Chapter 16

“Jake, that woman just won’t let up!”

“Which one, Jean-Louis? Priscilla or Sharon?” I asked.

“Priscilla! But she’s thick as thieves with Sharon, and between the two of them I can’t figure out whether I’m coming or going!” I laughed, and he glowered at me.

But I noticed that he hadn’t run away. If he was really all that afeared, all he’d have had to do was saddle up and go. So I listened to his complaints, then talked about how one sitio of land wasn’t much to start a speculating business. I mentioned that we’d had several offers to buy his Mexican grant, but we hadn’t sold because if we did he’d no longer have the makings of a horse ranch. And if he kept it, we could always go back to Gonzales and maybe rebuild, me as a blacksmith and gunsmith, him as a trapper, breaker, and dealer in mustangs. “Course, I wouldn’t have many customers, and it’s not much of a place to take Priscilla, what with no women there to talk to. I reckon she’d be lonesome, not to mention that would leave Sharon alone back here. A body can’t tell what might happen, the way the Indians are acting.”

I gave a nudge now and then, but he talked himself into it. The upshot was that we did what the women wanted and had a joint wedding, with the women smiling and us looking scared. After Muldoon had us sign his book, he beamed at us and sent us on our way. Charged us four silver dollars, too!

But after it was done, we looked up Ed Burleson to thank him and to ask his advice. A knowing man, Ed Burleson; he’d been in Texas a long time. “I believe I’d take a look down south of Gonzales,” he said. “Most land was claimed, but many a good man fell during the Goliad fighting and some didn’t have family to leave their claims to. They escheated to the Republic, meaning that the land is available.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but Sam, being a lawyer, did, and he explained it so I filed that word away in my memory. One day, I might need it to impress folks!

Another place he suggested was near the Pedernales river, and if that was already claimed look at Johnson creek. Rivers were prone to flooding, which spring-fed creeks usually weren’t, and as for bringing ships up from the Gulf, not many rivers were deep enough or wide enough so we might have to forget that idea. The four of us talked it over. Jean-Louis and me had planned on being partners anyway, and our wives being friends just made things easier.

One other thing Ed had suggested, sell off Jean-Louis’s grant so that we’d have starting capital. We looked around and soon found ourselves a lawyer who would handle matters. Frontier or not, there was no shortage of lawyers in Texas! My lot in Gonzales was likely gone, although a man could always go out to the edge of town and stake out another if he was a mind to. Texas was never going to run short of land, though some might not be all that good.

As for that Llano-Estacado grassland out west of Austin, I couldn’t see why anyone would ever want it. The Comanches wanted it for buffalo country, which was about the best use anyone could make of it! Let them have it, I figured, if that would keep them from raiding farmers and ranchers east of there!

So we talked, and made sort-of plans.

The women wanted us to settle close to each other and neither of us minded that. But being as we weren’t close to a settlement, the wives might need to fight off a raid. Jean-Louis claimed he was a better shot than me, but I knowed better, so both of us worked on teaching the women to shoot their new rifles. I taught Sharon, he taught Priscilla. The arrangement kept the arguments down some, but never quite stopped them. The other thing we needed to do was get them good mounts, the best we could find.

We talked about taking a trip to Mexico, but after thinking it over buying good horses didn’t make much sense if a feller got killed in the doing. The Mexicans were still touchy, because of losing the war the way they did, so while the two of us had only been in one fight they weren’t likely to see a difference between us and Sam Houston himself!

We now had money and we were anxious to find new headrights we could lay claim to, so one Thursday morning, with a freedman and his wife that we’d hired as wagon driver and camp cook, we headed south.

It looked like Galveston would soon have competition, for there were already work crews surveying and dredging Buffalo Bayou. Two brothers named Borden were surveying a townsite that took in Harrisburg, the town Santa Anna’s army had burned.

We went through around noon and didn’t slow down. It was so hot that we had sweated through our clothes and the mosquitos were everywhere, but we found a nice creek with a sandy bottom and banks to camp by. The mosquitos were behind us and I, for one, hoped they stayed back there.

We got an early start the next day and found the road leading to Hogan’s Ferry on the Brazos, which we crossed the next afternoon. By then, the land had begun to change, less boggy and with fewer of the giant southern live oaks that are found close to the Gulf. But we camped under one, and between its wide-spreading branches and our canvas tents, Priscilla and me stayed mostly dry during the downpour that night. Not so with Sharon and Jean-Louis, who swore they’d nearly drowned!

Try as we could the next morning, we couldn’t get the soggy oak branches to burn, so after handing out some of our jerky, we went on.

The Guadalupe River turned out not to have two adjoining parcels, but twenty miles to the east of Victoria was a pleasant little stream named Garcitas Creek. We explored it and found another creek that was lined with willows. Not far from where the two joined, we found the places we wanted.

Claiming our headrights turned out to be easy. The clerk promised to search through earlier claims, but he thought that the two sitios, originally part of De León’s colony, had reverted back. The brothers who’d owned them had died at Goliad. As for our two headrights, he came out personally to confirm that we had them. “I never saw anything like this, but according to what a friend in Austin sent me, Sam Houston and Ed Burleson both attested to your claim!”

“I was in the Gonzales fight with Ed,” I explained, “and later on, I met Sam. We both did, so it’s nice that he didn’t forget us now that he’s President.”

“Well, he didn’t, so I filed your claims,” he said. “Anything else I can do for you?”

There wasn’t, so he headed back.

Victoria was an easy day’s ride away.

Jim Fannin’s Texians had come here from Goliad in 1836, but after the Battle of Coleto Creek, the town had been occupied by Mexican soldiers. Whether because of that or because it had originally been part of De León’s mostly-Mexican colony, the residents had been Mexican or Tejano. We visited the town, talked to businessmen and generally made ourselves known, and our wives found friends among the women.

I mentioned that I had been a gunsmith in Gonzales and when I mentioned opening a similar business in Victoria, the people I talked to thought that was a good idea. But Jean-Louis and me both felt that my gunsmithing business should wait until after we’d built homes on the headrights we’d claimed, because winter would soon arrive.

The land was generally flat, with wide fields of tall grass that could be cut for hay. There were also occasional clumps of trees, and when the wind came from the south we could smell salty air coming up from Lavaca Bay. We figured that when storms blew in, a few trees for windbreaks would be mighty nice, so we kept that in mind when selecting our locations.

I also wanted direct access to Garcitas Creek, which I figured would be useful. Sooner or later, ships would come to Lavaca Bay and with them would come trade. The ship wouldn’t be able to sail up the creek, but a boat could.

Turned out we didn’t have to look far for help. As soon as we told people what we intended, men started showing up. Some of them were men who’d fought at San Jacinto; others were Tejanos who had no home to go back to. The ones with the most common sense became our foremen, which took some of the burden off us.

There were disagreements now and then, sometimes between the Anglo veterans and the Tejanos, but the foremen dealt with them, usually by firing the one who wouldn’t listen to reason. I remembered that Tejano militia captain who’d come up from Victoria when men started showing up from other settlements to help, and he wasn’t the only one. Austin had appointed Juan Seguín a captain, and his Tejano company had fought at San Antonio and at San Jacinto, He’d also accepted the surrender of San Antonio’s Mexican garrison when it left there for Mexico. He was as much a Texian as anyone, to my way of thinking.