‘And who are those hapless three you brought with you?’ Ripperdá asked, and Clooney corrected him: ‘Quimper is the best hunter I’ve ever seen. Tennessee man.’
At the mention of this state, Ripperdá groaned: ‘Tennessee and Kentucky, they’ll be the ruin of Tejas. Mind, I prophesied this. Up there they must teach boys to be animals.’
And when the Quimpers appeared before him, documents in hand, he refused to look at the papers or issue them land: ‘You have no claim. I have no authority. I advise you in your own best interests, go home.’
‘But the law says—’
‘My instructions tell me what the law is.’
In their six meetings with Ripperdá he never once claimed that he was the law. Meticulous in his observation of the proprieties, he referred always to some mystical body of law promulgated in Mexico City, just as his famous uncle had depended upon laws passed in Madrid for the closing down of the ancient capital across the Sabine. ‘This is not my action,’ the baron had protested in 1773. ‘It’s the king, in Madrid, who views your town as useless. It’s the king who has proclaimed: “Close down that wasteful place.” ’
Víctor Ripperdá had no baronial title to protect him, and no king in Madrid to offer him a job when his tour on the Mexican frontier ended; he had to rely upon the good will of the administrators in Mexico City, whose whims were many. He had learned that if in a post like Nacogdoches he did nothing, made no specific decisions, he could not find himself in trouble, so prudently he refused to issue land titles, build a church for the new priest, or authorize the settlement of any of the Americans who were beginning to stream across the Sabine. Mexico’s frontier policy, as Americans in Tejas saw it, was ‘Do nothing, and nothing bad can happen to you. Make one mistake, and you may be shot.’
This was not a fair assessment. When American settlers probed west they were supported by stable government in Washington and the state capitals. They were backed by a growing economy. They faced Indians who more often than not could be reasoned with. They were pushed along by a constantly growing population of Englishmen, Scots and Germans eager to test themselves against the wilderness. And most important, they carried with them ideas of education, freedom and self-government ideally suited to the establishment of new governments in new areas.
Mexico had an opposite experience, especially in Tejas, where it faced the most intractable Indians in the Americas. It had to rely upon an inadequate number of Hispanic settlers, with no fresh replacements streaming in. Its productive base was limited and its military disorganized by constant rebellion. The preoccupation of Mexicans was, properly, the founding of a stable government, and in their search they experimented repeatedly with imperialism, republicanism and liberal democracy, leaving them little energy for the development of distant territories.
Most important of all, whereas Spanish culture had proved itself capable, in both Aztec Mexico and Inca Peru, of overthrowing established civilizations centered upon cities, it was not well adapted to the settling of vast open spaces. Its religion was communal rather than individual; its educational theories did not apply to the frontier; and the preference of its people for the small, clustered settlement rather than the remote farm proved ill-suited to Tejas.
Individual Mexicans like Víctor Ripperdá were as capable as any Americans, and if their Tejas had consisted of well-defined settlements waiting to be taken over, they would have succeeded, as they did at Santa Fe, but to throw such men into an empty wilderness without adequate support was imprudent, as the Quimper family was discovering.
Despite the fact that their papers were in order, they were forced to remain in Nacogdoches for tedious weeks, pestering Ripperdá to make up his mind about their land, but he found it expedient to ignore them, to delay making any decision regarding their immigration, and when in desperation they begged him at least to tell them what their prospects were, he laughed: ‘Me? I have no control over immigration policy. The law says one thing, my superiors say another. Who am I to cut that Gordian knot?’
No appeal, no steady decline in the family’s funds could move this slim, dapper official, and it became apparent to the Quimpers, especially Mattie, who despised the man, that he was capable of keeping them in suspension not just for weeks, but for months or years: ‘Gettin’ a decision out of him? Impossible,’ and she began agitating for the family to move south toward San Antonio, where some official might be met who would make decisions.
Her husband warned that if they left Nacogdoches without permission, Ripperdá might dispatch his militia to overtake them, and then they would languish in jail, as many American trespassers did.
