shall come down. It is the right thing, is it not, Mrs. Vining?”
“Yes, it is,” she said, with secret relief that he was going to put on an appearance of amiability – he was so often disinclined to fall in with the demands of what society commanded – really, this had been so often an embarrassment to her, when her table was crowded with boarders and their conversation, and he had propped a medical text against the cruets and read through-out the meal. “Put on those clothes that I have laid out for you – do you want a manservant to come up and tie your cravat? Mr. Burnett’s man, Hurst – he is an expert. I will send him up, if you require assistance.”
“No . . . I am capable of managing my own cravat,” he answered, and Margaret thought to herself that perhaps she ought to send Hurst, if Dr. Williamson did not appear within ten minutes.
“Then, we shall expect you,” she said – and was fairly sure that she did not say so with her ‘Maeve-face’. “You are a man very well-liked in Austin, and so you should have a good welcome home.”

20. May 2011 · Comments Off on From the Next Book – Deep in the Heart · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

(Deep in the Heart will continue the story begun in Daughter of Texas. During the tumultuous years of the Repiblic of Texas, the widowed Margaret Becker Vining is trying to raise her four sons by keeping a boarding house in frontier Austin, the now-and-again capitol of the Republic. Deep in the Heart will be available by December 2011, from Watercress Press. )

Chapter 9 – Forted Up

The events of which Dr. Williamson had written were confirmed within days by accounts in the newspapers which arrived from across Texas. Morag wept a little when Margaret told them of what Dr. Wiliamson’s letter conveyed. So did Hetty, but then she dried her eyes and said, “Our old Mam would have said he was born to trouble as sparks fly upwards. But he made a brave end of it, did he? And in a state of grace, as well. A blessing, I’d say – there’s many dies worse that deserves better, and many deserving worse who die well.” She dabbed at her eyes again and blew her nose. “An’ he did well by his kinfolk an’ those he called friends. Ever so grateful I am that he brought us here.”
“I wish he had drawn life from that dreadful jar,” Margaret replied, and she felt a little teary in the face of Hetty’s stoicism. “I had hoped to expand the house again, someday – and I had trusted in him to be the one to build it! Now, I am sure I can find another carpenter . . . but where do you find another cousin?”
“Oh, aye – we had cousins a’plenty in Wexford!” Hetty answered robustly, and then her eyes moistened again. “No’ many like Seamus though! We shall miss him too, Marm, miss him something awful. Now – Morag, darlin’ – if the baby is a boy, you should name him after Seamus, no matter what your man says. Aye, that’s what you should do!”
“But what if the baby is a girl?” Morag asked, laughing a little through her tears, “What then, Marm?”
“Jemima,” Margaret suggested. “Close enough to James, I think.” They talked a little over a name for Morag’s babe if it should be a girl, Margaret all the time thinking how much she would have loved to have a daughter. Not that she loved her sons any the less, or would have wished them to be anything more or less than they were – bumptious and growing boys in all their glory . . . but a daughter, to be able to share those womanly mysteries with, to talk and laugh with, as she had done with her mother, and with Oma Katerina! Boys became men – just as her dear little baby Brother Carl had grown first into a boy . . . and then departed into the world of men. Doubtless her sons would do the same and very soon, too – depart on their own errands – and if not into the Llano like Carl and his Ranger comrades, then into a world of which she would ever only know a portion.

In the end, Morag and Daniel’s baby arrived quite swiftly, several weeks after Margaret had received Dr. Williamson’s letter. Morag had shuffled into the kitchen at mid-morning, heavy and off-balance with the weight of the child, taking up a dish-towel to dry the breakfast dishes that her sister was washing. Morag had been sleeping badly at night in these last few weeks, and resting frequently with her feet up – such were the discomforts of imminent child-bearing. Standing close to the warmth of the stove, Margaret was carefully stirring a kettle of milk-curds, watching the heavy masses of curds separate from the clear whey. Her sons were out with Papa, working in the garden-plot under Papa’s eyes, and although they were close enough to the house, Papa still had a loaded rifle leaning against the nearest tree.
“Och, Morag dear, you should be stayin’ off your feet!” Hetty exclaimed, and Margaret turned around, echoing the sentiments as soon as she saw Morag’s face, pale with strain and particularly bruised-looking around her eyes.
“No – there’s an ache in my legs and in my back – truly it feels better to be walking around – oh!” she gasped, half-doubling over. “Mother Mary an’ Joseph!”
“What is the matter!” Both Mary and Hetty exclaimed. Margaret dropped the long spoon into the curds and Hetty abandoned the dish-pan, to come to her side.
“It . . . hurts . . .” Morag answered, between clenched teeth. “A sudden pain . . . as if . . . oh!” She held on to Hetty with both hands, her own face crimson with embarrassment. “Hetty . . . I’ve gone an’ pissed meself . . . Marm, I’m terrible sorry…”
“Not to mind,” Margaret answered calmly, as the floor at Morag’s feet became suddenly dark with liquid, which soaked into the planks or swiftly drained between. “The pain was that of the waters breaking. The baby is coming.”
“Is that what ‘tis?” Morag gasped again, and her face screwed up as another pain took hold. “Och, another one – not so bad…”
“How close together?” Margaret demanded, “And how long have you been feeling them?”
“Since last night – and a no more than a minute or two between,” Morag answered, while Hetty replied comfortably, “Just like our Mam, then.” She looked across Morag’s bowed head to Margaret. “Mam always had hers fast. Two shakes of a lamb’s tail, Mam always said. Wi’ our youngest brother, she was brought to bed after the morning milking, birthed him by the time the church clock struck ten of the hour, and was bringing supper to the reapers in the field at noon.”
“How . . . energetic of her,” Margaret said, thinking that Hetty was most likely saying so to cheer and encourage Morag, who was clinging onto Margaret’s hand with such a grip that Margaret’s fingers were practically numb.
“Well, Mam was married when she was only a bit of a girl,” Hetty answered, “And she bore twenty-three babes, an’ all but four born alive and well – with th’ youngest of us, all the midwife need do was sit at the bottom of the bed an’ hold out her hands to catch – if there was time to go an’ find her. Morag, me darlin’ it may take a little longer for your first, but I swear to you, for Mam it always went easy.”
“I want to lie down now,” Morag demanded, her face suddenly sheened with perspiration. They had arranged a bed in the old parlor for a lying in and Margaret shook her head,
“In a little while, Morag dear – if you walk now, it will bring it on easily.” She looked across at Hetty, who seemed quite calm. “Do you want me to send one of the boys for a doctor?” she asked, and Hetty shook her head.
“No need, no need, Marm.” She answered. None the less, she slipped out to the garden while Hetty helped Morag remove her dress and petticoats, and quietly asked Papa to keep the boys in the garden, or set them to work in the stable for as long as possible. Papa looked grimly pleased at that, while the boys looked disappointed at having to work all the day, instead of lessons in the afternoon.
Miraculously to Margaret, there was no need to send for the doctor or any of the women in town known to be skilled as a mid-wife – at least more skilled than Hetty –for Morag’s baby came as easily as a kitten to a mother cat, a crumpled pink shape – a comical crown of dark hair on it’s elongated little head – slipping easily from between Morag’s pale thighs. Morag cried out, almost involuntarily, a cry that was half a moan of relief and triumph mixed together. Hetty, behind Morag’s shoulders and bracing her into a sitting position on the bed, commanded,
“Now, push one more time . . . och, you’ve a grand wee daughter for Danny. He’ll want a son the next time, I’ll be bound. Is the little one all there, Marm – all of her lovely little fingers and toes?”
“She is,” Margaret answered, around a lump in her throat. Morag groaned again, as the red spongy mass of the afterbirth came away. While Hetty dealt capably with it, Margaret swathed the little form in a towel that had been warming by the hearth, gently rubbing the birth-matter from it’s tiny limbs and from the fluff of dark hair – how small was a new-born, how compact from being sheltered in the safe refuge of a mother’s womb. The baby’s flesh was pale pink with health, it drew in an astonished breath, and Margaret hastily wrapped it in the towel and put Morag’s daughter into her arms, while Hetty beamed with happiness and satisfaction upon them all.
“Father Odin, he is away, but he left me wi’ a vial of holy water so that I could baptize the wee mite myself. What name d’ye wish to call her by? Jemima for Seamus, o’course, and perhaps Marm can gi’ her another name, for luck.”
“Mary,” Margaret answered, so moved that she could barely speak. “Mary for my own mother: I’d wished to name a daughter of mine for her.”
“And for the Blessed Mother,” Hetty cooed, “That will do very well, Marm – Jemima Mary Fritchie it is, then. Look you – she smiled – I think she likes her names.”
“She has a little pain in her middle,” Margaret answered. “It only looks like she is smiling.”
“No, she is truly smiling, Marm.” Morag insisted, and her own face was split by a yawn. “Oh – begging your pardon – I did no’ think to be so tired…”
“Try and nurse the little one at little, before you go to sleep,” Margaret suggested, “So that she may become accustomed to suck, and your milk will come the sooner.” Impulsively, she bent down and kissed Morag’s forehead, and kissed the baby’s downy little head. “Rest now – this will be the last good rest you will see for years.”

Jemima-Mary was a good baby, placid and not particularly colicky. The boys – especially Peter and Jamie were entranced – and deeply disappointed that she would not be a ready playmate for a good few years. The baby took no interest at all in the boy-treasures that they brought for her from the woods and creek-banks – flowers and water-tumbled stones, and flint arrowheads, although Morag smilingly promised to keep them safe for her, until she was a little older. A week after her birth, Morag and her sister and Margaret were invited by Mary Bullock to bring Jemima-Mary to a gathering of the town’s women for afternoon tea.
“To welcome our newest little settler,” explained Mrs. Eberly, who bore the message, stumping fearlessly up the hill. “And she is quite the picture of an angel, isn’t she?” Mrs. Eberly cooed at baby, who was awake and examining the world immediately over her head and shaking her tiny boneless fists at it, laying in the cradle that Papa had made. “A love, she is – and will her eyes stay so blue? Just the color of buffalo clover – and the very image of her mama, I am sure.”
“I hope so, Marm Eberly.” Morag was pink with embarrassment and pride, at being with her baby the center of so much attention. “I hope so indade.”
“And Mr. Fritchie,” Mrs. Eberly continued, “locked up in that wretched Perote place, never laying eyes on the little mite. Well, never you fear, Mrs. Fritchie – we’ll see that you’ll be looked after, just as one of our own.”
“Thank you, Marm,” and Morag blushed even deeper, as Mrs. Eberly straightened her bonnet and prepared to take her leave.
“We will see you the day after tomorrow, then – in the china parlor at Bullocks.”
“A party,” Hetty exclaimed. “Och, and isna that what we need for a cheering-up? To see the other ladies for a bit, and to show off Jemima-Mary . . . what shall we bring, then – some ginger-cakes? Although,” and she looked as if she was having a second thought. “No, the good white flour is all but gone.”
“Apple-butter,” Margaret said. “We have plenty to share.”

There were about thirty women and older girls still living in Austin; Margaret tallied them up thoughtfully – most of them married – and on good terms with each other as much as they had to be. Mrs. Eberly was about the oldest, the grand dame of such little society as they had. Margaret reckoned herself as the only young widow who had maintained that state for more than a year, for there were ever more men in Austin – young and daring men – than there were women to court them. It took a strong-minded and resolute woman to maintain a single state for very long. Of families, there were enough with children that Race Vining might have opened a school; it distressed Margaret to know that one of the reasons – besides having no schoolmaster – for not having such was that the older boys and girls were taken up with the work that needed to be done, and the danger of Indians kept the smaller ones close to their mothers. But for the sake of the community of women, it was a rare week when there was not a gathering of women at one house or another, for a round of quilting, or to talk together as they sewed or knitted, while their children played outside in the afternoon. Today, Margaret resolved to take the older boys, Horace and Johnny with her. Otherwise, Papa would have put them to work, and today would be a bit of a holiday.
“This is Jemima-Mary’s debut into society,” She told her sons, as they walked down the rise from Papa’s house, towards the scatterings of shanties and log-houses clustered around Constitution and Pecan. Morag and Hetty laughed, as Jamie asked,
“What’s a day-boo, Mama?”
“Back in the East,” she answered, “It’s when a young lady puts up her hair and her Mama and Papa have a party for all of their friends and her friends, to let everyone know she is of an age to be courted in marriage.”
“It sounds silly,” Horace said gravely, “Can’t they all just tell by looking?”
The three women laughed together, their voices mingling pleasantly in the glade of oak trees that the path towards town meandered through, while Jamie and Peter squabbled pleasantly over which one of them would court Jemima-Mary when she was a young lady. Morag drew Jemima-Mary closer to her with one arm, and picked up the trailing hem of her skirt with the other. Hetty answered, still laughing,
“I’ll tell ye how ye can tell when you’re of an age to begin courting, laddie – it’s when you finally get your growth and ye are taller than the one ye like!” Horace blushed – he had just turned twelve, and to his horror, the two girls nearest his age in Austin both towered over him by at least half a head. Margaret saw this discomfiture and put her arm around his shoulders, whispering,
“It’s only a matter of time, dear one.” She nearly slipped and called him ‘little one.’ “Girls always get their growth first, and then the boys catch up. You’ll not be as tall as Uncle Carl, but you will be as tall as your Papa, and I liked him very much as he was.”

Within the far-scattering of houses on the outskirts of town, but still short of the Bullocks’, they were startled by the swift urgent rattle of the alarm-drum sounding. Margaret’s heart chilled like a lump of ice within her breast – what was this? A man shouted, then another – Comanche! She turned and looked over her shoulder towards the steep ridge thrust up into the blue summer sky to the north of town, a height which offered a superb view of all of Austin and the outlaying houses, all the way down to the riverbank. Horror rooted her feet to the ground; the green and oak-wooded height was not green any more, but patched with seething color, of men on horseback, brilliantly painted horses and men accoutered in bright red blankets that the Comanche favored, carrying long bows and javelins adorned with ribbons and feather. Queerly, her first impulse was to turn and run back the refuge of Papa’s house, but just as sense prevailed, a man on horseback pounded past them, and reined in his horse in an uprush of dust and dancing hooves.
“To the Bullock’s fort – now!” He shouted, and she recognized Captain Coleman, of the local Ranger Company. He lived a little farther away, up the valley and farmed near Shoal Creek. Now, he held his horses’ reins in one fist, a long repeating revolver in the other, the barrel pointed upwards. Margaret gathered up the four-year old Peter in her arms, and commanded, breathlessly,
“Morag, Hetty – run! Don’t stop to look behind. Horace, take Jamie’s hand! Do it – Jamie, run now!” for Jamie clamored to be allowed to go back to the house and load for Opa so he could fight the Indians.” Hetty already had Johnny by one hand, and her other on Morag’s shoulder. Margaret looked back again, and at once wished that she hadn’t and was glad that she had, for the Indians on their gaily caparisoned horses were already spilling down through the trees – but Captain Coleman was between them and the Indians, his horse dancing impatiently to and fro – as he kept the reins tightly gathered. He turned his horse every few moments – himself always between the Indians pouring through the trees, and Margaret and Hetty, the children and Morag with the baby as they ran. Margaret’s heart pounded painfully under the bodice of her best black dress, and the corsets that she had laced so tightly. Morag ran strongly, but she was already gasping, easily tired after the work of recent childbed and the weight of that precious child in her arms. Hetty ran as like a man; her skirts pulled with indecent efficiency past her knobby knees and tucked into the waistband of her apron, her face set and her grip on Johnny and her sister like that of iron and rawhide. She was pulling them after her, an undaunted force. Margaret redoubled her efforts, spurred by the memory of every horror she had ever heard of the fate of women, of babies and children – save those of a particular age – in the brutal hands of the Comanche. There were other women with their children, running from their own houses, in town and in the outlaying ones, from the Harrell’s old compound, near the river and the confluence with Shoal Creek. They were close, close and closer still to the Bullock’s – the tall house on pilings, where the lower part had been walled in to make the dining room at ground-level for their inn, the stout log building ramble which had become a block-house and refuge. Now that so many had left Austin, Bullock’s place could shelter all that remained in an emergency, at least for hours, possibly even days.
Gasping for breath, Margaret and her sons, and Hetty with her sister and the baby gained the front door of Bullock’s, almost blinded in the sudden dimness after the bright sunlight outside. The shutters had all been hastily drawn and bolted shut; those interconnecting rooms now as dark as a cave and filled with the murmurs of frightened men and women, save when the door opened to admit another person seeking shelter at Bullock’s. Before her eyes adjusted, Margaret blundered into something hard, something solid and more oddly-shaped than a table. Already, much of the heavier furniture in the taproom and public parlor were being moved and propped up against the walls to strengthen the shutters. She put out her hand to steady herself, squinting in the dimness; it seemed that someone had now thought to bring a single cannon from the armory. How the men had ever managed to roll it inside – and when they had done this – she couldn’t think. Morag and the boys had already gone ahead, through the dark hallways to the Mary Bullock’s china parlor, which sat in the very heart of Bullocks’ establishment, the safest and most secure, and where the women and children were accustomed to take refuge upon hearing any alarm.
“Mrs. Vining?” in the confusion, someone caught at her arm – Captain Coleman, his expression urgent, as much as she could see in the darkness. “Is everyone from your household here?”
“All but my father,” she answered, and Captain Coleman’s lips made a thin line across his face. “Damn stubborn Dutchman,” he muttered, “I guess he has decided to hole up at his place. Just when we need every man-jack who can handle a weapon here!”
“What is the matter?” Margaret demanded, and stayed him by the arm as he would have turned away. She could see better now or perhaps someone had lit a few more lanterns. “Are we so few that we are in danger, even all gathered at Bullock’s?”
Captain Coleman looked as if he would rather not have answered; he was a wiry, weathered man, somewhere in his thirties; one of the many unmarried men in Austin. He still limped from a wound taken a month or two ago, which had made him unfit to ride out with his company. Margaret knew of him only that her brother spoke of him as a good Ranger and reputed to be the best poker player between Austin and Hornsby’s Bend – maybe even as far as Mina.
“Yes, damn the luck – sorry, Miz Vining. There are twenty good men out on a long scout with the Ranging Company, five more that I know – including Ed Waller – went to Houston on the stage last week for business, and another three or four are away with a wagon-load of timber yesterday to the saw-mill at Beeson’s Landing. There must be at least another dozen like your father caught by surprise and holed up in their places. I’m only here, ‘cause I’m still healing.”
“How many are here?” Margaret drew in her breath, and Captain Coleman didn’t bother to lower his voice.
“I count mebbe a few more than twenty men and some boys who are fitten’ to carry weapons.” Margaret was appalled – this few men of fit age in Austin and the district around? She had seen many times that number of Indians, in that fleeting glance over her shoulder. Was it the Penateka Comanche, who came down like a wolf on the fold, out of the Llano with a thousand warriors? Two years ago, they had terrorized the valley of the Guadalupe, pillaging their way down to Linnville, while all the folk who lived there took refuge on boats in the harbor. The Comanche were defeated in open battle only when all the Ranger companies had time to gather and ambush them at Plum Creek, upon their return journey to their customary hunting grounds in the untamed and un-peopled Llano country. But that victory was weeks in coming. It had taken no little time to assemble the volunteers, the mounted militia of all the settlements in Texas – and in the meantime, Linnville had burned, and the Penateka had taken, tortured and murdered many white captives. There were no boats, no sea refuge here, only the stout walls of Bullock’s Inn . . . and only if there were enough men to defend it.
“But don’t ye go discounting the women, if it would serve,” Hetty spoke up, at Margaret’s side. Mrs. Eberly – barely seen as a blur of pale face, in her widow-black – echoed, “I’ll take up a musket, if you’ll need . . . and some of the boys, too. If they are not old enough to aim a weapon, they are old enough to re-load.”
“So will I.” Margaret averred. She thought of her sons, of Morag and the baby, huddled in the parlor, and those other mothers and children – no, the brutal Comanche must not be allowed exercise their cruel whims upon them. Margaret would do whatever was needed, to keep them safe and alive. “Give us each a musket, Captain Coleman – or a pistol – a knife even, if that is all there is at hand.”
“Do you know how to use a musket?” he asked, skeptically. “Aim and cock – and are you sure you can kill a man with it? It’ud be no use if you, having a weapon if they can just take it away from you. ”
“A Comanche threatening my child – I’d kill with my bare hands.” Margaret answered, firmly. “I can load, and aim – I’ve watched my father, my husband – even my brothers do so, since the day we came to Texas.”
“What about you, ladies?” Captain Coleman turned to Mrs. Eberly and Hetty. “Can you load and aim, shoot to kill?”
“It’s not like there is a choice in the matter,” Mrs. Eberly answered with frank honesty, and Hetty said, “Aye well – its’ the narrow end pointed at them as you want to do the damage upon, isn’t it?” Captain Coleman chuckled, in sour amusement, but his face sobered at once. “A good thing we’re not in need of sharp-shooters, Miss Moran – but that’s the general notion. When we parcel out the town arsenal, I’ll see that you’re supplied – I reckon that now that I’m in charge, with Bullock my second. Now – go on into the parlor, so’s I’ll know where you are.”
He turned away, as the main door opened and shut. Margaret saw in the brief light which came in with the person admitted, that two men had already taken up a sentry-position on either side of it – and that Mr. Ware the Land Commissioner, who walked on a peg-leg and had his right coat-sleeve pinned up – was directing some of the older boys in adjusting the barrel of the cannon so that it pointed directly at the front door.
“Aye, there’s always a warm welcome for guests at Bullocks Inn,” Hetty observed, and Mrs. Eberly laughed in genuine amusement. Margaret thought; Angelina Eberly must have seen nearly everything in her time – I truly think there must be nothing on earth capable of shocking her. The china parlor was down a short corridor, past the door to the Bullock’s own private quarters, and a stairway which gave access to the upper floors. The parlor, as dark now as the rest of the Inn, was crammed with women and children. With no fresh air from the opened windows and the crush within, it was stiflingly warm inside; the odor of human bodies and dirty diapers was overlaid with the stink of fear. Margaret didn’t think she could endure very much time within. She was certain the war-band of Comanche she had glimpsed over her shoulder was by far the largest body of them that she had ever seen in her life. She could think of no good reason why so many would come to the valley of the Colorado all at once, unless it was to attack and overwhelm the folk of Austin, or Hornsby’s Bend, or even Mina. Most Comanche raids, they were on outlaying houses, an ambush of a few travelers, or a sudden attack upon men working in the fields. Sometimes the raiders were after horses: Papa had always kept his stable padlocked at night for that reason. In the early days, he and her brothers had ploughed the cornfield with a rifle over their shoulders; of late he had taken to doing so again. And what about Papa, now? He must have heard the alarm, and taken refuge in his own house, as he always stubbornly insisted that he would, rather than risk being caught out in the open and making a run for Bullock’s . . . surely he must be safe, if he had time to bar the doors . . . Margaret could hardly bear thinking about this.
Perhaps the Indians had been watching them all this time, observing how few men were around, noting with calculating eyes how many families were left living like ghosts among the decaying frame buildings, their horses, food stores and valuables – their scalps and their human flesh too – all ready for the taking by any raiding party able to reach out and just pluck them, like a ripe apple from one of Papa’s trees.
Morag sat in a corner of the parlor, with Jemima-Mary in her arms, and Margaret’s sons clustered with her, like chicks under a hen’s wings. She had been telling them a story of old Erin; of Cuchulain and his magical shield and sword. As always when she told them one of these tales, the Irish in her voice came out – musical and lilting, much more so than in every-day speech. Even some of the other women and children setting near her were quiet, hanging on every word as if she wove a gold-brocade spell – a spell which could magically take them away to another world.
“For it was at the place that was called Emain-Macha, Macha-of-the-Spears they called it – so they did – that Conchubar the High King held the Assembly House of the lords of Ulster, and it was there was the chief of his palaces. Oh, and a fine place it was, having the three parts to it – the House of the Royals, the Speckled House . . . and finally, the House of the Red Branch. Och, and it was truly a marvel; in the House of the Royals which had three-times-fifty rooms, the walls were of red cedar-wood with copper nails. The High King Conchubar’s own chamber was on the first level, the walls paneled with bronze below and silver above, adorned with golden birds, their eyes were set with shining jewels – there were nine divisions of it from the fireplace to the wall at the end, and each one of them being thirty feet tall! There was a silver scepter always before Conchubar, a silver scepter with three golden apples mounted upon it, as of bells – and when he took up that rod and made the golden apples ring, all the folk in the house would be silent, wherever they were upon hearing it . . . ”
“Well, we were intending to have a party,” Mrs. Eberly remarked, “Here, laddie-buck, let me have that chair. I’m too old to go charging around like this in the heat . . . when young Morag there is finished with her story we’ll have a sing-along, won’t we? And Mary can play the pianner.” She sounded so normal – as if the party which had been planned was going on exactly as expected – that Margaret thought at least some of the younger women and the children were reassured. “We’ll be out from underfoot, while Captain Coleman decides what’s best. Go on with the story, girl – silver on the walls and golden birds with jewels for their eyes . . . seems quite a place, I must say.”
Morag shifted Jemima-Mary in her arms, and resumed the tale, “Now, in the House of the Red Branch, they kept the weapons of the enemies which they had defeated – and their heads, as well – and the Speckled House was for the swords and shields and spears of the heroes of Ulster. It was called so for the colors of the hilts of their swords, and the brightness of the spears, for they were trimmed and bound around with rings and bands of gold and silver; so were the bosses of the shields and the rims of them. The drinking cups and were likewise trimmed with silver and gold. And it was the custom of the Men of the Red Branch, upon one of them being insulted; he would demand satisfaction at that very moment, even in the middle of the feasting hall . . .”
“Sounds a familiar sort,” Margaret whispered to Mrs. Eberly, who chuckled and answered, “Oh, the times I’ve had to speak up and tell them to settle it – afore they commenced to break up the furniture!”
“And Cuchulain’s sword hung with his shield – and the name of it was called Cruaidin Cailidcheann. The sword had a hilt of gold, ornamented with silver, and if the point of it was bent back, even as far as the hilt, it would spring back straight at once. Indeed, it was so sharp that it could cut a hair floating in the water, a hair from the head of a man without touching the skin – and if it cut a man in two, each half would not miss the other for some considerable time . . .”
Margaret leaned her back against the doorway – there were no more chairs, and she did not want to sit on the floor with the children, as the minutes and hours trickled away. It would be sundown, soon – very likely they would be spending the night here. She turned at a step in the corridor, to note Richard Bullock coming down the stairs, with his arms full of muskets and rifles. He also had a grey jacket, trimmed with martial braid over one arm and a peaked cap askew upon his head, a hat that looked as if it belonged to a smaller man. His son Frank followed him, similarly burdened with powder-flasks and several small haversacks over his shoulder.
“Marm Eberly, Miz Vining?” He said in a low voice, “Capn’ Coleman said you wished to be armed, since there were too few men. Are there any other ladies who can handle a rifle, or load one? Boys, too – we have enough weapons that everyone may have two at hand. Here . . .” he dealt out two each to Margaret, Hetty and Mrs. Eberly, as well as to several other ladies who stepped quietly out of the press in the china parlor. Horace and Johnny came forward as well, Horace saying gravely,
“Me an’ Johnny can load for you and Miss Hetty, Mama.”
“Good boys,” Margaret answered, her heart swelling with pride and fear for her sons as Horace and Johnny took two powder-flasks and a single haversack from Bullock’s son. “Where should we take our place, Mr. Bullock?”
“I reckon you should stay downstairs,” Mr. Bullock answered, “For I don’t believe the upstairs will stop a bullet. There’s some shooting holes in the outside walls here, Frank here will show you where. If’n you stand on benches, you should ought to be able to cover the back. An’ ma’am – don’t fire wild. We got plenty of lead, but not if you go wasting it.”
His arms empty of weapons, he was shrugging into the grey coat. It also did not seem to be his, for it did not fit him well. Someone called his name from the front of the Inn – a man’s voice, urgent but not alarmed. Margaret wondered briefly why he was bothering with such an ill-fitting coat, but then Frank Bullock hopped down from a bench, halfway along the corridor from the door that led into the china parlor. He had a small block of wood in his hand; a square of light pierced the roughly plastered log wall, light which had the golden tint of late afternoon. Outside, the tree-shadows lay long, stretching across.
“See, ma’am – each one of the shooting holes is blocked with one o’these, three or four at the same height; all the way along . . . I guess Pa thinks you each take one.”
“I think that a good idea,” Margaret answered sedately, and Mrs. Eberly snorted.
“May as well teach your grandmother to knit, laddie-buck. Load for me then, and help me up onto the bench, I’m not as nimble as I used to be.”
Silently, Frank and the other boys began loading rifles and muskets. Margaret gingerly accepted one, and stepped up onto the bench. She set her face to the shooting hole – about four inches wide, and half as tall – a space between logs deliberately left un-chinked. Papa had done the same with his house. This one looked out at the back of Bullock’s – she could see a little of Congress Avenue, but mostly the sides of other buildings, and various trees all robed in green leaves. The little wedge of sky that she could see was blue and cloudless, tinged with the golden-red of a sunset – but she could hear no bird-song. That very silence seemed heavy with menace.
“What’s happening, Mama?” Horace asked; he was loading a musket, with careful attention, as if it were a penmanship exercise. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” she answered, and then her eye caught a movement: three men, one in advance flanked by two others – they were dark shapes and at a distance, against the dazzle of sunshine. They moved along Congress Avenue, pacing slowly. “Oh, my.”
“What did you see?” Horace asked again, echoed by Hetty and Mrs. Eberly.
“I saw Captain Coleman,” Margaret answered, “And he was carrying a white flag.”

