The Daily Brief

Strange but true – General Lopez de Santa Anna’s invasion of Texas in 1836 was not to be the last time that a Mexican Army crossed the border into Texas in full battle array – artillery, infantry, military band and all. Santa Anna may have been defeated at San Jacinto – but for the Napoleon of the west, that was only a temporary setback. In March of 1842 a brief raid by General Rafael Vasquez and some 400 soldiers made a lightening-fast dash over the Rio Grande, while another 150 soldiers struck at Goliad and Refugio. They met little resistance – and departed at speed before Texan forces could assemble and retaliate. All seemed to have quieted down by late summer, though: Texas had ratified a treaty with England, and the United States requesting that Texas suspend all hostilities with Mexico.

It seemed a good time to get on with urgent civic business, such as the meeting of the District Court in San Antonio. There had not been the opportunity to try civil cases for many years; the town was full of visitors who had come for the court session: officials, lawyers and litigants. Court opened on September 5th – but within days rumors were flying of another Mexican incursion. Such rumors were cheerfully dismissed – not soldiers, just bandits and marauders. Just in case, though, local surveyor John Coffee Hays – who already had a peerless reputation as a ranger and Indian fighter – was sent out to scout with five of his men. They saw nothing, having stayed on the established roads; unknown to them, one of Santa Anna’s favorite generals, a French soldier of fortune named Adrian Woll was approaching through the deserted country to the west of San Antonio, with a column of more than 1,500 soldiers – as well as a considerable assortment of cannon.

Under cover of a dense fog bank on the morning of September 11th, Woll’s army marched into San Antonio, with banners flying and a band playing. Having blocked off all escape routes, the General had a cannon fired to announce his presence. There was some sharp, but futile resistance, before surrender was negotiated. General Woll announced that he would have to take all Anglo-Texian men in San Antonio as prisoners of war; this included the judge, district attorney, assistant district attorney, court clerk, court interpreter, every member of the San Antonio Bar save one, and a handful of litigants and residents, to a total of fifty-five. They were kept prisoner – after five days they were told they must walk all the way to the Rio Grande, but they would then be released. Sometime during this period, the-then Mayor of San Antonio, John William Smith, managed to escape and send word of what had happened to the nearest town, Gonzales.

John Coffee Hays and his scouts had also managed to elude capture upon their return to town. The word went out across Texas for volunteers to assemble; two hundred came quickly from Gonzales and Seguin, led by Mathew “Old Paint” Caldwell, and fought a sharp skirmish on Salado Creek. A company of 53 volunteers recruited by Nicolas Mosby Dawson in LaGrange or along the road to join Caldwell’s volunteers along the Salado Creek north of San Antonio, ran into the rear-guard of Woll’s army, a large contingent of cavalry and a single cannon as they were withdrawing to San Antonio. Dawson’s company was surrounded; in the confusion of surrendering, firing broke out again. Only fifteen of Dawson’s company survived, to join with the San Antonio prisoners on their long walk towards the Rio Grande.

Once there the prisoners were informed that they would be taken into Mexico. Some were paroled and permitted to leave as a personal favor to the US Consul in Mexico City. Others escaped, but most of the San Antonio prisoners were kept for two years at hard labor in Perote Prison, in the state of Vera Cruz, until an armistice was signed between Mexico and Texas in March of 1844.

The site of the Dawson Massacre is marked by a granite monument, where the present-day Austin Highway crosses Salado Creek. The first case to be heard at that momentous court session was never settled; Dr. Shields Booker brought suit against the former mayor of San Antonio, Juan Seguin, for a payment of a 50-peso fee. Dr. Booker died in Perote Prison. The lawyer representing him, Samuel Maverick, was paroled after six months in Perote, and returned to Texas.

