by Texas
When the Quimpers departed, with Yancey pleased at having seen his fort but dismayed by his failure to acquire the land, Mrs. Reed resumed the task of closing down the post, and as she moved from building to building she saw many things to remind her of the good work she had done in transforming this lonely outpost into a haven of civilization. In this stone building she had organized the social teas for each new wife; in a corner of that building
she had arranged for everyone to place his extra books so that a library might be started; in this small garden, fertilized with manure from the stables, she had grown flowers for the hospital; and in the dead-house she had made the disfigured corpses acceptable before their friends or families saw them. In the chapel she had persuaded her husband to conduct prayers when there was no regular chaplain; and on Suds Row she had helped when babies had the croup.
Most important, she had been the guiding spirit in converting this mud outpost into a square-cornered fort of limestone. It had lasted, in its complete form, only three years, but she resolved that if her husband was now assigned to a newly established fort, probably some leagues to the west where the settlers were probing, she would encourage him to build of stone from the start: 'We live in any place only briefly, George. They may laugh and ask us as we depart: "Why did you take the trouble to build of stone?" If they don't understand that this was the home of two hundred soldiers, I'll not be able to explain.' She did not weep as they departed, but she did keep looking backward until Bear Creek disappeared, and the Brazos, and the tops of the buildings at the fort, and she kept doing so until only the vast plains and its endless blue-sky were visible.
These eventful days had been difficult for Earnshaw Rusk, for the army despised him as a dreamer who refused to look facts in the face, and his own Quakers deplored him as a traitor who in panic had called in the soldiers to settle a temporary difficulty that could have been handled by negotiation.
After his expulsion in disgrace from Camp Hope, he had tried living for a while at Jacksborough, but that robust settlement, where men resolved arguments with guns and fists, provided no place for a man like him. He had also tried the town that had grown up at the edges of Fort Griffin to the south, but that was a true hellhole whose shenanigans terrified him. Then he served as a night nurse in a field hospital at another fort, where his behavior at Camp Hope was not known, and now when he heard that Fort Garner was being disbanded, he came back to the scene of his humiliation.
He went, as he had long planned in his confused imagination, to the house once occupied by Captain Wetzel and his wife, and there he found Emma Larkin working alone as if she were living safely in the heart of some small town. She seemed adjusted to the problem of living without ears or nose, and when, after the first awkward greetings, he asked where she would make her home, she
replied in her soft whisper: 'Here at the fort I like it and it's nunc '
He accepted the tea she offered him in a cup left behind by the Wetzels, and she showed him how she had collected quite household items from the other departing officers 111 live.'
Sitting in the chair that was once Wetzel's favorite, he 1 his awkward speech: 'Emma, I've made a terrible mess of my life He did not say it, but she knew he intended to say And the< made a mess of thine. Or, other people made a mess tor thee Instead he plowed on: 'And I have been wondering .
He stopped. FVom that first day when he met this pitiful child he had speculated on what might happen to her. How could a human being so abused survive? How could she face the world 7 It was out of such wonderment that he had been impelled to carve the nose which she now wore. It had not been because of love, for he had no comprehension of that word and little understanding of the complex emotions it represented, but it was out of concern, and caring. And he was caring now.
Tve been wondering what thee would do . with thy protectors gone.' By this use of an inappropriate word—for this young woman required no protectors—he betrayed his line of reasoning: 'And I've thought . . .' He could not go on. Nothing in his lonely, bungling life had prepared him to speak the words that should he spoken now.
Emma Larkin, damaged and renewed as few humans would ever be, reached out, touched his hand, and used his first name for the first time: 'Earnshaw, I've been given this land, these buildh will need someone to help me.'
'Could I be thy helper?' he managed to stammer.
