by Edna Ferber
Picture postcards. Souvenirs. At a desk in the great grey stone hall sat a schoolteacherly woman in spectacles who eyed the visitor with detached severity. The figures moving about the dim room tiptoed as in a cathedral and their voices dropped to a whisper.
In the glass cases were the mementos. Proof of the mad glorious courage of a handful of men against a horde—men who had come to this Texas wilderness from Massachusetts and Tennessee, from Virginia and Louisiana and Connecticut. In the glass cases under lock and key were the famed long-rifles that had barked so hopelessly against the oncoming enemy. Neat and cold and quaint in their glass caskets the long-rifles lay now, with their ornamental brass eagles and their six-foot unavailing barrels. And there was the slashing knife of Bowie. Bowie, on his cot in the crumbling Alamo fortress, Bowie already dying of typhoid and pneumonia and exposure and alcohol, wielding the pistols and the knife from his cot bed until they ran him through with their bayonets and it was finished.
The letters under glass too—stiff formal letters written in extremity by desperate men. “…. Your favour of the 11 Inst came safe to hand by the last mail and I will hasten to answer the contents.”
He must indeed hasten, this Davy Crockett who wrote so politely, for he was soon to die for Texas—for this strange and vast and brutal land that he and the drunken ruined brave Bowie of the terrible knife and the glory-seeking Travis all fought for and died for, though they had perhaps little legal right to do either.
Tourists trailed through the garden, through the chapel, through the museum, whispering and pointing and staring. Young bridal couples, honeymooning. Middle-aged ranchers, their high-heeled boots clicking on the stone floors, their wives plumply corseted in city clothes. Leslie watched a stout dark-skinned Mexican with his wife and three small children. Their faces were impassive as they looked at the knives, the guns, the flags. They were neatly dressed in their best. The woman trailed a little behind the man, and stared and quieted the restless infant in her arms.
There at the far end of the dim room were the six flags that had flown in sovereign authority over this violent and capricious state. Draped and festooned, they made a brilliant splash of color against the grey stone wall. The flag of ancient Spain. Of France. Of Mexico. Of the Republic of Texas. The Southern Confederacy. The United States of America. Two hundred and fifty years of violence of struggle, of unrest.
Leslie Benedict stood in the shadows of the great vaulted room, her head averted. “Don’t mind me. Pretend you’re not with me. I cry at parades, too, so don’t mind me.”
She stood there in the room that had become a sort of shrine to the arrogant swaggering giant—Texas. Texas. Jett Rink. Jordan Benedict. Adarene Morey. Doctor Tom Walker. Angel Obregon. Pinky Snyth. Uncle Bawley. Vashti Hake. She stared at the festooned flags and the colors misted and became faces and the faces faded and the folds of the flags began to ripple strangely.
“Heh, you feeling funny, Leslie?” Bick, his arm around her shoulder, his eyes searching her face with concern.
“No. I’m feeling fine. The flags. I suppose I stared at them so long the colors made me dizzy.”
“You’ve just about seen it all. How about going back to the hotel and getting a rest? Before we make the train.”
“In just a little while. I want to see the pictures. Just the pictures, and then we’ll go.”
Oil paintings made vivid splashes of scarlet and blue and gold against the walls. Men in buckskin breeches. Men in battle. Men dying. Men attacking. Invariably there were the brave white Americans rising superior over the dark-skinned Mexicans. Even if they were about to die they fought on, facing their adversaries with fortitude and an expression of civilized superiority.
The Mexican and his wife and children had finished gazing at the old guns and knives and battered mementos in the glass cases, and puzzling over the faded ink of Travis’ desperate letters:
Commandancy of Bexar,
Feb. 23rd. 3 o’clock P.M. 1836
To Andrew Ponton, Judge, and Citizens of Gonzales:
The enemy in large force is in sight. We want men and provisions. Send them to us. We have 150 men and are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance.
