Michener, James A. (85 page)

I have completed plans whereby the Cherokee will launch a major harassment of the norteamericanos to coincide with the army attack of mexicano troops under Generals Filisola, Cos, Urrea and Ripperda. At the same time our trusted revolutionary Benito Garza of Victoria will set the countryside ablaze, and we shall expel all norteamericanos and regain control of Tejas.

Otto was shaken, and in the dark silence his mind flashed pictures of the Garza he had known: the bright young fellow trying to find husbands for his sisters, the gifted teacher of riding, that moment of terrible truth when he had saved Otto's life at Goliad, and the swamp knifings at San Jacinto when Otto had reciprocated. During all the chases south of the Nueces, Otto had hoped that the Mexican government would see the wisdom of letting Texas have the disputed land Then peace between Mexico and Texas would be possible, ensuring peace between Benito and himself. Now he saw his dream was futile.

i am not surprised,' he told the colonel.

'My father's brother-in-law. I lived with him for three years.'

The officer in charge of the interrogation breathed deeply. Tm glad you admitted that, son, because we knew the answer before we asked the question.' And to Otto's amazement an orderly brought into the tent Martin Ascot, who nodded in Otto's direction and smiled in friendly fashion.

They arrested me this afternoon.'

'You were not arrested,' the officer corrected. 'You were interrogated.'

'And I told them "Of course Macnab knows Garza" and I told them about the incident in the swamp at San Jacinto when you stopped me from killing him. You see, Otto, they had a letter . . .'

'I saw it. The one they captured when they shot . . . what was his name?'

'Flores,' the officer said. 'Manuel Flores. But that is not the letter Ascot speaks of.'

'Someone who knew you in Xavier County—didn't sign his name—sent a letter,' Ascot said, 'which charges you with complicity in this affair.'

The anonymous letter was produced; its ugly charges were ventilated; and Otto had to deny on the Bible that when he stopped at the Zave Campbell dog-run on the return from the Nueces, he had consorted with the renegade Benito Garza.

'Why did you save his life at San Jacinto? If you knew at that time that he was an enemy?' Silence. 'Well, you knew he'd joined Santa Anna, didn't you?' Silence. 'You better speak up, son. You're in trouble.'

Very quietly Martin Ascot, the young lawyer, counseled his neighbor: 'You must tell them what you told me that evening.'

Standing very straight, the youngest and shortest in the tent, Otto recounted his adventures at Goliad, his surrender, the march out from the presidio that Sunday morning, the dreadful execution of his father, his fight in the woods with the Mexican swordsman, the cut across his face, the gunfire of the two foot soldiers. At the conclusion he said: 'I stand here today only because Benito Garza, under risk to himself, helped me to escape.'

The silence in the tent was overpowering. Finally the officer in charge asked: 'Macnab, what would you do tomorrow if you encountered Benito Garza on the battlefield? These papers prove he may be there.'

'I would shoot him,' Otto said.

Next day the battle was brief, and terrible, and heartbreaking. The Cherokee Nation, which had been so pathetically abused by the American nation, brought eight hundred braves onto a rolling, wooded plain near the Neches River, where they faced nine hundred well-mounted, well-armed Texians led by men skilled in such fighting.

The Bowl, eighty years old and white-haired, friend of Sam Houston and honorable negotiator with Spain, with Mexico, with the United States government and with the emerging nation of Texas, saw through copious tears that any hope of living in peace with these harsh newcomers to his land was vain. Indian and white man could not coexist in Texas, not ever.

Dressing on the morning of 15 July 1839 in his finest elkskin robes and wrapping about his waist the golden sash General Houston had given him as proof of their perpetual friendship, he girded on the silver-handled sword which Houston had also given him, mounted his best horse, and led his men into a battle he knew he could not win.

All that day Texians and Indians blazed away at each other, and at dusk it was clear to General Johnston and Vice-President Burnet that if equal pressure was applied on the morrow, total victory must be theirs. That night the confident Texians slept well, all except Martin Ascot, who had tormenting doubts. Shaking Otto awake, he asked: 'Why can't we find some kind of arrangement to let them live off to one side?' and Otto gave the answer he had developed while chasing Mexicans along the Nueces: 'Texians and Indians . . . impossible.'