'Thee could, Earnshaw,' she whispered. 'Thee could ind<
. . . TASK FORCE
It was midsummer in Austin, and heat lav over the city like an oppressive blanket which intercepted oxygen and brought blazing discomfort. Day after day the temperature hovered close hundred degrees as a cloudless sky glared down like the inside of a superheated bronze bowl. Fish in the lovely lake kept toward the bottom where the sun's incessant beating was lessened if not [escaped, and in the countryside torpid cattle sought any vestige of
shade. It could be hot in Texas, and all who could afford it fled to New Mexico.
Despite the heat, we were scheduled to hold our July meeting in Beaumont, the famous oil city near the Gulf, where we hoped optimistically there might be breezes. I anticipated a productive meeting, since we were to be addressed by Professor Garvey Jaxifer from Red River State College. My staff assured me that he was not inflammatory, only persistent, and I told them: 'Persistence after truth we can live with,' so the meeting was arranged.
I was therefore disturbed when Rusk and Quimper called me on a conference line to ask that I convene an extraordinary two-day meeting prior to Beaumont. I supposed they were going to protest my invitation to Professor Jaxifer, but they assured me that this was not their concern; Rusk growled: 'I've heard the man twice, here in Fort Worth. If he knew figures, I'd hire him. Solid citizen.'
What the improvised meeting was to discuss I could not guess, but at nine one steamy morning Miss Cobb, Professor Garza and I assembled at Austin's Browning Airport for private planes and watched as two jets landed in swift succession. As they taxied toward us I wondered why two were needed, but when the first opened its doors I saw that Lorenzo Quimper had picked up our three staffers from Dallas, so apparently it was going to be an important session.
The conspirators would not tell us where we were going, but shortly we were flying northwest on a route which would take us, I calculated, over Abilene and Lubbock. 'What's this all about?' I asked Quimper, who rode in my plane, and he winked. I guessed that we were going to hold a preliminary session of some kind in a place like Amarillo, but when we had reached that general area and gave no sign of descending, I knew we must be entering New Mexico.
After Quimper served us a choice of drinks and Danish, we began to descend, and soon one of the young men, a better geographer than I, shouted: 'Hey! Santa Fe!'
Flying low, so that we could see the grandest city of the Southwest, we swung north along the highway to Taos, circled a large ranch, and landed on a private strip, macadamized and six thousand feet long. 'Ransom's hacienda,' Quimper announced, and when we joined the others on the tarmac, Rusk said, almost apologetically: 'II Magnifico and I, we thought Texas was just too damned hot. I want you to enjoy two days of relaxation . . . anything you'd like to do. The helicopter's here . . . riding horses . . . swimming . . . great mountain trails. Taos up that way, Santa Fe down there.'
It was the kind of gesture the very rich in Texas like to make. but I noticed that everything about the place was low key pickups with gun racks behind the driver's head, not Mercedes; rough bunkhouses with Hudson's Bay blankets lor cold in no Olympic-sized swimming pool, just a small, friendly dipping place in which the girl from SMU was going to look just . because even if she hadn't brought a swimsuit, Rusk's Mexican housekeeper could offer her a choice of six or seven
It was a splendid break in the heat, for the Rusk ranch v feet high, with magnificent views of mountains higher than 12,-000. But the emotional part of our visit, and 1 use that word with fondest memories, came at dusk on that first day when Quimper signaled his chief pilot
to bring before us, as we sat by the pool drinking juleps, four rather long boxes wrapped in gift paper
'Working with you characters,' Lorenzo said, 'has been both an education and a privilege. Never knew I could get along so amiablv with anarchists.' Bowing to Garza, he said: 'On this happy occasion I cannot refrain from sharing my latest Aggie joke. Seems your aviation experts have invented a new type of parachute Opens on impact.'
'I'm walking home,' Garza said, whereupon Lorenzo grabbed him: 'I thought you might, so I brought you just the thing for hiking.'
Shuffling the four parcels, he selected one and handed it to Rusk, who tore off the paper to disclose a long shoebox, inside which rested a pair of incredibly ornate boots. Products of the workmen at the General Quimper Boot Factory, thev had been especially orchestrated, with the front showing a bull of the Texas Longhorn breed Rusk was striving to perpetuate on his Larkin County ranch, the side offering one of his oil derricks, and the back of the boot a fine version of his Leaqet in blue and gold. The retail cost of such masterpieces I did not care to guess, but 1 remembered a catalogue that had offered lesser boots at three thousand dollars.
