‘I think,’ said the judge, ‘that we have a very dangerous man amongst us,’ and he was about to propose certain protective steps when Father Ybarra burst into the room, flushed and obviously distressed at not having been summoned to a meeting of such importance.
‘Why was I not told?’ he demanded, and after Trinidad had brought him a glass of wine, which he took contemptuously, he added: ‘At a meeting like this I must be represented. After all, it is I who shall be reporting to the viceroy on affairs up here.’
‘We met by accident,’ the captain lied. ‘The judge and I were inspecting his papers, as our duty required, and we assembled quite by chance.’
‘What papers has he?’
‘Impeccable. Authorized by Mexico City to trade in our province. Customs duties properly paid.’
‘How could they be?’ Ybarra snapped. ‘He came in overland.’
‘Nacogdoches,’ the judge replied almost wearily, and in that moment the four original members of this meeting combined against the priest in defending the American. For half a year they had watched Ybarra and had recognized him as one of those petty, officious tyrants, adrift in all lands and in all religions, who assumed mantles of superiority in whatever affairs they touched. He was an impossible man, and if he opposed the American, they had to support the stranger.
‘Will he become Catholic?’ Ybarra asked. ‘The law says he should.’
‘If he wants land, I suppose he must,’ the judge said evasively. ‘But as a mere trader … I’m not sure how the law stands on that.’
‘But surely he must become a Spanish citizen,’ Ybarra pressed.
‘I’m not sure on that either. Did his papers refer to that, Captain?’
‘They said nothing specific’
‘You know what I think?’ the priest asked. ‘I think he’s a spy, sent down by the americanos to see where they can attack us.’
The judge looked at the captain, who said slyly: ‘We think you’re right. We must all watch him … very carefully.’
Father Ybarra, thinking that he had the support of these officials, gloated: ‘The minute he applies for land, he falls within my reach. Because we do not grant land rights to non-Catholics, is that not right?’
‘Absolutely correct,’ the judge said, but then he added: ‘We have the law, but it’s easily evaded.’
‘How?’
‘Foreign men marry our women and acquire their land.’
‘A man like Marr will never settle down,’ the priest said. ‘No matter how much he wants land.’
How wrong he was! Within a week Mr. Marr was asking in his slow, patient Spanish: ‘If the government allowed me to buy my shop, will it also allow me to buy land?’ and he confided to five different customers at his informal store how highly he regarded the Béjar district, and as the months passed, Béjar began to accept him as pretty much the man he said he was: ‘I did well in Philadelphia. Never much money, but always had a job. Never married, but I liked an Irish girl, except that my parents weren’t prepared to welcome a Catholic into the family. That and other things, they drove us apart. I tried Pittsburgh and then Kentucky and then down the river to New Orleans. And then I heard of Texas, as we call it up north.’
‘How did you lose your tooth?’
‘I never allow a man to call me Mordy more than once. But if you travel long enough, you’re bound to meet somebody bigger than you are.’ He grinned at his questioner, showing the gaping hole, and said: ‘But I won a lot more fights than I lost.’
And always he came back to the matter of land: ‘A man travels as much as I have …’
‘How old are you?’
‘My papers say twenty-eight. I guess that’s about right. One thing for certain, I’m old enough to want to settle down.’
‘Why Béjar?’
The man who asked this probing question one afternoon when the store was empty, except for him and Marr, had traveled a good deal in the army and by ship to Cuba, and he knew precisely the value of his town, as he explained to the americano: ‘You know, this isn’t Vera Cruz, where the ships come in each week. This isn’t Zacatecas, with its silver mines. And it certainly isn’t Saltillo … Why don’t you go on to that town if your papers say you can? There’s action and beautiful girls and real shops down there.’
‘I’ve never been to Saltillo, which must be a fine town from what you say. But it’s a far piece down the road, and I doubt it will ever have much contact with America. But Béjar! I tell you, when trade starts with the north, which it must, this town will grow like a mushroom in morning dew. I want to be here when that happens.’
‘How soon can it happen?’
