Michener, James A. (114 page)

To everyone's surprise, Reuben paid little attention to the porch, accepting one that was both shorter and narrower than his cousin's, so that when the unusual house was finished, several people, including some of the workmen, said in effect: 'Hell of a big breezeway. Itty-bitty porch. It don't match.'

He did not intend it to, for as soon as the plantation began prospering he did three daring things: he boarded up the two open ends of the breezeway, paying great attention to the architectural effect of door-and-window; he built at each far end of the axis a stone chimney, tying the two halves of the house together, and he tore off the inadequate porch and installed instead a magnificent affair supported by six marble Doric columns shipped in segments and at huge expense from New Orleans.

The redheaded Cobbs, as they were called in the community, •now had a mansion which would have graced Charleston or Montgomery. It was clean, and white, and spacious, and the happy combination of the two stone chimneys and the six marble pillars gave it a distinction which could be noticed when one first saw it from the steamboat landing down on the lake. But what pleased Reuben most, when he surveyed the whole, was the developing hedge of Osage-orange that enclosed and protected his grand new home.

When the mansions were livable, Sett, as the steadier of the two Cobbs and the more experienced in managing a sizable plantation, cast up the profit-and-loss figures for their enterprise, and when he displayed them to his partners, the wives declared that with Reuben's sharp purchasing and Sett's good management, the family was on its way to having a very profitable operation:

10,200 acres bought at various prices, total cost $14,590

81 Carolina and Georgia slaves, less Hadrian stolen, plus 12 additional acquired en route means 92 at $425 per head, fair average 39,100

Cost of equipment for the slaves, plus cattle, hogs and fowl to keep the plantation running, at $62 per slave 5,704

Total investment $59,394

Counting all slaves, each slave produces .89

bales of cotton per year times 92 82

Each bale contains 480 pounds times 82 39,360

Each pound sells at 10.8* $4,250

$4,250 divided by $59,394 yields yearly

profit of 7.11%

'And remember,' cried Reuben when he saw the final figure, 'nine of us Cobbs had a good living from our land. Each year the value of our slaves increases. And I'm convinced cotton will sell for more next year when it reaches Liverpool.'

Cautiously, lest he excite too much euphoria, Sett added: 'We'll soon be showing substantial profit from our mills and gin,' andi Petty Prue burbled: 'Hail to Cobbs! Best plantation in Texas.'

While the Cobbs were establishing themselves so securely, Yancey Quimper was taking his own giant steps down in Xavier County, for at the moment back in 1848 when he learned of Captain Sam Garner's death on the uplands of Mexico, he thought: He leaves a widow, damned nice, and two children. With all that land, she's goin' to need assistance.

Actually, Garner had not acquired a great deal of land: six; hundred and forty acres because of his services at San Jacinto; some acres that his wife, Rachel, had managed to acquire; and a couple of hundred that he had taken over for a bad debt. Right in the heart of Campbell, the county seat, the Garner lands were worth having.

Keeping a watchful eye on the Widow Garner lest some adventurer sneak in ahead of him, General Quimper waited what was' called 'a decent interval' and then swooped in, his colors flying. Actually, in a frontier settlement like Texas where women were scarce, the decent interval for an attractive widow to mourn after the sudden death of her husband was anywhere from three weeks to four months. Men needed wives; wives needed protection; and orphaned children were a positive boon rather than a hindrance.

When Quimper first began speaking to Rachel Garner about her perilous condition, he stressed only her responsibility for the

rearing and education of her children, and in this he was not being hypocritical, for he liked the boys. 'These are children worth the most careful attention,' he told her, sounding very much like a clergyman.

But on subsequent visits he began talking about her problems with the eight hundred and forty acres with which she found herself: 'Today they're worth nothing, maybe a dollar an acre. But in the future, Rachel . . .' He now addressed her only as Rachel and always saw to it that one of her children was at his side as he spoke. He dwelt upon the difficulties an unmarried woman would face if she endeavored to manage so much property. He stressed the fact that the land lay half within the town, half out in the country, a division which trebled the complications.

