Texas

by James A. Michener

  ‘Over here!’ Jubal yelled as he and Father Clooney sprinted with their guns to a smaller grove of oaks which he hoped they could defend. For one pitiful moment young Yancey stood riveted by fright; then, urged by a shout from the priest, he found courage and ran to the trees, arriving there at the same time as his terrified mother.

  Wisely, Jubal formed his three helpers in a circle about the base of a tall oak, from where they fended off the Indians with carefully aimed shots. Yancey reloaded for his father, and Mattie was supposed to do the same for Father Clooney, but after the first round of shots she yelled at the priest: ‘Load for yourself!’ and she began firing on her own, hitting one of the Karankawa in the leg.

  Realizing that the white travelers were going to keep on fighting, the huge Indians fired their two dilapidated muskets a few more times, missing even the oak tree, then withdrew, dragging their wounded companions behind them. ‘My God, they were big!’ Jubal cried as they disappeared. ‘If we’d had only one gun, they’d have killed us all.’ Turning to his wife, he kissed her: ‘You know how to use a gun, old girl.’

  Now came the glorious days! With moccasins, alligators and giant Karankawa safely passed, the travelers approached the outer limits of the Austin Colony, and as they neared the left bank of the Brazos they saw land that compared favorably with any in the world. Slight rolling hills created lovely valleys and gentle glades. Little streams wandered aimlessly, providing scenes so inviting that Father Clooney cried several times: ‘Build your cabin here!’ but always Mattie pushed ahead, for she had in mind a picture of the land she wanted, and it featured spacious meadowlands beside a big river, not some picturesque refuge close to a little stream.

  Each mile down the Goliad Road brought new surprises, but the miraculously placed clumps of oak trees on the otherwise open land pleased Mattie most: tall and straight, the fifteen or twenty oaks would be arranged in rude circles that resembled Greek temples, with a carpet of grass beneath the lower branches and reaching across many yards to where the next group of oaks stood. The result was a kind of majestic park, stretching forever, and when they had traveled through such splendid regions for two days Father Clooney said: ‘We’ve come to a paradise right here on earth. You can build your home anywhere and live like kings.’ And Mattie nodded.

  She was also relieved to detect in her son a slight change for the better, because on two occasions the boy had halted the procession to stand in wonder before some miracle of nature, and she thought as she watched him: Any boy who appreciates growin’ things ain’t all weakness.

  The first amazement was a tree called bodark, a wonderful, thorny thing which would produce enormous orangelike fruit of thick skin and of absolutely no use to men or their cattle. The proper name, of course, was bois-d’arc, later to be known as Osage orange, and what made this particular tree memorable was that on its branches devoid of leaves clustered not less than forty huge round balls of green plant life with no detectable means of sustenance. ‘Mistletoe?’ Jubal asked, but when Yancey pulled down a cluster for study, the family saw that it was merely a leafy parasite.

  The second encounter was more dramatic, for as the family turned a corner in the rude footpath they came face to face with a large live oak from whose many branches tumbled a cascade of the most beautiful gray-green tracery, with delicate lacy tips that drooped nearly to the ground. ‘Spanish moss,’ Mattie said. ‘Heard about it but never seen it.’ Yancey, encountering this lovely wonder for the first time, stood silent.

  Jubal had to be concerned with more practical matters, for one morning while Mattie and the priest were admiring the varied landscape, he chanced to see at some distance from the trail a sight which caused his heart to skip several beats: ‘My God! It’s a bee tree!’ And when he dragged Yancey to the half-dead tree Jubal thumped the hollow part of the tree with practiced knuckles. ‘Crammed with honey!’ he assured his son. ‘With this tree we could feed a village.’

  But when he started to show Yancey how to protect his head with his shirt, his belly exposed, the boy began to whimper: ‘I don’t want to be stung by no bees,’ and he ran back to the others, whining: ‘Pop wants me to stick my hand in a bee tree.’

  Father Clooney, excited by the prospect of finding honey, took the Quimpers’ two blankets, ran to the tree and, wrapping himself and Jubal in as much protection as possible, proceeded to break off dead limbs to provide entrance to the tree, and when they had done this they found, as Jubal had expected, the edges of a hoard so rich that it would have supplied a family of three for half a year.