‘Next year if cities like New Orleans prosper. Fifty years if things lag.’
‘And you want to own land when it does happen?’
‘I do.’
This questioner, a Canary Islander with all the tough shrewdness and character of that group, began taking Mr. Marr about the countryside, explaining who owned what: ‘As far as you can see and then twice that, Gertrudis Rodríguez.’ On another journey, which covered two days with camping out at night: ‘This great holding, Rivas family, one of the best.’ The man later remembered that at this point Marr asked: ‘Is that the Rivas with the two pretty daughters?’ It was.
But the trip which Marr seemed to appreciate most was one that took them along the wandering Medina: ‘Pérez ranch here, Ruiz up here, Navarro at the turn.’ And then on the second day he was told: ‘Here in the big bend of the river, Rancho El Codo. The Saldañas’. It once belonged to the Misión Santa Teresa, but somehow it got transferred to the family of the mission’s saintly founder.’
‘How many leagues?’
‘Vast. Who has counted?’
‘The Veramendis. Where’s their ranch?’
‘Bigger than any of these, but down in Saltillo, owned by a different branch of the family.’
They spent that night at El Codo, where the lack of supervision once provided by the Garza family was painfully obvious; Don Ramón had moved in other families, but all they seemed to do was build stronger walls to protect themselves against possible Comanche attacks, and that very night, toward four in the morning when a moon just past full threw a brilliant light, the Indians did strike, about thirty of them. They did not try to attack the biggest of the adobe houses, in which the travelers were sleeping along with the family, but they did surround a smaller house, where they killed two mestizo men and one of the wives, and galloped away with the other wife and two of her little girls.
The camp was in futile uproar when Mordecai Marr shouted for order: ‘I want your best horses. All your guns. Juan here will ride with me. Who else?’
He apportioned the guns sensibly; some to the people who would stay behind in case the Comanche tried to attack again while the posse was gone, but most to the five who would ride with him. One man, terribly frightened by the disaster, tried to dissuade Marr from chasing the Indians, but the big American growled: ‘We’ll catch and kill them and bring back those young ones.’
And he did just that. After a bold two-day run far to the west, he doubled back and took the Comanche by surprise as they came carelessly over a hill with their captives. After an opening fusillade that killed several Indians, Marr grabbed another gun and shot several more. Then, disregarding his own safety in the confusion that resulted and using his gun like a club, he dashed to the two children, dragged them to safety behind a hillock, and returned to the battle, which the Comanche were abandoning.
The other five white men had taken one Indian, and when Marr learned from the weeping children that their mother had been tortured and slain soon after their capture, he went berserk and leaped upon the Comanche, bore him to the ground, and smashed his head with a large rock. He kept pounding at the man’s chest until Juan and the other men pulled him away from the bloody mess.
‘Come back!’ he screamed into the emptiness, his hands dripping. ‘Come back any time, you goddamn savages!’ With great solicit
ation he started consoling the little girls, but when he saw their bruises and learned what they had suffered, he burst into tears and had to move away.
Word of his heroic rescue sped through Béjar prior to his return, carried by a workman from the ranch who said nothing to diminish the bravery of this americano who had been willing to fight the whole Comanche nation. Marr’s rescue of the two children was marveled at, for only rarely did a captive of the Comanche ever return to civilized life; they were either kept in perpetual slavery or hacked to pieces over a slow fire. Dread of the Comanche permeated Béjar, and for good reason, for there had never been enemies like these fearful creatures of the western plains, and any man brave enough to chase them down, his six against thirty, and rip away their captives too, was indeed a hero.
People crowded his warehouse and helped him unpack when a fresh convoy of mules arrived from New Orleans with treble the goods he had had before. He stood beside his bales and recounted his exploit: ‘I was a damned fool, understand that. I’d never do it again, of that you can be sure. I went crazy, I suppose. The woman and her children … And I could never have done it without Juan and the others. What shots those men were.’
‘But you did it!’ admiring women said.
‘Once, but never again.’
