by Celia Hayes
“I left most of it to Hannah,” Dolph admitted carelessly, as Magda skimmed her letter, a page and a half in Hansi’s inelegant but readable hand. “I just wanted it to be as comfortable as Vati’s house and for visitors not to worry about wiping their feet, or if they had mud on their clothes. What does Onkel Hansi have to say?”
“He will travel north on the third,” Magda counted the days on her fingers, “so expect him here in four days time. He will travel with your herd, then meet up with Fredi at Live Oak. Anna and Peter will already have started north with their herd—how many parties will we have on the trail this year, Dolph?”
“Five,” her son answered. “We have contracted with Captain King to bring one of his herds to the Kansas markets. And Billy Inman has arranged with another group of ranchers to buy their beeves outright. We have staked him the purchase money. When he gets to Kansas, he repays us out of what he gets for them, pays his drovers and keeps the rest for himself. He is going to rendezvous with the sellers in Mason and start towards the Red River from there . . . is something the matter, Mama?” he asked anxiously, for Magda had read farther down in Hansi’s letter and made a small involuntary cry.
“Hansi writes that Mr. Johnson—you didn’t meet him, only Anna and I—has been killed by Kiowa Indians. He came to Friedrichsburg to meet with Hansi, promising to look for the children and ransom them if he could. He had been able to find and return his own family, you see. And so he did go twice, and a most perilous journey it was, each time. He would have gone a third time, if Hansi had asked it, but having Grete returned and being assured, ” Magda swallowed bravely past the pain in her throat, “that Willi was beyond all aid, Hansi did not want to put him at such a risk again, especially since he had a family of his own. Mr. Johnson was a teamster by profession, owning his own wagons and teams, although he was a Negro. He and three of his men were,” the letter trembled in Magda’s hand, “ambushed and besieged on the road to Ft. Griffin in January. Hansi writes that Mr. Johnson made a gallant stand sheltered by the bodies of his horse team, and nearly two hundred spent cartridges from his weapons were found nearby. The Indians mutilated his body most hideously, most likely in revenge for his courage and efficacy against them.”
Dolph took the letter from her and straightened the pages that she had crumpled in her distress. “I am sorry to hear about this, Mama. Sorry for him of course—but even sorrier that it would so distress you so.”
“He was so very brave,” Magda gulped, “but so modest in his demeanor. So very like your father, I thought at the time they had something of the same spirit in them, though otherwise they could not have been less alike. Oh, I wish I had not heard of this on the eve of your departure! It seems like the worst sort of bad omen!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry, Mama.” Dolph smiled, sunny and cheerful. “For we all go armed and there are more than four of us. Moreover, north of the Red River crossing, the trail is like one long river of cattle and men, each one of us but a few hours removed from the next party on the trail. And the Army keeps a careful watch now. Onkel Fredi and Onkel Hansi will be the first to tell you. Don’t worry about us, Mama. We’ll be as safe as if we were sitting right here in the parlor.”
“And besides, Mama,” Hannah added softly from where she sat reading to Lottie, under the golden glow of the oil lamp, “if Mr. Johnson was truly as brave and honorable as Papa, than I can’t help being certain that he would be in the same heaven also.”
“I am sure he would be,” Magda spoke with swift vehemence. “But it is still an ill omen!”
“But it did not turn out to be any such thing,” Lottie said to her mother, long afterwards. “Only an ill chance hearing of another’s tragic end on such a happy day for ourselves. It turned out to be a splendid summer.”
“It was so, after all.” Magda looked out at the rain, pouring down in Turner Street, beyond the ornate curtains in Lottie’s parlor. “Your father’s last words were to bid me to be happy. I think I came closest to such as I ever would, during that summer.”
Five days later, she stood on the porch with her daughters and Tia Leticia, waving goodbye to her sons and Hansi, Tia Leticia’s sons, Daddy Hurst, and a cavalcade of horses, men and boys. The kitchen wagon and the ambulance creaked slowly down the road towards Comfort as the herd was assembled for the long drive north. Their departure left the Becker place quieter, save for Dolph’s dogs, howling disconsolately and shut up inside the barn. Magda watched pale grey dust settling in their wake, listened to the noise of their passage fade into distance, the shouts and whooping cries from the drovers, the occasional bellow of an angry cow. She tried very hard not to think of Mr. Johnson or the lonely trail across Indian Territory and into Kansas.