18. May 2011 · Comments Off on Lone Star Glory · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

It was always hoped, among the rebellious Anglo settlers in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas that a successful bid for independence from the increasingly authoritarian and centralist government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would be followed promptly by annexation by the United States. Certainly it was the hope of Sam Houston, almost from the beginning and possibly even earlier – just as much as it was the worst fear of Santa Anna’s on-again off-again administration. Flushed with a victory snatched from between the teeth of defeat at San Jacinto, and crowned with the capture of Santa Anna himself, the Texians anticipated joining the United States. But it did not work out – at least not right away. First, the then-president Andrew Jackson did not dare extend immediate recognition or offer annexation to Texas, for to do so before Mexico – or anyone else – recognized Texas as an independent state would almost certainly be construed as an act of war by Mexico. The United States gladly recognized Texas as an independent nation after a decent interval, but held off annexation for eight long years. It was political, of course – the politics of abolition and slavery, the bug-bear of mid 19th century American politics.

Texas had been largely settled by southerners, who had been permitted to bring their slaves. Texas, independent or not, was essentially a slave state, although there were never so many slaves in Texas as there were in other and more long-established states. Large scale agriculture in Texas – rice, sugar and cotton – was not so dependent upon the labor of large work gangs. Most households who owned slaves owned only a relative handful, and curiously, many slaves hired out and worked for wages in skilled or semi-skilled trades. But even so; they were still slaves, owned, traded and purchased as surely as any livestock.

By the 1830s the matter of chattel slavery, ‘the peculiar institution’ as it was termed – was a matter beginning to roil public thinking, as the adolescent United States spilled over the Appalachians and began filling in those rich lands east of the Mississippi, and in the upper Midwest. Slowly and gradually what had been a private, ethical choice about the use of slave labor began to have political and social ramifications. Would slavery be allowed in newly acquired territories and states? And if so – where? The rift between those who held slavery to morally insupportable, a crime against humanity, and those who held to be economically necessary and even a social benefit was just beginning to divide what had been fractiously united since the end of the Revolution – a Revolution that still green in living memory. But in 1838, the practice of slavery in Texas put a stop to Texas’ inital essay in annexation: Northern Abolitionists, led by John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts filibustered the first resolution of annexation to death, in a speech that allegedly lasted 22 days. In the bitterly-fought elections of 1844, Henry Clay of the Whigs opposed annexation mightily, Democrat James Polk came out in favor . . . but in the meantime – from that first rejection, until 1846, the Republic of Texas treaded water.

Sam Houston, who favored annexation, was formally elected to the Presidency of the Republic. He and his scratch army had won the war of independence, extracted concessions and a peace treaty from General Santa Anna, and briskly settled down to conduct the business of the state in the manner which they had wished to do all along. Unfortunately, Texas was poor in everything but land, energy and hopeful ambition . . . and plagued with enemies on two fronts. Sam Houston would have to manage on a shoe-string, to fight off resentful Mexico, ever-ready to create trouble for the colony which had escaped it’s control, find allies and recognition among the Europeans . . . and either defeat or make a peace with the relentless and aggressive Comanche. His government was funded by customs duties on imported goods, license fees and land taxes. A bond issue was initiated, which would have redeemed Texas finances and paid existing debts, – unfortunately, the bonds went on the market just as the United States was enduring a depression and Houston’s term as president came to an end. He could not serve a consecutive term.

His vice-president, successor in office and eventual adversary, Mirabeau Lamar had more grandiose ambitions, apparently believing with a whole heart that Texas could and ought to be a genuinely independent nation. His goals were only exceeded by his actual lack of administrative experience. Lamar wanted to pursue foreign loans, foreign recognition, a strong defense, never mind begging for annexation, expelling the Cherokee from east Texas and settling the hash of the Comanche by any means necessary. He also set out the foundations of public education in Texas by setting aside a quantity of public land in each county to support public schools, and another quantity for the establishment of two universities. Lamar rebuilt the Army, and he established a new and hopefully permanent capitol city for Texas, at Austin on the upper Colorado River – at the center of the claimed territories, but in actuality on the edge of the frontier; excellent ambitions, all – but without any kind of solid funding, doomed to failure. Finally, an ill-planned expedition to route the profitable Santa Fe trade through Texas succeeded only in reigniting a running cold war with Mexico. All of these disasters put an end to Lamar’s plans, and left Texas with more than $600 million in public debt. Sam Houston, elected again as president of the republic, kept his cards as close to his vest as he ever had done in the long brutal retreat of the Runaway Scrape. This was the time of Mexican incursions into the lowlands around Goliad, Victoria and San Antonio under Vazquez and Woll, the ill-fated Mier Expedition . . . and while sometimes it seemed that Houston was being damned on one side for not making effective peace with Mexico, and on the other for not making vigorous war. But Houston was playing a deeper game, during the final years of his second term; he was having another go at annexation, only this time going at it indirectly.

The British had recognized Texas as an independent nation in mid-1842. British diplomats were attempting to mediate between Mexico and Texas (this was following upon military incursions into Texas by the Mexican Army) and British mercantile interests were most ready, willing and able to support trade relations with the Texas market: manufactured goods for cotton. Houston instructed his minister in Washington to reject any approaches regarding annexation, as it might upset those new relationships with the British; to talk up those relationships extensively, and in fact, to raise the possibly that Texas might become a British protectorate. What he was doing, as he explained in a letter to a close confidant, was like a young woman exciting the interest and possessive jealousy of the man she really wanted, by flirting openly with another. This put a whole new complexion on the annexation matter, as far as the United States was concerned – no doubt aided by the fact that the clear winner of the 1844 presidential elections was Democrat James Polk. Polk’s campaign platform had included annexation of Texas, and sitting President John Tyler – who had been a quiet supporter of that cause as well, decided to recommend that Congress annex Texas by joint resolution. The resolution offered everything that Houston had wanted – and was accepted by special convention of the Texas Congress. The formal ceremony took place on February 19th, 1846, in the muddy little city of Austin on the Colorado: Houston had already been replaced as President by Dr. Anson Jones. In front of a large crowd gathered, Jones turned over political authority to the newly-elected governor, and shook out the ropes on the flagstaff to lower the flag of the Republic for the last time – and to raise the Stars and Stripes of the United States. “The final act in this great drama is now performed – the Republic of Texas is no more.”
When the Lone Star flag came down, Sam Houston was the one who stepped forward to gather it up in his arms. It was an unexpectedly moving moment for the audience; it had been a long decade since San Jacinto, interesting in the sense of the old Chinese curse; no doubt many of them were as nostalgic as they were relieved to have those exciting times at an end. But history does not end. Sam Houston would have his heart broken fifteen years later, when Texas seceeded from the Union on the eve of the Civil War.

02. May 2011 · Comments Off on Stand-off at Salado – Part 2 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Military, Old West, War

Most people accept as conventional wisdom about the Texas frontier, that Anglo settlers were always the consummate horsemen, cowboys and cavalrymen that they were at the height of the cattle boom years. But that was not so: there was a learning curve involved. The wealthier Texas settlers who came from the Southern states of course valued fine horseflesh. Horse-races were always a popular amusement, and the more down-to-earth farmers and tradesmen who came to Texas used horses as draft animals. But the Anglo element was not accustomed to working cattle – the long-horned and wilderness adapted descendents of Spanish cattle – from horseback. Their eastern cattle were slow, tame and lumbering. Nor were many of them as accustomed to making war from the saddle as the Comanche were. Most of Sam Houston’s army who won victory at San Jacinto, were foot-soldiers: his scouts and cavalry was a comparatively small component of his force. It was a deliberate part of Sam Houston’s strategy to fall back into East Texas, where the lay of the land worked in the favor of his army. The Anglos’ preferred weapon in those early days in Texas the long Kentucky rifle, a muzzle-loading weapon, impossible to use effectively in the saddle, more suited to their preferred cover of woods – not the rolling grasslands interspersed with occasional clumps of trees which afforded Mexican lancers such grand maneuvering room.

When did this begin to change for the Anglo-Texans? Always hard to say about such things, but I suspect that the Anglo-Texas began morphing into a people who more nearly resembled what they fought almost as soon as Texas declared independence in 1836. The war with the Comanche was unrelenting for fifty years, and conflict with Mexico was open for all of the decade that the Republic of Texas existed, as well as simmering away in fits and starts for even longer. And one of the agents taking an active part in that metamorphosis from settler to centaur was John Coffee “Jack” Hays, during a handful of years that he led a company of Rangers stationed in San Antonio. The Rangers were not lawmen, then – they were local companies organized to protect their own communities from depredations by raiding Indians, and as close to cavalry as the perennially broke Republic of Texas possessed. Jack Hays, who with fifteen of his Rangers had narrowly escaped being caught in San Antonio when Woll’s troops took the town – was one of the most innovative and aggressive Ranger company captains. He had already begun schooling his contingent in horsemanship and hard riding, and in use of five-shot repeating pistols developed by Samuel Colt. It was Hay’s contingent who spread the alarm, and militia volunteers began to assemble from across the westernmost inhabited part of Texas. Colonel Matthew “Old Paint” Caldwell, from Gonzales began gathering a scratch force at Seguin, east and south of San Antonio. He collected up about a hundred and forty, and set out for a camp on Cibolo Creek, twenty miles from San Antonio, before settling on another camp, on the Salado, seven miles north of San Antonio. He gathered another seventy or eighty volunteers – and more were on the way. But “Old Paint” was in any case, outnumbered several times over, and being a sensible man knew there was absolutely no chance of re-taking San Antonio in a head-on assault. But what if a sufficient number of Woll’s force could be lured out of the town – which may not have been a fortified town in the European sense of things, but certainly was set up to enable a stout defense against lightly-armed infantry. Caldwell arranged his few men efficiently, among the trees, deep thickets and rocky banks of the creek, with the water at their backs, and rolling prairie, dotted with trees all the way to San Antonio spread out before them. Could any part of Woll’s invaders be lured into a kill-zone? The Texians grimly proposed to find out.

There were only thirty-eight horses counted fit enough for what would be an easy ride to San Antonio, but undoubtedly a hard ride back. Jack Hays and his Rangers, and another dozen men were dispatched very early on the morning of September 17th. At a certain point, still short of San Antonio, Hays ordered twenty-nine of the men with him to dismount and set up an ambush. He and the remaining eight then rode on – to within half a mile of the Alamo, where the main part of Woll’s force had camped. They would have been clearly seen from the walls of the old presidio; it would have been about sunrise. What else did they do besides show themselves? Perhaps they fired a few shots into the air, shouted taunts, made obscene gestures clearly visible to anyone with a spyglass. It was their assignment to provoke at least fifty of Woll’s cavalrymen into chasing after them, hell for leather . . . instead, two hundred Mexican cavalrymen boiled out of the Alamo, along with forty Cherokee Indians (who at that time had allied themselves with Mexico) and another three hundred and more, led personally by General Woll. Hay’s provocation had worked a little too well – it was a running fight, all the seven miles back to the camp and the carefully arranged line of Texians with the Salado and the green forest of the trees and thickets at their back. Caldwell and the others were just eating breakfast when Hays and his party arrived breathlessly and at a full gallop. Over two hundred shots had been fired at them, none with any effect – not particularly surprising, given that it would have been extremely difficult to hit a moving target from a position on a galloping horse, and that reloading would have been near to impossible.

Having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in drawing the Mexican force to follow them, Jack Hays and the others took up their position in “Old Paint” Caldwell’s line – carefully screened and sheltered among the trees. Caldwell sent out messages saying that he was surrounded, but in a good spot for defense, if any at all could come to his aid – and so it turned out to be. The canny old Indian-fighter had a good eye for the ground, and for an enemy. The pursuing Mexican cavalry drew up short, upon seeing his positions, or whatever evidence they could see from their position on the open prairie, looking into the trees along the Salado – but they did not withdraw entirely. Instead, Woll, and most of his command lined up and prepared to sling a great deal of musket-fire and a barrage of artillery shot in the direction of Caldwell’s force, none of which had any noticeable effect at all – on the Texians. Instead, Anglo-Texian skirmishers went forward with their chosen and familiar weapon and from their favorite cover sniped at leisure all through the next five hours, inflicting considerable casualties, before scampering back to safety on the creek-bank. Some sources claim at least sixty dead and twice that number wounded, against one Texian killed, nine or ten injured and another half-dozen having had hairsbreadth escapes. At one point, General Woll ordered a direct attack – a few of his soldiers got within twenty feet of the dug-in Texians. Being a fairly rational man, and a professional soldier, the General knew when it was time to cut his losses. Leaving his campfires burning, he and his forces silently fell back to San Antonio under the cover of night, and then withdrew even farther – all the way back towards the Rio Grande.

This would have been a complete and total victory for Caldwell . . . except for one unfortunate circumstance: a company of fifty or so volunteers from Bastrop, on their way to join him, had the misfortune to almost make it – to even hear the sounds of the fight, from two miles distant. The company of Captain Nicholas Mosby Dawson, from Bastrop and the upper Colorado was caught by Woll’s rear-guard, as they retreated. Only fifteen of Dawson’s men would survive that battle and surrender to superior military force. Caldwell’s men would find the bodies of the dead on the following day, as the pursued Woll towards the somewhat amorphous border. The fifteen Dawson men would join those Anglo-Texians taken prisoner in San Antonio in chains in Perote prison – some of those would be held in durance vile until early 1844.

So, today I had the signing – supposed to be more or less the launch signing for Daughter of Texas, at the Twig – and it was actually a bit of a bust, scheduled as it was to start in the afternoon at exactly the time the Farmers’ Market around in back had already closed down. Alas . . . it seems that the Pearl Brewery pretty much resembles a tomb, once whatever big event scheduled folds up and goes away. Part of this was my fault, for scheduling release to coincide with Fiesta, and not realizing that Easter this year coincided also with my range of dates, and that the Fiesta celebrations would actually put the Twig out of commission on a couple of relevant days, because of traffic and parking, and their immediate vicinity being the staging area for a parade . . . And it seems to Blondie (no mean detective when it comes to trends and atmosphere) that they are preferring to emphasize their place of business as sort of the FAO Schwartz of kid’s books, in San Antonio, and downplay the local, adult, independent, small-market author sort of thing . . . without entirely nuking their bridges to that community. But still – one does sense a certain chill in that respect. And it’s not just me, BTW – another indy author of a gripping book about the Texas war for independence had a signing event on a Saturday in April – and if it weren’t for me and three of his friends showing up, I don’t think he had much more in the way of interest and sales, even though his event was on a Saturday morning. Just about everyone who came through the door was a parent with a kidlet in tow.

Anyway, a two-hour stint of sitting behind a table in an almost-deserted bookstore, before Blondie and I packed it up at the hour-and-a-half mark. A bore, and a demoralizing one, at that, although I managed to get through one-third of a book about the Irish on the 19th century frontier; which I might have bought, if the author had written more about the Irish in Texas. We left then, as we had passed a parking-lot rummage sale that Blondie wanted to check out, before everyone packed up the goods or the good stuff was taken. Honestly, only two people even came up and talked to me during the whole hour and a half . . . and there were things that I could have been doing in that hour and a half, like working on chapter 12 of the sequel, posting and commenting to various websites, working the social media angle. The excellent thing is that Daughter of Texas has sold big, during April, especially in the Kindle format. Working through Watercress and by extension, Lightning Source has let me price it at a competitive level and at an acceptable discount for distribution to the chain stores – and it is selling, a nice little trickle of sales, through thick and thin. In the last month there was also a massive up-tick in interest for the Trilogy and for Truckee, through the halo effect. All of my books have very high level of presence in search engines on various relevant terms . . . so, honestly, I believe now I would better be served by working more on internet marketing, on doing book-talks, library talks, and book-club meetings – and the internet stuff. Doing a single author-table at a store just does not work without massive local media interest. I have managed to score a little of that, but not enough to make an appearance at a local bookstore a standing-room-only event. I have one more such on the schedule, at the Borders in Huebner Oaks, but after that I will probably pull the plug on any more single-author book-store appearances. They just do not seem to have any useful result; they are an energy and time sink – and I only have so much of either to allot to them. Joint appearances with other local authors; yes, indeedy, I’ll be there. Book-talks, book-club meetings, special events, special events like Christmas on the Square in Goliad, and Evening with the Authors in Lockhart, the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene – and any other events that I am invited to . . . I’ll be there with bells on, and with my full table display and boxes of books. But the individual store events – It’s just not paying off, relative to the time and effort spent on them.

27. April 2011 · Comments Off on Stand-off at Salado Creek · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

Like a great many locations of note to the tumultuous years of the Republic of Texas, the site of the battle of Salado Creek does today look much like it did in 1842 . . . however, it is not so much changed that it is hard to picture in the minds’ eye what it would have looked like then. The creek is dryer and seasonal, more dependant upon rainfall than the massive amount of water drawn into the aquifer by the limestone sponge of the Hill Country, to the north. Then – before the aquifer was tapped and drilled and drained in a thousand places – the water came up in spectacular natural fountains in many places below the Balcones Escarpment. The Salado was a substantial landmark in the countryside north of San Antonio, a deep and regular torrent, running between steep banks liked with oak and pecan trees, thickly quilted with deep brush and the banks scored by shallow ravines that ran down to water-level. Otherwise, the countryside around was gently rolling grasslands, dotted with more stands of oak trees. There was a low hill a little east of the creek, with a house built on the heights. Perhaps it might have had a view of San Antonio de Bexar, seven miles away, to the south and west.

In that year, San Antonio was pretty much what it had been for two centuries: a huddle of jacales, huts made from plastered logs set upright in the ground and crowned with a roof of thatch, or thick-walled houses of unbaked clay adobe bricks, roofed with rusty-red tile, all gathered around the stumpy tower of the Church of San Fernando. A few narrow streets converged on the plaza where San Fernando stood – streets with names like the Alameda, Soledad and Flores, and the whole was threaded together by another river, lined with rushes and more trees. The river rambled like a drunken snake – but it generously watered the town and the orchards and farms nearby – and was the main reason for the town having been established in the first place. That street called Alameda, or sometimes the Powderhouse Hill Road, led out to the east, across a bend of the river, and past another ramble of stone and adobe buildings clustered around a roofless church – the Alamo, once a mission, then a presidio garrison, and finally a legend. But in 1842 – the siege of it’s Texian garrison only six years in the past – it was still a barracks and military establishment. In the fall of 1842, the Mexican Army returned to take temporary possession.