The people of Béjar did not believe this, because on several occasions Mr. Marr gave clear proof of his hot temper. One day a stranger from Saltillo protested that the price of cloth was too high, and Marr patiently tried to explain that he had to import his goods by land from New Orleans rather than by ship via Vera Cruz. When the buyer pointed out that the distance from Vera Cruz to Béjar was much longer, Marr politely agreed: ‘Longer, yes. But from Vera Cruz you have organized roads. From New Orleans, mostly trails.’
‘Even so …’
At this point, Mr. Marr, according to people who were there, lifted the Saltillo man by his ears, dragged him to the door, the American’s face getting redder each moment, and tossed him out into the plaza, bellowing in an echoing voice: ‘Then buy your damned cloth in Vera Cruz.’
Unwisely, the stranger reached for his knife, whereupon Marr leaped upon him, knocked the knife away, and pummeled him until the captain of the presidio ran up to halt the fray. After that, people did not argue with nice-mannered Mr. Marr about prices.
After Trinidad had listened to three or four similar examples of Marr’s mercurial behavior, she concluded that he was nothing but an americano bully, and she decided to have nothing to do with him. Next morning when he crossed the plaza to speak with her, she rebuffed him. But that afternoon Amalia came running to the Saldaña house with news that led her to change her mind: ‘Have you heard about the wonderful thing Mr. Marr’s doing?’ And when Trinidad went to his warehouse she found on the counter a small wooden box with his hand-lettered sign: POR LAS NIÑAS HUÉRFANAS. In it were three silver pieces, his own contribution to the two children orphaned by the Comanche. Soon he would have a substantial number of coins, which he intended giving to the Canary Island family that had assumed care of the little girls, who were slowly recovering.
It was because of this sign that Trinidad found occasion to speak with the americano, for later when she returned to add her contribution she noticed that someone, not the one who made the sign, had changed the word por to para. Both words meant for, but in specialized contexts and to use one where the other was appropriate was almost humorous. When she commented on the editorial change, he laughed: ‘Para and por, ser and estar. No foreigner can ever learn the difference.’
She was impressed that he understood the difficulty and spent some time trying to explain the inexplicable, how ser and estar both meant exactly to be, but, again, in minutely specialized applications. She said: ‘It’s very complicated. Yo soy means that I am, that I exist. Yo estoy means that I am somewhere.’ And he said: ‘I solve it easily. I use ser on three days of the week, estar on the other three, so I’m always half right.’ And she asked: ‘What about the seventh day?’ And he said: ‘Like God, on the seventh day I rest. I use neither.’
Instinctively she was repelled by this big, rough man with the missing tooth, for she was finding him to be just what Don Ramón had predicted the americanos would be: arrogant and uncivilized, Protestant and menacing. But he was also intriguing, so despite her apprehensions she began to stop by his warehouse to chat, and one day she startled her grandfather with an extraordinary bit of information: ‘Mr. Marr is becoming a Catholic’
Yes, he had gone to Father Ybarra and said with proper humility: ‘I wish to convert,’ and the priest, eager to bring such a spectacular man into the church, forgot his earlier animosity and started giving religious instruction. It was a case of the brutal converting the brute, and one Sunday at service the dour priest was able to announce, while pointing with satisfaction to where Marr sat: ‘Today the last unbeliever in our town has joined the Holy Church, and we welcome him. Jesus Christ is pleased this day, Don Mordecai.’ And from that time on he was no longer referred to as Mister, but as Don.
On Monday morning after his conversion was solemnized, Don Mordecai visited the local government offices and started turning over four maps of the area while asking numerous questions of the custodian: ‘Who owns this stretch of land?’ ‘On this map it refers to Rancho de Las Hermanas. Who are the sisters?’ ‘Who is this man Rivas?’ On another day he spread four maps on the floor and pointed to an anomaly: ‘The map of 1752 spells our town Véxar. Menchacha’s map of 1764 calls it Béxar. This map of 1779 calls it Véjar. And the one three years ago calls it Béjar. What is our name?’