We were still awed by Rusk's gift when Miss Cobb opened hers to reveal a tell, slim pair ideally suited to her grave demeanor They were silver and gray, with not a bit of ornamentation to detract from the exquisite patterning of the leather itself; it seemed to have been sculpted in eleven subtle shades of gray.
'What kind of leather?' the young woman from SMU cried, and Quimper replied with obvious pride in his men's workmanship: 'Amazon boa constrictor.' They were once-in-a-lifetime boots, and Miss Cobb was so touched by Lorenzo's gesture that she did not allow herself to speak lest she behave in a sentimental manner ill-befitting her Cobb ancestry.
Now it was my turn, and I could not imagine what Lorenzo had deemed proper for a man with few distinguishing characteristics, but when I opened my box it was apparent that he had gone back to my honored ancestor, Moses Barlow of the Alamo, for across the top rims of my boots, in flaming red letters against a pale-blue background, ran the word Alamo, and beneath it, in green-and-white leatherwork, stood a depiction of the famous building. Reaching from the sole of the shoe to the top, along the outer flank of each boot, rested a Kentucky long rifle, in black. My boots were pure Texas, and I was glad to have them, for with my own funds I could never have afforded such perfection.
Because of the incipient animosity between Quimper and Garza, rarely overt but never buried, I had to wonder what Lorenzo would do to catch the professor's personality, but when Efrain opened his box we gasped, because for him Quimper had saved his maximum artistry. In a wild flash of red, green and white, the colors of Mexico's flag, he had provided a peon in a big hat sleeping beside an adobe wall, a depiction of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and an intricate enlargement of the central design of the flag, the famous eagle killing a rattlesnake while perched on a cactus.
Referring proudly to the latter, Quimper said: 'I had my best workman do the vulture eating the worm,' and Garza looked up with a mixture of affection and sheer bewilderment. For more than two hundred years his family had had no permanent affiliation with Mexico; he had traveled within that nation only once, and then not pleasantly, and although he spoke its language and followed its religion, he felt no close association with the country. Yet here he was with boots that proclaimed him loudly to be a Mexican.
'Lorenzo,' he said with obvious gratitude, i think I can speak for us all. You are magnificent.'
Our three staff members, who had watched the unveiling of our boots, cheered, but now Quimper signaled his other pilot, who came forward with three boxes. When the young people realized that these must be for them, the two young men clapped hands and the girl from SMU squealed, and the highlight of the ceremony was when she opened her box, for Lorenzo had brought her a pair equal to Miss Cobb's in femininity, but precisely the kind a young woman would appreciate. They were tall and slender, with heels well undercut and uppers made of a soft red leather that seemed to shout: 'I'm twenty-three and unmarried!' The simple decoration was in shining black, and the total effect was one of youthfulness, dancing and an invitation to flirtation. Miss Cobb
said: "Every young woman should know what it's like to own a pair of boots like that,' and the recipient began to cry
The two men received simple cowboy boots made of valuable leather adorned by big hats, lariats and revolvers, and when the seven pairs were set side by side on the floor, we applauded, but Lorenzo rarely did things partially, for now the chief pilot can with a box for the boss, and as we cheered, Quimper revealed his own fantastic boots. Basically they were a wild purple, but in their lighter leathers they contained a summary of Texan culture a saucy roadrunner yakking across the desert, a Colts pistol, an oil well, a coiled rattlesnake. 'I like my boots to make a statement, Quimper said, and Garza responded: Those can be heard on the borders of California.' And that night, when we stepped from the front d< the ranch on our way to dinner at a Santa Fe restaurant, we were what Quimper called 'a splendiferous Task Force.'