W. B. Travis-Col, Commanding.
They were standing just beside Leslie now staring at the paintings in oil of those to whom the men and the provisions never came. Here in crude glowing colors were depicted the dark-skinned men in natty bright uniforms and the white-skinned men in the bloodstained shirts and the buckskins of the storied pioneer, and the dark men were hacking with knives and shooting with guns at the valiant white-faced men, and the faces of the one were ferocious and of the other agonized and brave. And which was right and which was wrong? Leslie asked herself. And which was aggressor and which defender?
Beside her the Mexican and his wife with the child in her arms and the two wide-eyed children gazed at the pictures and the oldest child—the boy—pointed and asked a question, puzzlement in his eyes and in his voice. And the man replied in Spanish, low-voiced.
“Better watch out, Bick!” Pinky said. “Your wife’s got that look in her eye can’t tear herself away from Bill Travis. Or is it Sam Houston?”
Bick laughed as he took Leslie’s arm. “They were both great boys with the ladies. Which is it, Leslie? They’re good and dead, so I don’t have to mind too much.”
Leslie turned as though she had not heard. “You were right about sight-seeing. I am rather tired.”
“You take things too hard,” said the practical Vashti. “What was it you were so upset about in there?”
“It could be so wonderful.”
“What could? What could be so wonderful?”
“Texas.”
“Texas! Listen at her! Texas is wonderful. Honestly, Leslie, sometimes I think you’re real horrid, the way you talk.”
Bick’s arm was about his wife’s shoulder. “It used to rile me too, Vashti, until I caught on. It’s what they call impersonal observation.”
Briskly Adarene Morey said, “Anyway, we’ve all had enough of Missions and Mexicans and mole de guajolote. I’ll be glad to get on that train.”
“When we’re all settled on the train let’s order something wonderful for supper,” Vashti suggested as they walked down the Alamo garden path.
“Steaks,” Pinky said.
“No!” the women shrieked.
Vashti’s plump pink face took on the look of a misty-eyed dreamer. “What I’d love is regular train food you never get anywhere else, hardly. Chicken potpie with teensy onions in the cream gravy, and corn muffins and that salad with Roquefort cheese dressing and for dessert blueberry pie à la mode with chocolate ice cream.”
“You all right, Leslie?” Adarene inquired anxiously, as her friend turned noticeably pale.
“I’m all right,” said Leslie. “Holgado. Is it really cool?”
18
The special car had been docilely waiting for them on the siding at San Antonio, ready to be picked up by the crack express that hurtled across the continent to the Mexican border and beyond into Mexico itself. There was the porter welcoming them like an old family servitor. He knew who took charged water, who took branch water, who took it straight; the Benedicts and the Moreys and the Hakes apparently had been part of his railroad life for years. He greeted them like long-lost benefactors.
“Well, this is mighty nice,” Lucius Morey said and sank into one of the great plushy seats with the air of one who has come home after a hard day’s work.
Pinky tossed his big Stetson with an expert twirl so that it landed neatly in the overhead rack at a distance of twenty feet. “I haven’t done so much walking since one time my horse died on me middle of the desert. I had to lug my old kack twenty miles afoot. Nothing beats you out like sight-seeing.”
“That’s right,” Bick agreed. “I’d rather do a day’s roundup than one more Mission.”
The jaunt took on a holiday air. Everyone felt relaxed. Vashti bubbled. “Oo
h, look, it’s a brand-new car they’ve got it upholstered in blue isn’t that cute I never saw blue before on a train it’s always green…”
“George, we’ll want a setup right away, plenty of ice…”
“That goes there and this goes here—no, the Benedict drawing room…”
“A menu from the dining car we’ll eat right here…”
The three men then said “Phew!” and glanced toward the little pantry from which came the tinkle of ice and glass. A waiter in a cardboard-stiff white apron and jacket appeared with menus. “Tengo hambre,” Pinky yelled. “Come on, amigos, let’s get together on this. Vash! Girls!”
The three women emerged from their rooms along the corridor at the far end of the car. In some miraculous way heat and weariness had vanished. They were fresh and fragrant as peppermint patties.
Solemnly they sipped their highballs and scanned the list of dinner dishes “Six dinners to haul in from the galley back in the dining car,” Pinky said. “So don’t let’s go hog-wild and order the works, it’ll take from here to breakfast to get it.”