  Battling the bees that attacked any naked spot they could find, the two men used oak leaves on which to pile the rich comb they were extracting, and when they had accumulated all they could carry, they started back to the road, with bees following in savage assault. Laughing and running with hands loaded, the two ignored the stings they were receiving and reached Mattie, who slapped away the bees and provided pots in which the seeping comb could be stored.

  ‘Any land that has bee trees is goin’ to be a fine place to settle,’ Jubal said, and as the days passed he found, to his delight, that in this region such trees abounded. But as they approached what seemed to be the bottom land of some river, they discovered another bounty which promised equal pleasure: very tall trees up which climbed thick vines reaching to the very crown. ‘Those look like muscadine vines,’ Jubal cried excitedly. ‘We had them in Tennessee. Great for jam, better for wine.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear,’ Father Clooney said, but on that same day they came to other trees, not so tall but holding vines twice as thick and ominous. ‘These must be mustangs!’ Jubal said. ‘I’ve heard about them. Skin so thick you can’t bite it, and if you try, it’ll burn your mouth out. But the fruit inside? Delicious. Sweet and acid at the same time. They could make fine jelly.’

  ‘But could they make good wine?’ Clooney asked, and when Quimper said they couldn’t, the priest said: ‘We’ll stay with the muscadines.’

  And then, as they reached the left bank of the Brazos, thirty feet higher than the bed of the river, they saw on the opposite bank something which gave Mattie such reassurance that she wanted to plant her seeds immediately. ‘Look!’ she shouted to the others, and when they did they saw fields of wild oats and rye, sown by no one, harvested never, just the bounty of the earth and a promise that if here one planted wheat and corn and nurtured it, crops would grow abundantly. In late March this grain, which had ripened the summer before, had been well beaten down by rain or fed upon by birds, but even so, there remained a remembrance of the oats and the rye, wild and tough and scant, but veritable food. Mattie looked at the priest, then at the grain, and said: ‘Father, give us a prayer of thanksgivin’. This is land we can use.’

  The three men were willing to halt where they were, for this was satisfactory, but Mattie clung to her vision of the perfect site, and forcefully she led the way to a rise from which they could look across the Brazos to land of wondrous beauty: groves of oak trees, swinging paths through rich grass, open areas for the building of homes, and the reassuring calm of a blue sky overhead. ‘That’s what we want,’ Mattie said.

  But how to get the cart across the river? Each of the men had suggestions: ‘Swim across and leave the cart here.’ Or ‘Cut two logs, wedge them under the wheels, and float it across.’ Even Yancey chimed in: ‘Cut grapevines and we’ll pull it across.’ Mattie listened respectfully to each proposal, and rejected them all: ‘We’ll build a raft, and after it has carried us across, we’ll use it as a ferry for others who come this way.’ And she would accept no alternative.

  With the tools acquired in Nacogdoches the two men and Yancey felled enough trees to form a substantial platform in the muddy water, and when Mattie bound the logs together with long lengths of vine, the cart was gingerly wheeled upon it, and cheers sounded when the raft held firm. With a long pole Mattie shoved the raft and its precious cargo into the middle of the river and across to the other bank.

  As soon as
the raft touched land she rushed ashore, dropped her bag of seed, and began pacing off the dimensions of her proposed cabin, and when she stood where the door would be, she spread her arms and cried: ‘This is it.’

  She had chosen a superior site, for here the wandering river formed a large S. At the first turn the current had eaten away the bank, leaving a huge red cliff thirty-two feet high, and then, as if bouncing back from that effort, it had done the same a little farther along but on the opposite shore, so that when Mattie stood on the spot she had selected for her home, she could see a most pleasing domain: the two red cliffs, the tangled woodland along the river, clusters of oaks on the higher ground, deer watching from a distance, soft hills adding movement, and over all, the bluest sky any of them had ever seen. ‘We’ll build the cabin here,’ she said, whereupon her husband broke into rude laughter: ‘Build it here and swim to safety when the floods come.’