Mattie was all for taking the risk; she yearned to get her seeds planted in land which she could call her own, and she pestered her husband to make the move, but he was afraid. The situation became more complicated one morning when young Yancey came running with exciting news: ‘Many Americans! Coming from the Bayou!’ And when his parents ran out they saw that a substantial contingent of immigrants had arrived from the Neutral Ground, quite different from the customary stragglers who kept drifting in, to Ripperdá’s disgust; these men and women had legal documents attaching them to the settlement plans of a man from Missouri whose name the Quimpers already knew but whose reputation for honest dealing they could not yet assess.
‘The empresario Stephen F. Austin has called for us,’ the spokesman of the group said. ‘He has title to vast lands along the Brazos River, and he offers a league-and-a-labor to every family of good reputation.’
‘Do you buy the land?’ Quimper asked, and the man said: ‘No. Surveyor’s fee only, if I understand correctly.’
Jubal showed the man his own papers, especially the form signed by Father Clooney proving that the Quimpers were good Catholics and as such were entitled to their land. The newcomer said: ‘It’s not like the papers we have, an authorization from Austin, but I’m sure it would be acknowledged if you wanted to come along with us.’
As soon as this suggestion—it was not a promise—was made, the Quimpers unanimously sought to join the Austin group, but when they applied to Ripperdá for permission to leave Nacogdoches, he balked: ‘Stephen F. Austin I’m aware of. He has empresario rights. His people are free to move south. But you have no rights.’ And he was adamant. The Quimpers could not leave the north to acquire land, nor could they obtain other land in the north. It was infuriating, but it was standard Mexican procedure.
When the new contingent of settlers started south, the Quimpers grew desperate, and Mattie wanted to join the procession whether she was entitled to do so or not, but her husband was afraid to take the risk, and the three immigrants watched with longing as the caravan moved on.
The next days were painful, with Mattie even suggesting that they shoot Ripperdá and get going; her husband hid the three guns and went for the last time to see the administrator. For years he would remember that meeting: Ripperdá wore a new outfit imported from New Orleans, fawn-gray in color, neatly stitched, with new boots to match. He wore one small medal bestowed by a previous administration, and an ingratiating smile: ‘My dear friend Quimper, I would gladly help you if it lay in my power to do so.’ Whenever he said something like this he twisted the left side of his mustache, then raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘But I am powerless, as you know.’ He would issue no permissions, make no promises. In fact, he would do nothing at all, and as Jubal’s fury rose, Ripperdá’s benign calm increased, but as the two men faced each other, Quimper suddenly realized: If we leave for the south, he won’t do anything, either. He will never do anything about anything.
That night he told his wife and son: ‘Gather what things we have. At dawn we head south.’
Before the sun was risen the three Quimpers were once again laden like oxen, with additional acquisitions from Nacogdoches—among them a stout hoe jutting out from Mattie’s back—and they were about to sneak away when Father Clooney, awake for his prayers, heard their commotion and ran to intercept t
hem: ‘Dear children! You must not attempt this.’
‘Ripperdá won’t have the courage to stop us. You know that.’
‘But I was thinking of the long trail ahead. You cannot travel it bearing such heavy burdens,’ and while they protested in whispers that they must reach their destination in time to plant their corn, he left abruptly, but soon came back with a gift he had purchased to help these good people on their way … if they ever gained permission to go.
It was a handcart such as peasants throughout the world used for pilgrimages: two tall wheels shod in iron, a large bed with sides, a canvas cover to guard against rain, two stubby handles with which to guide it. As the priest pushed it forward he praised the wheels: ‘Big ones pass easily over bumps. Little ones move faster, but they do catch.’
Mattie, who carried most of the family gear, appreciated what such a cart would mean, and with a glance of thanks, went to it ceremoniously, depositing on its oaken bed her new hoe, her cache of food, her sewing kit, her hand-shovel and a dozen other items, some surprisingly heavy. But her sack of corn seed she kept tied to her waist.