There was a gate—a little crossbarred iron gate—that stretched across their car platform and separated it from the other cars. It was not locked, it folded back on itself like an accordion. Their private porter, full of his own importance, closed it opened it as he went back and forth on his errands. Now and then a stray passenger would drift in past the folding gate, thinking this was a public lounge car, he would see six people seated there talking and drinking and laughing, he would sink into one of the luxurious seats and look about him with an air of relief and calm. Slowly an uncertain look would come into his face, then puzzlement, then embarrassment. No one said anything, the deferential colored porter did not approach these people. They vanished, red-faced. One man came in, boots, Stetson, city clothes. He seated himself, then his face beamed with a smile of recognition. “Well, say, Bick, you old sonofagun! Pinky! Howdy, Pinky!”
“Hi!” the men said. “Howdy, Mel!”
He rose, he came toward them, then a certain something seemed to strike him, an apprehensive look came into the frank blue eyes. Deliberately he stood. Those crinkled eyes that had stared so many years across the endless plain now slowly encompassed the luxurious room on wheels, the strangely empty seats, the porter eying him with amused hostility from the far doorway; the neatness, the lack of piled-up luggage.
“Have a drink, Mel?” Bick called to him. “How about supper with us? Had your supper?”
“Well, say,” Mel stammered, blushing like a boy. “I didn’t go for to stomp in on your party. Excuse me!” He shook his head and raised his hand in a rather touching gesture of apology and farewell as he walked out of the car. You heard the little folding gate outside go clink and clank as it opened and closed.
Leslie felt guilty and embarrassed but no one else seemed to attach any importance to the coming and going of Mel or his fellow travelers.
Pinky said, “Mel still got that little bitty place up to San Angelo? About fifteen sections, ain’t it?”
“Thereabouts. Ten twelve thousand-acre piece,” Bick said. “Over-used his grass, and over-stocked. Going under, I’d say.”
Pinky disposed of him. “That’s the trouble with those little fellows. Feeders. They let the grassland run down and have to feed their young stock cake and then they wonder where the money goes.”
“Cake!” said Leslie, scenting a Texas joke.
They laughed tolerantly, Bick laid a fond possessive hand on her knee. “Cake, Yankee, is feed—cottonseed cake. Concentrated cow feed and good and damned expensive.”
“That’s right,” Pinky agreed virtuously—Pinky the erstwhile cow hand newly come into the prospect of two million acres. “Abuse the rangeland and what’s happened to Texas the last half century! Couple inches of topsoil lost from millions of acres, that’s what. Like to’ve wrecked the state.”
“Why don’t they make them put it back?” Leslie inquired.
A roar went up. Vashti Hake’s shrill defense came to her through the uproar. “Never you mind, Leslie.”
She could laugh with them, but she persisted. “Well, but why?”
Thoughtfully Bick stared out of the window at the hundreds—thousands—millions of acres of semi-arid land.
“Because man hasn’t the trick of making earth—or maybe he just hasn’t got the time. To build back a couple of inches of topsoil in Texas would take nature from eight hundred to four thousand years.”
Fascinated, Leslie persisted. “Then why doesn’t somebody teach them not to neglect the grassland in the first place?”
Vashti had been rummaging in a huge box of chocolates with which she had fortified herself against the rigors of the journey. She was eating a fondant-filled sweet and drinking a bourbon highball, a unique gustatory feat of which even Pinky disapproved. He offered mild protest. “Vash, chocolates and liquor don’t go together, they don’t set right. Anyway, all that supper’ll be along any minute.”
Vashti ignored this epicurean counsel. Through a mouthful of creamy fondant and a sip of the highball she still sounded brisk and emphatic.
“Teach hell! They got no right to go ranching on a little bitty old piece you couldn’t run a goat on. They’d do better go to work for folks know how to run a real ranch. Like Pa. Or Bick. Or even the Moreys though they only run two three hundred thousand acres since they got to be city folks.”