On an April day in 1850, at the time the Cobbs were excavating their lake, he suddenly took Mrs. Garner's hands, her children being absent, and gazed at her as if overcome by a totally unexpected passion: 'Rachel, you cannot take care of a farm and two lovely children alone. Allow me to help.'

Everything he had been saying for the past months had made sense, indeed the only common sense she had heard for a long time. A preacher for whom she had little respect had mumbled: 'God always looks after the orphaned child,' but General Quimper had outlined practical courses of action which did not depend upon God's uncertain support, and she was now disposed to listen seriously to his next recommendations.

Having uttered the critical words, he retreated from her kitchen as if overcome with embarrassment and stayed away for two days, but on the third day he returned filled with apologies for his intemperate behavior during his last visit, and with great relief he heard Mrs. Garner say: 'No apologies are necessary. You were seized by an honest emotion, and I respect you for it.'

When the proposed marriage was announced, Rachel Garner was visited by an unexpected member of her community, a tall, shaggy, rough individual known unfavorably as Panther Komax, whom her dead husband had once described: 'An animal. Good with a gun, but an animal.'

Panther's message was blunt: 'Don't marry him, Mrs. Garner.'

'What are you saying?'

'He does nothin' withouten a plan.'

'What do you mean?'

'He plans to grab your land. He plans to grab ever'thin'.'

'My children need a father.'

'They don't need him.' In the silence that followed. Panther

studied the neat kitchen, then said: 'You're doin' all right as it is. Captain Garner would be proud of you.'

At the mention of her husband's name, Rachel frowned, as if Komax had been unfair in bringing into the discussion that fine man, that unquestioned hero, but since Sam had been brought into the room, she said, as if for him to hear: 'Sam would want his children to have a father. He would understand.' Then almost aggressively, she turned on Panther and demanded: 'What has General Quimper ever done to you?' Komax, not wishing to compound a mistake which he now realized he had made, replied: 'Nothin'. I was only comparin' him and your husband. And when I do I get sick to my stomach.'

Actually, Quimper had been doing a great deal to Panther, and as soon as the marriage to Rachel Garner had been safely solemnized, with her children in attendance, the general directed his attention to a business matter which had been concerning him for some time.

Like the rest of Xavier County, he had watched in disbelief when Komax returned from Mexico in 1848 leading a chubby Mexican bootmaker named Juan Hernandez, who proceeded to make the best boots the men of the county had ever seen. They were pliable, yet so sturdy that mesquite thorns could not penetrate them, and when three different users reported that rattlesnakes, 'and damned big ones, too, thick as your leg,' had struck the boots without forcing the fangs through the hide, Komax Boots began to be discussed favorably wherever men appreciated good leather.

In fact, Juan's boots became so popular that Panther could not supply all the men who sought them, even when he raised his price to four dollars a pair. Therefore, in December 1849, when hordes of prospectors were pouring through Texas to reach the California gold rush via the overland route through El Paso, Komax was embarrassed by the number of gold-seekers who offered him up to forty dollars for a pair of Juan's boots.

But embarrassment soon gave way to enthusiasm, and Komax told his bootmaker: 'Go down to Matamoros or Monterrey. Find five or six good cobblers. Bring 'em here, and we'll make a fortune if these California men keep comin'.' But before Juan set out, Komax gripped him by the wrist: 'You promise to come back?' and the Mexican replied in Spanish: 'Amigo, I never lived so well. You are a man to trust.'

Soon Hernandez was back in Xavier with five Mexican bootmakers, who, under his and Panther's tutelage, began to turn out boots of such remarkable quality that even when the California

gold rush petered out, the demand Iroui Texas men continued to snap up all that Panther could supply

The price was now fixed at eleven dollars a pair, twelve if Hernandez himself decorated the upper part with the Mexican designs he liked. He favored the symbol of his nation, the valiant eagle battling the rattlesnake, but most Texans rejected this: 'Damned vulture eatin' a worm,' they called it, and they asked instead for the Lone Star with crossed pistols. Juan could do either.

