Read Michener, James A. Online
Authors: Texas
Michener, James A. (92 page)
It was work of such strenuous effort that once Emil joked: 'I wish we had those slaves,' and this callous remark caused his father to assemble his family on Sunday for a sharp lesson in civilization: it's only natural for someone doing hard work, like digging a millrace, to wish that he could have slaves to do it while he rested. You spoke sense, Emil, when you said that, but we find in history that if a man does the work himself, he gets treble benefits from it. He does it better. He does it quicker. And in doing it, he amasses capital which enables him to finance additional tasks. We learn by doing.'
The Allerkamp women never idled while their men labored, Thekla and Franziska made all the clothes worn by the family, and although they purchased a little cloth, releasing their hoarded money in a most miserly way, for the most part, they spun cotton and wove their own. Depending on the time of year, they always had something to sell to strangers: extra cloth, eggs, deer and bear meat; they also sewed the ubiquitous sunbonnets that became the mark of the Texas woman, and it seemed to Ludwig that half the women in the area wore sunbonnets made by his wife and daughter.
Ernst had been home several weeks following his duty along the Nueces before Franziska found a way to ask about Otto Macnab without using his name or betraying her interest in him: 'Did you fight alone, Ernst?'
'No, we fought as a company. Captain Garner.'
'Did you pair off, each caring for the other?'
Since Ernst had been striving to forget some of the things he had seen, he found this questioning distressful. Reluctantly he replied: if a man fell, we all looked after him.'
'Did your companv do well? I mean, were all the men responsible?'
'Dirty work, but we were powerful.'
'Did you have a special companion?'
'No.'
'Did the Rangers from Xavier County perform well?' She used
a classical kind of speech, learned from her memorization of Schiller and Goethe, and tried to speak in complete sentences.
'We did. That short fellow you met, Otto Macnab ..."
The magical name had been spoken, and without changing her expression in any way, with her face still turned to the spinning wheel where the cotton transformed itself into thread, she asked: 'Was he brave?'
'Well now ..." He was still reluctant to speak.
'What?' she asked softly.
'Brave he was. Blue eyes hard as flint.'
'He sounds very brave.'
'He was. But . . .'
'What?'
Memory of a confusing incident came flooding back, and now he wanted to speak: 'We were patrolling north of the Nueces where the Mexican bandits had been raiding, and we came upon a white woman whose husband had been slain. I think she was out of her mind. Anyway, we left one of the men to take her to Victoria while we rode on. At a gallop we overtook three Mexican men. I thought they were farmers, maybe. They didn't look criminal. But this Otto Macnab rode right up to them and started firing.'
He stopped, and after a while his sister asked very carefully: 'You mean, the three Mexicans had no guns?'
He shook his head and could say no more, leaving his sister with the lonely problem of sorting out what had happened and what it signified.
When the Hardwork sawmill came into operation, civilization in Xavier County took a giant leap forward, because now the heads of families could drive their oxcarts to the mill, load up with beautifully sawn timbers—two hundred produced in the time it took two men to saw one in a hand pit—and build houses of real substance. Some of the most beautiful farmhouses in this part of Texas were built with that first flood of Hardwork timber. The German carpenters did not like the rather sprawled-out and formless dog-run of the Georgia and Carolina settlers; they preferred the compact, well-designed two-story house, with cedar or cypress shingles, neat board siding, stone fireplace and chimney at each end, and a trim small porch to provide protection against rain and sun.
Earlier settlers who had lived in Texas for some years warned the Germans: 'Without the dog-run to provide ventilation, you're going to be very hot in summer,' but the stubborn Germans
replied: 'We can stand a little heat in exchange for a beautiful house.' Of course, when the summer of 1844 produced a chain of forty days when the thermometer hovered above the hundred-degree mark, the Germans in their tight, compact houses did suffer, but they made no complaint; they simply lay in bed almost nude, sweated inordinately, and rose in the morning gasping for the fresh air which circulated so easily through the dog-runs. Summer in Texas, they were discovering, could be a blast straight out of hell, untempered by any passage over snowy mountains or cooling oceans. Said one old-timer: 'Come July, the devil stokes his furnaces real high, opens the draft, sends the flames to Texas so he can set up headquarters here in August and September.'
During this time of intense heat the Germans did have a respite which they enjoyed immensely, for a messenger rode in from the new settlement at a place called Lion Creek with news that there was to be an informal two-day Sangerfest to which all Germans living nearby were invited.