(This incident will feature in the book currently being written – as the man who will become my heroine’s second husband is one of those taken prisoner to Mexico. “Daughter of Texas”, the story of her first marriage and her various experiences during the Texas War for Independence will be released April 21, 2011 – although I am taking advance orders here, for delivery the week before.) And anyone who orders a set of the Adelsverein Trilogy through the website will have their name put in a drawing for a free copy of “Daughter of Texas.”

All right then – for Proud Veteran and all the rest of my HF fans out there; the first chapter of the book after the next book – which got to be so substantial that I broke it into two parts. This is the first chapter of the book after the next – which will be out … well, about a year from now. No, I do not have a problem with writer’s block. Why do you ask?

Deep In the Heart: Chapter 1 – Widow’s Weeds

Early in the year of 1841, Margaret Becker Vining received condolence visits in the front parlor of the house she had long thought of as her own, since her father, Alois, had long yielded up the management of it to his formidable daughter. The front parlor was a room longer than wide, with tall windows on two sides, which allowed the winter sun to fill the room with the mellow golden light of afternoon. It was a plain room with clean and whitewashed walls, adorned with only the shelves of books that her late husband had prized, and yet set with comfortable chairs and a day-bed piled with pillow-cushions covered with blue and yellow patchwork. Margaret – tall and slender, with hair the color of ripe wheat done in a long braid wrapped coronet-wise around her head – was dressed in unrelieved black, the weeds of a new-made widow. Her first caller was likewise dressed all in somber black, but the color of deep mourning did not flatter her as well as it did Margaret.

“The Doc came to attend on Mr. Eberly in his final illness,” remarked Margaret’s visitor, by way of commencing her call, “And he told us you had received word that your man died in Boston. Sorry to hear of it, Miz Vining. He seemed like a real nice man. I reckon you miss him something turrible. Schoolteacher, was he?”

“Yes, Mrs. Eberly,” Margaret answered. “We had been married more than ten years.”

“I thought I recollect him from San Felipe, when he first started a school there.” Angelina Eberly sighed, reminiscently. She was dumpy, capable and shrewd, some twenty years older than Margaret, who rather liked her even though she was a rival of sorts in the business of keeping a boarding house in the tiny frontier capitol city of Texas. “My first husband and I, we had just started our place, too. Such a dashing feller, altogether too handsome to be teaching school . . . seemed to be a waste, that he didn’t have no ambition a’tall.”

“My husband only wanted to teach school,” Margaret answered, showing no sign of the grief and resentment that still burned deep within her heart, like the coals of a fire left to smolder overnight. “He came to Texas for his health. He had a weak chest and his doctors told him that for his own sake he must live in a warm climate.” Race Vining had also been escaping a loveless marriage. That was not an uncommon thing among those young men who had rushed into Texas in the mid-1820s, seeking adventure, land and their fortunes in those American colonies in Mexican territories, those settlements set up by entrepreneurs like Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt. Unfortunately, Race Vining had omitted to obtain a divorce from his well-born and well-connected Boston wife before engaging Margaret in marriage. Margaret had loved him well and borne him four sons during all adversities – adversities of war, invasion, sickness and separation – before inadvertently discovering the nature of his existing marriage. It was for the purpose of seeking a divorce, which had finally impelled Race Vining to make that arduous return journey to the East – and he had died of his old malady before achieving that end. Margaret had received a settlement from his horrified family back east, and not yet decided what she would do with it. Her husband’s family appeared to have brought forth only daughters – no sons to carry on their name! But the Texas frontier was far removed from Boston, and Margaret was determined to keep the embarrassment of Race Vining’s bigamy a secret from all, even her sons. She assumed that his Boston family was determined to do the same.

Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “Now I had just five years, with Captain Eberly . . . he was my second husband, o’course. I was married to Mr. Peyton for sixteen year a’fore that, but we had known each other all our lives, bein’ that we were cousins. Like to have broke my heart when he died, but still . . .” She sighed, gustily. “I just cain’t see that I’ll marry again, Miz Vining. I’m set in my ways, an’ accustomed to running my establishment as I see fit. When you’re young an’ pretty, it helps to have a man around the place, stand up for ye, remind the boarders an’ customers to keep a civil tongue. It don’ much matter when yer as old as I am, Miz Vining. Then ye can do as yer pleases.”