At dinner, Quimper dominated conversation by expounding in a voice loud enough to be heard at nearby tables his theorv that Santa Fe should have been a part of Texas: The day will come when Texas patriots will muster an expedition to recapture this town. Then we'll have Texas as it should be, Santa Fe at one end, Houston at the other.'
When we left the restaurant we found our evening somewhat dampened by a sign plastered across our windshield: texans go home, which reminded us that New Mexicans regard the Texans who flood their towns in summer the way Texans regard the visitors from Michigan who invade their state in winter
Refreshed by this escape from the Texan inferno, we prepared for our forthcoming meeting in Beaumont, where we met Professor Garvey Jaxifer, a sophisticated black scholar. The newspapers usually referred to him as Harvey Jaxifer, unaware that he had been named after the incendiary Jamaican black Marcus Garvev, who had lectured American blacks about their destmv and their rights. That first Garvey had been deported, I believe, but had left behind a sterling reputation as a fighter, and our professor was no less an agitator than his namesake. He presented a short, no-compromise paper, whose highlights follow:
Throughout their history Anglo Texans have despised Indians, Mexicans and blacks. This tradition started with the Spanish con-quistadores, who saw their Indians as slaves and treated them abominably. This attitude was intensified by any Mexicans who were not classified as Indians themselves. We have seen how in 1836, General Santa Anna had no compunction about marching his barefoot, thinly clad Yucatecan Indians into the face of a blizzard, losing more than half through freezing to death.
The early Texians inherited this contempt for the Indian, strengthened by understandable prejudices engendered in frontier states like Kentucky and Tennessee, where warfare with the Indian had been a common experience. But it was fortified in Texas by the fact that many of the Indian tribes encountered by the early settlers were extremely difficult people: the cannibalistic Karan-kawa, the remorseless Waco and the savage Kiowa. The earliest Americans had to fight such Indians for every foot of ground they occupied, and this blinded them to the positive aspects of the other Indians they encountered, especially the Cherokee.
'Later, of course, the Texians met face-to-face with the fearful Apache and Comanche, and with the most generous intentions in the world it would have been difficult to find any solution to the clash which then occurred. No outsider ignorant of the bloody history of the 1850 to 1875 frontier, with its endless massacres and hideous tortures, has a right to condemn the Texas settlers for the manner in which they responded.
'But Texas lost a great deal when it expelled its Indians, and the debt is only now being collected. For one thing, the state lost a group of people who could have contributed to our wonderful diversity had they remained; but much more important, their expulsion encouraged the Texian to believe that he truly was supreme, lord of all he surveyed, and that he could ord
er lesser peoples around as he wished. The Indian was long gone when the real tragedy of his departure began to be felt, because the Texian diverted his wrath from the Indian to the Mexican and the black, and the scars of this transferral are with us to this day.
'I am assured that previous scholars have spoken of the heavy burden Texas bears because of its refusal to adjust to the Mexican problem, so I shall drop that subject. I shall restrict myself solely to the way in which Texas has handled its black problem, and because my allotted time is short, I shall address you shortly, sharply, and without that body of substantiating material I would normally offer.
'The condition of the black in Texas is one of the great secrets of Texas history, which has been written almost as if the blacks had never existed. Yet in 1860 blacks constituted thirty-one percent of the population and represented a total tax value of over a hundred and twenty-two million dollars. They vastly outnumbered either the Mexicans or the Indians, and the economy of the state, dominated by cotton, depended largely upon them.
'Despite vast evidence to the contrary, two legends grew up around the blacks, one before the Civil War, one after, and these legends were so persuasive, so consoling to the Texas whites, that
they are not only honored today but also believed. Thev continue to affect all relations between the two races
The ante-bellum legend is that the slaves were happv in their servitude, that they did not seek freedom, and that thev did not warrant it because they had no skills other than chopping and could not possibly have existed without white supervision The facts were somewhat different. On most plantations slaves were the master mechanics. They were nurses of extraordinary skill and compassion. They were also custodians of the land, and many saved enough money to buy their own freedom Properlv encouraged and utilized, they could have earned Texas far more as mechanics than they did through cotton.