Any German Sangerfest, even a limited one like this, was a glorious affair, with almost every man in the community participating, as soloists if their voices were exceptional, as part of the humming chorus if obviously inadequate, and as an honorable part of the singing group if average. No women were allowed to join in the singing, of course, nor were they permitted to give the talks on such subjects as The Historical Plays of Friedrich Schiller' or The Metaphysics of Goethe.' But they did provide the food, and that most abundantly, and the younger unmarried women were the principal reason why many of the men attended, for finding a bride in German Texas was a grievous problem for which there seemed to be no solution, other than sending to Germany for one, as Theo down in the Matagorda area had done.
Of a hundred typical German men, at least ninety-seven, and perhaps even ninety-nine, would marry German women: 'It keeps the bloodlines clean. It keeps out the lesser strains.' It was therefore inevitable that when an industrious, attractive girl like Franziska appeared at a Sangerfest, her dress beautifully embroidered by her own hand, her hair in two neat braids with flowers plaited into the ends, she must attract attention and proposals from the hungry young men. Her father treated each approach with dignity, telling the swain that Franziska was too young to be thinking of such things, but his wife gave the young fellows hope that these conditions might change within the year. Franziska herself said nothing, did nothing. She had not at this time ever been kissed by a man, not even by her father or her brothers, and she felt no desire to be kissed by anyone at the festival.
But if she had never been kissed, and in this respect she resembled many reserved German girls of that time, she did experience a rich emotional life, as revealed in her diary:
I shall hide this book even more carefully after today, because I must confide to it a thrilling event in my life. 1 do believe I have fallen in love. Since I cannot discuss this with anyone, I cannot be sure, but there is a young man, from Ireland I think, who once stopped by our house and who has all the qualities I would seek in a husband. He is handsome, though smaller than my brothers, and he has the frankest blue eyes. Ernst assures me that he is brave in battle with brigands, and I learned from Herr Metzdorf that he owns a substantial property. When shall I meet him? And what shall I say to him when we do meet? These questions are important, because I do honestly believe that one day I shall marry him, even if he is a Catholic. What an amazing thing to write!
Her behavior was not exceptional in these years, for the diaries of various German girls would reveal instances in which young women attended Sangerfests year after year, always knowing which of the young men there they would ultimately marry, but never would the two young people speak. They would look, and remember, and fifty years later they would confess: T knew I loved him' or perhaps i loved her from that first moment.' Germans could bide their time.
The Sangerfest this year provided two grand days of German singing, German poetry and German food, and not even the heavy rains that came at the close of the second day diminished the ardor of these good people who were keeping alive the traditions of the homeland which had treated them so badly but which still commanded their memories. Indeed, the rain became so heavy that most of the visitors from Hardwork had to lay over an extra day, and when they did set forth for home they found that what had been little streams during the trip to Lion Creek were now surging torrents, so they were forced to waste a fourth day till the floods subsided.
As they neared their house in Hardwork, Hugo Metzdorf, his face ashen, came to greet them, and without speaking, thrust into Ludwig's hand a letter just received from Grenzler. When Ludwig finished reading, he passed it dumbly to his wife, who studied it, then grasped Metzdorf's hand and uttered a low sigh: 'Ach, mein Gottf
The letter said that the secret police had arrested Alois Metzdorf, charged him with treason and thrown him in jail, where he had hanged himself.
Unable to speak to either Metzdorf or his wife, Ludwig walked unsteadily to a rock, sat down and covered his face, overwhelmed by the tragedy. Alois, the dreamer, the one who had really wanted to come to Texas, the man who had given him the certificates. Ludwig had shaken hands with him on the pledge: 'Alois, I'll hold the best fields for you . . . till you come.' He retched, for a horrible suspicion assailed him: 'Alois Metzdorf would never commit suicide. Visions of freedom kept that man alive. My God! They hanged him in his cell.'
His hands fell to his lap, and when Thekla whispered: 'Ludwig, we must go,' he was unable to move. Stricken by grief over the death of his old friend, he could only sit there and mumble acid verses of Heine. In the depth of his despair, and in his sorrow for the German people, he understood as fully as any man might the meaning of emigration, its terrors, its relief, and the wonder of finding after long struggle a new life in a new land. Had he been invited at that moment to occupy a castle in the Margravate or any other German principality, he would have refused. He was in Texas and he loved every rolling hill, every relentless heat-filled day.
In a rush of enthusiasm like none he had known before, he decided that the Allerkamps must immediately utilize their certificates, and with the aid of a surveyor, stake out their own farm. To their relief, a man said to be an expert in such matters arrived at this crucial time to inform them that he knew a surveyor who would locate land for them if their papers were in order. When the certificates were presented, he said: 'Everything fine. Your land is on the way.'