“No!” said Leslie, to her own surprise. “That isn’t the way. That isn’t a good way.”
Vashti hooted good-naturedly. “Isn’t the way! Listen at the Texian talking!”
It was not until twenty years later that Bob Dietz the agronomist spoke the words which Leslie now was too inexperienced to phrase.
“Reata,” he said two decades later, “and the Hake ranch and all those overgrown giants are dated. A man who knows modern methods can make a success of four sections and not feed his stock a pound of hay or cake even in a drought season. But success or failure, a man who’s running his own ranch is a man. But on a place like Reata he’s a piece of machinery. And anyway, no man in a democracy should have the right to own millions of acres of land. That’s foolish old feudal stuff.”
Now, falteringly, Leslie tried to express her own half-formed observations. “I just mean I think it’s better for a million men to own their own little farms than for one man to own a million——”
“Heh, hold on there!” Bick laughed. “You’re talking about the husband of the woman I love.”
“That’s right, you want to watch out with that kind of talk,” Vashti said. “Every single thing you say is repeated all over Texas inside of twenty-four hours.”
Leslie smiled politely. “Now Vashti. I’ve been in Texas long enough to know you mean all over Reata.”
“I mean all over Texas.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re Mrs. Bick Benedict. And a Yankee. And different. And Texas is like that. Next thing you know they’ll be saying you’re one of those Socialists.”
“Pooh, you’re just trying to scare me. I won’t scare.”
Bick leaned toward her, smiling, his eyes serious. “Texas,” he said, “is a village—of about three hundred thousand square miles. There’s more cattle in Texas than there are people. And Texas people are kind of lonesome people, they like a piece of news to chew on. You’re news.”
“In Ohio,” Leslie said equably, “we three Lynnton girls always were considered slightly crazy, and even Virginia thinks we’re odd. But Papa brought us up to think for ourselves and say what we thought.”
“He sure did!” Bick said in full round tones.
“Papa!” Vashti yelled. “That’s funny. My pa raised me up too.”
“Well, they don’t come any crazier than you do, Vash,” Pinky stated reasonably.
“Of course Texas,” Leslie went on, “is really very conventional, so that anyone who varies from the——”
“Conventional!” shouted the Texans in chorus.
Lew Morey, the mild-faced, raised a placating hand. “It’s too hot to be arguing whether Texas is conventional or not.”
“I kind of know what she means,” Adarene Morey said. “I honestly do. But didn’t you mean provincial instead of conventional, Leslie?”
“Never mind who means what,” Bick interrupted irritably. “People have been wrangling about what Texas is and isn’t for a hundred years and more. Let’s talk about something else, will you!”
Smoothly Lucius Morey poured a conversational oil slick. “I’ll bet anybody that in another ten years, the way the airplane business is booming since the war, you’ll be flying up to Holgado inside an hour, instead of having to eat and sleep on a long train trip this way.”
Pinky took a thoughtful sip of bourbon. “I don’t know’s I’d relish flying up to Holgado in all that mountain country. Too many hard clouds up around there, as the fellas used to say in the war.”
Adarene Morey regarded her undramatic Lucius. “Lucius flew in the war,” she said to Leslie. “You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he was an ace.”
“Why wouldn’t you think it to look at me!” her husband challenged her. “Mars kind of changed his face these last couple of wars. Used to be a big hairy fellow with whiskers. Now he’s mostly a kid just about managed to have his first shave.”
Leslie regarded the bland Morey with new interest. She was silent a moment. Then she swung her chair around away from the window view of the flat land skimming by in the early evening light. “You won’t believe it! I’ve never asked Jordan what he was up to in the war. We’ve all wanted to forget it, I suppose. Jordan, did you win the Battle of the Marne singlehanded?”
Vashti spoke quickly. Even Luz could not have sprung more alertly to his defense. “Some had to stay home and raise beef cattle so the soldiers could eat.”
Thoughtlessly Leslie said, “Old men can raise beef cattle.” Immediately she regretted it.
“If it hadn’t of been for Texas,” Vashti went on, “we probably wouldn’t even have won the war.”