“I do not think I shall remarry.” Margaret answered – although the old black witch woman who had told Margaret her fortune on her twelfth birthday had promised that she would marry once for love and again for friendship. The utter humiliation of Race’s confession to her and the long silence after he had departed for Boston still hurt Margaret dreadfully. She had done with heartbreak, with lies told for love and for men who did things for convenience.

“A man about the place is handy to have, now and again,” Mrs. Eberly conceded generously, “And you’re young enough still – hain’t lost any of your looks – but as long as your old Pa is around, I don’t think you’d be too much bothered.”

“I do not think I could endure the sorrow of love regained and then the loss of it . . . but I have considered taking up weaving, like Penelope,” Margaret answered; Mrs. Eberly looked blank and Margaret stifled a small sigh. “The wife of Ulysses, plagued by unwanted suitors in his absence; she promised to marry when her weaving was done, but she picked out at night all she had accomplished during the day.” Having had the allusion explained to her, Mrs. Eberly laughed in frank amusement, which gratified Margaret. She was becoming rather tired of being treated as if she were made of spun glass, as if she would dissolve into a welter of tears if anyone so much as cracked a smile.

Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “All that Penelope woman would have needed was to have your Pa sit in the corner and glower at them. I can’t help thinking now that he’s a man who might have done good to marry again! It would have improved his temper, at any rate.”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Eberly – he took the loss of my mother so very hard,” Margaret replied. “And the death of my brother Rudi with Colonel Fannin at the Goliad . . . Pa has never been the same since. But then he was always a difficult man.” What Margaret would not say was that her father, Alois Becker, had always been proud and hot-tempered. He doted on the older of his two sons while scorning the younger, and quarreled frequently with men who might otherwise have been his friends. Only his wife, Margaret’s mother, had been able to soften his harsh nature into some pretense of amity with his fellows. Her death of the bloody flux during the terrible ‘runaway scrape’ had removed that effective governance on Alois Becker’s ill-temper. Margaret coped by serenely ignoring his occasional bitter outburst, reasoning that Pa was what he was, and paying any mind to him was a fruitless exercise. In any case, she had the house to manage and her sons to bring up properly. Now Mrs. Eberly looked ready to settle in for a good enjoyable gossip.

“Have you many gentleman guests, now? There’s been so much talk now, about Meskin bandits raiding over the Nueces – can you believe they have the nerve – that people are frightened about staying in Austin because of the danger. I’ve lost all my boarders but a handful! I can’t wait until the Legislature comes back to town, and fills up my rooms good and proper. General Sam, he’s staying for a few days, but if it weren’t for him and the missus, I might as well turn over the mattresses and lock the doors.”

“I can’t blame people for being frightened,” Margaret answered. “But I think it would take more than talk to drive me away. I know that it would! We left our home once before, I’d not be leaving again, and I know that my father wouldn’t.”

“Oh, but he was up here when it was still Waterloo, wasn’t he?” Mrs. Eberly fanned herself. “Then he’s accustomed to living out and away from everything. But I tell you straight enough, Miz Vining, we’d be in mortal danger of loosing our livelihood altogether, if General Sam has his way. He never liked having the Legislature meet all the way out here – it was President Lamar who was dead-set upon building a new capitol city, instead of meeting at Columbia or Washington-on-the-Brazos. I have to say that I much preferred Mr. Lamar. He was ever so much a real gent, always polite, never going on a spree!”

“I still have three boarders,” Margaret answered. “Mr. Hattersley the Englishman, Dr. Williamson . . . and Seamus O’Doyle, of course. He is contracted to build the French Legation. And that is still going ahead. I do not think General Sam would be able to move the capitol city away from here, even if he wanted to, now that he has been re-elected.”