When they met the surveyor, a thin small man from Alabama who chewed grass stems, he laid the situation honestly before them: 'We find the land together. We mark it off together. I build three-foot piles of earth and rock at each corner, and then you itand in the middle and dance up and down, shout to the four winds, and fire a gun two or three times to inform the world that this is now your land. For my fee I get one-third, so since you have :ertificates for six parcels, I'll just take these two and you have /ourself two thousand acres, more or less.'
It seemed so simple, with the surveyor assuring them there vould be no other costs, that the Allerkamps in family session lgreed, and Ludwig said when the deal was closed: 'We'll have our )wn land. We'll work for ourselves.' They further agreed that they vould apply the four certificates they still retained to some choice and in the northern part of Xavier County, not on the Brazos, for hat was all taken, but not too far inland. Franziska was quietly
excited when she realized that the land her father was speaking of would place her close to where Otto Macnab had his property; they had not yet spoken, but she was decidedly interested in being near him.
Unfortunately, the Alabama surveyor was a scoundrel. Immediately after obtaining possession of the Allerkamp entitlement of a thousand acres, he sold it to another man and was never seen again in that part of Texas. When Ludwig and his son Ernst tried to recover their certificate, the buyer went before Judge Phinizy and proved that he had obtained it not from the Alabama surveyor, because had he received stolen goods he would have to return them, but as a finder's fee from Allerkamp direct, in which case the land pertaining to the certificate was certainly his.
When Ludwig heard this decision, typical of hundreds then being handed down by the Texas courts against immigrants and Mexicans, he was so outraged that he could not for several days even discuss his indignation with his family, but when his fury subsided he assembled them: There is much wrong with Texas. The way they treat Indians, the way they own slaves, the way they allow a man like that to steal from everyone. But there is also much that is right; our neighbors represent that goodness. They're still willing to provide us food for the next six months while I study and find our land. I'm going to be a surveyor, and an honest one.'
With that firm decision as a rocklike base, he took out his trigonometry book, associated himself with a man from Mississippi who had mastered Spanish land law, and began the laborious study of varas, cordeles, labors and leagues. 'A vara,' he told his family, 'is exactly thirty-three point thirty-three inches, which means that it's just short of a yard. Texas system, seventeen hundred and sixty yards to the mile. Spanish system, nineteen hundred and one varas to the mile.' He purchased a surveyor's chain of twenty varas and accompanied his tutor on various jobs, during which he learned the rudiments of his new trade. He found that he liked the rough life of tramping across open land; he learned how to shake brush and low shrubs with a warning stick to scare away rattlesnakes; and he enjoyed the closing ceremonies when the new owner stood in the middle of his selection and jumped in the air and shouted to the four winds and fired his gun. At such moments he felt that he had accomplished something: he had helped a man to be free.
On one prolonged survey he was led to a river far to the west, the Pedernales it was called, the River of Flints, and he vowed that when he had his own credentials as a surveyor, he would return to the Pedernales and stake out his claim on the two thousand acres to which he was entitled, paying himself the surveying fee, and
then buy as much more as he could afford. He said nothing of this to the man from Mississippi, lest he spread the news that his German helper had found a paradise among the rolling hills and green forests of the west.
For a long period Captain Garner's company of Rangers received no call to duty, because with the Cherokee expelled and the Comanche pushed back from Austin, the only recurring trouble spot was along the Nueces River, and this contested region fell strangely inactive.
'What's your friend Garza doing down there?' Garner asked Otto when they met in Campbell.
'Up to no good, you can be sure of that.'
'Government wants me to make a scout. But it has funds for only three Rangers.'
'I'll go without pay. I go crazy just sitting around.'
'Would you ride down and see if that Allerkamp fellow cares to come along?'
With an enthusiasm which almost betrayed his real purpose, Otto cried: 'Hey, I'd like to do that,' and it was in this way that he saw Franziska for the second time. As before, he remained on his horse, instructing Ernst as to where they would meet, and as he had hoped, the Allerkamp girl stood by the door, watching him intently. She was now a petite, handsome sixteen-year-old young miss whose flaxen hair was wound about her head. Again, neither she nor Otto spoke, but she believed that he was somewhat taller than before and he saw her as infinitely more beautiful.
When Mrs. Allerkamp came to the door to ask in heavily broken English: 'Is it that you would like maybe some drink?' he blushed painfully and allowed as how he wouldn't.