'Why 7 '

'Martin,' Otto said like an old campaigner to a raw recruit, 'go to sleep. We got work tomorrow.'

Next day the fighting was brief, concentrated and brutal. There was a violent chase all the way into another county, where the troops cut The Bowl off from his braves, shot him from his horse and shot him again as he lay on the ground, his white hair caked with blood, his silver-handled sword a trophy to be cheered.

Without their leader, the Cherokee were lost, and well before noon they surrendered. They asked if they could go back and gather their still-unreaped crops, for they had no food, but the victorious Texians said they should just continue north and get the hell out of Texas.

So they went, honorable wanderers who had known many homes since the white men began to press down upon them. East Texas would know its Indians no more, save for one minute enclave.

Mirabeau Lamar's Imperial designs suffered humiliating defeats but also enjoyed significant triumphs, proving that although Texas was no supernation, it was more viable than its economic performance might suggest.

The history of his attempt to invade Santa Fe and bring it into the Texas orbit can be told briefly. 14 April 1840: President Lamar drafts a letter to the people of New Mexico telling them of the glories of Texas and warning them that sooner or later, they will have to join up; the letter is ignored by loyal Santa Fe citizens, who are Spanish-speaking and happy under Mexican rule. 19 June 1841: Lamar personally but not governmentally approves of a convoy of twenty-one ox wagons, with military support and a contingent of 321 eager settlers, which sets out to take over the government of New Mexico. 5 August to 17 August, same year: the expedition, having no guides who have ever been to Santa Fe, becomes hopelessly lost and sends out horsemen to see if anyone can identify anything. 12 September, same year: the would-be conquerors stagger in to a remote Mexican settlement and beg for water and help. 17 September, 1841: the entire expedition surrenders to Mexican troops without having fired a single shot or having been allowed to peddle their promises to a single resident of Santa Fe. 1 October 1841: almost all of the Texians are marched to Mexico City and on to the old fort of Perote in the jungle, where they are thrown into prison. 6 April 1842: most of the Perote prisoners are released, but with bitter memories of their mistreatment.

On the other hand, President Lamar's negotiations with powers other than Mexico and the United States progressed handsomely, and in 1839, France signed a treaty recognizing the independence of the new nation, thus assuring Texas of full international standing. England, too, made overtures, and the future looked bright. As for the United States, Lamar perceived it as the enemy and refused either to initiate or to participate in talks leading to annexation.

Regarding Mexico, he was generously prepared to offer either war or peace, but he was not prepared for what his neighbor to the south actually did. Its troops marched across the Rio Grande and captured San Antonio, but fortunately for Lamar, they withdrew of their own volition.

So Texas was not an unalloyed success, but the valor of its poet-president did encourage it to make certain sensible moves, chief of which was the incredible decision to shift the capital from Houston, on the eastern malarial fringe of the nation, into Austin,

at the edge of the salubrious highlands. On the day the governmental party surveyed the site for the new capital, buffalo scampered down what was to become the main street.

The intellectual life of the new nation also flourished, thanks to men like Martin Ascot, who took seriously his duties as Xavier County's corresponding secretary of the Philosophical Society. Otto watched admiringly as his friend spent six nights in a row, hunched over the table in the kitchen, drafting by candlelight his first submission to the society, and although Otto could not know it at the time, the resonant success of this paper was to account for an experience from which Otto would profit.

Corresponding secretaries were obligated to report on the 'scientific, agricultural, historical, political, moral and geographical phenomena of their counties,' so Martin chose for his topic The Texas Pecan, Salvator Mundi,' and he wrote with such charm that older members said: There's a lad to watch!'

He extolled the pecan as a miracle food, a possible source of oil, a tree with unique capabilities and God's particular blessing on the new nation, insofar as native foods were concerned. What was remembered best was the way he harmonized scientific knowledge about its cultivation with his personal reaction to it:

If corn is our nation's primary cereal and the pecan our finest nut, is it not appropriate that the two be blended in some perfect dish? My wife, Betsy Belle, has discovered a way of doing this in a pie which has considerable merit. Using corn flour and bear grease, she bakes a fine crust, into which she pours a cooked mixture of syrup made from the boiled stalk of the corn mixed with the finest ground corn thickening. She sprinkles the top so richly with pecan halves, lightly salted, that nothing else is visible. She then puts everything in a flat iron receptacle with a cover and bakes it for an hour until all ingredients combine in what I do believe is the most tempting pie in the world.