“What will we do now, Mama?” Lottie asked. Her daughter seemed a little deflated, now that the excitement of their journey home and the departure of the herd were over.
“Now, Lottchen?” Magda smiled at her. “We will do as I always did in the spring—put on my oldest clothes and work in the garden!”
Mr. Inman had ploughed up the vegetable patch, but done nothing else, what with the press of work attendant on spring roundup. Magda clicked her tongue disapprovingly against her teeth and zestfully took up a spade and a rake. She and her daughters went to work with a will, breaking up clods and digging in rotted muck, raking it all smooth and setting out seeds in the velvety-soft soil. There was a peace to be found in working out of doors, in the sunshine, even though Mr. Inman appeared to be either amused or disapproving of the sight of the Patrón’s mother and sister hauling stable muck in buckets. That was nothing compared to Tia Leticia’s remonstrations over the three of them digging in it, wearing only plain faded calico wash-dresses turned up to the knee, and no petticoats. She appeared to want the men to do that kind of work. When Magda courteously declined their services, Tia Leticia burst into floods of angry Spanish.
Magda finally blurted to Mr. Inman, and blushed as Hannah repeated what she had said in English, “Tell her kindly, no, this is our garden. I don’t think the hired men know anything of vegetable gardens save for eating the harvest of it.”
Tia Leticia apparently held very strong views of what was a proper morning occupation for a lady. Hard work in a vegetable patch was not among them. She simmered with disapproval for days, until the neat furrows and mounds began to come out in green sprouts. A bit of gentle weeding was apparently acceptable. By the end of summer, Magda had won her over by teaching her the art of making various sorts of cheese that were especially relished among the German settlers. The resulting garden bounty also made the crude labor of preparing and planting a little more acceptable.
At mid-summer, they received letters from Dolph and Sam; the latter amusingly and lavishly ornamented with pencil sketches of horses, cows and drovers working at various tasks. They had brought the herd safely to the great terminus for the cattle trail, this time at Dodge City, which the railway had reached at long last. Within a few weeks Dolph and Sam returned, weather-burnt and brown, full of tales of their adventures. In hardly any time at all, the oak trees had turned bronze; autumn had come, and the apple boughs hung heavy with fruit.
Hansi sent Daddy Hurst to bring Magda and the children to his San Antonio house. They brought two bushels of apples with them, and the fruit held their slight sweet perfume all the way there.
Chapter Seventeen: In the World But Not Of It
In early spring of 1875, Hansi’s daughter Marie married a clever young man, the son of one of Hansi’s San Antonio business associates. Both families—and indeed the entire German community in San Antonio—approved heartily of the match, and attended the lavish wedding ball which Hansi and Liesel gave at the sprawling and gaily painted mansion that Hansi had built with the profits of his various enterprises.
It was very much to Magda’s astonishment that Marie had not wed as soon as she was old enough, for she was as pretty as Liesel had been at that age; and besides, she was given to sentimental over-affection for many
a handsome youth. But aside from being handsome, Hermann Menges was a practical young man and inclined to work hard, which quality recommended itself to Hansi. He also possessed a puckish sense of humor, which ingratiated him with practically everyone else in Marie’s family.
“She’s done well for herself in him, our flighty little romantic,” Hansi pronounced. He sat with Magda, Anna and Peter, at ease around one of the little tables that had been set out on the lawn under a cheerfully adorned canvas pavilion. Planks had been laid out for a dance floor, since the largest parlor in the house was too small to accommodate all the guests. An orchestra played music from the summer house; the girls whirling around the dance floor in their full skirts looked like moths dancing in the twilight.
“Better than I expected, Papa,” Anna remarked. Peter teasingly made the sound of a cat meowing. The look that Anna sent her husband was more fond than annoyed, “And at least Mama finally got to put on a marvelous wedding with all the trimmings and baubles. I think I am forgiven for an elopement.”