General and President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had never ceased to resent how one-half of the province of Coahuila-y-Tejas had been wrenched from the grasp of Mexico by the efforts of a scratch army of volunteer and barely trained rebel upstarts who had the nerve to think they could govern themselves, thank you. For the decade-long life of the Republic, war on the border with Mexico continued at a slow simmer, now and again flaring up into open conflict: a punitive expedition here, a retaliatory strike there, fears of subversion, and of encouraging raids by bandits and Indians, finally resulting in an all-out war between the United States and Mexico when Texas chose to be annexed by the United States. So when General Adrian Woll, a French soldier of fortune who was one of Lopez de Santa Anna’s most trusted commanders brought an expeditionary force all the from the Rio Grande and swooped down on the relatively unprotected town . . . this was an action not entirely unexpected. However, the speed, the secrecy of his maneuvers, and the overwhelming force that Woll brought with him and the depth that he penetrated into Texas – all that did manage to catch the town by surprise. Woll and his well-equipped, well-armored and well supplied cavalry occupied the town after token resistance by those Anglo citizens who were in town for a meeting of the district court. So, score one for General Woll as an able soldier and leader.

Texas did not have much of a regular professional army, as most western nations understood the concept, then and later. Texas did have sort of an army, and sort of a navy, too – but mere tokens – the window-dressing required of a legitimate, established nation, which is what Texas was trying it’s best to become, given restricted resources. But what Texas did have was nearly limitless numbers of rough and ready volunteers, who were accustomed to respond to a threat, gathering in a local militia body and volunteering for a specific aim or mission, bringing their own weapons, supplies and horses, and usually electing their own officers. They also had the men of various ranging companies, which can be thought of as a mounted and heavily-armed and aggressive Neighborhood Watch. Most small towns on the Texas frontier fielded their own Ranger Companies. By the time of Woll’s raid on San Antonio, those volunteers and Rangers were veterans of every fight going since before Texas had declared independence, a large portion of them being of that tough Scotch-Irish ilk of whom it was said that they were born fighting. That part of the frontier which ran through Texas gave them practice at small-scale war and irregular tactics on a regular and continuing basis.

One bit of good fortune for the Anglos of San Antonio and the various militias and of Texas generally, was that the captain of the local Ranger Company was not one of those caught by Woll’s lighting-raid. Captain John Coffee Hays and fifteen of his rangers had actually been out patrolling the various roads and trails, in response to rumors of a Mexican force in the vicinity. It was they who – upon their return in the wee hours of a September morning – found every road into San Antonio blocked by Mexican soldiers.

Naturally, they did not let this event pass without comment or response . . .
(to be continued)

17. April 2011 · Comments Off on Annals of 1836 · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

The 175 anniversary of the war for Texas independence is being observed this year, I’ve been to commemorative events at the Alamo, and at Presidio La Bahia. With the price of a gallon of gas already reaching towards $3.50, I had to give a miss to driving to Houston for the reenactment event there. The war was fast, furious and relatively brief; barely six months from the start of open hostilities at the ‘Come-and-Take-it Fight” in a watermelon field outside of Gonzales, to the shattering of the Mexican forces under the command of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, in a grassy meadow by Buffalo Bayou, in 18 minutes of pitched battle. Kind of fitting, actually – as went the war, so went the final decisive battle.

So, most of the major events have their commemoration – but not so much the event that hit the Texian settlers the hardest – the terrifying Runaway Scrape. The San Jacinto reenactment touched on it a little, which is only suitable, but it would be difficult for a day-long event to do the experience justice. It was a pell-mell evacuation of all the Anglo settler families, first from all settlements and farms west of the Colorado – and then, as Santa Anna’s three columns kept advancing east, it seemed as if there would be no safety anywhere on the Texas side of the Sabine.

Fear drove the settler families, fear of the implacable Santa Anna, who had put down similar federalist-inspired rebellions in other Mexican states with considerable brutality. Upon defeating the federalist militia of Zacatecas, Santa Anna had allowed his victorious army to pillage, loot and otherwise abuse the citizens of the defeated town for two days. What happened in Zacatecas would have been well-known, among the Texian rebels; the executions of the Alamo and La Bahia garrisons were just proof that Santa Anna was running true to established form.

The direct orders of Sam Houston also provided a motivation, as if any more were needed. He had barely arrived in Gonzales on March 11, with the intent of rallying an army to him to relieve the Alamo, when word arrived that it was too late. Within hours, Houston gave orders for his army to retreat east, back to hold a strong line along the Colorado River. He also ordered that civilians evacuate as well . . . and that the town be burnt. It was a cruel plan, but one with a purpose. Santa Anna’s supply lines were stretched to the breaking point as it was. Failing necessary supplies arriving from Mexico, they could manage in the short term by forage and local requisition, but Houston’s plan was to leave a scorched earth as he retreated back and back again. Gonzales burned, so did the fledgling settlement of Bastrop, and San Felipe de Austin, although there is controversy as to who actually fired San Felipe. Refugio, Richmond, Washington-on-the Brazos – all emptied of the Anglo-American settlers and their families. Santa Anna burned Harrisburg, possibly out of frustration at not being able to catch members of the Texian government. All the way through March and into April, settler families straggled east. Some had only a bare few minutes to gather their belongings and leave. Many families buried those things they valued, intending to return when they could. It was the rainiest spring in years, which put many of the rivers at flood-stage and bogged down the Mexican army . . . but added to the sufferings of the refugees. Disease broke out, especially those intensified by cold, hunger and bad sanitation. The dead were hastily buried where they died, and their kin moved on, seeking any safety they could.

And then, on April 21st, it was all over, although it took some few weeks for word to get out, and for the refugees to believe . . . and even longer to rebuild.
(Daughter of Texas touches on this, in several key chapters – of the sufferings of women and their children, who had to leave their homes and make their way east alone – either their men were with Houston’s Army … or already dead in the fighting.)

14. April 2011 · Comments Off on First Reviews – Daughter of Texas · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Well, the first reviews are out and posted – a lovely one from David at ChicagoBoyz and Photon Courier, and on Amazon, one from John Willingham, whose book about James Fannin and Goliad that I reviewed. The first of many (fingers crosssed) I hope!

12. April 2011 · Comments Off on A Miscellany of the Writer Life · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Rant

Just spent most of my working day editing a MS which features lots of chapters which are transcripts of various late-night radio shows, of which the less said the better, since this client have actually paid me money in advance.

Paid a large part of the SAWS bill, and also on Saturday – thanks to that same client – paid the tax bill due on my California real estate. This land, which is about three acres of howling unimproved wilderness in the neighborhood of Julian, California, is currently on the market. At this point, I do not think I can, want to, or ever will go back to California to live and to build a nice little writer’s wilderness retreat on the property, which is what I hoped when I bought that land, ever-so-many-years ago. But I am damned if I will let it go for lack of payment of taxes, which is why a good few parcels of eventually-valuable real estate that my G-Grandfather George owned were lost to the family treasury during the Depression. G-G George was a wiz at this sort of thing; unfortunately his wife had neither the skills nor the pocketbook to hold on to them all. If she had, Dad and I might have been real estate/trust fund babies. We might have taken different paths in life – I am sure I would have been a writer, no matter what.

Daughter of Texas is launched, with lots of review and pre-paid copies going out this week. Just have to see which ones will hit the interest and resulting sales jackpot. Da Blogfaddah – Instapundit – probably won’t be one of them. I didn’t bother sending a copy or a query to him . . . it seems that we have been dropped from his blog-roll. Anyone notice at all? Meah – I didn’t, for weeks. It has never seemed in the past couple of years that being on his blog-roll got me any notice as a writer or as a Tea Partier – thank you very much and I otherwise would be rude about this – but this is Instapundit that we are talking about, and the occasional lordly-dispensed link was very good. I guess this is just an ordinary unobserved milblog once again. There is a review for Daughter of Texas posted on Amazon. The first of many, I should hope.

I am kicking about the notion of doing a hard-cover version of the Adelsverein Trilogy, through the Tiny Publishing Business that I am now a working partner in: I would like to offer a hard-bound version of all the separate volumes of the Trilogy, at slightly under the rate of buying all three in paperback. So, what would please all the fans – a cloth-bound and paper jacket edition, or a hard-cover version with just a bright-color laminated cover. Let me know – the laminated cover is slightly less expensive to publish than the cloth-bound and paper dust-jacket version – but the cloth and dust-jacket version just looks so classy! This wouldn’t be something I would look to put in the big-box stores, since to do so would involve a discount more than would make this doable, economically.

So – are there any readers out there?

16. March 2011 · Comments Off on More Unsung Texians:The Mayor and the Newspaperman · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Thomas William Ward was born in Ireland of English parents in 1807, and at the age of 21 took ship and emigrated to America. He settled in New Orleans, which by that time had passed from French to Spanish, back to French and finally landed in American hands thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. There he took up the study of architecture and engineering – this being a time when an intelligent and striving young man could engage in a course of study and hang out a shingle to practice it shortly thereafter. However, Thomas Ward was diverted from his studies early in October, 1835 by an excited and well-attended meeting in a large coffee-room at Banks’ Arcade on Magazine Street. Matters between the Anglo settlers in Texas and the central Mexican governing authority – helmed by the so-called Napoleon of the West, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – had come to a frothy boil. Bad feelings between the Texian and Tejano settlers of Texas, who were of generally federalist (semi-autonomous) sympathies had been building against the centralist (conservative and authoritarian) faction. These developments were followed with close and passionate attention by political junkies in the United States.

Nowhere did interest run as high as it did in those cities along the Mississippi River basin. On the evening of October 13, 1835, Adolphus Sterne – the alcade (mayor) of Nacogdoches – offered weapons for the first fifty volunteers who would fight for Texas. A hundred and twenty volunteers signed up before the evening was over, and Thomas W. Ward was among them. They formed into two companies, and were apparently equipped and outfitted from various sources: the armory of the local militia organization, donations from the public, and ransacking local haberdashers for sufficient uniform-appearing clothing. They wore grey jackets and pants, with a smooth leather forage cap; the color grey being chosen for utility on the prairies. The two companies traveled separately from New Orleans, but eventually met up at San Antonio de Bexar, where they became part of the Army of Texas. They took part in the Texian siege of Bexar and those Mexican troops garrisoned there under General Cos – who had come into Texas earlier in the year to reinforce Mexican control of a wayward province. Thomas W. Ward was serving as an artillery officer by then; a military specialty which men with a bent for the mathematical and mechanical seemed to gravitate towards. The Texians and volunteers fought their way into San Antonio by December, led by an old settler and soldier of fortune named Ben Milam. Milam was killed at the height of the siege by a Mexican sharp-shooter, and Thomas W. Ward was injured; one leg was taken off by an errant cannon-ball. The enduring legend is that Milam was buried with Ward’s amputated leg together in the same grave. Was this a misfortune – or a bit of good luck for Thomas Ward?

Not very much discouraged or sidelined, Thomas Ward returned to New Orleans to recuperate – and to be fitted with a wooden prosthesis. He would be known as “Pegleg” Ward for the remainder of his life. He came back to Texas in the spring of 1836, escaping the fate of many of his fellow ‘Greys’ – many of who were among the defenders of the Alamo, their company standard being one of those trophies captured there by Santa Anna. Others of the ‘Greys’ were participants in the ill-fated Matamoros expedition, or became part of Colonel James Fannin’s garrison at the presidio La Bahia, and executed by order of Santa Anna after the defeat at Coleto Creek.

Thomas Ward was commissioned as a colonel and served during the remainder of the war for independence. Upon the return of peace – or a condition closely resembling it – he settled in the new-established city of Houston, and returned to the trade of architect and building contractor. He was hired to build a capitol building in Houston – one of several, for the over the life of the Republic of Texas, the actual seat of government became a rather peripatetic affair. When the second President of Texas, Mirabeau Lamar, moved the capitol to Waterloo-on-the-Colorado – soon to be called Austin – in 1839, Thomas Ward relocated there, serving variously as chief clerk for the House of Representatives, as mayor of Austin and as commissioner of the General Land Office. As luck would have it, during an observance of the victory at San Jacinto in April of 1841, Thomas Ward had another bit of bad luck. In setting off a celebratory shot, the cannon misfired, and the explosion took off his right arm. (I swear – I am not making this up!) To add to cannon-related indignities heaped upon him, in the following year, he was involved in the Archives War. Local inn-keeper, Angelina Eberly fired off another cannon in to alert the citizens of Austin that President Sam Houston’s men were trying to remove the official national archives from the Land Office building. (Either it was not loaded with anything but black powder, or she missed hitting anything.)

Fortunately, Thomas Ward emerged unscathed from this imbroglio – I think it would have been plain to everyone by this time that Mr. Cannon-ball was most definitely not his friend. He married, fought against Texas secession in the bitter year of 1860, served another term as Mayor of Austin, as US Counsel to Panama, and lived to 1872 – a very good age, considering all that he had been through. He will appear briefly as a character – along with Angelina Eberly – in the sequel to Daughter of Texas.

(Next – the story of the two-faced newspaperman.)

06. March 2011 · Comments Off on Return to the Writer’s Life Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Old West

I know, I know – posting here from me has been a bit pro forma over the last couple of weeks. There are so many things that have happened, in several different arenas that I could have written about, but either just didn’t feel enough interest/passion/irritation about them, or have been swamped in launching the latest book. Yes, Daughter of Texas is being published by the Tiny Publishing Bidness in which I am now a partner, as part of our venture into POD. Just this last week, DoT was added to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, to be available as of April. (To coincide with the 175th anniversary of the war for Texas independence from Mexico. Yeah, I chose that deliberately, as a release date). Alice has always worked before with a number of different litho printers and binders, but increasingly over the last couple of years I am convinced that we have lost potential customers who really, really only wanted a small initial print run, or access to mainstream distribution and to get their book on Amazon. So, I convinced her to let me set up an account with Lightning Source – which I did – and Daughter of Texas is our test run. We’ll offer the POD option – to include a very strict edit of the manuscript, as well as professional standard cover design and formatting. I know, I know – the Tiny Publishing Bidness is late to the game with all this, but she has established a nice little niche market and gotten all kinds of local referrals which have afforded her a regular income over the years that she is in business. San Antonio is a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city. She is a very good editor – I joke that she has been married three times; twice to mere mortal men and once to the Chicago Manual of Style.

I am also looking at the option of having the Trilogy and To Truckee’s Trail in a second edition through The Tiny Publishing Bidness as well. I have a good relationship with the current publishers . . . but the individual per-copy cost is increasingly unbearable to me and to customers actual and potential. Since I am now the slightly-less-than-half partner in an existing publishing company, and have my dear little brother the professional graphics designer doing book-covers . . . well, it’s only logical. I am only held back by the hassle, and additional chore of paying the various fees. On the upside – fixing the various typo issues – priceless! Truckee was thick with them and very obvious to me now that I have had the experience of working with Alice on various editing projects. (To those readers who have noticed them – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. To those who have not – bless you; these are not the typographical errors you seek. There are no typographical errors. You may go on your way.)

This last weekend was the 175th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo – Blondie and I went to some of the reenactor events in Alamo Plaza. Gee, first time in two years that we haven’t been there for a Tea Party protest! Anyway, lots of fun and I got some good pictures. On my list of things to fix – why I can’t do pictures on this blog, but I put the best of the best on my Open Salon blog. Link here, as soon as OS gets their a** in gear.

I may even be scoring a bit of local media interest, through having chosen to release Daughter of Texas to coincide with Fiesta San Antonio, the commemoration of the San Jacinto victory, and an excuse for a two-week long city-wide bash-slash-block party. Next Saturday, I am off to New Braunfels, to speak at a fundraising brunch for the local DRT chapter – which is really kind of a lift for me, as last year’s famous local scribbler-slash-guest speaker was Stephen Harrigan, of Gates of the Alamo fame. The Daughters – Lindheimer Chapter – have bought a boatload of copies of the Trilogy, to be on sale after the talk and personally autographed. (Note: it’s a kick to autograph my books for someone, but now I have awful nightmares about botching the message and signature. In that case, do I owe them another copy? Did Margaret Mitchell have this nightmare?)

Finally – I haven’t written much about Mom and Dad, since returning from California, for a reason. Mom asked me not to blog about this – too personal. She’s OK, being basically one of these flinty and resilient pioneer types. Besides my brothers and sister, and bro-in-law, she and Dad had lots of friends; we’re looking out for her. Wish I could have talked her into getting the internet, but no luck with that.

Oh, and one final thing – anyone who wants to be on the email list for my monthly author newsletter? Send me a private message, and the email addy you would like it to be sent to. I promise – I will only send it out once a month.

03. February 2011 · Comments Off on Book Talk at the Antique Store · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

So, on the coldest winter day for several winters running in South Texas, Blondie and I set out on a book-talk excursion. This was unique – not just for the very coldness of the day, but also for the fact that this time the location was within city limits, and about a hop-skip-and-jump from the house. Previous book-talks have been as far as Beeville (twice), Junction and Harper, all of which were at least an hour and a half drive away. The weather being what it was, I don’t think we would have risked such an excursion, icy roads being a component. Too many drivers here freak out when it rains heavily – adding ice to the mix is courting disaster. As it was, we encountered the rolling black-out; our first clue being that the traffic lights were out for a good part of the way along Bitters Road, and in Artisans’ Alley.

The venue was to be at Back Alley Antiques, which is – suitably enough – at the back end of Artisans’ Alley. We love a couple of the little shops there, including the one who has a guardian Shi-Tzu dog named Harley – but our very favorite is Back Alley Antiques. Not that we’ve ever been able to afford much there, but what they do have in stock is enviably wonderful, from the large pieces of classic furniture, down to the linens, the accessories, the china and milk glass. (When I’m a best-selling author, and fit out my dream retreat in the Hill Country, a lot of the furniture for it will come from there and from the Antique Mall in Comfort, thank you very much.) The last time we were there, I had a nice leisurely chat with one of the owners, who took my card and seemed interested in the fact that I had written extensively about local history; and so in January, Rita C. invited me to speak to a small circle of antique enthusiasts which she belonged to, about the Trilogy.

Very fortunately, there was not much traffic out on the roads – also, even more fortunately, the power came back on, almost as soon as we walked in the door. It was a nice gathering of ladies about my age or a little older – could have been mistaken for a Red Hats gathering, save that everyone was tastefully dressed in other colors than red or purple – and all of us had on substantially heavy winter coats. They gathered around a couple of antique dining room tables, carefully decked out with equally antique place settings, silverware and linens, held the business portion of their meeting – and then, it was show-time!

I have notes, carefully printed up for the first book-talk that I did – an outline of early Texas history, about the adventures of the Adelsverein representatives in Texas, and the subsequent transmission of settlers from Germany, straight to the wild-n-woolly frontier, together with a short explanation of how I came to write about them. Didn’t look at the notes once, I’ve done this talk so often, since. Took a few questions – some of the lady members had heard in a vague sort of way about the German settlers, one or two – including one who owns a historic home in Castroville – had heard of the general specifics, but the mini-Civil War in the Hill Country was an interesting and fascinating surprise. We had bought along the few copies of books that I had, and some order forms and flyers about the Trilogy. After the meeting, we repaired to the Pomegranate for lunch – another nice round of conversation. Blondie and Rita C. explored a mutual interest in vintage pressed glass, and we had a lot of fun discussing how much more rewarding it was, finding splendid vintage and antique items at estate sales, and thrift stores. Another club member – who has fitted out an entire frontier town as a venue and B&B at her family’s hunting ranch – turns out to know one of my clients, the ranch broker – yet more proof, if any were needed, that San Antonio is just a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city.

26. January 2011 · Comments Off on Another Chapter of the Good Stuff · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

All righty then – I pounded out a couple of chapters of Deep in the Heart – the book after the next, while in California and undistracted by the internet. The release of Daughter of Texas is coming along nicely, BTW. I have a couple of events coming up in the next few months which will hopfully goose my royalty checks to seriously meaningful levels. Previous chapter of Deep in the Heart is here

Chapter 4 – The Ranger from Bexar

Around mid-morning on a day in the second week of September, Hetty was just finishing the breakfast dishes, while Margaret was rolling out piecrust; the early apples were ripe for the harvest. Papa and the boys had brought in the first of several baskets, overflowing with them, and the two women were discussing what to do with them once Margaret had made three or four pies pies.

“Apple-butter, I think,” Margaret had just said, and Hetty agreed. “We’ll start today, for there will be more by tomorrow.” There came a pounding upon the door, and Margaret took her hands from the rolling pin, and dusted flour from her hands on her apron. “Oh, why doesn’t whoever just open it and come in – it’s unlatched. Jamie! Peter!” she called, “Can you see who it is at the door?” She cast a glance out of the long window at the end of the kitchen, which looked out upon the farmyard and the apple trees beyond. Her father and the two oldest boys were at work there. There was no sign of her younger sons. Just as the person outside pounded again on the door, Margaret heard Jamie’s voice in the hallway, and the door opening. Within a moment, Jamie appeared in the kitchen, wide-eyed with awe,

“It’s Uncle Carl,” he said and Margaret gasped. So it was indeed – her younger brother, filling up the doorway behind her son; a tall young man with the wheat-pale fair hair that was the mark of the Becker kin; Saxon-square to the bone. His rough work trousers and leather hunting coat were covered in trail-dust, and the lines of weariness in his face made him appear older than his twenty-two years.

“H’lo, M’grete,” he said only. His eyes were the same calm and placid blue that they had been when he was a child; the only feature of him which had remained unchanged.

“Carlchen!” Margaret cried and flew to him, flinging her arms about him in a joyous embrace. “Oh, my – you have gotten so thin! Where have you come from this time – from Bexar? Will you stay at home with us for a bit? At least remain for supper. Hetty and I are making pies from the first of the apples – now fortunate that is your favorite!”

“I can’t, M’grete,” he answered, and the gravity of his expression drew her attention. “Jack sent me. I rode through the night to raise the alarm. I must go, as soon as Ward has raised enough volunteers, and guide them to our camp. The Mexes have invaded again, and their army holds all of Bexar. ”

“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” Hetty gasped; her face was ashen, the freckles on it standing out as stark as paint-splatters. A tin plate dropped from nerveless fingers and fell with a clatter to the floor. Jamie stared, his eyes as round as a baby owlets’ – part hero-worship of his uncle, part distress at the reaction of the adults to this dreadful news. Margaret stepped back, gasping. “How has this happened?” She demanded, “When – and how did you come to escape? You and your Ranger company, you were garrisoned in Bexar, weren’t you?”

“So we were,” he yawned hugely, and pulled a chair aside from the table, slumping into it as if he were tired to his very bones – which he would be, if he had ridden the eighty or so miles from Bexar. “Might I have something to eat, M’grete? I haven’t eaten for two days.” Hetty was turning the dish-towel into knots, between her hands, the plate still on the floor at her feet where she had dropped it.

“An’ what of them as were there for the court?” she asked, and Margaret’s own memory seemed to leap like a started hare. “Yes, what of the district court in session,” Margaret asked, urgently. “For one of our boarders, Dr. Williamson – he was in Bexar to have a civil suit heard. He left last week.”

“Then he’s still there.” Her brother answered in short sentences, as if he were too exhausted to do any more. “They surrounded the town. Took every white man as a prisoner; judge, district attorney . . . lawyers, witnesses and the lot. Lawyer Maverick – he was caught as well. John-Will Smith – the mayor – he escaped, the only one. His wife’s family helped him. He saw everything from the roof of his father-in-law’s house. It’s an army, right enough. Not bandits and Comancheros. They even brought a band with them. Came straight into town at dawn under cover of thick fog, set up cannon in Military Square, and fired a shot. Woke up the whole town all at once, so John-Will said.” Looking at his eyes, Margaret saw that it was true. Carlchen had never lied to her. Her own anger began to smolder into open flames; anger that Lopez de Santa Anna – that vile, treacherous butcher – would dare send his armies into Texas once again. He would dare send his gold-braided officers and his convict armies into Texas, to pillage and murder, then accept parole and sue for peace . . . and six years later to dare do it again.

