arrived, but since then I have fixed the tables in my head fairly well.
A vara is a little over thirty-three inches; a labor is about one
hundred and seventy-seven acres. Of course we reckoned our boundaries
in American measurements, but in all our relations with the Mexicans it
was necessary to know of what we were speaking.
THE CHAPARRAL COCK
Father's claim was in a valley where was a large motte, or grove, of
pecan trees. As we came up to the place a bird called a chaparral cock
looked down on me with what I fancied was a note of welcome. It seemed
to me a happy omen that the little fellow should have uttered his cry
at the very moment my eyes rested upon him.
[Illustration]
His head was cocked on one side, and his black, beady eyes twinkled in
a most kindly fashion, so that I hailed him as a friend and vowed that
neither he nor any of his family should come to harm through me unless
it might be that we were sorely pressed for food. But it did not appear
to me probable we should ever be put to such straits as that of killing
a bird who thus made us welcome.
Father had already decided upon the location of the house, which was
to be just south of the pecan trees, which would shelter us from those
icy northers. The three wagons and the two-mule cart were therefore
drawn up side by side at the very spot where he intended to build the
dwelling, so that we might use them for lodgings until we had a better
place.
OUR FIRST NIGHT ON THE TRINITY
The live stock were turned out that night to wander as they would. We
had no fear of their straying, for since leaving Fort Towson all the
animals had been pushed forward at their best pace, and every one was
sufficiently weary to remain near at hand.
[Illustration]
Before darkness had come we learned that the little chaparral cock was
not the only neighbor we were to have in our new home, for there came
from the distance what sounded like screams of pain, and sharp, yelping
barks. The hair stood up on Gyp's back, and he bared his teeth as if
ready for a most desperate struggle, while I took good care to keep him
close beside me as I tumbled into the two-mule cart for my rifle, not
knowing what danger threatened us.
Then father laughed heartily and told me that the dismal,
blood-curdling noises which I heard came from a pack of coyotes, or
wolves, howling, perhaps in expectation of getting supper. He predicted
that we would soon become accustomed to such disagreeable noises, for
there was little doubt but that these beasts would remain our neighbors
until we could kill them off, or, at least, make them afraid of
venturing near our clearing.
A large part of the goods was thrown out of the wagons that we might
spread our beds in comfort, for it was expected that we should live
under the canvas coverings until we had built our house; the first work
necessary was the setting up of some kind of shanty to serve as a cook
room.
That night, however, a fire was built in the open, and over it mother
prepared the evening meal while father and I milked the cows. With
smoking hot corn bread, fried bacon, bacon fat in which to dip the
bread, and plenty of fresh milk, we had such a meal as tired emigrants
could fully appreciate.
STANDING GUARD
If I imagined that all of us were to lie down in the wagons and take
our rest on this first night after arriving at the Trinity, I was very
much mistaken. Father made me forget all about sleep and rest, when he
said that unless we kept sharp watch against the coyotes we were likely
to lose several sheep before morning, and that it was necessary that at
least two of us stand guard throughout the night.
[Illustration]
If only the oxen or the mules had been in danger, perhaps I would not
have been so eager to shoulder my rifle and, in company with Zeba,
tramp around and around the animals until midnight. As it was, however,
I did my duty faithfully, and when the night was half spent, father
came out with John to relieve us. I was so weary that when I crawled
into one of the wagons on to the soft feather bed, it seemed to me as
if my legs would drop from my body, and my eyes were so heavy with
slumber that it was only by the greatest exertion I could keep them
open.
[Illustration]
When next I was conscious of my surroundings, the rising sun was
sending long yellow shafts of light beneath the canvas covering of
the wagon; the little chaparral cock was calling out from the pecan
motte near at hand, as if to assure me he still stood my friend; while
far away could be heard the shrieks, yelps, and barks of the cowardly
wolves which had been sneaking around our flock of sheep all night.
A TURKEY BUZZARD
I came out of the wagon with a bound, determined that from this on
until I had my flock of five thousand sheep, there should be no
dallying on my part.