  He took her to a grove of oaks that towered more than thirty feet above the stream below, and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the trees: ‘Don’t you see nothin’?’ When she asked what she was supposed to see, he pointed to a mass of grass and driftwood caught in the branches ten feet above her head. ‘What is that?’ she asked, and he said: ‘Can’t you see? That’s where the flood came last time.’

  And when she looked more closely, both at the trees on her side of the Brazos and those opposite, she saw that along a line as clearly defined as if some giant had drawn it with his pen, remnants of a great flood were visible; at that tumultuous time the water had stood more than forty feet higher than it did now, and when she moved back to study other trees on the upland plain, she realized that the river must have been two or three miles wide. The awesome size appalled her, and she asked: ‘When did this happen?’ and her husband said: ‘Last year. Ten years ago. You can’t tell by the flotsam, because it’s dead. But do you doubt it happened?’

  ‘I do not,’ she said, and forthwith she moved inland, studying the trees and their trapped refuse, until she reached a high mound to which no flood had crept: ‘This will be safe.’ And while the men watched, she moved beyond the mound to an open space, where she began to grub the ground with her hoe. When it was well broken, she took from her canvas bag handfuls of corn. ‘The place is right,’ she said. ‘The moon is right and the soil is right. I’ve come a long, long way for this blessed moment.’ Inspecting each kernel to be sure the tobacco had kept it weevil-free, she planted her first crop, and only when each grain had been safely embedded in the rich soil did she look for a place to sleep.

  The time had now come for Father Clooney to continue his pastoral way down the Brazos to those settlements whose spiritual life he would be supervising, but before he departed he felt he must help the Quimpers erect their cabin. And now he asked: ‘How will you inform Stephen Austin that you’ve settled on his land?’

  ‘When you see him, you must tell him what land we’ve taken. I’ll write a letter askin’ that surveyors be sent.’ And when the three adults had calculated roughly what a league-and-a-labor would be—4,605 acres, or about 2.5 miles long on a side—the men began cutting stakes to indicate their corners, but as soon as the riverside square was determined, Mattie quietly began to move the stakes in order to form a long, slim fronting on the river. ‘This gives us a lot more land along the water.’

  Satisfied with her little kingdom, she now began to plan her house, but she had not gone far when Jubal interrupted: ‘Stop where you are! We’re not cuttin’ logs for no big cabin. That can come later.’

  What are we doin’?’ Mattie asked, and Jubal pointed to the mound that had attracted her to this site: ‘We’re goin’ to dig us a deep hole in the face of that mound, build us a log front out here, and short side walls to close off the rooms.’

  ‘A cave-house?’ Mattie cried. ‘Not for me!’

  ‘Matt, old girl. Us men got to do the cuttin’ of them trees, and doin’ it this way … Figure it out. Only one wall and two halves instead of four walls. Half a roof instead of a whole one.’

  ‘But we’ll be livin’ in a cave,’ she protested, and her husband said: ‘Many do. And I promise you this, once I find the time, I’ll cut the rest of the logs and build you a real house.’

  But it took him and Father Clooney so much time and effort to cut and notch two big logs for the base of the front wall that they simplified their plan. They used the two finished logs as corner posts, sunk deep into the ground and strongly braced, and joined them together by a palisade made of saplings dug into the earth side by side.

  ‘Now we tie all together,’ Jubal said as the outside portion of the cave-house was formed. ‘Yancey, Mattie, start tearin’ down grapevines!’ And when these were dragged in abundance to the site, everyone worked at weaving them through the saplings, which were then plastered with a heavy red clay dredged from the bottom of the river, forming a solid wall.

  The roof they wove of heavier vines, covering it with sod so that grass would grow and keep it impervious. When all was done, Jubal said: ‘We got us a house half in the air, half in the cave. Warm in winter, cool in summer,’ but Mattie added: ‘And dark all the time. And filled with smoke.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Matt, you’ll have better one day.’ So the Quimpers moved into their house, with its dirt floor, hastily carpentered benches and stools, two wooden beds, a trestle table, and pegs on which to hang things. It was not what Mattie had wanted, but as she stepped inside she muttered to herself: ‘We’ll get out of this cave. We’ll have a house with proper sides. I don’t know when or how, but this ain’t a proper home.’