“Truth to tell, he’s a canny man,” Mrs. Eberly answered, with an air of dark warning. “Who knows what he really has his mind set on? Myself, I think his wife has something to do with it. She wishes to be settled nearest her kinfolk; she tole me her sister and husband have a big plantation on the Trinity River. Take my word on it – she’s the one who doesn’t wish to be always traveling around, and living all the way out here! Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.”

“General Sam has married?” Margaret was startled. Now that she thought on it, she recalled there had been a bit of gossip floated at her supper-table last year, but as her guests were mostly men, they had very little interest in the marriage of a public figure like Sam Houston – or if they did, their remarks would have been prurient in nature and too unseemly to voice in Margaret’s presence. “I had heard mention of him courting a young lady whose family did not approve, but I thought there was an end to it.”

“No, Mrs. Vining – she defied them, and they went ahead with marrying – last May, it was. Who would have thought it? A little slip of a girl and that drunken old goat, even if he is the hero of San Jacinto, but they seem happy enough.”

“I am very glad for them, then,” Margaret replied with all honesty. “General Sam . . . always appeared to me as one who would be a most devoted husband. I think he is a man who likes the company of women as friends. When we had to leave Gonzales, during the war, General Sam gave orders that the Army wagons should be used to carry away the women . . . especially the widows of those Gonzales men who had gone to the Alamo. At that terrible time, he took the trouble to be kindly. He sat with Sue Dickinson as she told us of what had happened there, holding her hand and weeping openly. I have always had the most generous feelings towards him on that account.”

“Ah,” Mrs. Eberly began drawing her shawl closer around herself, and setting her bonnet at a rakish angle, preparatory to taking her leave, “Well, General Sam can be charming when he wants to be, I’ll give him that. But what he does and says when he has a few drinks – I’d not want to endure being married to him, knowing what I know of life and the didoes he kicked up in Tennessee and among the Cherokee. Well, I’ll be taking my leave now, Mrs. Vining. I just wanted to tell you again, how sorry I was to hear about Mr. Vining and all – leaving you with the boys and all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Eberly – I appreciate your consideration more than I can say,” Margaret clasped her visitor’s hands briefly, feeling that it really was very kind of Mrs. Eberly to take this time from her unending daily rounds of cooking, cleaning and overseeing the care of her guests.

“That’s all right, my dear,” Mrs. Eberly embraced her fondly, adding, “Now you hear any rumors from your gentlemen about moving the Legislature to anywhere else – you must promise to pass them on to me! A whisper of such doings will affect your business no less than mine, and not for the better.”

She walked with Mrs. Eberly to the front door, once again thinking how very kind everyone had been to her since hearing of Race Vining’s death. She was fortunate to have such friends. Well, that was one of the other things that the witch-woman had promised her; many friends and a large house, aside from the two husbands – but that very few of those friends would truly know her heart. These days, Margaret sometimes felt that she herself didn’t know it, either. She had mourned her husband and her marriage all of last year; now what she was doing was a pretense, a sop to proprieties. Just as she was emerging from the shadow of last year, like a butterfly from a chrysalis – she must make a quiet show of her grief because everyone expected it of her. She had just decided to go change out of her good black dress, and help Morag and Hetty with supper, when Morag put her head around the parlor door saying,

“Oh, Marm – it looks like there’s another visitor for ye; a trap just coming up to th’ door.” Morag was barely sixteen; she and her older sister Hetty worked in Margaret’s house, although Margaret valued them for their companionship almost more than the work that spared her, and gave time to spend with her sons . . . and to sit in the parlor of a winter afternoon and receive visitors. Really, Margaret thought with a pang of regret – Race would have been so proud of her. As she had seen to his needs and nursed him in sickness, he had schooled her in the social graces and in the contents of his books; he was an educated man, and had read widely.