[Illustration]
As I started toward the stream for a morning bath, a big black shadow
came between me and the sun. Looking up, I saw for the first time a
turkey buzzard, his black coat and red crest showing vividly against
the sky as he flapped lazily in front of me to alight in the near
vicinity of the chaparral cock. I was so superstitious as to believe
for the moment that the sudden appearance of this disagreeable-looking
bird at the very moment when the little cock was bidding me good
morning, threatened disaster to our scheme of making a home and to my
plan of raising sheep.
With the air fresh and bracing, the sunlight flooding everything with
gold, and even with the dismal shrieks and yelps in the distance, it
would have been a pretty poor kind of fellow who could have remained
long disheartened, simply because a grumbling old turkey buzzard
chanced to fly in front of him.
The stream by the side of which I hoped to live for many a long year
was not deep at this season, but clear as crystal, and just cool enough
to give me the sensation of being keenly alive when I plunged in head
foremost. I floundered about until I heard mother calling for me to
hurry while the corn bread was hot, lest I lose my share, for both she
and father were ravenously hungry.
While we ate we decided where the cook camp should be put up and how
we would care for the cattle, the sheep, and the mules while we were
building our house. In fact, very many plans were laid during those
ten or fifteen minutes, some of which were carried out at once.
PLANS FOR BUILDING A HOUSE
As for the cook shanty, we were not inclined to spend very much time
over it. Simply a shelter from the dew and the sun, where mother might
be screened from the wind, so she could use the cookstove we had
brought with us, was all we needed.
[Illustration]
Father intended to build a house of lumber, even though at that time
he knew that he would be forced to pay anywhere from twenty to thirty
dollars a thousand feet for cheap boards, and then haul them no less
than two hundred miles.
After he had told me about the lumber I asked in wonder and surprise if
he counted on spending so much money, when we might build a house as
the Mexicans do, of adobe brick, with no more timber in it than would
serve to hold up a roof of mud. He laughingly replied that when we had
made a saw pit, he would show me how we might get out our own building
material, and said that I was to have a hand in the manufacture, for he
thought I could do my share of the sawing when I was not looking after
the cattle or the sheep.
Before leaving home he had made arrangements to keep with us the three
negroes whom we had hired in Bolivar County, until we were fairly
settled. Therefore we had seven pairs of hands in this house building,
which should put the work along in reasonably rapid fashion, even
though five of the laborers were not skilled.
We spent no more time at breakfast than was necessary for eating and
for roughly sketching out the plans for the day's work. After this each
set about his task. I drove the sheep a short distance away toward
the farther end of the valley, where they could conveniently get at
the water and yet find rich pasturage; John and Zeba picketed out the
mules; and father with the three negroes rounded up the cattle.
THE COOK SHANTY
This done, we set about making a shanty by digging to the depth of
two or three feet a space about three yards wide and four yards long,
around the sides of which we set branches of pecan trees. We planted
poles at the four corners so that we could use the wagon covers for
walls and roof.
When this rudest kind of rude building was so far finished that it
would screen us from the wind, we set up the cookstove, and mother
began what in Bolivar County she would have called her regular
Saturday's baking. After this we put on a roof of canvas, pinning the
whole down as best we might with mesquite bushes, until we had a shed
which would serve, but which was most crude looking.
Although there was nothing on which we could pride ourselves in this
first building, it had occupied us nearly the entire day, and I had
no more than an hour in which to rest my weary limbs before it was
necessary to stand guard over the sheep, lest the wolves carry off the
beginnings of my flock.
It was during this night, when it cost not only great effort, but
real pain, to keep continually on the move lest I fall asleep, that
I decided that at the very first opportunity I would build a corral.
While our flock was so small, it would not be a very great task to
build a pen sufficiently large to hold the animals together, and at the
same time shut out the wolves. There were enough mesquite bushes, or
trees, to provide me with the necessary material, and I decided upon
the place where I would build a pen, figuring in my mind how the work
could be best done.
[Illustration]
Therefore, when father relieved me at midnight, I had in my mind's
eye the first sheep pen put up on the West Fork of the Trinity, and
already in imagination was on the high road to prosperity.
