Chapter 7

I staked out a location on the north edge of Gonzales and started work. People showed up to say howdy and stayed to help.

By the end of that first day we had pulled weeds, dug out bushes, leveled the ground, sprinkled it with a little water, and tramped it solid. That’s all the floor a blacksmith needs, unless he expects to burn down his smithy before he gets well started! The gunsmith’s shop next to it would be like most of the other buildings, two log cabins joined by a covered opening between. I figured to live in one and use the other for work. The space behind the smithy I left for later. After I fenced it in for a corral, which I would need for holding horses and mules while they were waiting to be shod, the animals would take care of clearing out the grass and weeds. What they wouldn’t eat, they’d stomp flat in no time.

While we were working, Jean-Louis and a freedman named Joe unloaded our wagon and went hunting. There was game in plenty to be had, folks said, although a body needed to ride an hour or two out of town to find it. Joe knowed where there were good hunting spots closer than that. He was as good as folks claimed; him and Jean-Louis brought back two does, three turkeys, and a wild sheep of some kind, all field-dressed and skinned. They’d kept one of the deerskins aside to wrap the livers and hearts in; the others they laid hair-side-down on the wagon bed to put the meat on.

I’d never seen the likes of that sheep! Mostly brown he was, with a light-colored rump and big curling horns. He was chunky too, compared with the deer, having as much meat on him as both of those does together! Although, to be fair, the does were a mite on the small side and hadn’t regained the weight they’d lost before they got around to weaning their fawns.

People came by the next morning to help, as neighbors do, and the meat was welcome. Several women showed up to do the cooking and most brought more food, including cornbread, a pot of Mexican beans, and four kinds of pie! I managed to sample all four, and they were right tasty. Too bad those women were married; good as they fed us, I might have thought twice about remaining a bachelor!

The walls, of well-seasoned unhewn logs, were up by the end of the day. It was understood that when we had time, Jean-Louis and I would head out and help cut trees to replace the ones we’d used.

I found out later they’d been intended for a palisade, but the town had grown so fast that people kept putting the job off, and finally they decided they didn’t need a wall around the town after all.

The following day, Jean-Louis and two helpers went off to look at the land that Edward Burleson had recommended, while I joined the fireplace-building crew. I wondered why they built them in corners instead of in the middle of the wall, but they explained that it was the Mexican way. And since they were Mexican, I figured they knowed what they were doing. As for me, I was glad someone did!

That afternoon, they hauled rocks and mixed more mud for mortar while I stacked them for my forge, with a hollowed-out space below the firepit for an air pipe. The tuyere I installed was one that I’d brought with me from Galveston, of thick bronze with holes designed to let the air pass but keep small pieces of charcoal and clinker from falling through. Below that was the opening for removing ashes. Not a real forge yet because I hadn’t made a bellows, but it was farther along than I would have expected after only two days of work!

The anvil, nothing more than a large square block of iron, was the one that I’d used in Galveston while learning the trade. Maybe one day I would have a real one, with a horn, cutting bench, and hardened face that had hardy and pritchel holes.

Some day...

My hammers and tongs I brought under the roof to protect them, for the clouds had begun rolling up from the south and my helpers needed to get home to see to their own affairs. The post-vise I put aside until I had time to construct a workbench.

Over the next few days, I loaned out my spade, froe, felling axe, adze, and broad-axe to the ones who’d helped me. Some of the borrowers might not have helped yet, but they would later. Meantime, they would have smoothed logs to sit on, and riven planks for their roofs. Loaning out tools to those who had none didn’t harm me. I could always fix something if it broke, and if needed, I could make new. Such was the way of the frontier. Neighbor helped neighbor and when necessary, risked everything, including his life.

The summer passed, and it seemed like there weren’t enough hours in the day. Jean-Louis and I worked from first light to deep dusk before falling exhausted into our beds. There were times we were just too tired even to eat. But by the end of August, I had a shop and a growing business, and Jean-Louis had a house and corrals on the 4,428-acre league of land he’d claimed. That’s how the Spaniards had reckoned land area, by the league and the 177-acre labor. The Mexicans had just kept the old system when they booted the Spaniards out.

His house was like the one we’d built in Gonzales, but bigger.

The log cabins had window openings with thick shutters that faced out on a covered but unfloored porch, and were connected by a roofed opening wide enough and tall enough to park a wagon. Behind one of the cabins was the cook-space and a ways behind the other was the outhouse. Families generally lived in one cabin and used the other for a kitchen, but during hot Texas summers most folks cooked outside. All that was needed was an adobe horno, which is what Mexicans called their ovens, and a firepit with a tripod. At the top was a hook to hang the grate from, and raising or lowering the chain by a link or two was how folks adjusted cooking heat.

Jean-Louis and his crew had also built a wooden landing, not quite a dock, that stuck out into the Guadalupe river, making it easy to draw a bucketful to water the stock. Later on, he figured to put in a pump and a flue to carry water directly to the corrals. The holding corral and breaking pens were also done, but building a barn would have to wait.

While I was busy in Gonzales shoeing horses and repairing guns that should have been replaced, Jean-Louis and two helpers rounded up two dozen mustangs. The best, mostly young, they trained as riding stock, the others were broke to work as draft animals.

Breaking a horse to the saddle was a simple, if difficult, job best done by two men, but teaching horses to draw a plow or a wagon was easier. Just hitch one or two to a stone-boat, which was really no more than a heavy sled with thick-hewn log runners, and let the horses tire themselves out trying to run away from it. We would need teams for our own use, but as soon as the others were ready they would be sold. Most who lived in town had no need for a saddle-mount, but whether oxen, horses, or mules, there was always a market for draft animals.

Others had started with more than we had, but for two who were pulling ourselves up by our own boot-straps we were doing well. Our neighbors had taken note. Men who will work hard without complaining soon gain the respect of others. Edward Burleson came by now and then, but John Henry Moore was often in my shop when he visited Gonzales. I figured that sometimes he was there just to visit, other times he seemed more interested in the repair work I was doing. “That’s a nice rifle,” he said one day, looking at the one I’d made for myself where it hung on the pegs. “Plains pattern, I take it?”