  Father Clooney, admiring the handiwork in which he had shared so vigorously, said: ‘I think I should bless this home,’ and he gathered the Quimpers for a prayer:

  ‘We have come to Tejas seeking freedom and a better life. May this house which we have built with our own hands be a perpetual center of love. May the fields prosper. May the animals multiply. And may the owners find that joy which the Israelites found in their new home. Amen.’

  As soon as the Irishman departed, carrying in his pocket Jubal Quimper’s claim for the land where the Goliad Road intersected the Brazos River, Jubal launched the project that would provide a meager and uncertain income in the new land; he started felling trees with which their raft could be enlarged, and after weeks of the most painful labor, for his hands grew raw, he had himself a serviceable ferry for lifting travelers back and forth across the Brazos. ‘Quimper’s Ferry’ it was called, and as such it would find an honorable place in Texas history, for across it would move men of distinction, and their cattle, and their armies.

  But what most travelers remembered about Quimper’s Ferry was not the husband’s ferry but the hospitality which the wife dispatched, for she ran a kind of inn or stopping place, and hundreds who straggled down the Goliad Road would testify in their memoirs that the difficult travel from the Sabine River to the Brazos almost discouraged them:

  We was attacked by Indians and threatened by panthers in the woods, and our food was low and we seen alligators, and one man died from rattlesnake, and we would of turned back, sick in spirit, but then we come to Quimper’s Ferry on the Brazos and Mrs. Quimper welcomed us to her cave-house, and we didn’t have no money at the time to pay her but she said no mind, and she fed us and give the children honey for their bread. And it was in those days we first thought Texas might be a decent place to settle.

  In the autumn of that first difficult year Jubal discovered just how rewarding a place this was, for as he tramped the woods he came upon a tallish tree with fine green leaves and some husks about its trunk, carry-overs from the preceding fall: ‘This is a nut tree! Look up there!’ And scattered profusely through the heavy branches he saw clusters of long, plump nuts in a profusion he had not seen in Tennessee.

  They were pecans, still protected by a greenish husk, and in the colder days that followed he saw that the husks curled back toward the stem which attached them to the tree. Reaching up to pick one, he inadver
tently shook the tree, whereupon a waterfall of nuts fell about his shoulders as the pecan tree willingly divested itself of that year’s crop.

  In great excitement he gathered the unexpected harvest, stuffing his clothes with the rich food and running toward the hut, shouting: ‘Matt, old girl! God sent us food for the winter!’ Just as Cabeza de Vaca in 1529 had survived autumn and early winter only on pecans, so the Quimpers, nearly three hundred years later, relished the same remarkable bounty.

  Now the pattern of Quimper living became clear. On bright autumn days Jubal and Yancey would search out the pecan trees, shake the branches and garner the fallen nuts so rich in foodstuff. Hauling them home like conquering heroes who had risked much to catch their prey, they would toss the nuts toward where Mattie waited. ‘Matt, old girl! We did it again!’ Jubal would shout, and then retire, highly pleased with himself, while his wife built a fire, heated water and dipped the pecans to soften the shell and moisten the nutmeat to make it easier to extract.

  While her husband watched approvingly, she cracked the shells, sharpened a fine-pointed stick and made Yancey use it to dig out the meats, which she dried on a flat stone beside the fire. When he had extracted huge quantities, warned constantly by Jubal: ‘Don’t break them, Yancey,’ Mattie prepared her hoard in one of three ways: ‘Folks like ’em just toasted, or better if we can find a smidgen of salt, or best of all, if I coat ’em in honey real thick with just a touch of salt.’

  Often when travelers stopped, the men would gorge on handfuls of Mattie’s pecans as they played cards, almost fighting for the toasted nuts if they were the honeyed version. Jubal always explained the trouble he’d had in finding the trees, watching them through the ripening seasons and dragging home the garnered hoard. ‘Yancey breaks a lot of the halves,’ he apologized. ‘It’s a pity, but Mattie’s real good at toastin’ them and addin’ the honey.’ The Quimpers were proving that properly handled, this nut provided one of the world’s complete sources of food. Yancey was not fond of pecans: ‘Too much work. Now, if a family had slaves to do the pickin’, that would be somethin’.’