Hansi groaned comically and Peter said, in a way meant to bring comfort, “It might make you feel less pain on the matter of economy, sir—to just make an average for the costs for our nuptial celebration and this.”
“And by this exercise you gain yet another able son, Hansi,” Magda said, then as soon as the words were out of her mouth hoped that Hansi—bluff, practical Hansi—would not take them amiss, would not be reminded on this happy day of the sons lost to him. Magda knew that Liesel still secretly mourned for them—most of all, mourned for Willi. He, along with Christian, and Joachim who died as infant on board the brig Apollo, would have been beginning the business of being men; old enough to dance and flirt with a pretty girl, just as Sam was doing this very minute.
Hansi did not take it amiss at all. He smiled broadly and with very real affection at them all. “Aye, that’s the thing to consider. He’s good with figures, too. Mariechen wants to settle in Friedrichsburg for a time, so I thought I’d offer him a position in the old store. If Jacob says he’s up to it, we’d set him up in Neu Braunfels. What do you think?”
“That would give him a year of experience,” Magda ventured, “and if he has no aptitude for shopkeeping, we’ll have enough time to find and hire someone who is.”
“Your little lads can’t grow up soon enough,” Hansi jested to his daughter, “or else I’d put them to work in the new store, eh? They behaved well today, damned well.”
Both Anna and Peter glowed with quiet parental satisfaction. Magda reflected that Anna had acted on a sure instinct, abruptly jumping into a marriage of convenience, when Hansi broke his leg and couldn’t go on the spring cattle drive as planned. Against all initial forebodings, their marriage had worked out marvelously well. Anna had accompanied Peter up the trail to Kansas several times. Serenely and without fuss she provided a home for Peter’s nephew Horrie and her own children; Henry—called Harry—who had just turned five, and Christian, who was almost four. Liesel had dressed them for the wedding ceremony in matching black velveteen knickerbockers suits with Battenberg lace collars, and tasked them with carrying velvet cushions upon which the wedding rings rested.
“I must confess that I bribed Harry into behaving by telling him he may pick his very own horse out of the remuda next spring,” Peter noted. “Otherwise I think he might have taken shears to that velveteen abomination! What was your mother thinking, Anna—did she want the other lads to beat him up at school? They will, when they see him next!”
“The other boys’ mothers and grandmothers make them wear the exact same thing for this kind of occasion,” Anna returned calmly. “So they have very little reason to torment our son especially. Besides, I bribed him also. I promised him a saddle of his choosing for his next birthday.”
“Well worth the effort and a bargain at any price,” Hansi guffawed, as Harry’s parents laughed in mutual appreciation for their eldest’s cleverness. “I tell you, I have always said to beware of any enterprise that demands a suit of new clothes . . . unless you are a merchant, of course!” And Hansi laughed again; he had quite a fondness for Anna’s sons. Harry was a bold and fearless urchin, possessed of nearly limitless supplies of charm and persistence. Anna and Peter between them usually did not let him get away with much, but on this occasion he clearly had the advantage of his parents.
It pleased Magda that her niece had fallen, all unexpected, into such a contented and affectionate marriage. Her eyes sought out her own children. Lottie and Hannah, along with Anna and Grete, had all been pressed into service as bridesmaids, draped in gauzy pink silk with crowns of silk rosebuds in their hair. The younger girls were dancing, tremulous with excitement at being allowed to participate in such a grown-up party. Hannah was dancing in a small circle with Peter’s nephew Horrie and Anna’s little boys, showing them the steps. Magda smiled with tender affection. Her daughter was so good with children. She had taken Grete and Lottie in hand, taught them how to waltz, and shown them how to handle gallant compliments and the ungallant kind with equal courtesy and aplomb. She had an aptitude for teaching and a gentle way of winning confidence in her from the shyest and most timid. Magda did not think she had any particular suitors that she held in special affection. That did not worry her; neither she nor Anna had scampered headlong from the schoolroom to the marriage bed. There was time enough for her soft-spoken Hannah to find her own way, her own beloved.