On the way home he rode in great perplexity, for if he had shied away from Betsy Belle Ascot because she was so distressingly much older than he, all of five years, he was now ashamed of himself for being interested so achingly in a child who was obviously years younger than himself. Desperately he had wanted to accept Mrs. Allerkamp's invitation and to sit in the kitchen, perhaps with the daughter, whose name he did not even know, but he had been afraid. However, when Ernst joined Captain Garner for the scout, Otto did contrive a tortuous way of discovering his sister's name.
'Franziska,' Ernst said, and there the conversation ended.
At the Nueces they did not find Benito Garza, and for a reason that would have astonished them. Now thirty-nine years old and, like Otto, still unmarried, Garza was far south of the Rio Grande astride a stolen horse and leading two others acquired in the same
way. He wore a big, drooping mustache, which had become his trademark: no waxed points, no fanciness, just an ominous growth of hair which gave his face its sinister look.
He rode in bitterness, a man whose world had fallen apart. It galled him to think that because he fought to retain the Nueces Strip for Mexico, he was characterized a bandit and that notices were plastered along the Nueces River:
$300 DEAD OR ALIVE
BENITO GARCIA
They can't even get my name right,' he grumbled as he continued down the dusty road. He thought of himself as a patriot, never a bandit. When he raided in the Nueces Strip, using ugly tactics in doing so, he saw himself, and justifiably so, as a defender of his land, land which his family had occupied long before even the first dozen anglo families had filtered in to Tejas. In recent months he had even revived his vanished dream of becoming Gobernador de la Provincia de Tejas, and he knew that to achieve it he must, as before, depend upon Santa Anna.
When he came in sight of Mexico City his heart quickened, for here he was to meet his hero, the general, and learn from him when the reconquest and punishment of Tejas was to begin.
But when he entered the capital and reported to military headquarters he learned that Santa Anna, now dictator with powers unprecedented, had as so often before left the government in the hands of others while he loafed on his beloved ranch near Xalapa, and Garza showed his disappointment. 'Damnit,' he complained to headquarters, 'I've ridden all the way from Tejas to learn how my volunteers can serve when the new war begins, and I find the commander in chief idling on his ranch.'
A very young colonel, Ignacio Bustamante, related in some way to the politician who served as nominal president in Santa Anna's absence, took him in charge: 'Never speak badly of our president. He has ten thousand ears.'
'I fought for him. I revere him.'
'That's good, because he wants to see you ... at his hacienda.'
As the two officers rode east past the great volcanoes, Bustamante brought Garza up to date on the doings of their general: 'I suppose you know that a long time ago some high-spirited young Mexican officers stole a few pastries from the shop of a French baker, and when the French ambassador was unable to collect damages for his countryman, France imposed a blockade. Yes, a real war with ships bombarding Vera Cruz.
'Well, you know Santa Anna. Let an enemy touch his beloved Vera Cruz, and he's off like a lion. As the French landed, he leaped on his white horse and dashed into town to defend it. As usual, he behaved heroically and had the great good luck to be hit by a French cannonball, which so damaged his left leg that it had to be amputated. Yes, our noble warrior now has only one leg.'
'How does he get about?' Benito asked, and the colonel explained: 'He has four wooden legs that he carries with him in a leather case, one for dress, one for everyday wear, one for battle, and I've been told what the fourth is for but I forget. Each different, each made of different materials. The one for evening wear is very light, made of cork.'
'You said he was lucky to have been hit by the French cannonball? I don't think losing a leg is luck, even if you have four replacements.'
'Oh! You miss the meaning! You'll not listen to our general speak four sentences in a public oration, and he makes them constantly, without hearing an account of how he lost his leg in the service of his nation. He has fifteen clever ways of casually referring to it. Heroic: "I galloped into the very mouth of the French cannon and lost my leg in doing so." Self-pity, with tears: "In a moment of great danger I surrendered my leg to the glory of my country." Challenging: "Do you think that a man who has lost his leg defending his country is afraid of a threat like that?" His missing leg is his passport to glory.'
When they rode past the grim prison at Perote, where various Texian adventurers still languished in dark cells, Colonel Bustamante began pointing at choice fields and saying repeatedly: 'Santa Anna has acquired this ranch' or 'Santa Anna had this owner shot as a traitor and now the ranch is his.' The dictator owned nearly half a million acres on which roamed more than forty thousand cattle, all obtained at no cost, and Garza, proud of his hero's accomplishments, failed to realize that Santa Anna's stealing of land from peasants was precisely the same as the anglos' stealing land from mexicanos in the Nueces Strip. Nor could he know that the total corruption made popular by Santa Anna was going to become a way of life in Mexico, contaminating government for the next century and a half.