“What do they intend? Are they coming here?” Carl shook his head.

“I don’t know, M’grete – and not if Cap’n Jack has anything to say, and General Sam, too.” He yawned again, and Margaret abruptly returned to that matter which she could do something about. She set a plate before him, with a fork and spoon to one side of it, fetched half a loaf of bread from the pie-safe, and began cutting slices from it. There was a quarter-wheel of cheese, some fresh butter from the churning of yesterday’s cream, and of course, plenty of apples. Jamie brought two from the nearest basket, with the air of a page doing service to his sworn liege lord. He lingered at Carl’s elbow, a worshipful expression on his face.

“Hetty – bacon and eggs; the fire is hot enough, surely? Ham . . . Papa has just begun smoking the hams, but I am sure we can find some cured sausage, if you would like.”

“Whatever you have in a hurry. I’m too hungry to be particular.” Her brother was already wolfing bread and cheese. Margaret spared a covert look at him, as she busied herself about the kitchen. No – he was no longer the soft-spoken boy that he had been once; a boy reserved to the point of silence when in the presence of strangers. He had risen to the rank of sergeant more than a year ago; he seemed surer of himself, confident and capable, but still quiet about it. Now he took a small knife from the top of his boot to slice another piece of cheese with – not that wicked-sharp brass-backed hunting knife, which hung from a belt around his waist, along with a brace of long-barreled pistols. With his mouth full, he added, “I turned m’horse out in the paddock with old Bucephalus. The boys promised they’d rub him down, and bring him some corn. He needs a rest more’n I do.” Hetty was busying herself about the stove, where bacon was already sizzling briskly in the pan. Margaret finished crimping the top of the first piecrust, and her brother added, “Can I have some of that, when it’s baked, M’grete?”

“You may have all of it, if you like,” she answered, “If you are staying long enough.” Unbidden, Hetty opened the oven door, so that Margaret could slide in the first pie. Rolling out another round of dough, Margaret continued, “Then tell us – how did you escape the Mexicans, Carlchen?” She waited for the answer: her brother would not willingly submit to being a prisoner of the Mexicans ever again. By a merest chance and the action of their brother Rudi in stepping before the Mexican’s guns, Carl had survived the massacre of Texian prisoners at the Goliad. If Margaret knew anything in the world with more certainty, it was that her brother would not endure captivity or confinement for a second time.

“We didn’t escape from town, if that’s what you mean.” He swallowed a mouthful of cheese and bread. “We had never been caught there to start with. There were rumors. Seemed that there were fewer of them than usual – but everyone who had heard and passed them on . . . they weren’t the usual rumor-passing sort. Jack thought that was strange. He was asked to go on a scout – took me and four of the fellows. Some of us went along the Old Spanish road – half a day’s ride, both directions, the same with the Sabine Road and the Gonzales Road. No sign of anything out of the ordinary, no one we spoke to had seen anything strange, either. But when we returned – there were Mex soldiers at every way into town. They had not come by a known road, M’grete. They made their own, so as to come around from the west without being seen. We have a camp of our own, on Salado Creek, just north of town. Sometimes we don’t want prying eyes to see where we are headed, what we are doing. So we went there and John-Will met us at mid-morning, told us what had happened. The general in charge is a Frenchie soldier of fortune. A hard case, but decent enough. He has two thousand men, John-Will said. Pioneers. Cavalry. And artillery – I don’t know how many pieces. We didn’t stick around long enough to take a count. There weren’t but about fifty of our men in town; they came for court, not for a fight. Some of them put up one at first, but it wasn’t any good. They were outnumbered, and the Mexes could have leveled the place with their cannon anyway. General Woll agreed to treat them as prisoners.”

“Treat them to a Santa Anna quarter, no doubt!” Margaret felt sick at the thought of Dr. Williamson as a prisoner, sick with helpless fury, He was so kind, so gentle and absent-minded; surely they would spare a doctor from execution! “Why are they doing this to us, Carlchen? Why?”

“Because they can,” her brother answered, calmly biting off another mouthful of bread and cheese. His eyes were as blue and unclouded as the skies outside the kitchen window. “And what they can do, they will, sooner or later. It’s like the Comanche. They talk peace when it suits and when it gets them something. I reckon they mean it sincere at the time. And when it suits them and gets what they want by going on the warpath, why, they’ll do that without thinking twice. Don’t mean nothing, what they said last week, or last year.” Carl appeared quite unruffled by this fresh Mexican treachery, of naked war and invasion brought down upon them once again by the vile dictator Santa Anna. That very serenity was bracing to Margaret.

“Of the gods we believe, and of men we know – that what they can do, they will,” Margaret quoted from her husband’s copy of Thucydides. “So, little brother – they have done it now. What happens next?”

Carl smiled, reassuringly. “Don’t worry, M’grete; Jack and General Sam will sort them out, once they get to hear of it. Jack sent us flying in all directions with messages. It’ll be like the Plum Creek fight all over again.”

“Yes, but in the meantime the Comanches sacked Victoria and burned Linnville to the ground even before the ranging companies gathered!” Margaret answered, “And what will happen this time? This is a proper army, not a war party of Comanche!”

“Well, the Penateka haven’t come back, have they?” Carl answered, reasonably. “They learned a hard lesson – and mebbe it’s time to teach Santy Anna another. Or remind him again. Really, M’grete, he’s awful forgetful.”

“No, I think he remembers well enough,” Margaret answered her voice bitter with anger and memory. Lopez de Santa Anna’s last incursion into Texas had cost her a home, the lives of her mother and dear friends, as well as a certain peace of mind. “This time he sent a flunky rather than risk his own precious skin!”

“True enough,” Carl’s good-natured expression dimmed slightly. “I don’t reckon he would be let live, if we captured him in his drawers again. He and the nearest tree and a coil of good rope would meet up – no matter what General Sam might say.” He yawned again, just as Hetty brought a clean plate and the pan of eggs and bacon, still sizzling and popping with fat. Hetty tipped them onto the plate and set it before her brother; Carl caught up a piece of bacon in his fingers, and then dropped it. “That’s hot!”

“Straight from the stove,” Margaret answered, “At my table, most use a fork to eat.” Just at that moment, Papa came in the door, a carrying-yoke over his shoulders and a bushel-basket of apples hanging from each end. Horace and Johnny followed, lugging another basket between them. Margaret’s breath caught in her throat, anticipating a dreadful scene, something like the last time Carl had come home and encountered Papa; but Papa merely dropped the baskets with a groan and a grunt. He glanced at his youngest son and then looked away without a change of expression. It was as if Carl were not there at all. For his own part, Carl took up the fork that lay next to the plate and took a bite of scrambled eggs.

“Papa, the Mexicans have invaded and taken Bexar,” Margaret said, her heart in her very throat. “Carlchen has brought a message from his captain.”

“What’s it to me?” Alois Becker grumbled, in German “They’re all Mexicans in Bexar anyway – let them have the joy of entertaining those fatherless sons of whores. Tell me when they cross Shoal Creek – then maybe I’ll give a damn. Come along, lads. There’s work to be done, not stand around gawking at this wastrel son of mine.” He gestured to the boys to follow him and stumped out of the room; Margaret heard the door fall closed behind them. It cost her some effort to look towards her little brother. Papa’s words still had the ability to hurt, like the slash of a knife. Margaret had long willed herself to move past feeling them, to think of them as nothing more than a human sort of lightening and thunder, a cold blue Norther, or a spring-time flood. His words had no more effect on her, but she was certain that it was Papa’s words and the careless cruelty in them which had first driven Carlchen away – and what had kept him away ever since. She need not have worried. From the untroubled manner in which her brother was still forking up mouthfuls of eggs and bacon, it was clear that he had also moved to that point, sometime in the last six years that he had spent as a ranger. He only smiled, very slightly and answered softly in the same language,

“The old man hasn’t changed a bit, has he, M’grete. Nice to know that some things remain always the same.”

“He is not ‘the old man,’” Margaret insisted. “You should speak of him with respect, Carlchen. He is our father . . . and he is not a bad man.” Her brother chewed thoughtfully, as he shook his head, and swallowed another mouthful before answering.

“No? And a pool of water poisoned with alkali is not good to drink from, although it still looks like water. He got us all – you, me, Rudi – on the body of Mama, but he was no more a real father to you and me than a wild mustang is a real father to the foals he sires on any handy mare.”

“But he is still our father,” Margaret was shocked out of countenance, and glad that this very improper conversation was being carried on in German, that Hetty was uncomprehending, as she gathered up the clean dishes and began putting them away. “We owe him all respect for that.” Carl shrugged indifferently.

“You respect him then, M’grete. To my way of thinking, your husband was more a father to me than the old man. So was Jacob Harrell, who taught Rudi and me how to hunt. Trap Tallmadge – the ranger sergeant in my first company – he took more pains over me than the old man ever did. He’s poison, M’grete, like an alkali spring. If your boys were mine, I’d keep him far from them.”

“You would have no need to worry about Papa’s influence on my sons, if you came home a little oftener, gave up rangering. Perhaps if you took up a trade and settled down . . .” Margaret suggested, stung by his words. She had long believed that the company of her sons might soften Papa a little, bring him to take an interest in a younger generation, and now to have Carlchen suggest that such an influence would do them harm! In all the travails of the past few years, Carl had not been there; he did not have any idea of what she had to face, every day and every hour.

But now he was already shaking his head. “No, M’grete . . . I could not. Rangering what I am best fit for, and I like it . . . out there. It’s not complicated. Other people make things complicated.”

“Ah. I see – get on your horse and ride away into the wilderness, where everything is simple. Leave someone else to raise the children, nurse the sick and dying, bake bread, build houses and look after the wellbeing of families . . . which makes things all so very, very complicated. Well, you have that luxury, little brother, but I do not. I must cope with the complications.” Carl shrugged, apparently little affected by her words.

“And someone must fight the Indians . . . and now the Mexes, while you bake bread and darn Papa’s shirts. May as well be me, M’grete. I’m good at it.” He calmly scraped up the last of the scrambled eggs, but then his voice turned grave with sympathy. “Lawyer Maverick – he told me last year that Race died. Consumption, he said it was. Someone told him. A friend, I guess. He had friends all over, didn’t he? Race, I mean. I’m sorry about that, M’grete. I heard so late, didn’t make any sense to come home, then. Anyway, I’m sorry that you lost him. He was a good man, where it counted.”

“Yes, he was,” Margaret answered. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell her brother about the other matter, of Race’s Boston marriage, and of the settlement from his family. Someone ought to know, she thought – someone of her blood, but immediately she also recalled General Sam’s advice about scandal and of the matter being no ones’ business but hers and Races.’ Instead she said, “Do you want anything more, Carlchen. The pie will not be done for another hour, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll wait,” He still had that sweet half-smile from his childhood, converted into another yawn. “I’m sorry, M’grete. I rode through the night. Is there a place where I might sleep for a few hours, until the volunteers are ready to ride out?”

“In the front parlor,” Margaret answered, “On the day-bed.” He rose from the table, still yawning, and by the time Margaret brought a blanket from her bedroom, he was already fast asleep, sprawled on the daybed without even having taken off his boots, although he had taken off the belt that held his holstered weapons, and hung it close at hand over the back of the day-bed.

“What are we to do then?” Hetty asked, when she returned to the kitchen, and began rolling out pie dough. Margaret deftly turned the rolled-out crust around the rolling pin, and draped it over the next pie-pan. She began cutting the edges with a pastry-knife, before she answered,

“Begin making apple butter, I think. Oh, you mean – what do we do if the Mexicans come? I won’t leave here, Hetty. I expect that we shall have to bury the valuables, and hide the horses. Papa may also take his musket and find a place in the woods to hide, if he does not want to go with the fighting militia. Surely, you are not frightened of them, Hetty?”

“No Marm – I am not,” Hetty answered, sturdily.

“Good,” Margaret piled the piecrust full of peeled apple quarters, and emptied a measure of coarse sugar over it all, with a pinch of cinnamon and a twist of nutmeg. She rolled out another round of crust, before continuing. “They are eighty miles away. Before very much longer, our men will be taking up a place between us and them, among the woods and the hills and behind a river. Two thousand soldiers is not very many.” She draped the top crust over the rolling pin, using that as a wand to carry and lay the tender crust over the mounded-up apples. “Besides,” she added, “I am resolved never to leave my home again, Hetty. I would rather face them down, than take to the roads and live like a beggar in all weather. I do not think they would scruple to harm us – for any insult given will be repaid in blood. I believe Lopez de Santa Anna knows this well, or if he does not, his soldiers will learn.”

The making of apple butter that afternoon was often disrupted, for there was a constant stream of men and women coming to the house. Margaret finally tasked Jamie and Peter with sitting on the front steps and to fetch her from the kitchen whenever they saw someone coming up the hill, rather than have the noise of their knocking on the door waken her sleeping brother. She need not have bothered, for he slept as deeply as one nearly dead for hours, in spite of the footsteps of people coming and going, of hushed voices and Papa tramping back and forth with baskets of apples, who couldn’t be bothered to pay any mind to her admonitions.

Of course, Mrs. Eberly was one of the first – the storm-crow, as Margaret had privately named her; wherever there was trouble brewing, there was Angelina Eberly, flapping her black wings. She came with a basket of fresh-baked hard-tack biscuits over her elbow, puffing as she climbed the hill. Margaret, already rattled because of the news her brother had brought, had showed her into the kitchen and settled her into Hetty’s rocking chair. Kettles of apple and molasses slowly bubbled away on the stove. Fortunately, Mrs. Eberly was amiable about this omission of conventional courtesy. “I’ve heard already,” she announced, “And brought bread for them as are going. I must say, it sounds bad. I had two more boarders leave today, and Mr. Bullock’s place will be near empty in the next week. And it’s not that they are going south to fight the Meskins, either – they are just plumb running scairt, and running back east with their tails between their legs.” She cast an expert eye around the kitchen, warm and redolent of cooking apples and spices, every one of the copper pots polished until it gleamed like gold. “I can tell, Miz Vining, you ain’t one of them. I know you’ve said so, often enough – but the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. Or in the packing of the wagon.”

“I have confidence in the men of our army,” Margaret said, firmly. “Whereas before we were a state in rebellion, and many of our people were in disarray and disagreement – now we are a sovereign nation. And not one to be violated lightly, and in defiance of the laws which rule the conduct of nations – even such a villain as Lopez de Santa Anna must take notice of those laws now and again, lest Mexico become a pariah among nations. For we are united, this time, under brave and determined commanders!” Mrs. Eberly clapped her hands, “Oh, my dear – bravely said! And I am heartened, Miz Vining, truly I am! My family and I, we will remain, as well. There are a few of us, happy and proud to stand fast in this dark time…”

“ ‘That he which hath no stomach to this fight,’” Margaret quoted from that play of Shakespeare’s which her husband had come to love the best of all, “‘Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse; We would not die in that man’s company, That fears his fellowship to die with us . . . ”

“Oh, dear, I hope that it won’t come to that!” Mrs. Eberly’s cheer suddenly turned to apprehension.

“It won’t,” Margaret’s brother said, confidently; he appeared in the kitchen door, walking as silently as a ghost. He had seemingly been refreshed by the brief hours that he had slept. “For Captain Jack leads us, and he is the boldest and canniest of all. Better than that, he will never surrender. And best of all, many of us have these at our side.” He unshipped one of the long pistols from the holster on his belt, a matte-metal thing with a long and slender barrel, but which had an oddly large cylindrical attachment where the trigger and flintlock should have been. Margaret, Hetty and Mrs. Eberly looked at it with puzzled, yet curious expressions, and Carl continued with the slightly exasperated air of a man explaining something to women which he would have assumed did not need explanation. “It’s a Colt repeating pistol – five shots without needing to reload. We fight from horseback. The State bought them for the Navy, but they work very much better for us, you see.” He stowed the long pistol away, and continued his explanation. “Jack – that is, Captain Hays – he trained us to fight as the Comanche do. Like the Mex lancers did, only better. To scout and harry and ambush the enemy, to go a long way without being seen. The Mexes, and the Comanche, they still think this land is theirs. They’re wrong – we own it now, day and night, plain, river and forest. They just need reminding, now and again.”

“Well, I am very glad to hear of that!” Mrs. Eberly exclaimed, and Hetty looked gratified. Margaret’s spirits rose, fractionally. Perhaps there was hope after all, that the prisoners would be freed, and the Mexican troops sent fleeing back over the Nueces.

Carl and the assembled militiamen departed without ceremony, late that afternoon; grim and purposeful men, their saddlebags bulging with food and ammunition, their saddle-holsters bristling with arms. Margaret watched, as her brother moved among them, unhurried and quietly authoritative. They were moving light and fast, with two pack-mules laden with even more supplies; her brother planned that they should be at the Salado camp within three days. Margaret’s heart was wrung – she had seen this so many times before! The only solace she might take in this prospect was that there were no young boys among the riders this time, only men and many of them battle-hardened and wily, veterans of the first fight for Bexar, back in the beginning, of the mad scramble to withdraw from the west, after the fall of the Alamo, veterans of San Jacinto, of Plum Creek and a thousand small skirmishes with Mexicans soldiers and Indians alike. And General Sam – he would not let this insult pass, indeed he would not. And with that, Margaret would have to be content.

It was little more than a week before Margaret and those still remaining in Austin received certain news of what had happened at Bexar. The Mexicans had withdrawn – that was the best of it. The Texian companies from the lower Colorado settlements, to include Captain Hays’ Rangers, had lured a large portion of the Mexican force out of Bexar, lured them into a trap among the sandy creek-beds and thickets of mesquite and scrub oaks north of the town. There they fought a sharp skirmish, and sent the Mexicans reeling back . . . but a company of fifty or so volunteers from La Grange, led by Captain Mosby Dawson, had just arrived, and hearing the distant sounds of the fight had advanced to the aid of their comrades. They were overrun by the Mexican cavalry, before they could join the main Texian companies, safely entrenched along Salado Creek. All but fifteen or so were captured alive, the rest being killed in the fight, or upon surrendering. Within days, the Mexican general Woll and his columns of marching men, of cavalry and the heavy cannons had withdrawn from Bexar, retreating slowly back towards the Rio Grande. But he took hostages with him, those men captured in Bexar, and in the skirmishing along Salado Creek. Nonetheless, this invasion had been stopped, and Margaret and her household rejoiced, until a tear-stained letter from Morag arrived; Daniel Fritchie was one of Dawson’s men captured at Salado, and his brother killed.

Worse yet emerged in the next weeks; those prisoners taken in Bexar, those men who had been at the meeting of the district court were not released on the banks of the Rio Grande, as they had been promised by General Woll. Dr. Williamson’s captivity would be of longer duration than merely a few weeks; Margaret fumed when she read of this new treachery in the newspapers, and Hetty wept when she re-read Morag’s piteous letter.

“Oh, Marm – what will she do, then?” she cried, and Margaret answered, practically. “She writes that she is become ill very often, and she cannot rest . . .”

“She must come home to us, of course. It’s the heat,” Margaret had her own suspicious about what was making Morag ill.

“And I will go to fetch her, o’ course,” Seamus O’Doyle looked immediately more cheerful. He had made some adjustment to Morag’s marriage in the past months; Margaret thought that perhaps Hetty had spoken to him bluntly on the subject.

The final blow, when it fell was not completely unexpected: citing the constant danger of hostile incursions from Mexico and from the Indians, General Sam called the Legislature to meet at Washington-on-the-Brazos . . . not at Austin. Margaret was philosophical, at least more so than Mrs. Eberly, who predictably enough was furious. She stumped up the hill to consult with Margaret – or at least, to complain angrily while Margaret listened.

“Who does General Sam think he is?” the Widow Eberly shouted, “And who to those lily-livered men think they are – afraid to come to this place, to do the business required of the nation…”

“They may rightfully fear such, seeing how the men who attended district court were dragged from Bexar as prisoners,” Margaret began; a temporizing statement which was entirely wasted on Mrs. Eberly.

“Fear of a Meskin sojer jumping out of a bush has gelded every one of them!” Mrs. Eberly stormed on, “That drunken old lecher may as well have taken a knife and done it wholesale – I’ll lay any roads that he has gone around, talking up how dangerous it is to all! This will be the ruination of our business, Miz Vining, the ruination of it all!”

“This was a passing emergency, Mrs. Eberly, a passing emergency,” Margaret said, “They were defeated, and have withdrawn over the Rio Grande…”

“Aye, and thanks to our men, men like your brother – and no thanks to General Sam this time! Leave it to our best to take up a musket and defend our homes – what has it come to, that our own leader will not take up his duty here – where we had established our city!”

“I am sure that the legislature will meet here, next time,” Margaret was about to give up being soothing, as it seemed to have little effect upon Mrs. Eberly.

“They had better so,” Mrs. Eberly replied, “For all the offices are here, and the archives safe-guarded in the land office. How can you conduct the business of the country, without the records of matters? Tell me that, Miz Vining!”

“I am sure they cannot,” Margaret sighed. “Truth to tell, Mrs. Eberly – I am not so disappointed in this matter. Poor Dr. Williamson! We shall miss him so dreadfully. Morag is with child, you see – and Daniel Fritchie is a prisoner also. Mr. O’Doyle has gone to Mina with a wagon, to bring her back to stay with us. We hope every day that Daniel will be freed, but she is so young and alone, and they had not been married all that long.”

“Hard times,” Mrs. Eberly said, with a grim expression, “And even harder, for it is our own leader making it harder for us. Aye well – it’s lads like that brother of yours that stand guard for us; aye, I can sleep at night, knowing it’s he and Captain Jack Hays and Captain Caldwell and all . . . what have we done to deserve that devotion, Mrs. Vining?”

“I do not know,” Margaret confessed, “But I think they feel it to be their duty, whether we be open in our gratitude or not.”

“Well, if and when your brother and any of his comrades come to Austin again,” Mrs. Eberly patted her knee fondly, “And you have not the space for them all, I’ll gladly make room – and not charge a bit. It’s the least we can do for our lads, isn’t it?”

“The very least,” Margaret answered, and left unspoken the question – would Carlchen ever return to the family home, when business or war did not take him?

Morag did return, and with tears of mingled joy and distress, as Seamus O’Doyle came around and handed her carefully down from the wagon seat. It was October; the days were drawing shorter, with grey-clouded skies and a chill wind from the north. She ran lightly to Hetty’s embrace; there was no sign outwardly that she was with child, save for the sudden sharpness of the cheekbones in her face. There is a difference in the face of a woman who is bearing, or has born a child, Margaret thought; something elemental, no matter how young she may be herself. She had observed it in the faces of those friends of her girlhood in Gonzales, seen it in her own features – and now it was in Morag’s face, when she turned from her sister to Margaret.

“Dear little girl,” Margaret whispered – what it might have been to have had a younger sister of her own, or a daughter! “I think you have some news to tell us.”

“You knew!” Morag’s face fell, and then her expression danced into laughter, as she hugged Margaret. “But of course, Marm – you know everything!”

“Know of what?” Hetty looked from one to another, slightly baffled, and Margaret marveled at how she and Morag were now united in a sisterhood, despite the years between the two of them, and her long friendship with Hetty – the bond of sisterhood between the mothers of children.

“That I will have a child to console me!” Morag embraced her sister again, “That Danny will return, an’ I will have his son to show him! He knew, o’ course. That was why he went w’ Captain Dawson! ‘Meggie, he said to me – I must do what I must to keep us safe, now more than ever – for th’ matter is most urgent!’ An’ I kissed him an’ said that he must do what he must . . . an’ oh, Marm – what was I thinkin’? For now I want him worse than I have iver wanted him, t’ be at my side . . . “and she dissolved into tears on Margaret’s shoulder. “Moods,” she said over Morag’s shoulder to the much-puzzled Hetty. “It comes with the country of children. That you will have moods and your children alike, and hope that your kin and friends may forgive you for being considerably out of sorts with the world, whilst you are in the process of bearing them.”