A STORM OF RAIN
When another morning came, my dreams of what the future might bring me
had become decidedly cloudy, for the rain was falling, not furiously,
as in the case of a norther or a short-lived tempest, but with a steady
downfall which told of a long spell of disagreeable weather, and I
was not the only member of our party to come out from the beds in the
wagons looking disheartened, and uncomfortably damp.
[Illustration]
At our old home in Bolivar County the first sound in the morning which
usually broke upon my ear was that of mother's singing as she prepared
breakfast. On this day she was in our cook house, but working in
silence. So, forgetting my own discomfort in the fear that something
might have gone wrong with her, I asked why I had not heard her
morning song. In reply she pointed first to the heavens, and then to
our stock of household belongings, which were strewn here and there
where they had been taken from the wagons. To give her cheer, I tried
to laugh, saying there was little among our goods which would come to
harm because of the rain, and such as might be injured I would quickly
get under cover. She replied in an injured tone that father had told
her there were few rainstorms in Texas during the year, save when a
norther raged.
A DAY OF DISCOMFORT
I ventured to jest with her, by saying most likely it had been arranged
for our especial benefit, as we were newcomers in the country and
needed to be introduced to all varieties of climate. The light words
failed to bring a smile to her lips. So, without loss of time, I set
about carrying such of our belongings as might be injured by the rain
to the shelter of the wagons, and had hardly more than begun the task
when father returned, his face quite as gloomy as mother's.
He tried to apologize for this sort of weather, and began by saying
that from all he had learned during his first visit there was little
danger that we should be visited by a very long storm.
Even the negroes were out of humor, and although the morning was not
cold, all were shivering, and looked as if they had been taking a bath
in the stream. I asked Zeba what had happened. In sulky tones he told
me that while he had been rounding up the cattle and bunching them at
the upper end of the valley, so that they would not stray too far on
the prairie, he had been treated to a veritable shower bath from the
moisture on the mesquite bushes and the pecan trees.
[Illustration]
THINKING OF THE OLD HOME
The chaparral cock was silent. Even the turkey buzzard had forsaken
the pecan motte. The mules, which I could see in the distance, were
hanging their long ears dejectedly, and the cattle in a most forlorn
manner stood humped up with their heads away from the wind. Only the
sheep grazed with seeming contentment.
[Illustration]
When I went into the cook camp, in order to get my breakfast, I
was thinking of the old plantation in Bolivar County, where, when
it rained, we had good shelter instead of being homeless in the
wilderness, as one might say.
And surely we were in a wilderness, there on the banks of the Trinity,
exposed to all the downpour, save when we crawled into one of the
wagons to shelter ourselves while mother continued her work. There is
no need that I should say the breakfast was inviting, for my mother
could cook the meanest of food in such a manner that it would appeal to
one's appetite, yet we ate as if it were a duty rather than a pleasure
to break our fast after so much watching.
When the meal was ended, father set the negroes to gathering up the
remainder of our goods that might be injured by dampness, and I, rather
than remain idle when there was so much work to be done, took part in
the task, until we had nearly everything sheltered.
The only places of refuge against the storm were the miserable shanty
we had put up so hastily and the small two-mule wagon in which father
and mother had ridden.
We were a mournful-looking company of emigrants, when, the last of the
goods having been stowed away, we sat under one of the wagon bodies,
while mother continued to work in the shanty regardless of the rain
which came in through a hundred crevices.
WAITING FOR THE SUN
The negroes gathered about father and me, in order to take advantage
of the shelter afforded by the wagon. We remained silent a full ten
minutes before father strove to cheer our spirits by suggesting that a
storm at this season of the year could not last very many hours, and
that by the following morning we should be rejoicing in the heat and
the brightness of the sun.
[Illustration]
He was at fault in this prediction, however. During the remainder of
the day we came out from the shelter now and then to make certain that
the cattle, the mules, and the sheep yet remained within the valley,
and then crept back once more to keep mournful silence, seldom breaking
it, save when the meals were ready.