“Is it anyone that you recognize?” Margaret asked, as she resettled the cushions that had been somewhat disarranged by Mrs. Eberly.

“Marm, I think it is General Houston,” Morag breathed, with eyes as wide as saucers. “And there is a lady with him.”

“Oh, my!” Margaret peeped out of one of the parlor’s long windows: yes, there was a trap drawn up on the wagon-way out in front, and her father holding the bridle of the horse that drew it, as General Sam, climbed down from the seat. General Sam exchanged remarks with her father – remarks which sounded casually friendly – or as friendly as anyone could ever be with Alois Becker. It looked as if Alois Becker was about to begin spring plowing, for the team of oxen stood patiently behind him. Then the General turned to hand down a young lady; a young lady in a fashionable dark purple dress and a bonnet whose beribboned brim hid her face. Margaret drew in her breath – at least Papa appeared to be in a good mood, for he was speaking to the General and his lady with a lessening of his usual sour expression.

“It is indeed – well, Mrs. Eberly said that he and his wife were in Austin . . . don’t bother with showing them in, Morag, I’ll meet them at the door.”

“You shall not, Marm,” Hetty popped her head out of the kitchen door as Margaret came from the parlor. “’Tis fitting that you should sit in the parlor an’ receive your guests there, so you should, for you are in mourning for the Young Sir.” Margaret could hear the men’s voices from outside, closer as General Sam approached the steps.

“Very well,” Margaret yielded. Morag was having so much fun, playing the part of a ‘proper maid’ as Hetty had called it, although neither one of the Moylan sisters had any idea of what that actually entailed, other than their long-dead mother’s stories of domestic service in a grand mansion in Ireland some three or four decades since. Margaret sat in the chair that had been her husband’s, her back straight and her hands folded in her lap, although she was aching to take up a piece of mending from the basket at her side.

“General and Mrs. Houston,” Morag announced from the parlor door, and Margaret rose from the chair. Before she had taken more than a few steps, General Sam was within the room, the force of his personality seeming to fill it entirely, at the expense of the woman in the fashionable purple dress clinging timidly to his arm. At once, the General enclosed Margaret’s hands in his, saying,

“Mrs. Vining, we had only just heard of your sad loss! What a tragedy that you would hear of it so late, and be unable to take some small crumbs of comfort in knowing that you ministered to him in his last hours. He must have longed for your loving presence as well.”

“He was with his family,” Margaret answered, suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed with the intensity of General Sam’s concern. He was a tall man, with craggy features and a lion’s mane of hair, and possessed of such personal vitality and energy that people were drawn towards him, like iron-filings to a magnet. His charm was of such a powerful nature that it convinced anyone who held his regard – for that moment – that they were the most important person and fascinating person in the world. “And . . . he had been so often ill, that I was in part prepared for the end.”

“None the less,” General Sam gave her hands a comforting squeeze, and without letting them go, turned to the lady at his side. “I can see that you would have grieved none-the-less, Mrs. Vining. My dear, may I present you to another Margaret? Her late husband, Mr. Vining was long-settled in Texas. He served as a scout all during our retreat to the East, and then in the line in the San Jacinto fight – a brave man and none nobler. I confess that I oft-envied him for the simple wealth of his possessions – his horse, his home and his family,” the General smiled impishly, “and his Margaret, as well – but then I found a very dear Margaret of my own.” He yielded Margaret’s hands and turned to the lady at his side, with a proud and fond expression, and Margaret thought – Oh, General Sam, what have you done? She looks hardly older than Morag and you are more than twice her age! The General’s Margaret was slender and very, very young, with tremulous dark eyes set in pale, regular features and lips that curved in a somber and rather hesitant smile. “May I present my wife, Margaret, to you?”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Vining.” Margaret Houston’s voice was low and gentle, like a dove – a dove that had been sipping southern honeysuckle, Margaret thought irreverently. “I think it is very sad to do so under the circumstances of a visit of condolence. But then my husband has made so many friends in Texas! I am always pleased to make their acquaintance for myself – but so many of them are men . . .”