When the cart had accepted comfortably the family gear, Father Clooney said: ‘Now we must add the things that will make life more bearable,’ and he left them again, returning with more gifts, items he knew they would need: another ax, a strong hammer, a hatchet, another spade, a big crosscut saw, more salt. ‘And you’d better take this augur to bore holes for the legs of your stools.’
But by the time all these things were stowed, the sun was well up, and Father Clooney warned his new Catholics: ‘If you start now, Ripperdá will surely know, and he’ll have to arrest you.’
‘But we must go!’ Mattie cried, and he said: ‘So you shall. For I must move along the rivers to perform marriages and baptisms, and I’m asking for you as my guide and hunter. To provide me with food and protection. I have reason to think that Ripperdá will approve, because otherwise he’ll have to send soldiers, and he wouldn’t like to do that.’
So the morning escape was delayed, but by noon, after Father Clooney had met with Commandant Ripperdá and it was agreed that the Quimpers would accompany him on his journey, they started off. As they left Nacogdoches, Víctor Ripperdá bade them goodbye with such warm smiles that one might have thought he had arranged the expedition: ‘Go, and may God speed you in your great work,’ to which Mattie Quimper retorted under her breath: ‘Stay, and may the devil take you on his next visit.’
The excursion was a joyful experience, for it was March, and the air was warming and the forests of Texas were threatening to break into leaf. The rivers ran with new vigor, and birds and flowers returned in abundance.
To Father Clooney, who recognized this as his last abode on earth, each day was a new delight, and constantly he said to the others: ‘Imagine having a parish like this! Forty miles to the next cottage, with warmth and love awaiting you when you arrive.’ He never doubted, not even when he found himself surrounded by Methodists, that when he sat down at dusk he would be greeted with respect and in time with affection.
At lonely cabins he performed weddings and baptisms, usually on the same day. He went to the most forsaken graves, a pile of stone, no more, and said prayers with those who had lost babies and grandfathers. He blessed people. He converted those whose claim to land would otherwise be denied, and he ate voraciously of whatever food the people offered: ‘My father always told me, eat beef while you still have teeth. For a long time you’ll drink nothin’ but broth.’
Few clergymen have ever reported to a new assignment with more abounding love and gratitude than Francis X. Clooney, this exile from Ballyclooney: God has given me a second chance, and I will show my thanks.
To Mattie the trip was equally exciting. Landless in Tennessee, the daughter of a wretched man who had to crop on shares without ever receiving his legal allowance, she had married Jubal Quimper because he did have land, and she had watched helplessly as men more clever than he stole that land with spurious documentation and protracted lawsuits. Landless once more, she had traveled across Tennessee and through Arkansas, seeing people far less able than she enjoying fields and farms and stretches of their own forest, and always before her, as she trudged along, glowed a vision of land which she and her family would one day own: Ever’ damned thing we do on it will make it better and our children will make it better still.
‘Land hunger’ it would be called in later years when scholars tried to explain why so many people like Mattie poured into Texas, and no better description could be fashioned. She was tired, dead tired of being pushed around, and when she picked up that rifle in the Neutral Ground and killed the renegade, she felt that she was protecting her right to acquire land when she crossed over into Texas. The vacillations in Nacogdoches had driven her to such desperation that she might indeed have slain Ripperdá had not her husband restrained her, and now to be freed of those restraints, to be on the way to great expanses of empty land—this was an exploration toward paradise, and she knew it.
Despite the relief the handcart provided from beastlike burdens, Mattie still did most of the work about the nightly camps: she cooked, she laundered in the rivers, she looked after the priest when rain soaked him and he ran the risk of a cold, she molded the bullets and saved the deerskins for later tanning. She hoarded her supply of salt, dispensing it in niggardly fashion when her husband brought in a portion of some bear he had slain, for then she knew that her crew would eat well. But most important of all she kept the fires burning when they sputtered, hauling in the fallen timbers herself.