The clerk noticed with both pride and confusion that Don Mordecai was now calling it ‘our town,’ as if his conversion to Catholicism had also conferred citizenship: ‘You can spell it however you please, but it’s always something soft and beautiful.’
Marr said he did not think of Béjar as soft and beautiful, but the clerk assured him: ‘You will when you’ve found yourself a plot, built your own house, taken a wife, and settled down with us.’
‘All those things I should like to do,’ Marr said, and by nightfall every one of the Spanish citizens knew what he had said, as did many of the Indians.
But Marr soon found that it was not a simple matter for a foreigner to acquire land in a frontier province, and his attempts to do so met with frustration. Either none of the good land was for sale, or he found himself ineligible to buy any of the marginal fields. Returning to the maps, he identified hundreds of thousands of acres of unclaimed land, but invariably some constraint prevented him from acquiring any. It was the same with purchasing a house in Béjar itself. There were none for sale, even though half a dozen changed hands while he watched.
It was then, in the summer of 1792, that he seriously analyzed his situation: Spain is finished in this part of the world. Within ten years Louisiana will break away. Then Mexico will break away, too. But an independent Mexico will never be strong enough to hold Tejas. And when Tejas breaks loose, everything will be in confusion.
He pondered how he could profitably fish in these troubled waters, and was guided by the folk wisdom his grandfather had often recited: ‘Mordecai, I seen it so clear in England. Them as had land, had money. Them as didn’t, didn’t.’ At the conclusion of this silent session, Mordecai summarized his strategy: I’ll settle in Béjar, find me a wife, and grab hold of some land.
Before noon next morning he began paying serious attention to Trinidad de Saldaña, for the maps showed that the vast acreage her grandfather owned at El Codo stood right where El Camino Real turned to approach Béjar. Any future road leading to the west toward Chihuahua would have to cross the established camino on this land, and he could foresee settlements there and the exchange of goods and the development of real farms, not just empty land called loosely a ranch, with no fences, few buildings and very little control.
The old man can’t live forever, he told himself as he studied the ranch from a hillock to the east. When he dies, it goes to his granddaughter, an
d a man could do lots worse than her.
He began intercepting her when she crossed the plaza, or speaking to her when she sat under the trees with her friend Amalia. He took great effort to obtain invitations to dinners where she and her grandfather were to be, and when Engracia de Saldaña died of the fever that raged north of the Rio Grande—‘virulent, pulmonary and strangling,’ the doctor called it—he paid a formal visit to the house across the plaza with a large package of sweetmeats imported from New Orleans as his contribution to the funeral feast. He spoke with Trinidad for some minutes, consoling her for her grievous loss: ‘I liked to see Doña Engracia crossing the plaza, for then I knew happiness was on the way.’
Trinidad, caught up in her new lamentations, perceived nothing of Don Mordecai’s plan to acquire her land through his quiet courtship, but Don Ramón smelled him out in a minute, and now began the protracted, painful duel between the elderly Spaniard and the brash newcomer.
‘I don’t want you to speak any further with Marr,’ Don Ramón warned his granddaughter. ‘The man does not have decent intentions.’
If Trinidad had accepted her grandfather’s accurate assessment, much trouble would have been avoided, but she was beginning to stare down the corridor of years and see only loneliness ahead. The man she loved was dead. Her mother was dead. Her grandfather was obviously failing, and when he died, she would have to manage El Codo by herself. So although she was not actively seeking a potential husband, she was aware that Mordecai Marr was a vigorous fellow who could solve many of her problems. Her next defense of Marr revealed her increasingly muddled thinking, for she cited the opinion of a man she detested: ‘But Father Ybarra has welcomed him into the community.’
‘A worse recommendation a man could not have. Stay clear of them both.’
Trinidad certainly had no desire to engage in any close friendship with the americano, but she did recognize him as a man of character, and he certainly represented a vitality which was lacking in her life and in the life of this town. She did not like Marr, but she was stirred by what he represented, and when she compared his stern and unmistakable masculinity with the rather colorless character of the few unmarried Spanish and mestizo men in the region, she had to prefer Marr.
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