But the main advantage of a Komax boot was that it fitted properly, and in this respect it was unique. Up to this time, in both Mexico and Texas, shoemakers had been accustomed to make simply a boot: big, square, solid, but with the same outline for left foot and right. Such boots were so uncomfortable that a buyer sometimes had to wear them for six months before they adjusted to his feet, or vice versa, juan Hernandez changed this by drawing on a piece of paper the exact outlines of a customer's feet, properly differentiated as to right and left, and then shaping boots to fit. Men were apt to sigh when they first put on such boots: They fit!'

The lucrative trade which Komax had developed by his simple device of having befriended a weeping bootmaker about to have his neck slit attracted the attention of many Xavier men, who wondered why they had not thought of importing shoemakers from Matamoros, but no one paid closer heed than General Quimper, who said, one afternoon as a new rush of California-bound men clamored for boots: 'This dumb ox has a gold mine.'

It offended Quimper, offended him deeply, to think that a reprehensible man like Komax had stumbled upon such a bonanza, and he felt it his duty to see that the manufacturing operation, as he called it, was brought under honest control. He could think of no one better qualified to exercise such control than himself, for he spoke Spanish, knew men of property who could afford to buy the boots, and obviously was reliable, for he had both land and money.

To accomplish this transfer, General Quimper needed the cooperation of either a judge or a sheriff, and in frontier Texas both were available to a gentleman of good standing, especially if he came from Tennessee or Alabama and had some gold coins in his pocket. Yancey decided upon a three-pronged assault, so one morning Judge Kemper summoned Komax to his chambers: 'Panther, you could go to jail for bringing in those Mexicans.' There was no law forbidding this, for law-abiding Mexicans had always been free to cross the Rio Grande, but the judge's manner was ominous, and it was substantiated by a visit from Sheriff Bodger, who said: 'Us sheriffs in these parts got our eye on you, Panther,

and your illegal operations.' The convincing blow, however, fell when six gunmen appeared at the workshop, threatening to shoot everyone in sight if they didn't get the hell out of Texas.

Quimper himself, terrified of a brute like Komax, did not make an appearance till the threats had softened up the wild man. Then he appeared, unctuous and reassuring, to deliver the good news that he could protect Panther and square things with the law by taking the offending Mexicans off his, Panther's, hands. By this simple but effective strategy, General Quimper obtained control of the bootmaking operation, and it must be conceded that once he got it he knew what to do with it. Advertising in both Houston and Austin, he visited the many United States Army forts, peddling his excellent boots to the eager officers, and he established the designation 'General Quimper Boots' as effectively as Samuel Colt had made his name synonymous with good revolvers, or as John B. Stetson would make his with hats. In the great war that was about to erupt, generals and colonels fighting for both the North or the South were apt to wear the heavily ornamented Quimpers, as they were called; but very few enlisted men would have them unless they stole them from the bodies of dead officers. Yancey did not find it comfortable selling to enlisted men.

The Cobbs now had eleven thousand acres, Reuben having acquired eight hundred more of relatively useless river-bottom swamp, and to run it they had ninety-eight slaves, not all field hands. Since from long experience the owners had learned that one strong field hand could effectively tend only ten acres of cotton and six of corn, this meant that much of their land had to lie idle, and this was just what Reuben had intended: Today those bottom acres look like nothin', but time's comin' when they'll be priceless.' When someone asked why, he smiled, for what he had in mind was to dike them in, play farmer's roulette, and make enormous crops when the great floods stayed away, lose everything when they came. 'But even when floods do hit,' he told his cousin, 'we win because they bring down fresh silt from somebody else's place to enrich ours.'

The Cobb cotton fields were like no other in the area, for they were hardly fields at all, merely open spaces between tall trees, soi that in early March a slave with a plow could never follow a furrow for very long before being stopped by one of the trees, and when in late March the plants showed their pale-green heads, they did not appear like proper cotton at all but rather like patches of green thrown helter-skelter. However, if the fields lacked neatness, they did carry signs that three years from now they were going to be

masterpieces, because each tree which now prevented proper cultivation had been girdled and was dying; in two years it would wither, and in three it could be pushed down and the stump drawn.