Garza was astonished when he met his hero, for Santa Anna was extremely thin, his face poetically gaunt, his heavy head of hair beginning to show gray. He limped pitifully as he came forward to greet his Alamo lieutenant: i lost a leg, you know, defending our nation at Vera Cruz.' He was wearing his country-landowner leg, and before Garza could reply, he reached out, clasped him by
the shoulder, and said with unfeigned enthusiasm: 'In honor of the great days, my Gobernador de Tejas, let us see the cocks fight,' and he led the way, now springing along, with no perceptible difficulty, to the small circular building in which he conducted his famous cockfights.
He had invited some sportsmen up from Vera Cruz, each with three or four champion birds, and for three loud and dusty hours the great dictator indulged himself with one of the things in life he prized most, the slash-and-flash of the cockfight when two noble birds, trained to the last degree and fitted with three-inch scimitar blades, fought to the death.
Next morning Santa Anna revealed why he had asked Garza to make the long ride to Manga de Clavo, and to Benito's surprise, it did not concern the invasion of Tejas or even the guerrilla warfare there; it was an imperial concern which no visitor could have anticipated: 'My dear and trusted friend, 1 seek a guard of honor for a deed of honor. In response to demands from the people of Mexico, and also its religious leaders, I have consented with some reluctance, for I am essentially a modest man, to have my left leg disinterred, borne to the capital, and buried in a pantheon reserved for heroes.'
Tour leg?' Benito asked.
'Why not?' Santa Anna snapped, it gave itself in service to our nation, did it not? What leg has ever meant so much to a nation? Does it not deserve the treatment we give other heroes?'
'It certainly does,' Benito said hurriedly, and he was present i when the leg was dug up, placed upon an ornate catafalque, and started on its triumphal journey to the capital.
He and seven other lieutenants, men who had proved their worth in battle, were issued special green-and-gold uniforms and ] horses with silver-encrusted saddles, and they led the procession, f clearing the way through villages where entire populations turned out to honor the great man's leg as it made its way slowly past Perote prison, into Puebla, and beneath the noble volcanoes.
Garza and Bustamante rode ahead into the capital, to alert the city that the leg was coming and to ensure that multitudes lined the avenues when it arrived. Thousands turned out, and at the j splendid cathedral in the center of town more than fifty priests of various ranks, including a number of bishops, waited to place the j: leg in a position of honor below the altar. Here legions of the j faithful could come and kneel and say brief prayers.
Two days later, with Santa Anna himself in attendance, entire' regiments of cavalry in resplendent uniform, young cadets from the military academy at Chapultepec, a solemn procession of
priests and religious dignitaries, the entire civilian cabinet and most of the diplomatic corps marched to the beat of seven military bands, leaving the center of the city and progressing to the historic cemetery of Santa Paula, where a cenotaph had been erected to the dictator's leg.
Prayers were said. Chants were sung. Rifles fired. Santa Anna wept. The multitudes cheered. And soldiers such as Benito Garza stood stiffly at attention while flags were draped over the coffin and the leg was lowered into its new and stately grave.
Garza was still in the capital when a vast revulsion against the pomposity of Santa Anna surfaced, and he watched in horror as a mob tore down a gilded statue of the dictator in the center of the city, rampaged through the streets, and cheered when a crazy-eyed leader shouted: 'Let's get that goddamned leg!' From a safe distance Garza followed the frenzied rabble as it broke down the gates of Santa Paula, destroyed the cenotaph honoring the leg, dug up the bones, and dragged them ignominiously through the very streets where they had a short time before been paraded with such majesty. He was aghast when the bones were separated, some going to one part of the city, some to another, and all of them ending in rubbish piles.
Through back streets he made his way to the palace from which the dictator had ruled with such unchallenged authority, and there he found him packing his wooden legs in their case as he prepared for flight. When Garza informed him of events at the cemetery, the great man sat heavily upon a trunk packed with silver objects and sniffled: 'My leg! The symbol of my honor! They dragged it through the streets!' Then, pulling himself up, he hobbled off to what appeared to be a lifelong exile.
As he disappeared in the dusk, Garza swore an oath: I shall drive every norteamericano out of the Strip. I shall ride and burn and kill, because that land is Mexico's, and I shall hold it until General Santa Anna marches back with a great army to reconquer it. He had to realize, of course, that his one-legged hero was nine parts charlatan, but this deficiency was offset by the fact that it was only Santa Anna who stood any chance of defeating the Texians, and he dreamed of the day when fighting would resume.