“Oh, me ain darlin’!” Hetty cried, with sudden comprehension grown doubly fond. “Come and lay down within! This is happy news, so ‘tis!” She embraced her sister, and walked to the house with her arm around her waist. Meanwhile, Seamus O’Doyle had lifted down the little trunk, which was all that Morag had brought with her.

“It was a good thought, to have her come home to stay with us,” Margaret said to him, “And thank you for bringing her.”

“Aye well, she’s as dear as kin,” Seamus O’Doyle replied. “And Danny is a foine lad – we’ll just see about getting him back, won’t we, Marm? They say in Mina that there’s news that General Sam is raising a large army, to strike at Mexico in hopes of freeing our boys. Is it true, now?”

“It has been in several newspapers,” Margaret answered, “So I think it must be. But I would have known so, even if I had not read of it. I don’t believe we would tamely submit to such a provocation as the taking of Bexar, and the kidnapping of our own citizens.”

“No, we would not,” Seamus O’Doyle agreed, and he had such a thoughtful expression on his face, that Margaret knew he must have already begun thinking about this. “No, we would not, indade.”

12. December 2010 · Comments Off on The Innkeeper and the Archives War · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

A lady of certain years by the time she became moderately famous, Angelina Belle Peyton was born in the last years of the 18th century in Sumner County, Tennessee. For a decade or so Tennessee would be the far western frontier, but by the time she was twenty and newly married to her first cousin, John Peyton, the frontier had moved west. Texas beckoned like a siren – and eventually, the Peytons settled in San Felipe-on-the-Brazos, the de facto capitol of the American settlements in Texas. They would open an inn, and raise three children, before John died in 1834. She would continue running the inn in San Felipe on her own for another two years, until history intervened.

By 1835, times were changing for the Anglo-American settlers in Texas, who began to refer to themselves as Texians. Having been invited specifically to come and settle in the most distant and dangerous of Mexican territories, the authorities were at first generous and tolerant. Newly freed from the rule of Spain, Mexico had organized into a federation of states, and adopted a Constitution patterned after the U.S. Constitution. Liberal and forward-thinking Mexicans, as well as the Texian settlers confidently expected that Mexico would eventually become a nation very much resembling the United States. Unfortunately, Mexico became torn between two factions – the Centralists, top-down authoritarians, strictly conservative in the old European sense who believed in a strong central authority, ruling from Mexico City – and the Federalists, who were more classically liberal in the early 19th century sense, democratically inclined and backing a Mexico as a loose federation of states. In the mid 1830’s Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a leading Federalist hero, suddenly reversed course upon becoming president, essentially declaring himself dictator, and voided the Constitution. Rebellion against a suddenly-Centralist authority flared up across Mexico’s northern states and territories.

The Texian settlers, who had been accustomed to minding their own affairs, also went up in flames – overnight, and as it turned out, literally. Lopez de Santa Anna, at the head of a large and professionally officered army, methodically crushed those rebels within other Mexican states and turned his attention towards Texas in the spring of 1836. After the siege and fall of certain strong-points held by Texians and eager volunteers from the United States, Sam Houston, the one man who kept his head while all around him were becoming progressively more unglued, ordered that all the Anglo-Texian settlements be abandoned. All structures should be burnt and supplies that could not be carried along be destroyed, in order to deny them to Santa Anna’s advancing army. Houston commanded a relatively tiny force; for him, safety lay in movement rather than forting up, and in luring Santa Anna’s companies farther and farther into East Texas. This was done, with savage efficiency: as Houston gathered more volunteers to his armies, families evacuated their hard-won homes. Those established towns which were the heart of Anglo Texas were burned. For a little more than a month, the civilian refugees straggled east, towards the border with the United States, and some illusory safety. It was a miserable, rainy spring. San Felipe burned, either at Houston’s order, or by pursuing Mexicans; Angelina Peyton was now a homeless widow, trudging east with her family. Just when everything turned dark and hopeless, when it seemed sure that Sam Houston would never turn and fight, that the Lone Star had gone out for good; a miracle happened. Sam Houston’s ragged, ill-trained army did turn won a smashing victory – and better yet, they captured Lopez de Santa Anna. In return for his parole, he ceded Texas to the rebels. (Lopez de Santa Anna went back on that promise, but that’s another story.)

In the aftermath of the war, Angelina Peyton took her family to Columbia on the Brazos, which would for a time be the capitol of Texas. Late in 1836, she married again, to a widower named Jacob Eberly. Within three years, she and Jacob had moved to what was supposed to be the grand new capitol of Texas – Austin, on the banks of the Colorado River, on the western edge of the line of Anglo-Texas settlement, but square in the middle of the territory claimed by the new Republic of Texas. The place had been chosen by the new President of the Republic, Mirabeau Lamar. It was a beautiful, beautiful place, set on wooded hills above the river. Angelina and Jacob opened a boarding house – the Eberly House, catering to members of the new Legislature, and to those officers of Lamar’s administration. Everyone agreed that Austin had a fine and prosperous future: within the first year of being laid out, the population had gone from a handful of families to nearly 1,000. And the Eberly House was considered very fine: even Sam Houston, upon being elected President after Lamar, preferred living there, rather than the drafty and hastily-constructed presidential mansion. Angelina, now in her early forties, seemed tireless in her devotion to her business – and her community.

But still, disaster waited around every corner over the next years: Jacob died in 1841. In the following year, war with Mexico threatened again, and Sam Houston decreed that the legislature should meet . . . in Washington-on-the-Brazos. Not in Austin. It was too dangerous, and Houston had never been as enthusiastic about Austin as Lamar had been. Panic emptied Austin, as the population fell to around 200 souls. Government and private buildings stood empty, with leaves blowing in through empty rooms. A handful of die-hard residents carried on, hoping that when things calmed down, the Legislature would return, and meet there again. After all – the archives of the State of Texas were stored there, safely tucked up in the General Land Office Building. A committee of vigilance formed, to ensure that the records remained, after President Houston politely requested their removal to safety . . . in East Texas.

In the dead of night on December 29th, 1842, a party of men acting under Houston’s direction arrived, with orders to remove the archives – in secret and without shedding any blood. Unfortunately, they were rather noisy about loading the wagons. Angelina Eberly woke, looked out of a window and immediately realized what was going on. She ran outside, and fired off the six-pound cannon that the residents kept loaded with grapeshot in case of an Indian attack. The shot alerted the vigilance committee – and supposedly punched a hole in the side of the General Land Office Building. The men fled with three wagons full of documents, pursued within hours by the volunteers of the vigilance committee, who caught up with them the next day. The archives were returned – Sam Houston had specified no bloodshed; the following year, he was admonished by the Legislature for trying to relocate the capitol.

The Legislature would return to Austin in 1845 and after annexation by the United States, the state capitol would remain there. Angelina Eberly – who had fired the shot that ensured it would do so – moved her hotel business to the coast; to Indianola, the Queen City of the Gulf. She did not marry again, and ran a profitable and well-frequented hotel, until her death in 1860.

(Angelina Eberly will feature as a minor character in one of my upcoming books – and has served as a model for the character of Margaret Becker, in my soon-to-be-released novel “Daughter of Texas” – which is due out on April 21, 2011. This is the 175 anniversary of San Jacinto Day. Anyone who purchases a set of the “Adelsverein Trilogy” through my book website, or at a personal appearance in December will have their name put into a drawing for a free advance copy of “Daughter of Texas”. I’ll hold the drawing on New Years’ Day.)

05. December 2010 · Comments Off on Disorder in the Court: 9/11/1842 · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Strange but true – General Lopez de Santa Anna’s invasion of Texas in 1836 was not to be the last time that a Mexican Army crossed the border into Texas in full battle array – artillery, infantry, military band and all. Santa Anna may have been defeated at San Jacinto – but for the Napoleon of the west, that was only a temporary setback. In March of 1842 a brief raid by General Rafael Vasquez and some 400 soldiers made a lightening-fast dash over the Rio Grande, while another 150 soldiers struck at Goliad and Refugio. They met little resistance – and departed at speed before Texan forces could assemble and retaliate. All seemed to have quieted down by late summer, though: Texas had ratified a treaty with England, and the United States requesting that Texas suspend all hostilities with Mexico.

It seemed a good time to get on with urgent civic business, such as the meeting of the District Court in San Antonio. There had not been the opportunity to try civil cases for many years; the town was full of visitors who had come for the court session: officials, lawyers and litigants. Court opened on September 5th – but within days rumors were flying of another Mexican incursion. Such rumors were cheerfully dismissed – not soldiers, just bandits and marauders. Just in case, though, local surveyor John Coffee Hays – who already had a peerless reputation as a ranger and Indian fighter – was sent out to scout with five of his men. They saw nothing, having stayed on the established roads; unknown to them, one of Santa Anna’s favorite generals, a French soldier of fortune named Adrian Woll was approaching through the deserted country to the west of San Antonio, with a column of more than 1,500 soldiers – as well as a considerable assortment of cannon.

Under cover of a dense fog bank on the morning of September 11th, Woll’s army marched into San Antonio, with banners flying and a band playing. Having blocked off all escape routes, the General had a cannon fired to announce his presence. There was some sharp, but futile resistance, before surrender was negotiated. General Woll announced that he would have to take all Anglo-Texian men in San Antonio as prisoners of war; this included the judge, district attorney, assistant district attorney, court clerk, court interpreter, every member of the San Antonio Bar save one, and a handful of litigants and residents, to a total of fifty-five. They were kept prisoner – after five days they were told they must walk all the way to the Rio Grande, but they would then be released. Sometime during this period, the-then Mayor of San Antonio, John William Smith, managed to escape and send word of what had happened to the nearest town, Gonzales.

John Coffee Hays and his scouts had also managed to elude capture upon their return to town. The word went out across Texas for volunteers to assemble; two hundred came quickly from Gonzales and Seguin, led by Mathew “Old Paint” Caldwell, and fought a sharp skirmish on Salado Creek. A company of 53 volunteers recruited by Nicolas Mosby Dawson in LaGrange or along the road to join Caldwell’s volunteers along the Salado Creek north of San Antonio, ran into the rear-guard of Woll’s army, a large contingent of cavalry and a single cannon as they were withdrawing to San Antonio. Dawson’s company was surrounded; in the confusion of surrendering, firing broke out again. Only fifteen of Dawson’s company survived, to join with the San Antonio prisoners on their long walk towards the Rio Grande.

Once there the prisoners were informed that they would be taken into Mexico. Some were paroled and permitted to leave as a personal favor to the US Consul in Mexico City. Others escaped, but most of the San Antonio prisoners were kept for two years at hard labor in Perote Prison, in the state of Vera Cruz, until an armistice was signed between Mexico and Texas in March of 1844.

The site of the Dawson Massacre is marked by a granite monument, where the present-day Austin Highway crosses Salado Creek. The first case to be heard at that momentous court session was never settled; Dr. Shields Booker brought suit against the former mayor of San Antonio, Juan Seguin, for a payment of a 50-peso fee. Dr. Booker died in Perote Prison. The lawyer representing him, Samuel Maverick, was paroled after six months in Perote, and returned to Texas.

(This incident will feature in the book currently being written – as the man who will become my heroine’s second husband is one of those taken prisoner to Mexico. “Daughter of Texas”, the story of her first marriage and her various experiences during the Texas War for Independence will be released April 21, 2011 – although I am taking advance orders here, for delivery the week before.) And anyone who orders a set of the Adelsverein Trilogy through the website will have their name put in a drawing for a free copy of “Daughter of Texas.”

02. December 2010 · Comments Off on The Great Texas Pig War of 1841 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

The Pig War was not actually an honest-to-pete real shooting war. But it did involve a pair of international powers; the Republic of Texas, and the constitutional monarchy of France. And thereby hangs the story of a neighborhood squabble between a frontier innkeeper and a gentleman-dandy named Jean Pierre Isidore Dubois de Saligny who called himself the Comte de Saligny. He was the charge d’affaires, the representative of France to the Republic of Texas, arriving from a previous assignment the French Legation in Washington D.C. He had been instrumental in recommending that France extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, but one might be forgiven for thinking that some kind of 19th Century Peter Principle was at play . . . for Dubois turned out to be terribly undiplomatic.

Perhaps it was just the shock of arriving in the new capitol city of Austin, a ramble of hastily built frame shacks and log cabins scattered along a series of muddy streets along the scenic and wooded shores of the upper Colorado River; a city planned with great hopes and nothing but insane optimism to base them on. Dubois arrived with two French servants, including a chef, a very fine collection of wines, elegant furniture and household goods. Here was a man of culture and refinement, perhaps acclimated to America, but ill-unprepared for the raw crudities of the Texas frontier.

Initially, Dubois took rooms at the only hotel in town, a crude inn of roughly-finished logs owned by Richard Bullock, located at the present intersection of 6th and Capitol. In the days before cattle was king, pork was much more favored; Richard Bullock kept a herd of pigs – pigs which were allowed to roam freely, and eat what they could scavenge, along the muddy streets and in back of the frame buildings and log cabins set up to do the business of the Republic. Undaunted, Dubois, rented a small building nearby to use as an office and residence while a fine new legation was being built. He entertained in fine style – was most especially plagued by Bullock’s pigs, which constantly broke through the fence around his garden, and helped themselves to the corn intended for his horses. The pigs even broke into the house, and consumed a quantity of bedclothes and papers.

That was the last straw: Dubois instructed one of his servants to kill any pigs found on the property that he had rented, which was done. Richard Bullock, outraged, demanded payment for his loss, which was indignantly refused on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. The matter escalated when Bullock encountered Dubois’ swine-killing servant one day in the street and thrashed him. An official protest was filed, and a hearing ordered by the Texas Secretary of State – but citing international law, Dubois refused to attend or allow his servant to testify. Richard Bullock was freed on bail – and when Dubois complained bitterly to Republic authorities he was told that he could collect his passport and depart at any time.

He left in a huff, and stayed away for a year – never having had the chance to actually live in the elegant residence which he had commissioned to become the official legation; a white frame house on a hill which is presently the only remaining structure from those early days. Richard Bullock became the toast of the town, and his pigs were celebrities, for of course the story got around. The fracas also put an end to a generous loan from France, and plans to bring 8,000 French settlers to settle on Texas lands – as well as a military alliance that would allow stationing of French garrisons in Texas to protect them.

What would Texas have been like, one wonders – if Richard Bullock hadn’t let his pigs roam and the French Legate had thought to hire someone to build a better fence

18. November 2010 · Comments Off on The Next Book · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

All right then – for Proud Veteran and all the rest of my HF fans out there; the first chapter of the book after the next book – which got to be so substantial that I broke it into two parts. This is the first chapter of the book after the next – which will be out … well, about a year from now. No, I do not have a problem with writer’s block. Why do you ask?

Deep In the Heart: Chapter 1 – Widow’s Weeds

Early in the year of 1841, Margaret Becker Vining received condolence visits in the front parlor of the house she had long thought of as her own, since her father, Alois, had long yielded up the management of it to his formidable daughter. The front parlor was a room longer than wide, with tall windows on two sides, which allowed the winter sun to fill the room with the mellow golden light of afternoon. It was a plain room with clean and whitewashed walls, adorned with only the shelves of books that her late husband had prized, and yet set with comfortable chairs and a day-bed piled with pillow-cushions covered with blue and yellow patchwork. Margaret – tall and slender, with hair the color of ripe wheat done in a long braid wrapped coronet-wise around her head – was dressed in unrelieved black, the weeds of a new-made widow. Her first caller was likewise dressed all in somber black, but the color of deep mourning did not flatter her as well as it did Margaret.

“The Doc came to attend on Mr. Eberly in his final illness,” remarked Margaret’s visitor, by way of commencing her call, “And he told us you had received word that your man died in Boston. Sorry to hear of it, Miz Vining. He seemed like a real nice man. I reckon you miss him something turrible. Schoolteacher, was he?”

“Yes, Mrs. Eberly,” Margaret answered. “We had been married more than ten years.”

“I thought I recollect him from San Felipe, when he first started a school there.” Angelina Eberly sighed, reminiscently. She was dumpy, capable and shrewd, some twenty years older than Margaret, who rather liked her even though she was a rival of sorts in the business of keeping a boarding house in the tiny frontier capitol city of Texas. “My first husband and I, we had just started our place, too. Such a dashing feller, altogether too handsome to be teaching school . . . seemed to be a waste, that he didn’t have no ambition a’tall.”

“My husband only wanted to teach school,” Margaret answered, showing no sign of the grief and resentment that still burned deep within her heart, like the coals of a fire left to smolder overnight. “He came to Texas for his health. He had a weak chest and his doctors told him that for his own sake he must live in a warm climate.” Race Vining had also been escaping a loveless marriage. That was not an uncommon thing among those young men who had rushed into Texas in the mid-1820s, seeking adventure, land and their fortunes in those American colonies in Mexican territories, those settlements set up by entrepreneurs like Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt. Unfortunately, Race Vining had omitted to obtain a divorce from his well-born and well-connected Boston wife before engaging Margaret in marriage. Margaret had loved him well and borne him four sons during all adversities – adversities of war, invasion, sickness and separation – before inadvertently discovering the nature of his existing marriage. It was for the purpose of seeking a divorce, which had finally impelled Race Vining to make that arduous return journey to the East – and he had died of his old malady before achieving that end. Margaret had received a settlement from his horrified family back east, and not yet decided what she would do with it. Her husband’s family appeared to have brought forth only daughters – no sons to carry on their name! But the Texas frontier was far removed from Boston, and Margaret was determined to keep the embarrassment of Race Vining’s bigamy a secret from all, even her sons. She assumed that his Boston family was determined to do the same.

Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “Now I had just five years, with Captain Eberly . . . he was my second husband, o’course. I was married to Mr. Peyton for sixteen year a’fore that, but we had known each other all our lives, bein’ that we were cousins. Like to have broke my heart when he died, but still . . .” She sighed, gustily. “I just cain’t see that I’ll marry again, Miz Vining. I’m set in my ways, an’ accustomed to running my establishment as I see fit. When you’re young an’ pretty, it helps to have a man around the place, stand up for ye, remind the boarders an’ customers to keep a civil tongue. It don’ much matter when yer as old as I am, Miz Vining. Then ye can do as yer pleases.”

“I do not think I shall remarry.” Margaret answered – although the old black witch woman who had told Margaret her fortune on her twelfth birthday had promised that she would marry once for love and again for friendship. The utter humiliation of Race’s confession to her and the long silence after he had departed for Boston still hurt Margaret dreadfully. She had done with heartbreak, with lies told for love and for men who did things for convenience.

“A man about the place is handy to have, now and again,” Mrs. Eberly conceded generously, “And you’re young enough still – hain’t lost any of your looks – but as long as your old Pa is around, I don’t think you’d be too much bothered.”

“I do not think I could endure the sorrow of love regained and then the loss of it . . . but I have considered taking up weaving, like Penelope,” Margaret answered; Mrs. Eberly looked blank and Margaret stifled a small sigh. “The wife of Ulysses, plagued by unwanted suitors in his absence; she promised to marry when her weaving was done, but she picked out at night all she had accomplished during the day.” Having had the allusion explained to her, Mrs. Eberly laughed in frank amusement, which gratified Margaret. She was becoming rather tired of being treated as if she were made of spun glass, as if she would dissolve into a welter of tears if anyone so much as cracked a smile.

Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “All that Penelope woman would have needed was to have your Pa sit in the corner and glower at them. I can’t help thinking now that he’s a man who might have done good to marry again! It would have improved his temper, at any rate.”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Eberly – he took the loss of my mother so very hard,” Margaret replied. “And the death of my brother Rudi with Colonel Fannin at the Goliad . . . Pa has never been the same since. But then he was always a difficult man.” What Margaret would not say was that her father, Alois Becker, had always been proud and hot-tempered. He doted on the older of his two sons while scorning the younger, and quarreled frequently with men who might otherwise have been his friends. Only his wife, Margaret’s mother, had been able to soften his harsh nature into some pretense of amity with his fellows. Her death of the bloody flux during the terrible ‘runaway scrape’ had removed that effective governance on Alois Becker’s ill-temper. Margaret coped by serenely ignoring his occasional bitter outburst, reasoning that Pa was what he was, and paying any mind to him was a fruitless exercise. In any case, she had the house to manage and her sons to bring up properly. Now Mrs. Eberly looked ready to settle in for a good enjoyable gossip.

“Have you many gentleman guests, now? There’s been so much talk now, about Meskin bandits raiding over the Nueces – can you believe they have the nerve – that people are frightened about staying in Austin because of the danger. I’ve lost all my boarders but a handful! I can’t wait until the Legislature comes back to town, and fills up my rooms good and proper. General Sam, he’s staying for a few days, but if it weren’t for him and the missus, I might as well turn over the mattresses and lock the doors.”

“I can’t blame people for being frightened,” Margaret answered. “But I think it would take more than talk to drive me away. I know that it would! We left our home once before, I’d not be leaving again, and I know that my father wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but he was up here when it was still Waterloo, wasn’t he?” Mrs. Eberly fanned herself. “Then he’s accustomed to living out and away from everything. But I tell you straight enough, Miz Vining, we’d be in mortal danger of loosing our livelihood altogether, if General Sam has his way. He never liked having the Legislature meet all the way out here – it was President Lamar who was dead-set upon building a new capitol city, instead of meeting at Columbia or Washington-on-the-Brazos. I have to say that I much preferred Mr. Lamar. He was ever so much a real gent, always polite, never going on a spree!”

“I still have three boarders,” Margaret answered. “Mr. Hattersley the Englishman, Dr. Williamson . . . and Seamus O’Doyle, of course. He is contracted to build the French Legation. And that is still going ahead. I do not think General Sam would be able to move the capitol city away from here, even if he wanted to, now that he has been re-elected.”

“Truth to tell, he’s a canny man,” Mrs. Eberly answered, with an air of dark warning. “Who knows what he really has his mind set on? Myself, I think his wife has something to do with it. She wishes to be settled nearest her kinfolk; she tole me her sister and husband have a big plantation on the Trinity River. Take my word on it – she’s the one who doesn’t wish to be always traveling around, and living all the way out here! Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.”

“General Sam has married?” Margaret was startled. Now that she thought on it, she recalled there had been a bit of gossip floated at her supper-table last year, but as her guests were mostly men, they had very little interest in the marriage of a public figure like Sam Houston – or if they did, their remarks would have been prurient in nature and too unseemly to voice in Margaret’s presence. “I had heard mention of him courting a young lady whose family did not approve, but I thought there was an end to it.”

“No, Mrs. Vining – she defied them, and they went ahead with marrying – last May, it was. Who would have thought it? A little slip of a girl and that drunken old goat, even if he is the hero of San Jacinto, but they seem happy enough.”

“I am very glad for them, then,” Margaret replied with all honesty. “General Sam . . . always appeared to me as one who would be a most devoted husband. I think he is a man who likes the company of women as friends. When we had to leave Gonzales, during the war, General Sam gave orders that the Army wagons should be used to carry away the women . . . especially the widows of those Gonzales men who had gone to the Alamo. At that terrible time, he took the trouble to be kindly. He sat with Sue Dickinson as she told us of what had happened there, holding her hand and weeping openly. I have always had the most generous feelings towards him on that account.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Eberly began drawing her shawl closer around herself, and setting her bonnet at a rakish angle, preparatory to taking her leave, “Well, General Sam can be charming when he wants to be, I’ll give him that. But what he does and says when he has a few drinks – I’d not want to endure being married to him, knowing what I know of life and the didoes he kicked up in Tennessee and among the Cherokee. Well, I’ll be taking my leave now, Mrs. Vining. I just wanted to tell you again, how sorry I was to hear about Mr. Vining and all – leaving you with the boys and all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Eberly – I appreciate your consideration more than I can say,” Margaret clasped her visitor’s hands briefly, feeling that it really was very kind of Mrs. Eberly to take this time from her unending daily rounds of cooking, cleaning and overseeing the care of her guests.