The rain continued to fall steadily, and yet it was necessary we stand
guard against the coyotes, who began to howl, and scream, and bark as
soon as night came. No longer dreaming of making my fortune at sheep
raising, I went off with Zeba just before darkness covered the earth,
to begin the weary march around and around our herd of cattle and flock
of sheep. I was soon drenched to the skin, and wished that father had
never been attacked by the Texas fever.
I wondered during that long, wet, disagreeable time of watching where
the other newly arrived settlers had begun to make homes in Texas. I
knew that hundreds of families near us in Bolivar County, and from
Kentucky and Missouri, had come into this republic of Texas, and it
seemed, as I thought it over, most singular that we had failed to meet
with any of them.
The storm, the darkness, and the irritating calls of the coyotes had
so worked upon my mind that I came to believe that all the stories we
had heard of people who were to make homes in this new country had been
false. It seemed to me that we were the only persons in the United
States who had been so foolish as to venture across the Red River with
wild dreams of fertile ranches and rapidly increasing herds of cattle
or flocks of sheep.
TOO MUCH WATER
Three days passed before we again rejoiced in the light of the sun.
During that time so much discomfort and actual danger had been met that
I was sick at heart at the very sound of the name of Texas.
Before the end of the second day we had succeeded in making the cook
shanty nearly waterproof, by stripping all the wagons of their covers,
and pinning the canvas down over the pecan branches. This left our
goods exposed to the rain, and many of our belongings were necessarily
ruined, although we took little heed of that fact, if only it was
possible to give mother some degree of comfort.
[Illustration]
On the morning of the third day the valley was dotted here and there
with pools of water, showing that the soil had drunk its fill and
refused to take in more. In order to move about in the valley, it was
necessary at times to wade ankle-deep. The result was that father and
I, as well as the negroes, were forced to wear garments saturated with
water, since it would have been useless to put on dry clothes, for
after an hour of tramping to and fro they would have been in the same
wet condition. Yet we had no thought of real danger. There was in our
minds simply the painful idea that we must endure what could not be
avoided; we never dreamed that worse was to come.
THE STREAM RISING
Just before time for dinner on the third day I noticed that the sheep
were making their way rapidly up out of the valley, and, fearing lest
they might stray so far that it would be impossible to herd them before
nightfall, I followed, leaving father and the negroes crouching under
one of the wagon bodies.
[Illustration]
To my surprise, when I had walked a few yards from where we were
encamped, I found the water in many of the pools nearly ankle-deep, and
saw that the western side of the valley, that part farthest from the
stream, was literally flooded.
Strange as it may seem, neither father nor I had given any particular
heed to the rising of the stream. There was in our minds, dimly
perhaps, an idea that the amount of water had increased during this
long storm, and we were not disquieted on seeing it come up to the
height of the banks; but now, being warned by the depth of water in the
valley, I quite forgot the sheep for an instant, and ran back to where
I could have a full view of the river.
The flood was already overlapping the banks at the northern end of the
valley, a fact which accounted for the quantity of water I had found
while going toward the sheep, and I fancied it was possible to hear,
far away in the distance, a roaring noise such as a waterfall might
produce.
TRYING TO SAVE THE STOCK
Heedless of the fact that my twelve sheep were stampeded, I ran swiftly
along the edge of the stream toward the wagons, shouting wildly that a
flood was upon us. I was yet twenty or thirty yards distant when father
came out to learn why I was raising such an alarm.
It needed but one glance for him to understand that we were in the
gravest danger. Even while I ran, it was possible for me to see the
river rising, rising, until what, at the moment I set off to herd the
sheep, had been comparatively dry land, was being flooded so rapidly
that before I had gained the wagons, they were standing a full inch
deep in the water.