Sam of course, was in the middle of another laughing circle—mostly of girls in flower-colored dance dresses that showed their shoulders and their pale pretty arms. He had a pencil and the ragged notebook that lived in his coat pocket wherever he went. He was amusing those around him by making sketches; Magda could not see what they were of, but they made the girls squeal with laughter. Sam split his time between San Antonio and Hansi’s many businesses, and helping his brother with the land. It was a proper ranch, now, Magda supposed. They had gone up the trail to Kansas with a herd every year for the last five. There also, Sam amused his fellows with sketches. “He’s all but useless as a cowhand,” his brother observed with a sigh, “but everyone likes him for those drawings and the yarns he can spin about kings and crusades and things.” Sam had also done splendid oil paintings for Hansi’s study, scenes of cattle drives and round-up times, with every drover and wrangler—and every horse as well—clearly identifiable.
Dolph himself was not with the dancers, or among the merry gathering of younger people. Magda thought he was in the dining room where a cold supper had been laid out for guests to partake of as they wished. Dolph, still serious and self-contained, held a kind of quietness to himself, even in the liveliest gathering. She had seen him talking quietly with Porfirio, who looked splendid in a black suit of Mexican cut, trimmed with silver buttons. Porfirio’s family did not attend such social gatherings among the Americans and the Germans; only Porfirio himself, suave and gallant and with enough of a cold steel edge to put off anyone who thought to make trouble.
“Your son is talking business again,” Liesel announced, as she came tripping down the steps from the house. The French doors between the big parlor and the terrace stood wide open this evening. Guests washed back and forth, like water in the tide pools and lagoons on the coast. “Make him stop, Magda. He is supposed to dance and flirt with all the pretty girls who have come to the wedding . . . not talk of wars and business with the dry old sticks.”
Liesel’s cheeks glowed hectically pink from excitement and exertion. Magda studied her covertly and carefully, alert for any sign that she was descending from her tall tower into the cellar again. No, she thought, not now, not tonight, with a house full of guests and the orchestra playing so delightfully. Liesel giggled, delicious as ever, as Hansi pulled her into his lap, careless of her elaborate dress with its complicated draping and overskirt. In spite of her squeals of protest, he kissed her very heartily. Anna exchanged a look of fond exasperation with Magda.
It was amusing, thought Magda, how Hansi’s earthier qualities had bee
n transmuted in the eyes of others by wealth and success. The hardworking cattle drover and teamster, with his dislike of formality, his open affection for his wife, and his shrewd eye for profit, was no longer seen as crude and rather vulgar, but instead, as endearing and eccentric. She had said something of the sort to him; Hansi had laughed uproariously and made a remark about the thickness of the gold plate on a pile of cattle turds.
It had been good for Hansi to bring Liesel to San Antonio, even better for Magda to heed Hansi’s urgings to join them there for all but the summer months. He had a small guest cottage built for her use at the bottom of the garden adjacent to the cool green riverbank, calling it the “Rest of the Week House.” Magda most often joined Liesel and Hansi for meals, especially when Hannah and Lottie were at school; she loved the little house and rejoiced to return to it, even if she had only been writing letters for Hansi all day. Now she thought of how wonderful it would be when the party was over, to walk across the garden and take off her shoes, to undress and slip into the little bathing cabin that overhung the riverbank and soak in the cool water for a while. The river flowed quiet and green; all the nicest houses were built on its banks, so that people could take advantage in the heat of summer. Liesel had a housekeeper and three maids who would see to washing the dishes and sweeping up after the party. This must be, Magda thought, what being rich meant; that you could hire someone to see to the mess.
There was a soft step behind her as Liesel gave one last squeal and wriggled out of her husband’s arms. “I must see to my guests!” she gasped, patting her elaborately curled hair and the decoration of flowers and feathers in it, while Hansi begged for one last kiss. When she bent over to give it to him, he made as if to kiss her breasts, bulging up like pillows of rising bread dough against the force of her corset. “Hansi! For shame, you are awful!” she cried, and escaped; a fat busy wren in peacock’s raiment.