“That’s all right, my dear,” Mrs. Eberly embraced her fondly, adding, “Now you hear any rumors from your gentlemen about moving the Legislature to anywhere else – you must promise to pass them on to me! A whisper of such doings will affect your business no less than mine, and not for the better.”

She walked with Mrs. Eberly to the front door, once again thinking how very kind everyone had been to her since hearing of Race Vining’s death. She was fortunate to have such friends. Well, that was one of the other things that the witch-woman had promised her; many friends and a large house, aside from the two husbands – but that very few of those friends would truly know her heart. These days, Margaret sometimes felt that she herself didn’t know it, either. She had mourned her husband and her marriage all of last year; now what she was doing was a pretense, a sop to proprieties. Just as she was emerging from the shadow of last year, like a butterfly from a chrysalis – she must make a quiet show of her grief because everyone expected it of her. She had just decided to go change out of her good black dress, and help Morag and Hetty with supper, when Morag put her head around the parlor door saying,

“Oh, Marm – it looks like there’s another visitor for ye; a trap just coming up to th’ door.” Morag was barely sixteen; she and her older sister Hetty worked in Margaret’s house, although Margaret valued them for their companionship almost more than the work that spared her, and gave time to spend with her sons . . . and to sit in the parlor of a winter afternoon and receive visitors. Really, Margaret thought with a pang of regret – Race would have been so proud of her. As she had seen to his needs and nursed him in sickness, he had schooled her in the social graces and in the contents of his books; he was an educated man, and had read widely.

“Is it anyone that you recognize?” Margaret asked, as she resettled the cushions that had been somewhat disarranged by Mrs. Eberly.

“Marm, I think it is General Houston,” Morag breathed, with eyes as wide as saucers. “And there is a lady with him.”

“Oh, my!” Margaret peeped out of one of the parlor’s long windows: yes, there was a trap drawn up on the wagon-way out in front, and her father holding the bridle of the horse that drew it, as General Sam, climbed down from the seat. General Sam exchanged remarks with her father – remarks which sounded casually friendly – or as friendly as anyone could ever be with Alois Becker. It looked as if Alois Becker was about to begin spring plowing, for the team of oxen stood patiently behind him. Then the General turned to hand down a young lady; a young lady in a fashionable dark purple dress and a bonnet whose beribboned brim hid her face. Margaret drew in her breath – at least Papa appeared to be in a good mood, for he was speaking to the General and his lady with a lessening of his usual sour expression.

“It is indeed – well, Mrs. Eberly said that he and his wife were in Austin . . . don’t bother with showing them in, Morag, I’ll meet them at the door.”

“You shall not, Marm,” Hetty popped her head out of the kitchen door as Margaret came from the parlor. “’Tis fitting that you should sit in the parlor an’ receive your guests there, so you should, for you are in mourning for the Young Sir.” Margaret could hear the men’s voices from outside, closer as General Sam approached the steps.

“Very well,” Margaret yielded. Morag was having so much fun, playing the part of a ‘proper maid’ as Hetty had called it, although neither one of the Moylan sisters had any idea of what that actually entailed, other than their long-dead mother’s stories of domestic service in a grand mansion in Ireland some three or four decades since. Margaret sat in the chair that had been her husband’s, her back straight and her hands folded in her lap, although she was aching to take up a piece of mending from the basket at her side.

“General and Mrs. Houston,” Morag announced from the parlor door, and Margaret rose from the chair. Before she had taken more than a few steps, General Sam was within the room, the force of his personality seeming to fill it entirely, at the expense of the woman in the fashionable purple dress clinging timidly to his arm. At once, the General enclosed Margaret’s hands in his, saying,

“Mrs. Vining, we had only just heard of your sad loss! What a tragedy that you would hear of it so late, and be unable to take some small crumbs of comfort in knowing that you ministered to him in his last hours. He must have longed for your loving presence as well.”

“He was with his family,” Margaret answered, suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed with the intensity of General Sam’s concern. He was a tall man, with craggy features and a lion’s mane of hair, and possessed of such personal vitality and energy that people were drawn towards him, like iron-filings to a magnet. His charm was of such a powerful nature that it convinced anyone who held his regard – for that moment – that they were the most important person and fascinating person in the world. “And . . . he had been so often ill, that I was in part prepared for the end.”

“None the less,” General Sam gave her hands a comforting squeeze, and without letting them go, turned to the lady at his side. “I can see that you would have grieved none-the-less, Mrs. Vining. My dear, may I present you to another Margaret? Her late husband, Mr. Vining was long-settled in Texas. He served as a scout all during our retreat to the East, and then in the line in the San Jacinto fight – a brave man and none nobler. I confess that I oft-envied him for the simple wealth of his possessions – his horse, his home and his family,” the General smiled impishly, “and his Margaret, as well – but then I found a very dear Margaret of my own.” He yielded Margaret’s hands and turned to the lady at his side, with a proud and fond expression, and Margaret thought – Oh, General Sam, what have you done? She looks hardly older than Morag and you are more than twice her age! The General’s Margaret was slender and very, very young, with tremulous dark eyes set in pale, regular features and lips that curved in a somber and rather hesitant smile. “May I present my wife, Margaret, to you?”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Vining.” Margaret Houston’s voice was low and gentle, like a dove – a dove that had been sipping southern honeysuckle, Margaret thought irreverently. “I think it is very sad to do so under the circumstances of a visit of condolence. But then my husband has made so many friends in Texas! I am always pleased to make their acquaintance for myself – but so many of them are men . . .”

“Being in politics and having been the general of an army, he can scarcely avoid that,” Margaret answered, and added the unspoken thought – Besides good friends, he has at least as many enemies and ill-wishers, too – while General Sam chuckled, and remarked, “Never been one for sitting around the drawing room, flirting with the ladies.” “Save now and again,” Margaret Houston added, she and the General exchanged look of wry fondness, as she continued, “But I shall be so very glad to make friends of my own in Texas – but that there are rather more men then women here!”

Margaret thought with some relief; Oh, good. She is not timid at all – merely reserved. Aloud, she said, “So many think of it as the far frontier, Mrs. Houston – a place more suited to men and dogs, than women and horses. I was so pleased to hear of your marriage from Mrs. Eberly. I have always thought that the General was one who well-deserved the reward of a loving marriage and a happy home – as loving and happy as my own with my husband was.”

“Thank you for your good wishes,” General Sam looked inordinately pleased; he and Margaret Houston exchanged another of those fond looks, “I think we’re off to a good start – even if it took a good long time to find my own dear Maggie Lea. A house of our own a-building …”

“I do envy yours,” Margaret Houston confided, as they sat down, “So many books – I had not expected to see so many in one house! Have you read them all, Mrs. Vining?”

Margaret restrained herself from saying snappishly, “Of course I have!” since she had heard this question from practically every visitor that she had Race Vining had entertained from their first days of marriage in Gonzales. Instead, she answered, “I have indeed – my late husband was a schoolteacher. He needed books the way most other men require food and drink. He guided my education himself, even after our marriage.”

“Marvelous,” Now Margaret Houston smiled a smile of genuine pleasure which brought out a pair of dimples. “May I examine your library, Mrs. Vining? I vow I have not seen such a wealth of books since my own schooldays at the Judson Female Institute!”

“Of course,” Margaret answered, and Margaret Lea Houston went to the bookshelves in a rustle of purple silk, just as the door of the parlor opened again.

“I’ve brought the boys to see General Houston, Marm,” Morag said, “For they wouldn’t give us any peace, knowing that he was within the house.”

Margaret’s three older sons stood slightly abashed within the parlor, each of their faces alight with hero-worship: ten year-old Horace, whose likeness and character was his father’s image, Johnny, who was seven and rather timid – and five-year old Jamie who wasn’t. Jamie was fair-haired and big for his age, a true Becker. He was as tall as Johnny and was as bold and brash as the man he had been named for, that James Bowie who had fallen in the Alamo siege, who had also been one of her husband’s good friends.

“Hello boys,” General Sam’s own face lit up, “I see you’ve brought your toy soldiers then,” for Jamie had an armful of his corn-husk toy soldiers. “What sort of game were you playing?”

“We weren’t, sir,” Horace answered with touching dignity, “We were doing chores with Opa, and Miss Hetty said you had come to pay respects on account of Papa.”

“Then I am very pleased to meet you, lad,” General Sam shook hands gravely with all three boys, even Johnny who looked as if he would like to go back to sucking his thumb again, “Your father was a gallant gentleman indeed. He was with us at San Jacinto – I am sure you have heard the story many times.”

“Oh, yes, but not from you, sir!” Jamie spoke up, and Horace answered,

“I saw you then, sir – Johnny and I did. Mama and our friends, we were camped in a wagon close to Harrisburg, and Papa and Opa were gone with Captain Smith. We saw the whole Army march by, and you on a white horse, and Mrs. Kimball and Mrs. Darst told us to look well and remember that we saw the Army of Texas on it’s way to do battle – but we did not see Papa then…”

“He was most likely on a proper scout,” General Sam rumbled, “Or flanking the column at a distance . . . here, let me show you…” In short order, he and the boys were down on the floor – the boys entranced as General Sam demonstrated the proper marching order across the rag-rug, with Jamie’s corn-husk soldiers and Johnny’s toy wooden horses. Margaret and Margaret Lea Houston exchanged amused glances.

“A good general,” Margaret remarked, “And very good with children. He took as good a care of his soldiers as if they were his sons – or so my husband said.”

“I know,” Margaret Lea knelt in a pool of whispering silk, to examine the gilt-lettered backs of the books on the lower shelves. “And I think to myself sometimes, Mrs. Vining, that it is unfair that he will then take such little care of himself, and share his deepest confidence with so very few. Yet he has been my teacher, as much as your husband was yours.”

“He is a great man,” Margaret said honestly, “Perhaps one of the greatest men in Texas. But not entirely without flaws – no man truly is. Even my husband had faults, and I confess that my father has many of them. I have come to think that a wife’s duty is to . . . either ameliorate such faults, or to encourage a husband to rise above them by bettering himself. ”

“I agree with you that the General . . . my husband,” Margaret Lea acknowledged, with earnest determination, “Is a great man – and that my task is to help him become greater still, as he is capable – but to do so humbly. For I do not think he would willingly accept a greater master, unless it was our Lord and Master of all.”

“You have done very well so far,” Margaret observed; really, she did very much like the General’s Margaret. For looking so sweet and shy, she had a spine of steel under that silk, and perhaps they were better matched than appeared so at first. “You have tamed a wily, scarred old tom-cat, the veteran of many battles who has run through at least three or four of his own lives – into being a tame puss who wants nothing more than a bowl of milk and to curl up on a soft cushion before the parlor fire.”

“You think?” Margaret Lea smiled sideways at her, “Oh, he is scarred – some of them dreadful, enough to break your heart to look at and think of the pain it costs him and still does – but he does have plenty of wildness left in him. You have not seen – and I pray you never do – the suit that he first wished to wear to be inaugurated in. All of green velveteen, with a hideous sort of flat Indian turban.”

“All of it?” Margaret asked in disbelief and Margaret Lea nodded. “Oh, what you have spared us, my dear!” and they laughed companionably over the books. Meanwhile, the boys and General Sam were down on their knees on the rag rug; the General demonstrating how the thin line attacked Santa Anna’s Mexican army at San Jacinto – a single rank of corn-husk soldiers, with Johnny’s horses to one side to represent the cavalry, and a pair of thread-spools from Margaret’s mending basket for the two cannon; cast in Cincinnati by a subscription among sympathizers to the cause of Texas freedom and sent at great expense down the river to New Orleans and by sea to Velasco. The afternoon passed with remarkable swiftness, so swift and pleasurable that Margaret was hardly aware of it, until a beaming Morag came into the parlor bearing a tray with a china coffee-pot and cups and plates, and a plate of fresh-baked bread and jam and butter. She brought another plate of it for the boys, who were immediately distracted from their recreation of the great battle by the prospect of something to eat. General Sam dusted off the knees of his trousers and joined his wife and Margaret at the table.

“Fine boys,” he said, with admiration and approval, “This was another reason and cause, my dear, to envy Horace Vining.”

“We shall have our own, in good time,” Margaret Lea answered, with serene confidence, “As they are given to us.”

General Sam took a healthy bite of bread and butter. “And clever, too,” he added. “The youngest – Jamie is it? Now, he is the bold lad; a born soldier, if I ever saw one – and I know the breed well, for I was such a one myself.”

“He is not the youngest,” Margaret said, “That is Peter – but he is only two years old. The saddest thing for me is that Peter was just a baby when my husband went back East. He will not remember his father at all. The other boys – oh, they recall him well and dearly. But Peter will have no recollection of him at all…”

“Save in the hearts of those who thought well of him, and continue to burnish his memory,” General Sam affirmed stoutly, “And will speak of him and his qualities to those who cannot remember at first hand. Dear Mrs. Vining – that is our history, the best and finest of our people – and we must recall them and their noble deeds to those lately born and still unborn! How can we remember what we are, and what we may yet be called to become, if we lack the example and inspiration of our forbearers? Raise your sons with the memory of their noble father and those of his deeds which are most valorous always on your lips.”

And leaving the memory of his most ignoble deed in my heart, Margaret thought. It was the General himself who counseled me in this, saying that scandal will eventually die when gossip has no purchase. He did not ask the reason for my distress, that day when he met me by the riverside, and I was weeping because I had just discovered that Race was married to another woman besides myself. He asked nothing, only listened, and advised that we settle it between ourselves, that it was no one’s business but our own. She met General Sam’s shrewd and sympathetic eye, and knew without a doubt that he also was also recollecting that day.

“Good lads,” General Sam remarked again, “For you, Mrs. Vining, they are an ornament better than any jewels, eh?”

“They are everything to me,” Margaret answered. “My daily care is to see that they are educated well, and take up a profession that their father would have approved. He did not own much property in Texas – only a small town-lot in Gonzales.”

“You should apply for a grant of land in your name, as the widow of a veteran,” The General suggested. Inwardly, Margaret cringed; she would have to file affidavits and statements regarding her status as her husband’s widow. She could not bear the thought of an investigation and what that might reveal.

“I will consider that, when the year is up,” she answered, calmly. “Truly, there is so much land that I fear it is not so much valued. If it were dear, I might value it altogether more. A good town-lot in a prosperous region – that is of more use to me than a thousand acres of wilderness, even if the land is rich and well-watered.”

“You should consider it applying in any case,” General Sam advised. “Even in quantities, land has a value – if not for yourself, then for the boys. It is a pity though – that you must be living so far out at the edge of our settlements, though. Have you never considered moving to a more settled part of Texas, to Galveston or to Harrisburg? Even to Bexar, perhaps.”

“I would not,” Margaret shook her head, “We lived in San Felipe for a time, and then Gonzales with my husband – but this is where we made our home and I have become so fond of it that I would never leave. And after the next Legislative session, I am planning to enlarge the house once again.”

“I fear that it will take a long time for this place to be truly secure,” General Sam answered, and for a moment, Margaret thought that a shadow passed over his face – and that he would say something more, but he did not.

They talked a little while longer, the casual companionable talk of friends, with Margaret realizing with some surprise that General Sam and his Margaret were both well on the way to becoming her friends, friends of the heart. At last, with the afternoon sun dropping low and touching the edges of the trees with gold and silvering the reaches of the distant Colorado, General Sam and his Margaret took their leave. They could not stay to supper, having a previous invitation, and Margaret saw them to the door, thanking them again for their company.

“I think this must be a notable occasion,” she confessed, “A consolation visit – and I have actually been consoled by your presence!”

“It was our profound pleasure,” General Sam answered, with a glint of amusement in his eyes, as he tipped his hat to her, and Margaret Lea’s smile once more revealed her dimples. The trap rolled away, down the long sweep of hillside, between the rows of Alois Becker’s treasured apple trees, with their bare branches holding up the swelling blossom buds to the sky.

Margaret straightened her shoulders, feeling at least a little guilty for having spent the afternoon in the parlor, when there was supper to be prepared. But oh – it had been so pleasant! She had spent the last year under a shadow, and now she felt as if she had come out of it, out into the sunshine again. There was only one small speck of disquiet in her mind – which she could not quite put her finger upon. Something in General Sam’s expression, when she had mentioned expanding the house, after the Legislature next met. He had looked . . . Margaret searched for a word, and could not find it – but his expression was so like Jamie’s, when he had been caught in some mischief and was considering an evasive answer. Yes, that was it; General Sam had some notion in mind, something he knew but did not want to say anything of. He was a man, as her husband had once acknowledged, who played his cards very close to his vest, taking no one into his confidence. And this very day, Mrs. Eberly had said something about rumors of the Legislature meeting elsewhere. Could General Sam – having been reelected as President – now change the capitol city of Texas once again? Just by ordering it? The thought made Margaret most uneasy; General Sam had never liked having the Legislature meet in Austin – too close to the frontier, too vulnerable to Comanche raids, or from Mexico. But she, and Mrs. Eberly, Seamus O’Doyle the carpenter, Mr. Cronican the printer, and so many others – they had invested, built businesses in the expectation of the town of Austin growing and growing well. Margaret frowned. This was something that she should have one of her ‘thinks’ about; one of those matters that she must contemplate quietly and at length.

As she turned to go back into the house, her father came around from the barn and stable-yard at the back of the house, a pair of his oxen clumping obediently after them; he had been at work all afternoon, plowing the first of the two cornfields he still kept in cultivation. He was scowling, as usual – a big man with thinning fair hair and an untidy beard, grubby and burned by the sun after a day working in the open.

“They gone yet?” he growled, in German – the language that Margaret and her brothers had grown up speaking. “If they had stayed much longer, I swear they would have spent the night.”

“Yes, they have just departed,” Margaret answered. Her father grunted – he sounded neither pleased nor unhappy, and Margaret asked, on impulse, “Papa – would you ever consider leaving this place, and taking up a plot of land elsewhere.”

“No, I would not,” he answered, gruffly. “This is where your mother and Rudi lived and were happy; not Mexicans, Indians nor your guests would ever make me leave the hearth that I built for them.”

“That is what I thought, Papa.” Margaret said. She closed the door behind her; Papa might have built the hearth, she thought, but I have made it into our home – and neither of us will ever leave.

31. October 2010 · Comments Off on Intersection · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

The Daughter Unit and I were in Fredericksburg on Thursday last, running various errands to do with the books – and one of the more enjoyable interludes was lunch (at Rather Sweet) with Kenn Knopp. He is the local historian – nay, rather a walking encyclopedia when it comes to all things doing with the German settlement of Fredericksburg and the Hill Country. He very kindly read the Trilogy in draft manuscript, searching for historical and linguistic inaccuracies, beginning it as sort of a grim duty and turning into an enthusiastic fan by the last page. I was very grateful to him for doing this, and continue being grateful since he has continued singing their praises.
When we had been in Fredericksburg the week before, for a book-club meeting, and an interesting conversation with another long-time resident, who told us that during WWII it was illegal to speak German in public, which is why use of that language – (almost universal in Gillespie County in the 19th century) was no longer common, save among the very elderly. I had always understood that it was WWI which had really put a stake in the heart of German being the common usage in schools, churches and newspapers in the US; the extreme xenophobia of that time had mellowed somewhat with regards to ethnic Germans by the 1940s. Not so, apparently – and we asked Kenn to confirm. Oh yes, he said – and related the tale of a newly ordained minister, who arrived in Fredericksburg in the early 40s – from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and could not speak English well enough to discuss theological and philosophical intricacies. He kept lapsing back into German, in spite of being repeatedly warned – and wound up interned in the Crystal City camp for those suspected of having enemy sympathies. The luckless pastor did not mind internment very much, according to Kenn; even though he did not have a speck of Nazi sympathies. He could practice his pastoral vocation to his hearts’ content, in the Crystal City camp. He had a captive congregation, in more ways than one.
And not to assume that everyone there was as innocent as the Swiss-German pastor; Kenn also told us of a contemporary of his mothers’ – who actually was a Nazi sympathizer, in the 1930s, and persisted in delusions that he could recruit like-minded sympathizers among the Fredericksburg locals – much to their embarrassment and dismay. And then when he fancied himself a spy and began trying to send information to Germany by short-wave . . . well, that was too much. The hapless would-be spy was turned in to the authorities, and sent to Crystal City.
And that reminded me of the story which I heard, when growing up in the Shadow Hills – Sunland suburbs of greater Los Angeles. Along Sunland Boulevard, which connected Sun Valley with Sunland, and wound through a narrow, steep-sided valley connecting the two, was a wonderful rustic old restaurant building. It was built in the Thirties, quaint beyond belief, and set about with terraces cut into the hillside, vine-grown pergolas, pavilions where you could sit outside and eat and drink, all connected with stone staircases and paths: it was called “Old Vienna” when I knew it – serving generically mittel-European cuisine. It was built originally as a restaurant and beer garden, and called Old Vienna Gardens – it still exists as the Villa Terraza (serving uninspired Italian cuisine, to judge from the restaurant reviews) – but it was always and still a landmark. But the legend was, that the family who built it (and their ornate family home on the tall hilltop behind it) were somehow associated with Nazi sympathizers – and they also were spying for the Third Reich. Only, their shortwave radio had an even shorter range, of approximately three and a half miles, and the local county sheriff’s department was listening attentively to every broadcast . . . so no one was ever arrested. At the time, I think they were more freaked out about Japanese spies, anyway. Just an amusing intersection of legends.

There were POW camps in Texas also – for German prisoners of war. The Daughter Unit and I wondered if there were ever any serious escape activity from them; hundreds and hundreds of miles from a neutral border, lots of desert and rough country . . . and a great many well-armed local citizens. It’s in the back of my mind that there were one or two successful escape runs by German POWs from camps in Canada and the US, but I’m thinking that generally there were too many obstacles in the way of a successful home run – like the whole Atlantic Ocean for one. (Note to self – exercise the google-fu and see what comes up.)

27. October 2010 · Comments Off on Border Incursion · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West, On The Border, War

Once there was a little town, a little oasis of civilization – as the early 20th century understood the term – in the deserts of New Mexico, a bare three miles from the international boarder. The town was named for Christopher Columbus – the nearest big town on the American side of the border with Mexico was the county seat of Deming, thirty miles or so to the north; half a day’s journey on horseback or in a Model T automobile in the desert country of the Southwest. It’s a mixed community of Anglo and Mexicans, some of whose families have been there nearly forever as the far West goes, eking out a living as ranchers and traders, never more than a population of about fifteen hundred. There’s a train station, a schoolhouse, a couple of general stores, a drug-store, some nice houses for the better-off Anglo residents, and a local newspaper – the Columbus Courier, where there is even a telephone switchboard. Although Columbus at this time is better than a decade and a half into the twentieth century, in most ways it looks back to the late 19th century, to the frontier, when men went armed as a matter of course. Although the Indian wars are thirty years over – no need to fear raids from Mimbreno and Jicarilla Apache, from the fearsome Geronimo, from Comanche and Kiowa, the Mexican and Anglo living in this place have long and bitter memories.

In this year of 1916, as a new and more horrible kind of war is being waged on the other side of the world, while a more present danger menaces the border; political unrest in Mexico has flamed into open civil war, once again. Once again, the fighting threatens to spill over the border; once again refugees from a war on one side of the border seek safety on the other, while those doing the fighting look for allies, supplies, arms. This has been going on for ten years. One man in particular, the revolutionary Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa had several good reasons for broadening the fight within Mexico to the other side of the border. Pancho Villa had (and still does) an enviable reputation as their champion among the poorest of the poor in Mexico, in spite of being a particularly ruthless killer. He also had been, at various times, a cattle rustler, bank robber, guerrilla fighter – and aspiring presidential candidate in the revolution that broke out following overthrow of more than three decades of dictatorship by Porfirio Diaz.