The country's leaders in Houston were so impressed by Martin's report, and their wives so pleased with Betsy Belle's recipe, that President Lamar gave Ascot an assignment which required work in Xavier, travel to the new capital at Austin and the delivery of papers back to Houston. Martin, who had a case scheduled before Judge Phinizy, completed the work but turned it over to Otto to deliver at government expense.

Otto rode to Austin with Martin's papers, got them signed, and was told that he could take the new stagecoach down to Houston. The firm of Starke and Burgess had been awarded the right to operate a stage between the new capital and the old, and to accomplish this, had imported coaches that had seen decades of

service in Mississippi and two drivers with almost as much experience in Alabama. Otto would ride to Houston in the Thursday coach driven by Jake Hornblow, who had a wealth of beard, a brazen voice and a sulphurous vocabulary. When the six passengers were assembled, four men, two women, Jake instructed everyone where to sit, then glared at Otto and said: 'You, fetch the pole and rope.'

'Where are they?'

'Damn it to hell, if I have to tell you people everything, like you was babies, we'll never get to Houston.' Asking around the office, a one-room shack with a heavy iron safe, Otto found the gear, and when he delivered it, Jake studied him contemptuously and growled: 'I was goin' to let you work the pole, but you ain't got the weight to give it leverage.'

It was a scheduled three-day trip, and before it started, Jake assured his passengers 'If this was July or August, we'd get there in great shape,' but it was late March, in the rainy season, and when they were only a few miles out of Austin, Otto learned what the rope was for, because they came to a place where a swollen stream had overrun the road, turning it into a Texas quagmire.

'All out!' Hornblow bellowed, and when everyone was standing beside the mired coach, he threw Otto the rope and told him to take it to the far side of the huge mudhole, but as Otto started to obey, Jake cursed at him as if he were both idiotic and criminal: 'Goddamnit, you stupid horse's ass. You're supposed to tie one end to the coach.' So back Otto sloshed, with Jake heaping scorn on him as he bent down to tie the hitch: 'If you was in the rangin' company, like they say, the Indians have nothin' to worry about.'

Then, surveying the male passengers as if they were members of a chain gang, he nominated one: 'You, take the pole.' This stout lever was rested upon a pile of rocks with one end thrust under the rear of the wagon, whereupon Jake yelled at the two women passengers: 'Yes, you, goddamnit, lean on the pole with the gentleman.' The other men were expected to go into the mud up to their boot tops and push.

In this way, with the horses straining, Otto pulling, the man and the two ladies prizing the rear with their lever, the others in the mud, and Jake cursing God, the rain, the creek and his lazy companions, the coach worked its way through.

The three-day trip took six days, with the rope-and-pole trick

. being utilized at least four times each day. The cost was fifteen

dollars per passenger, not including food, which was invariably

cornbread, greasy bacon and weak coffee, three times a day. When

the trip ended, Otto and the other men were so outraged by the

treatment they had received from Jake Hornblow that they wanted to thrash him, but when they considered his size, they refrained.

The high regard in which Lawyer Ascot was held was further demonstrated when President Lamar appointed him to head a commission with important duties in San Antonio. He was to have in his entourage a company of Texas soldiers and Captain Garner with three members of his ranging company, now known as Texas Rangers. Ascot suggested that Macnab be one, and the party set forth in the late winter of 1840.

As they rode, Commissioner Ascot explained the purpose of the meeting: 'At last the Comanche see the folly of their ways. They want a treaty with us. They propose a wide strip where a truce will be permanently observed, so that maybe now the killings will stop.'

'What did they say about the white people they hold captive?' Otto inquired, and Ascot said: if a treaty can be arranged, the Comanche promise to surrender every prisoner they now hold, perhaps as many as a hundred.' This was joyous news, if true, for the idea that savages held white women and children was repellent.