[Illustration]
Father ran hurriedly, with a look of alarm on his face, toward the cook
shanty and shouted for mother to make all haste, to leave everything
behind her, and to clamber into one of the wagons. Then, turning to
the negroes, he literally drove them out from their shelter, ordering
them to round up the mules without delay so we might hitch them to the
wagons. It was not necessary that I should be told to obey this command
on the instant, even though it was not directed to me. I wheeled about,
intending to turn the mules in the direction of the wagons, leaving
the slaves to bring up the harness, but while doing so, I saw that we
were too late by at least three or four minutes, for the mules, having
already taken alarm by the rising of the water, were making their way
at a quick pace up the incline which led to the higher land, following
directly behind the sheep.
THE ANIMALS STAMPEDED
Probably, if I had moved more cautiously, I might have circled around
them, and thus checked their flight until the negroes could come up;
but I was so thoroughly alarmed by the rapid rise of the water and the
ominous roaring in the distance, that I set off at full speed directly
toward the animals, and in a twinkling they broke into a gallop,
stampeding the sheep by plunging among them.
As if this was not sufficient disaster, the cattle, which had been
feeding fully a mile farther down the valley, now wheeled suddenly
about in alarm, and set off over the ridge, bellowing with fear, their
tails swinging high in the air.
So unreasoning was I in the sudden fright which had come upon me,
that I failed to realize it would be useless to pursue any of our live
stock, until father shouted for me to turn back without loss of time.
His voice, even though he was no more than two hundred yards away, came
dimly to my ears because of the increasing roar in the distance, which
sounded more and more threatening each instant.
[Illustration]
When I gathered my wits about me sufficiently to obey the command, I
saw that he, with the negroes, was striving desperately to haul one of
the heavy wagons from the bank of the stream; but so sodden with water
was the earth that the wheels sank into the soft surface to the depth
of two or three inches, and, struggle as they might, it could not be
moved a single pace.
SAVING OUR OWN LIVES
[Illustration]
"Gather up the spare clothing, and take your mother with you!" father
shouted as I came up to where the black men were standing dumbly by the
side of the wagon they had so vainly attempted to haul. I cried out
dully, grown stupid with fear, asking where I should go with mother;
but even while speaking, I had sufficient common sense remaining to
pull out from among our belongings as many water-soaked garments as I
could get my hands on.
"Go to the high land!" father shouted, and literally dragged mother
out from her seat in the wagon, where she had been crouching since the
water flooded the cook camp. She had her wits about her sufficiently to
understand what father would have us do. Calling on me to follow, she
took from my arms a portion of the burden and set off straight across
that increasing flood of water in the direction taken by the animals.
She realized that they, prompted by instinct, would lead the way to the
highest point of land.
Thus we two, mother and I, abandoned father and all our belongings, and
it surely seemed as if we were leaving him to a terrible fate. I would
have come to a full stop in order to urge him to follow us, but mother
called out that I should not slacken pace. She said that he knew better
than we what should be done, and that he would follow without loss of
time.
It seemed to me that we had no sooner gained the top of the bank, and
from there the highest point of one of the prairie hills, when, looking
around, I saw father and the negroes coming at full speed, as if
fleeing from death itself. And this really was the case, as I saw a few
seconds later. I would have run toward the edge of the valley in the
hope of helping them, but mother held me back.
A RAGING TORRENT
[Illustration]
The roar of the coming flood was deafening. Father and the slaves were
yet clambering up the side of the valley when I saw, coming down the
channel of the river, a raging torrent which bore on its surface trunks
of trees such as would have dealt death to any one who might have been
in their line of advance. On the waters were fragments of wood, bunches
of mesquite bushes, and I fancied now and then the body of an ox; but
it was all a scene of confusion, of noise, and of menace.
During perhaps ten seconds I felt certain father would be swept away
by the raging stream which was filling the valley. The torrent swelled
until the crest of the muddy waves swept against Zeba's legs, for he
was the last of that little company struggling to save his life. Not
one moment too soon did father and the negroes gain the high land. They
were hardly in safety when all our valley was filled with water, and I
knew that beneath the flood was everything we owned in the world save
the live stock.
Father came swiftly on until he stood by mother's side, clasping both
her hands. But he spoke not a word, and I realized that we had come
from Bolivar County with all our belongings only to have them swept
away, and that we were destitute.