Once, he had counted on American support in his bid for the presidency of Mexico, but after bitter fighting his rival Carranza had been officially recognized by the American government – and Pancho Villa was enraged. The border was closed to him, as far as supplies and munitions were concerned. He began deliberately targeting Americans living and working along the border region, hoping to provoke a furious American reaction, and possibly even intervention in the still-simmering war in Northern Mexico. He believed that an American counter-strike against him would discredit Carranza. Such activities would renew support to his side, and revive his hopes for the presidency.

In this he may have been egged on by German interests, hoping to foment sufficient unrest along the border in order to keep the Americans from intervening in Europe. A US Army deployed along the Mexican border was a much more satisfactory situation to Germany than a US Army deployed along the Western Front along with the English and the French. Early in April, 1915, Brigadier General John “Black Jack” Pershing and an infantry brigade were deployed to Fort Bliss; by the next year, there was a garrison of about 600 soldiers stationed near Columbus, housed in flimsy quarters called Camp Furlong, although they were often deployed on patrols.

By March, 1916, Pancho Villa’s band was in desperate straits; short of shoes, beans and bullets. Something had to be done, both to re-supply his command – and to provoke a reaction from the Americans. The best place for both turned out to be . . . Columbus. After a decade of bitter civil war south of a border marked only with five slender strands of barbed-tire, that conflict was about to spill over. The US government, led by President Woodrow Wilson had laid down their bet on the apparent winner, Venustiano Carranza. Carranza’s sometime ally, now rival, Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa, who had once appeared to be a clear winner from north of the border – was cut off, from supplies and support, which now went to Carranza. Pancho Villa had been so admired for his military skills during the revolution which overthrew the Diaz dictatorship that he was invited personally to Fort Bliss in 1913 to meet with General Pershing. He appeared as himself in a handful of silent movies . . . but suddenly he was persona non grata north of the border, and one might be forgiven for wondering if Villa took it all as a personal insult; how much was the deliberate killing of Americans a calculation intended to produce a reaction, and how much was personal pique?

Villa and the last remnants of his army – about five-hundred, all told – were almost down to their last bean and bullet. In defeat, Villa’s men increasingly resembled bandits, rather than soldiers. The high desert of Sonora was all but empty of anything that could be used by the Villa’s foraging parties, having been pretty well looted, wrecked or expropriated previously. There were only a few struggling ranches and mining operations, from which very little in the way of supplies could be extracted, only a handful of American hostages – the wife of an American ranch manager, Maude Wright and a black American ranch hand known as Bunk Spencer. Some days later, on March 9, 1916, Villa’s column of horsemen departed from their camp and crossed the border into New Mexico. In the darkness before dawn, most residents and soldiers were asleep. At about 4:15, the Villistas stuck in two elements. Of those residents of Columbus awake at that hour, most were soldiers on guard, or Army cooks beginning preparations for breakfast, and the initial surprise was almost total. A few guards were surprised, knifed or clubbed to death – but a guard posted at the military headquarters challenged the shadowy intruders, and the first exchange of gunfire broke out – alerting townspeople and soldiers alike.

The aim of the well-organized Villistas was loot, of course – stocks of food, ammunition, clothing and boots from the civilian stores, and small arms, machine guns, mules and horses from the Army camp. To that end, Villa’s men first moved swiftly towards those general stores. Most of the structures in town and housing the garrison were wood-framed clapboard; in the dry climate, easy to set on fire, and even easier to break into, as well as offering practically no shelter from gunfire. But the citizens and soldiers quickly rallied – memories of frontier days were sufficiently fresh that most residents of Columbus kept arms and ammunition in their houses as a matter of course. Even the Army cooks defended themselves, with a kettle of boiling water, an ax used to cut kindling and a couple of shotguns used to hunt game for the soldiers.

Otherwise, most of the Army’s guns were secured in the armory, but a quick-thinking lieutenant, James Castleman, quickly rounded up about thirty soldiers who broke the locks in the armory and took to the field. Castleman had been alerted early on, having stepped out of his quarters to see what the ruckus was all about only to be shot at and narrowly missed by a Villista. Castleman, fortunately had his side-arm in hand, and returned fire. Another lieutenant, John Lucas, who commanded a machine-gun troop, set up his four 7-mm machine guns. The Villistas were caught in a cross-fire, silhouetted against the fiercely burning Commercial Hotel and the general stores. The fighting lasted about an hour and a half, with terribly one-sided results: eight soldiers and ten civilians, including a pregnant woman caught accidentally in the crossfire, against about a hundred of Villa’s raiding party. As the sun rose, Villa withdrew – allowing his two hostages to go free. He was pursued over the border by Major Frank Tompkins and two companies of cavalry, who harassed Villa’s rear-guard unmercifully, until a lack of ammunition and the realization they had chased Villa some fifteen miles into Mexico forced them to return.

Within a week, the outcry over Villa’s raid on Columbus would lead to the launching of a punitive expedition into Mexico, a force of 4,800 led by General Pershing – over the natural objections of the Carranza government. Pershing’s expedition would ultimately prove fruitless in it’s stated objective of capturing Pancho Villa and neutralizing his forces – however, it proved to be a useful experience for the US Army. Pershing’s force made heavy use of aerial reconnaissance, provided by the 1st Aero Squadron, flying Curtiss ‘Jenny’ biplanes, of long-range truck transport of supplies, and practice in tactics which would come in very handy, when America entered into WWI. Lt. Lucas would become a general and command troops on the Italian front in WWII. Lt. Castleman was decorated for valor, in organizing the defense of Columbus, and one of General Pershing’s aides on the Mexico expedition – then 2nd Lt. George Patton, would win his first promotion and be launched on a path to military glory.

Pancho Villa would, when the Revolution ended in 1920, settle down to the life of a rancher, on estates that he owned near Parral and Chihuahua. He would be assassinated in July, 1923; for what reason and by whom are still a matter of mystery and considerable debate.

We were off to Fredericksburg on Monday; Fredericksburg, Texas – a medium-sized town large enough to contain two HEB supermarkets, a Walmart, four RV parks and two museums, one of which[ the National Museum of the Pacific War – draws considerable tourist interest and a marvelous kitchenware shop which might very well be the best one in the state of Texas. (It certainly makes Williams  Sonoma look pretty feeble in comparison.) The town has begun to develop a little bit of suburban sprawl, but not excessively so. Most of the town is arranged along the original east-west axis of streets laid out by German immigrant surveyors in the mid-1840s, along a rise of land cradled between two creeks which fed into the Pedernales River. In a hundred and sixty years since then, houses and gardens spilled over Baron’s Creek and Town Creek. Log and fachwork houses were soon replaced by tall L-shaped houses of local stone, trimmed with modest amounts of Victorian fretwork lace, or frame and brick bungalows from every decade since. Main Street – which on either side of town turns into US Highway 290 – is still the main thoroughfare. A good few blocks of Main Street are lined with classic 19th century store-front buildings, or new construction built to match, storefronts with porches which overhang the sidewalk, and adorned with tubs of flowers and hanging baskets, with shops and restaurants and wine-tasting rooms catering to a substantial tourist trade. Fredericksburg is a lively place; and I have been visiting there frequently since I came to live in Texas.

I actually have a curious relationship with the place, having written a series of three historical novels about how it came to be founded and settled. Thanks to intensive research which involved reading practically every available scrap of nonfiction about the Hill Country and Fredericksburg written by historians and memoirists alike, I am in the curious position of knowing Fredericksburg at least as well as many long-time residents with a bent for local history do, and holding my own in discussions of such minutia as to how many people were killed in cold blood on Main Street. (Two, for those who count such things. It happened during the Civil War.) And for another, of having a mental map of 19th-century Fredericksburg laid over the present-day town, which makes for a slightly schizophrenic experience when I walk around the older parts. Eventually, I may have to do a sort of walking guide to significant locations, since so many readers have asked me exactly where did such-and-such an event take place, or where was Vati’s house on Market Square, and where in the valley of the Upper Guadalupe was the Becker ranch house?

Mike, the husband of one of Monday’s book-club members is a fan of the Trilogy, and although he couldn’t come to the meeting (being at work and all) he still wanted to meet me. He had actually contacted me through Facebook a couple of months ago, for a series of searching questions about where I had gotten some of the street names that I had used in the Trilogy; many of them are not the present-day names, but are what the original surveyors of Fredericksburg had laid out. I deduced that being stubborn and set in their ways, the old German residents would have gone on using those names, rather than the newer ones. After all,  when I grew up in LA, there were still old-timers who insisted on referring to MacArthur Park as Westlake Park, even though the name had been changed decades ago. So, the book club organizer gave me Mike’s work number at the Nimitz Foundation (which runs the Museum of the Pacific War) and said we should call and his assistant would get us on the schedule for that afternoon. It was my understanding that this gentleman was a retired general; OK, I thought – eh, another general, met ’em by the bag-full . . . matter of fact, there was a general even carried my B-4 bag, once –  (long story) but anyway, we had a block of time to meet Mike at his office and a lovely discussion we were having, too; he was full of questions over how much research I had done, and terribly complimentary on how well woven into the story.

Mike thought ever so highly about how I had made C.H. Nimitz, the grandfather of Admiral Chester Nimitz into such a strong and engaging character; although we had a discussion over how devoted a Confederate that C.H. Nimitz really was – probably not so much a Unionist as I made him seem to be, but I argued that C.H. was probably a lot more loyal to his local friends and community than he was to the Confederacy; so, nice discussion over that. It seems that the Mike was born and grew up in the area. He and his wife (who was German-born) had read the Trilogy, and loved it very much; they were even recommending it to everyone, and giving sets of it as presents. Well, that is way cool! I’m in regular touch with three or four fans doing just that; talking it up to friends, and giving copies as gifts. Local history buffs, or they know the Hill Country very well, they can’t wait to tell their friends about it; as Blondie says, I am building my fan base. So I had a question-packed half hour and a bit; me, answering the questions mostly, and Blondie backing me up. At the end of it as we were leaving, Blondie casually asked about a few relics on the sideboard, under an old photograph of C.H. Nimitz and Chester Nimitz as a very young junior officer; a very battered pair of glasses, and a covered Japanese rice bowl: they came from the tunnels on Iwo Jima. Blondie said. “Oh?” and raised her eyebrows. Yes, Mike had been allowed into the old Japanese tunnels; Rank hath it’s privileges – and Iwo is a shrine to Marines, after all.

After the book-club meeting – two hours, of talk and questions, and hardly a chance to nibble any of the traditional German finger-foods, an hour-long drive home, which seemed much longer. I fired up the computer and did a google-search, and found out the very coolest part. (Blondie had a suspicion, of course; being a Marine herself.) Mike was not just any general, but a Marine general, and commandant of the Marine Corps. How cool is that? One of my biggest fans is the former commandant of Marines, General Michael Hagee.

I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t know that, going in -“ I think we both would have been at least a little bit intimidated.

07. October 2010 · Comments Off on The West Texas Book & Music Festival · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

This five-day long celebration of books and music has been going on for a good few years; two weekends ago, I made the five-hour long drive from San Antonio to participate in the Hall of Texas Authors – for the second time. The Hall – that’s the main display room at the Abilene Convention Center, wherein local authors and a handful of publishers (some established and well known, some whom only hope to be established and well known at some future date) have a table-top display of their books on the last day of the festival. All during the week there are concerts, a medley of free and open events, readings and panel discussions. All of this has several stated intentions: to benefit the Abilene Public Library system and to support their programs, for one, to spotlight local and regional musical and authorial talent, for another, and for a third, to promote Abilene as a cultural Mecca and tourist destination. It isn’t New York or Las Vegas, by any stretch of the imagination yet, but that isn’t for lack of trying.

Abilene, you see, was established in the boom years of the Wild West: every element embedded in popular imagination about the Wild West was present there for one reason or another, from the classical wood-frame buildings, wooden-sidewalk and dusty streets visualization of a typical frontier town, the railways and occasional Indian warfare, to cattle drives and gunfights in the streets and saloons. (And the Butterfield Stage line, buffalo hunters, teamsters, traders and Army posts, too.) A lot of interesting stuff happened in and around Abilene, and a fair number of interesting people passed through town, or nearby. Many of these people are featured in a state-of the art museum called Frontier Texas, where there was a nice get-together for visiting authors, for volunteers and various members of the Abilene literary scene on Friday evening. I was especially interested in meeting one of the two big-name featured authors: Scott Zesch, whose book The Captured, was an account of white children kidnapped by Indians in raids on Hill Country settlements during and just after the Civil War. The story of his great-great-uncle, captured as a boy of ten or so, and eventually returned to his white family haunted me. Such a cruel thing, to loose a child, get the child back years later – and then to discover that the child has been lost to you for all time; I simply had to make that a plot twist in my own book. He’s from Mason, and from one of the old German families who settled the Hill Country. Anyway, interesting person to speak with, and listen to: he spoke briefly at that gathering and at the awards luncheon the following day. He is another of those completely convinced that a place like the frontier was so filled with interesting and heroic people, of fantastic events and things that seem too bizarre to be true (but are!) – and furthermore are almost unknown – that a writer can’t help but try and make a ripping good yarn out of them. The second featured writer had done just that, with creating a novel about a relatively unknown hero: Paulette Jiles, whose book The Color of Lightning was about Britt Johnson – supposedly one of the inspirations for the storyline of the movie The Searchers. It looks like Britt Johnson may get a movie in his own right, according to what Ms. Jiles said at the awards luncheon. The script for a movie based on Color of Lightning is in the works – all about how he went looking for his wife and children, taken by Indian raiders in 1864, and went back again and again, looking for other captives. He was, as Ms. Jiles said in her own remarks, very proper classical hero material: on a quest for something of great value to him, against considerable odds, blessed with a companion animal (his horse), good friends, and lashings of pluck and luck, so it is only fair that he get to be better known than in just dry-as-dust local historical circles. (Blondie and I inadvertently toured the Frontier Texas exhibits with her; just three of us and a hovering volunteer/docent. I didn’t recognize her – not being good at remembering faces. That is, I recognize people that I have seen before, but not always remember who they are or where I know them from.)
I sold a few sets of the Trilogy in the Author’s Hall the next day, and passed out a lot of fliers about my own books – including the one that’s due out in April, 2011 – but it’s not about sales, it’s more about getting out there and connecting with readers and potential readers.
And some darned nice BBQ, too – but that came later, from the Riverside Market in Boerne, on the way home. Only in Texas!

28. September 2010 · Comments Off on The West Texas Book & Music Festival · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Old West

This five-day long celebration of books and music has been going on for a good few years; this is the second time that I made the five-hour long drive from San Antonio to participate in the Hall of Texas Authors. The Hall – that’s the main display room at the Abilene Convention Center, wherein local authors and a handful of publishers (some established and well known, some whom only hope to be established and well known at some future date) have a table-top display of their books on the last day of the festival. All during the week there are concerts, a medley of free and open events, readings and panel discussions. All of this has several stated intentions: to benefit the Abilene Public Library system and to support their programs, for one, to spotlight local and regional musical and authorial talent, for another, and for a third, to promote Abilene as a cultural Mecca and tourist destination. It isn’t New York or Las Vegas, by any stretch of the imagination yet, but that isn’t for lack of trying.

Abilene, you see, was established in the boom years of the Wild West: every element embedded in popular imagination about the Wild West was present there for one reason or another, from the classical wood-frame buildings, wooden-sidewalk and dusty streets visualization of a typical frontier town, the railways and occasional Indian warfare, to cattle drives and gunfights in the streets and saloons. (And the Butterfield Stage line, buffalo hunters, teamsters, traders and Army posts, too.) A lot of interesting stuff happened in and around Abilene, and a fair number of interesting people passed through town, or nearby. Many of these people are featured in a state-of the art museum called Frontier Texas, where there was a nice get-together for visiting authors, for volunteers and various members of the Abilene literary scene on Friday evening. I was especially interested in meeting one of the two big-name featured authors: Scott Zesch, whose book The Captured, was an account of white children kidnapped by Indians in raids on Hill Country settlements during and just after the Civil War. The story of his great-great-uncle, captured as a boy of ten or so, and eventually returned to his white family haunted me. Such a cruel thing, to loose a child, get the child back years later – and then to discover that the child has been lost to you for all time; I simply had to make that a plot twist in my own book. He’s from Mason, and from one of the old German families who settled the Hill Country. Anyway, interesting person to speak with, and listen to: he spoke briefly at that gathering and at the awards luncheon the following day. He is another of those completely convinced that a place like the frontier was so filled with interesting and heroic people, of fantastic events and things that seem too bizarre to be true (but are!) – and furthermore are almost unknown – that a writer can’t help but try and make a ripping good yarn out of them.

The second featured writer had done just that, with creating a novel about a relatively unknown hero: Paulette Jiles, whose book The Color of Lightning was about Britt Johnson – supposedly one of the inspirations for the storyline of the movie The Searchers. It looks like Britt Johnson may get a movie in his own right, according to what Ms. Jiles said at the awards luncheon. The script for a movie based on Color of Lightning is in the works – all about how he went looking for his wife and children, taken by Indian raiders in 1864, and went back again and again, looking for other captives. He was, as Ms. Jiles said in her own remarks, very proper classical hero material: on a quest for something of great value to him, against considerable odds, blessed with a companion animal (his horse), good friends, and lashings of pluck and luck, so it is only fair that he get to be better known than in just dry-as-dust local historical circles. (The Daughter Unit and I inadvertently toured the Frontier Texas exhibits with her; just three of us and a hovering volunteer/docent. I didn’t recognize her – not being good at remembering faces. That is, I recognize people that I have seen before, but not always remember who they are or where I know them from.)

I sold a few sets of the Trilogy in the Author’s Hall the next day, and passed out a lot of fliers about my own books – including the one that’s due out in April, 2011 – but it’s not about sales, it’s more about getting out there and connecting with readers and potential readers.
And some darned nice BBQ, too – but that came later, from the Riverside Market in Boerne, on the way home. Only in Texas!

28. July 2010 · Comments Off on Chapter 13 – Following the Army · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

(Working title, “Gone to Texas” – final title – “Daughter of Texas”. Will be formally launched, April 21, 2011. Enjoy!)

Margaret slept long in the wagon. When she woke, the wagon was not moving, and speckles of sunlight danced over the outside of the wagon cover, for it was broad daylight: mid-morning, by the look of it slanting through the trees overhead, and the openings at the back and front of the wagon, where the cover had been loosened. Johnny and little Charlie Kimball slept curled next to her, as kittens sleep with their bodies pressed close to the mother cat, seeking comfort and reassurance. It was the noise which had awoken her; the noise of a man’s raised voice, and the irregular tramp of many footsteps attempting a regular rhythm and failing utterly – to the loud and profane exasperation of that voice shouting the cadence at them. The tail of the wagon was taken down, as she could see clearly, when she sat up – carefully, so as not to waken the children. She slid carefully across the tick where they had all lain, groaning faintly to herself at the aches in her legs, arms and shoulders, stepping carefully across the jumbled cargo in the wagon, towards where she could clamber down from the wagon-tail and look around.

They were at the edge of a wide meadow, dotted with majestic oak trees. Beyond the largest of them was the McClure house, one of those large and well-built log houses, surrounded by the outbuildings of a prosperous and well-established plantation – or at least, as well-established as one could have been, out on the far edge of the frontier. But the meadow was full of rough camp-sites, of pieces of canvas or blankets mounted on sticks, or wagons and horse-pickets and hasty campfires. Everywhere were men, men in hunting clothes, in rags of uniforms, patched coats or blankets around their shoulders. Twenty or thirty of them were at conscientious drill, marching back and forth across an open space, and going through the motions of loading and firing their muskets under the tutelage of a drillmaster who sounded ever more exasperated by the moment. Many more men slept in apparent utter exhaustion, sprawled out on the ground, with their heads resting on packs and haversacks. The sky was close-spotted with fair-sized clouds, heavy with rain, by the appearance of gray at their centers, but fair and sparkling white as cleaned cotton drifts around their edges. There were other wagons and carts scattered in rough campsites around the periphery of the main camp; other exhausted women moving listlessly around campfires preparing food, or fetching buckets of water from Peach Creek.

Close to the tail of Papa’s wagon, a small fire sent a sullen thread of smoke into the air; Mama and Pru huddled over it, on the bench taken from the wagon, and a seat made from a small half-empty cask of molasses. Little Horace was curled up in Mama’s comfortable lap, but Maggie Darst and her son were arguing in tense, low voices.

“. . . the Gen’ral is calling for volunteers!” Davy insisted. His face was pale, his voice resolute. His mother looked no less resolute.

“I forbid it!” she answered, her voice on the thin edge between reason and hysteria, “Davy, you are only fourteen! What did your father tell you, before he rode away with the company? You were to obey me, see to our property and lands . . . what are you thinking of, Davy?”

“What is Davy thinking of?” Margaret asked, in her calmest and most reasonable tone of voice, as she climbed down from the wagon-tail and settled her skirts around her.

“He wants to volunteer himself for General Houston’s army!” Cried Maggie – after her resolute calm of the night before, the agony plain in the tone of her voice and expression in her face took Margaret aback. “The General has called for all to join with him, to train and prepare to fight – and Davy will go, whether I permit or not, and I cannot bear it, M’grete – to loose a husband and a child is more than anyone should be called to endure! How dare you ask me to bear this, any of you – not least the General! Aren’t there enough fools in Texas already, must my only child be taken . . . “

“Ma, I’m not a child,” Davy answered, so stung with embarrassment that his face was primrose pink. “Gal and Will King – they weren’t all that older than me, and they went with the company…”

“Gal and Will are dead!” Maggie’s voice rose, “Foolish boy, they are dead, and their bodies burnt with all the others by Santa Anna’s order – think you that you would be somehow exempt from such a fate by the excuse of being merely young! Men die in battle, Davy – they die, no matter how old or how young, how well-favored or no, loved or no! They die, by shot or grape or bayonet – they die by chance and mischance, they die suddenly or after hours of agony, alone or among friends – they die!” Maggie’s near-hysterical voice carried – not a few heads of the volunteers at drill turned towards her in sudden distraction. Davy turned a deeper shade of crimson and Pru began weeping silently.

“Ma! Everyone can hear you!”

“I do not care if they can hear me or not, as long as you are listening to me, David Darst!”

“Ma, I will go to the General this minute and enlist,” Davy answered. His soft young boy-face had suddenly gone hard with completely adult determination, and at that, Maggie began sobbing anew. Davy picked up his coat, and put his hat on his head.

“Where are you going?” Margaret demanded through her tears, and Davy answered,

“To tell General Sam that I will do as my father would have allowed me!” and he set off, threading his way across the crowded meadow towards the McClure house, where a small group of men held purposeful counsel, standing or squatting on the ground under the shelter of that towering oak tree. Margaret recognized General Sam and Erastus Smith among them; so the General was holding conversation with his staff. The expressions on the faces they could yet see were grim and exhausted. The very manner in which they held themselves spoke of weariness and despair, but also something of resolution. Margaret cast a frantic eye around – Mama was simultaneously comforting the weeping Pru and the bewildered little Horace, for who raised voices among adults was an unusual and distressing thing.

“You will do no such thing!” Maggie shrieked, following after her son, and Margaret caught her arm.

“Maggie,” she counseled, even as she felt her heart sink, “Let me come with you – perhaps he will listen to me, or at any roads, we can talk to the General, explain the matter to him . . . he is a reasonable and kindly man…” Maggie made no answer, save for picking up her skirts so that she could walk a little faster. Davy had nearly reached the General and his consort of officers. Oh, dear – he was going to interrupt them, Margaret thought, and inwardly cringed, just as Maggie called her son’s name. General Sam turned, taking off his hat – a dark felt hat which Margaret noticed, had a brim quaintly turned up in three places, styled after the old-fashioned tricorn – as soon as he saw Margaret and Maggie hastening towards them. His face brightened in recognition of her, which Margaret found most gratifying. Davy had already blurted out his reason for approaching the General, and from the expressions on the faces of those around General Sam, they seemed either exasperated or amused. Oh, poor Davy, Margaret thought; he would be so humiliated – again, to be treated like a child. General Sam, though – and bless him for that, seemed inclined to treat it all as a serious matter and Davy worthy of being treated with as an adult.