For Jubal the long trip was merely an extended hunting party: deer, an occasional turkey, pigeon, wild pig or bear. One day he came rushing back to the camp, shouting like an excited boy: ‘Mattie! Mattie! What I seen off to the west!’ And at her feet he threw a huge chunk of meat and an animal’s tongue five times larger than a deer’s.
‘What is it?’ she asked, and he said: ‘I went further than ordinary, that’s why I didn’t get back last night. Far to the west, I saw this movement, huge, like a movin’ carpet. Know what it was? Buffalo. Yep, out there we got buffalo.’
‘What are they like?’ she asked, and he said simply: ‘Mattie, they’re so big! So much hair. And they come in such endless numbers!’
On some days when he was certain where Father Clooney and the others were headed, so that they could be easily overtaken, he would trek to the west, sit on some mound, and watch the herds moving slowly across an open space where the forest ended and the plains began, and he would wonder if the great beasts could be domesticated: They’d make wonderful cows! They must give milk, elsen how could they feed their young? But I wouldn’t want that bull over there to come chargin’ at me. When he killed one and cut off only the most succulent parts, leaving the rest to rot, he often mused: We never ate so well. No potatoes or flour, but meat like no man ever saw before.
He would have been content for the trip to continue endlessly, for he had never before enjoyed such hunting, but when Mattie warned him that their supplies of powder and lead were perilously low, he realized that they must soon strike civilization or find themselves in trouble, and he began to ask at lonely cabins along the ancient forest trail: ‘How far to Austin’s Colony?’ and invariably the settlers spoke well of the empresario: ‘You can trust that one. He charges for his land, but it’s worth it. May move down myself one of these days.’
‘He charges? I thought all you paid was the surveyor.’
‘Yes, you pay him, but it ain’t much. Then you also pay Austin, maybe twelve and a half cents an acre, maybe twenty-five, I’ve heered both.’
Quimper stopped, calculating in his head: How much was a league-and-a-labor? Nearly five thousand acres. Even at twelve and a half cents, that would be … Jesus Christ! It was then that he developed his suspicions about Stephen F. Austin: He’s nothin’ but a Tennessee banker moved south.
He asked Father Clooney about this startling development, and the priest said: ‘As I understand it,
the way they told me in New Orleans when they gave me the parish, Austin’s the only man the Mexican government trusts. He’s the only one the American settlers trust. When you get your land from him you get a clear, sound title. Otherwise, real trouble.’
Quimper would confide in no one, not even his wife, how much money he was bringing, but Father Clooney gained the impression that he had enough to pay for his acreage if he so desired but that it galled him to think that he must do so. ‘Jubal, if payin’ out a little money ensures a proper beginnin’, pay it. You’ll be happier and so will your woman.’
‘It don’t matter about Mattie, she’ll do what I tell her.’
‘Jubal, that woman dreams of havin’ her own land. Why else would she work so hard? Get it for her in the right way.’
For Yancey Quimper, eleven years old, growing shrewder each day, the trip was a kind of grand awakening: ‘You told me we would be traveling the Camino Real. Don’t look very royal to me.’ He was a whining kind of boy, noticing everything and complaining about it: ‘They ought to build some bridges like we saw in Arkansas.’ He also thought the scattered settlers should build better cabins: ‘If they fitted the logs closer, the wind wouldn’t blow through.’
Astutely he analyzed the elders he was traveling with: Pop don’t like work. But everybody seems to like him. When the men play cards at night, they all like Pop. Father Clooney likes whiskey too much. And Mom bites her lip to keep from givin’ them both hell. He grew to think of his mother as a workhorse, not masculine like the two men, but not feminine either, and then one day as they approached a well-built cabin by a stream and Mattie saw from a distance a woman in a neat dress, Yancey watched as his mother withdrew from the convoy and stepped behind some bushes, where she slipped out of her dirty buckskins, washed herself in the stream, and then unpacked the gray-blue woolen dress she had brought from Tennessee. When she rejoined the men, her hair drawn neatly behind her ears and fastened with a cord, she appeared as a tall, handsome woman in her early thirties, and for the first time her son realized that under different circumstances she could have been beautiful.
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