“I am sorry for troubling you, sir!” Maggie gasped, entirely out of breath.

“It is no trouble,” General Sam answered, most courteously. “This young man has come in answer to an appeal to serve in my army . . . which is most appreciated – even though we usually prefer our soldiers to have a little more . . . er, seasoning to them. In our current straits, however – we aren’t inclined to be that particular. Mrs. Vining…” he nodded towards Margaret. “And Mrs. Darst, is it? Of Gonzales – I thought as much. Your grief is shared, Mrs. Darst, of that you have my assurance. Mrs. Vining was kind enough to tell me a little of the temper of those men who gave their lives in this noble cause. So now, this young man wishes to take up where his father set down his burden…”

“He is only fourteen!” Maggie cried, “I forbid it on that account!” and the General nodded, sympathetically.

“So I can see, ma’am. I can also see that he would not be the only one in my army . . . unseasoned to that degree.”

“He is an only child of a widowed mother,” Margaret pointed out, in a quiet voice, “His mother and I and another of our friends – Mrs. Kimball, also widowed at the Alamo – have only him of an age to be a help with our wagon and the oxen who pull it.”

“I see.” General Sam’s eyes narrowed, thoughtfully. “A moment, gentleman,” he added, in slight reproof of those of his officers who were shifting impatiently at this interruption. “This is a matter worthy of a moment of my attention, at the least. Every recruit gathering to our cause is a gain to me, of sorts…” He seemed lost in thought for a moment, regarding Davy and the two women, before he snapped his fingers. “See here, young Darst – you wish to join our army, serve under my command and the orders of those officers of your company, and to do so freely, upon careful consideration? You may swear openly and honestly to me that no one has made you do this?’

“I do,” Davy answered firmly. “No one has influenced me unduly, only the example of my father, and those men of valor who were his friends!”

“But you are indeed only fourteen years of age?” General Sam asked, and when Davy nodded and Maggie said,

“He will be fifteen in five months, on August the third – and who would know better than his mother?”

“Well then,” General Sam answered, “I shall accept your enlistment, Private David Darst, but on one condition – you shall serve on a special detached service, under the command of Captain Smith, until such time as we cross the Colorado River, or to some other point when I or Captain Smith shall convey other orders to you…”

“Thank you, General Houston, sir!” Davy’s face was alive with worship and gratitude, but Maggie cried out, a sharp keening wail of unbearable distress, and Margaret held her as she seemed about to crumple to the ground.

“Not so fast, Private Darst,” General Sam continued, “Until you hear my orders and conditions. You are yet so very young – and my army is not yet in such deep need as to recruit children from their mothers’ arms and throw them before the enemies’ cannon – indeed, not even well-grown and eager lads of fourteen and fifteen or so. I make an exception for you, in honor of your father, so hear me out,” and General Sam’s voice turned gentle and grave. “The safety and security of all the citizens of Texas is a matter of deep concern to me – why do you think that we burned our tents, dumped our cannons and such of our supplies which we could not carry into the river, so that we might safely evacuate the women and children of Gonzales? We will take as many of them in those wagons as we had to us . . . aye, and there will be more, many more, as the word of our retreat to the Colorado is passed. Darst – you will serve me well in this respect – stay with Mrs. Vining’s wagon as we retreat to the east bank of the Colorado, and make yourself of use to other civilian refugees. I know there will be other civilians fleeing their homes. We must aid to them as we may. You must reassure them, bring to bear your best efforts and rendering aid. Your efforts would bring honor upon the Army of Texas, and my name as commander. Can you do that for me, for the good of Texas?”

“That I can, sir,” Davy replied, somewhat crestfallen, as he realized the full import of Houston’s words.

“Good,” General Sam answered, and as Davy hesitated, he added, “Now, as your duties with the refugee train permit, and assuming that our camp and yours are co-located, you are tasked with attending regular drill with Captain Smith’s company – or whoever else may be practicing the Manual of Arms in my camp. We will be departing from here within the hour, and our next camp will be on the Lavaca River, tonight. You will make your way there, with Mrs. Vining and your mother and any such others as require your assistance. You will take any further orders from Captain Smith. If you do not have a musket or a rifle and the proper gear, you will be issued such, as soon as we refresh our armory. You are dismissed, Private Darst.”

“Sir . . .” Davy sketched a hesitant and wavering salute, at which General Sam nodded, with something of an amused expression on his face. “Thank you, sir.”

“Be fair to him,” Margaret whispered to Maggie, whose face was wet with tears, as they walked away from the tiny huddle of the general and his officers, below the veranda of the McClure house. “For General Sam has done a very wise and proper judgment of Solomon – he has accepted Davy into his army and salved his feelings, and yet has kept him with you, as safe as any of us might be!”

“He is a child!” Maggie whispered, “The veriest child!”

“No,” Margaret shook her head, suddenly feeling terribly wise, “In these times – not a child. My own little brother is only a year or so older, and he is with Colonel Fannin’s company at La Bahia. Our boy-children are not torn from our arms, Maggie – they go willingly, wishing to be counted as men. And to be a man, a gentle perfect knight – oh, Maggie, that is a commendable thing to be, and that is what our sons long to become! How can they not, when there are so many splendid examples around them, to emulate and follow! Allow Davy to drill with the company, let him think that he has had his way in this . . . and think on a way to thank the General.” She put her arm around Maggie then, for comfort. “We must be as good friends as we can, to each other, Maggie – for in this present emergency, the comfort of loyalty of friends is all that we have . . . oh, see – look at that, my dear Maggie, they have managed to find Mary and the children!”

For there was an ancient one-horse Mexican cart, with solid wheels, creaking slowly into the camp, under the escort of a handful of horsemen lead by David Kent, whose face was beaming with triumph and exhaustion. Mary and her children sat in the cart, on the top of a pile of straw and bedding. Margaret and Maggie ran towards them, Margaret exclaiming,

“Oh, my dear! Where were you all this time – Mr. Kent came looking among the wagons for you last night, but we truly did not believe you had been forgotten!”

“Margaret?” Mary’s face lit with her lovely smile. “I am afraid that we were – but it was no one’s fault but our own, for we thought that we should leave the house and hide in the thickets, and everyone thought we were with someone else. Where are we, now?”

“At the McClures, on Peach Creek,” Maggie reached up and embraced Mary, as her older children helped her down to the ground “Thank the Lord that Mr. Kent began to wonder, upon seeing that you were nowhere to be found.”

“Alas, we hid in the woods, taking nothing but a few blankets for the children,” Mary answered, “These men, they were kind enough to find this cart, and round up a horse to pull it . . . I think the horse is one of Kent’s. We are so many and the cart so heavy that we must walk as much as possible to spare the poor thing. Is it true that Santa Anna’s army is just behind us?”

“Perhaps not just behind,” Margaret answered, “We may have a little respite, before we move on. Come – share a little of our breakfast with us. My father had left us his wagon, and so we were able to bring away a little more. But the Army is supposed to march within the hour, so we may not linger over it.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, with gratitude, and her sightless eyes seemed to look out across the camp, with tears welling up in them. “Oh, dear – I wonder where we shall sleep tonight, or next week. How rapidly our lives have changed, between one hour and the next. My husband gone from us, and never even being allowed a proper grave by that hateful man! All of our towns and farms emptied out, falling back to the Colorado, or so said Mr. Kent. Whatever will happen next, I wonder?”

“I shall think no farther on than the next day,” Margaret answered, resolutely lifting her chin and taking Mary’s hand to guide her. “And follow the Army as closely as we can.”

Even as she and Mama hastily cooked more mush, for the Millsap children, the soldiers were forming into companies, kicking their friends awake, and lining up in ragged ranks. Seeing this, a worried and uneasy murmur arose from the women and their children, as they watched this. Unbidden, Davy and the eldest of the Millsap boys began hitching up the oxen to Margaret’s wagon.

“We dare not fall behind,” Maggie began sorting out those few things they had brought from the wagon. There were deep worry-lines scored around her eyes. “We have no protection, otherwise – from Indians or Santa Anna. Is there such a thing as a pistol or a musket among us? Or did all of these things go with our men, leaving us truly defenseless?”

“I believe so,” Margaret answered, with grim honesty. Maggie was strong, brave and practical. Mama still seemed stunned by the suddenness of it all, adrift in a frightening world, without the strong anchor of Papa and the boys. “Although there is a hatchet in Papa’s box of tools. And several sharp knives among the kitchen things.”

“Jacob left his old hunting knife, when he went with the Company,” Maggie said, with an air of something just remembered, “I thought Davy should have it, but maybe I shall ask for it back again for a time – a knife such as Colonel Bowie was famous for. It never kept a sharpened edge for long, though – which is why my husband did not favor it so much.”

“Better than nothing at all,” Margaret said, as Davy brought up the second ox team. She nodded at him, adding to Maggie, “You should compliment him, on being so brisk and prompt with the oxen. General Sam has done very well, reposing such trust in him.”

“Aye, so I should,” Maggie answered, but she still looked terribly worried. So far to go today, after the journey of the night before – and they only had been able to rest three hours or so! Every foot set one before the other took them farther away from Santa Anna’s vengeful army – and closer to safety, over the Colorado. Margaret looked at the clouds beginning to lower overhead, as if it was considering a good heavy rain. Where, she wondered, was Race? He had been sent to Mina two days before – surely he must be on his way back by now, and he must know that the army was falling back, that General Sam had decided to abandon Gonzales and all west of the Colorado. How worried he must be, at this juncture. Margaret considered this, as she and Mama finished re-packing the wagon. Race would have known that the army was going to retreat to the Colorado, so he must also know that the civilians would be going with them. So, he would be looking for her and the boys wherever the army was. Another good reason to follow the army close, Margaret told herself. Oh, she was tired and aching still from last night’s journey – but Race would come looking for them within a day or so, and she would tell him triumphantly that she had saved his precious library, burying it in a tin trunk under Maggie Darst’s red-bud tree. Of course – they would have to return to Gonzales, somehow. Again, Margaret put that thought aside. She could do nothing now, save follow the army doggedly, taking Mama, Maggie, Pru, and Mary and all their children with her. A return to home – or to the place where home had been, was as far away now, as the far side of the moon.

It was a ragged and desperate little train of wagons and carts following the army’s baggage wagons and ammunition limbers out of their stopping place at the McClures.’ A straggle of women and children walked bravely among them, for everyone wished to spare the team animals as much as possible. Hers was nearly the first wagon ready, among the civilians, Davy Darst striding out manfully next to the lead ox-team. The cart which had carried Mary and the Millsap children followed after, although the horse drawing it was in such poor condition that Mary also walked, led by her oldest daughter. Margaret took the younger children into her wagon, with Mama and Pru. At the last minute, place in the cart was given to Sarah Eggleston, who was the much younger sister of Andrew Ponton. She was hugely pregnant with her first child, although barely older than Davy Darst, and grimaced painfully every time the solid wheels went over another bump in the road. Margaret set her face towards the east, inwardly pleading with God not to allow Pru and Sarah to have their children by the side of the road. They must win this war somehow, Margaret told herself – they must find a way to win it, rather than be homeless vagabonds, without homes or a safe place to lay their heads. Maggie found a piece of a canvas tent, abandoned in the trash left by the army; she and Margaret walked on either side of the cart, holding it over Sarah so that she might have a little shade. Even as they walked down the road east, the McClures were packing their own wagon to leave.

And so they marched, falling behind the marching column of Sam Houston’s army, yet stubbornly following as fast as they could force their own faltering feet, and those of their tired and poor-conditioned team animals. Margaret and Maggie walked together, all that long and wearying day. They dared not take time to rest, for then they might fall behind. Now and again, they saw columns of grey and black smoke rising on the horizon – the clear signs of other homes and farmsteads put to the torch – and another straggle of women and children come to join them, with carts and wagons hap-hazardly packed and hitched to winter-thin and scraggly animals. Panic was in the air, the smell of it stronger than that of the trampled grass, or the scent of rain borne on the light wind, a rain that soon pelted down upon them, in ice-cold drops. Their feet sank to the ankles in the churned mud – and yet they had to plod onward, ducking their faces against the driving rain. Think no farther than the next camp, Margaret told herself, think of no other effort than to put one foot in front of the other, for ahead lay safety and behind only peril.

With some difficulty, the civilians’ carts and wagons were brought across Rocky Creek, and then through the ford on the Navadad River, although because of the recent rain, the water ran high in both of them. Margaret and Maggie were soaked to the waist, walking after the wagon, and holding onto the tail to steady themselves against the ice-cold river current as they followed after. The sole of one of Maggie’s shoes began to tear loose, through constant soaking and abrasion against the rocks. With Isaac’s second-best hunting knife, Maggie cut a length of fabric from the top of a half-empty grain-sack and bound it tightly around her foot. As the march continued, it did not seem to help Maggie all that much.

“If it weren’t for the cold, and the roughness of the road, I think I would be better served by going barefoot!” Maggie lamented to Margaret, who added up that one small thing to her store of matters to worry herself about. The Millsap children were without shoes, having tied pieces of blanket around their feet to spare them from the cold. Mama had no proper shoes, only a pair of Indian rawhide moccasins, and Margaret feared that her own shoes might not last very much longer than Maggie’s, under the hard wearing of this trek.

The first elements of that straggling train of refugees reached the camp on the Navadad around sunset. Margaret and her party were among them. Margaret felt as tired as she ever had after giving birth – yet, in this present emergency, she could not just rest, exhausted in the bed and triumphantly admire the new child, before going to sleep. Now she must see to finding a campsite for her wagon, and for the clumsy cart which carried Sarah Eggleston, sort out forage for Papa’s oxen and the spavined horse with drew the cart, see to comforting Maggie, and Sarah and Mama, mop up Pru’s exhausted tears, assure Davy of his manly competence, sooth the Millsap children and reassure their mother. It was all too much – and when would it ever end? And why had it all fallen to her? Margaret raged briefly and inwardly at that unfairness, and then took up her work. For who else would take up the burden what had fallen to her? The progress of a pilgrim, for sure – to do what seemed to be needful, take up the responsibility. In the end, she would be judged, and by more than just her friends. Rebellion against fate would not water the horse, pasture the oxen, feed the children and comfort those of her friends, who labored under their own burden of grief and fear.

They could not rest here for more than one night – in the morning they would be gone again, in the trail of the army, wading through the mud. But for now, as soon as she came from the river-edge with the older children, bearing a few buckets of water, there was a good fire burning, a fire which had burned down to incandescent coals, which could be cooked over – and a pair of ragged young soldiers, bashfully adding to a pile of wood stacked nearby. Margaret set down the buckets – there was the wagon-bench, taken from the wagon, with Mama holding Johnnie in her lap.

“We thought we should perform this kindness for you, ma’am,” said the tallest of them, who spoke with the clipped accent of New England. “Seeing that you ladies are in such need . . . “

“Our sergeant said,” added the other, in a soft Carolina burr, “That some of you were widowed by the action at the Alamo . . . an’ this is the mos’ kindness that we can do, ma’am . . . an’ ma’am . . . an’ ma’am,” he nodded politely at Maggie, at Pru and Mary, “It is no’ so much as we would wish to do . . . but it is as much as we can do.”

“And we are grateful,” Maggie Darst replied gruffly, as if she feared that her voice would break with emotion. “For any consideration, no matter how small – it is substantial to us, in our present reduced circumstances.”

“Aw, no ma’am,” replied the southern soldier, in some distress, “It weren’t no trouble at all – as soon as we reach the Coloradda – we shall turn and fight! You’ll see, ma’am . . . an’ ma’am . . . an’ ma’am! We’ll throw Santy Anna, an’ all of his lot clean out, you jist wait an’ see – we’ll have a right good revenge on ‘em, for what they have done, just you trust Cap’n Pitcher’s boys for that!”

“So we all hope, very much,” Margaret answered, as the two soldiers dropped the last armload of wood and bid the women goodnight. Darkness was falling – she was vividly reminded of that first night in Texas, the evening of her twelfth birthday, watching the sparks fly up into the sky, while she held her little brother in her lap and Mama busied herself, cooking supper over a fire.

“They brought us some fresh beef,” Maggie Darst said, “For they have slaughtered some beeves to feed the army, and say that we shall not go hungry, ourselves. Oh, what I would have given, that we thought to bring along some of our own hogs . . . wandering in the woods they were, and not enough time to round them up.”

“They’ll be there for you when we return,” Margaret answered, “and all the fatter for eating acorns and things in the woods. Tonight, leave a pot of beans to soak in the coals, as the fire burns down . . . “

“Ah, I remember well that old trick,” Maggie laughed a little, lamenting. “Molasses on pone for the children . . . oh, all the things that we would have brought, had we the time!”

“We will be home, in a while,” Margaret insisted, firmly. The other women had been reassured; their hopes revived a little, by the consideration of those two soldiers, the gift of a warm fire and some meat for their supper. She must put on the brave face for them now, Margaret realized. She must never show doubt or fear, even if she felt such, she must not share them. How very lonely that would be, to be always seeming brave and able . . . how had it come about that she seemed to be their leader, to feel the responsibility for them all – for Mama, and Maggie, for Pru and Sarah and their children? How very lonely that was, but this was a burden once taken up, could not be put down! She wondered briefly if General Sam felt that kind of loneliness. She raised her eyes and looking beyond their campfire, saw a party of men on horseback, with three men a little in the lead, riding towards them and towards the army’s main camp, which was a little beyond theirs. It was almost to dark to see them clear, but one of the leaders’ horses looked like Bucephalus . . . and if so . . . Margaret’s heart lifted, almost painfully. She ran towards him, crying out his name – for it was indeed he, and the other two with him were also friends and acquaintances – Erastus Smith, and Juan Seguin. All three men looked tired to death and very weary, but somehow exultant, in spite of it all. Race slid down from Bucephalus’ saddle, and caught her in his arms, a fierce and hard embrace, saying,

“Thank the gods, you are safe . . . I carried the orders to Mina, and the message that General Sam was evacuating Gonzales . . . but I did not know what the message was until I had arrived. I prayed every moment that you and Mother Becker and the boys were safely away, Daisy-mine, I was in torment until this very moment!”

“We are safe enough, my dear love,” Margaret whispered, in answer, seeing that Erastus Smith was looking away from them with somewhat of an embarrassed expression, while Juan observed with frank approval. “With Papa’s wagon, and Mama and Maggie and Davy to help – we had enough time to bring the barest of what we needed, and to offer assistance to Maggie and Pru. I could not bring your books, dearest . . . but they are safely buried,” she added, seeing a fleeting look of anguish in his face, as she said those words, an emotion as quenched as quickly as it had arisen, “I put them in the tin trunk, and Davy helped me bury it under the red-bud tree before Maggie’s house . . . you know, where the boys had hollowed out a den to hide, and play soldiers in?”

“Providential, indeed,” and Race, with a catch in his voice, and embraced her again. “Daisy-mine, you are a woman whose price is above rubies . . . my books are dear to me, but you and the boys are a treasure above any price . . . but still – I am scholar enough to appreciate that you have taken care with them all.”

“You know about the Alamo then . . . and the fate of our friends.” Margaret ventured, with a catch in her throat, and Race nodded. Grief darkened his voice.

“Aye . . . Erastus told me. I wish I could say that it came as a surprise to me, Daisy-mine, but it did not. Esteban and Jim Bowie . . . Isaac and Almaron . . . the boys . . . ‘tis a pagan thing to say, but the smoke of their burning upon a pyre . . . it has lit a fire for all to see, a signal rising up to heaven, of a worthy sacrifice …” Juan Seguin snorted in disgust, hearing this. He dismounted, as easily as a bird swooping from branch to ground, and still holding the reins of his horse in one hand took Margaret’s hand with the other and gallantly kissed it.

“Lopez de Santa Anna – he is a hypocrite and a fraud, as I have said may times to you and to my poor deluded cousin Diego, more times than there are leaves on that tree! For Esteban, for Senor Jaime and the others . . . oh, they will have honor and a proper resting place. I have taken a vow, Senora Vining, a vow on my own blood and honor as a gentleman to see that this is so – but first, we shall cram the mouth of Lopez de Santa Anna with those ashes of those he has cruelly slain and denied proper burial. And then,” he concluded jauntily, but his smile was edged with sharp bitterness, “we shall make a tall mound – a mound built of his head and the heads of those centralistas he has brought with him. My dear friend, you have no idea of how to begin being a pagan! Me, and my men, we shall show you, eh?”

“And this is the man who insists that he is a proper Catholic,” Race laughed, an attempt to seem light, as Erastus Smith also dismounted, somewhat less gracefully than Juan. Erastus also took her hand, briefly and saying,

“Miz Vining – you are also prepared and fitten’ to move on tomorrow? I fear that speed is of the essence, in our current circumstance. The Army, such as it is, must find safety behind one river or another. Colonel Fannin’s garrison would double the amount of soldiers at General Sam’s disposal, as soon as he and they present themselves. Until then, we are not . . .” he looked earnestly, deep into her eyes, “entirely safe and secure from Santy-Anna’s army. Sorry I am to say this to you, Miz Vining – but we are not, and I will not tell you comforting lies to imply that such is not the case.”

“I see,” Margaret straightened her shoulders. She was thought worthy of confidence by these men – so she must now bear herself as a woman of courage and consequence. “I had no other plan in mind, than to follow the Army to east of the Colorado. If there is any other to be considered, then tell me of it now – and I shall tell the other women accordingly.”

“That will do, excellently, ma’am,” Erastus Smith answered – and Margaret thought that he did so with a certain amount of relief.

“So,” she answered, “May you now tell me of what matters you have been about? I cannot tell lies, or make up some cheerful story for the other women . . . how stands our current situation, husband . . . Mr. Smith, Senor Seguin? I must know, so that I might have something honest, to answer to the other women. You cannot know how desperate they are, how devoid of hope we are in our present circumstance – we are turned out of our homes, how many of us are near to starving, widowed, and without any place in the world, shoeless and dependent upon the charity of our fellow refugees and the Army! We must have some kind of hope to cling to, in our present poor condition – how close is the menace of Santa Anna’s army – for that is almost our worst fear!”

“As best we can, ma’am,” Erastus turned the brim of his hat over, and over in his hands, “We are doing the bestest that we can,” while Juan Seguin replied gallantly,

“You should have little fear, Senora Vining – my company of vaqueros and Bejarenos has been set in place as a rear guard – to follow behind and see that none straggles. There is no sign yet of close pursuit from that devil Lopez de Santa Anna, but he has sworn openly to drive all the Americanos from Tejas . . . so,” Juan Seguin shrugged, lifting his hands in a typical Mexican gesture. “We expect that he will bestir himself from contemplating his great victory. You are safe tonight, senora, and perhaps safe for a little tomorrow and the day after, but until we reach the Colorado . . .” he finished with one of those eloquent shrugs, and Erastus Smith finished,

“ . . . and meet up with Fannin’s company, and gather to us more volunteers . . . stay with the army, Miz Vining.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Margaret recovered something of her composure. Under cover of their farewells, Race whispered into her ear,

“I am detailed away with the scouts, Daisy-mine, but I am certain that I will be permitted to spend a few hours with my family! I will return in a little while…”

“ ‘ . . . And with a stronger faith embrace a sword, a horse, a shield.” Margaret quoted, and he smiled, the quick wry smile that she so loved to see.

“Devious Daisy, quoting poetry at me . . . I shall treasure every hour of your company, and especially relish it at such times.” Margaret, thinking of Maggie and Isaac and what Maggie had said, of loving words, answered,

“Never forget that I love you always.”
“Nor I,” he said, and wheeling Bucephalus, was gone into the twilight after the others.