“Being in politics and having been the general of an army, he can scarcely avoid that,” Margaret answered, and added the unspoken thought – Besides good friends, he has at least as many enemies and ill-wishers, too – while General Sam chuckled, and remarked, “Never been one for sitting around the drawing room, flirting with the ladies.” “Save now and again,” Margaret Houston added, she and the General exchanged look of wry fondness, as she continued, “But I shall be so very glad to make friends of my own in Texas – but that there are rather more men then women here!”

Margaret thought with some relief; Oh, good. She is not timid at all – merely reserved. Aloud, she said, “So many think of it as the far frontier, Mrs. Houston – a place more suited to men and dogs, than women and horses. I was so pleased to hear of your marriage from Mrs. Eberly. I have always thought that the General was one who well-deserved the reward of a loving marriage and a happy home – as loving and happy as my own with my husband was.”

“Thank you for your good wishes,” General Sam looked inordinately pleased; he and Margaret Houston exchanged another of those fond looks, “I think we’re off to a good start – even if it took a good long time to find my own dear Maggie Lea. A house of our own a-building …”

“I do envy yours,” Margaret Houston confided, as they sat down, “So many books – I had not expected to see so many in one house! Have you read them all, Mrs. Vining?”

Margaret restrained herself from saying snappishly, “Of course I have!” since she had heard this question from practically every visitor that she had Race Vining had entertained from their first days of marriage in Gonzales. Instead, she answered, “I have indeed – my late husband was a schoolteacher. He needed books the way most other men require food and drink. He guided my education himself, even after our marriage.”

“Marvelous,” Now Margaret Houston smiled a smile of genuine pleasure which brought out a pair of dimples. “May I examine your library, Mrs. Vining? I vow I have not seen such a wealth of books since my own schooldays at the Judson Female Institute!”

“Of course,” Margaret answered, and Margaret Lea Houston went to the bookshelves in a rustle of purple silk, just as the door of the parlor opened again.

“I’ve brought the boys to see General Houston, Marm,” Morag said, “For they wouldn’t give us any peace, knowing that he was within the house.”

Margaret’s three older sons stood slightly abashed within the parlor, each of their faces alight with hero-worship: ten year-old Horace, whose likeness and character was his father’s image, Johnny, who was seven and rather timid – and five-year old Jamie who wasn’t. Jamie was fair-haired and big for his age, a true Becker. He was as tall as Johnny and was as bold and brash as the man he had been named for, that James Bowie who had fallen in the Alamo siege, who had also been one of her husband’s good friends.

“Hello boys,” General Sam’s own face lit up, “I see you’ve brought your toy soldiers then,” for Jamie had an armful of his corn-husk toy soldiers. “What sort of game were you playing?”

“We weren’t, sir,” Horace answered with touching dignity, “We were doing chores with Opa, and Miss Hetty said you had come to pay respects on account of Papa.”

“Then I am very pleased to meet you, lad,” General Sam shook hands gravely with all three boys, even Johnny who looked as if he would like to go back to sucking his thumb again, “Your father was a gallant gentleman indeed. He was with us at San Jacinto – I am sure you have heard the story many times.”

“Oh, yes, but not from you, sir!” Jamie spoke up, and Horace answered,

“I saw you then, sir – Johnny and I did. Mama and our friends, we were camped in a wagon close to Harrisburg, and Papa and Opa were gone with Captain Smith. We saw the whole Army march by, and you on a white horse, and Mrs. Kimball and Mrs. Darst told us to look well and remember that we saw the Army of Texas on it’s way to do battle – but we did not see Papa then…”

“He was most likely on a proper scout,” General Sam rumbled, “Or flanking the column at a distance . . . here, let me show you…” In short order, he and the boys were down on the floor – the boys entranced as General Sam demonstrated the proper marching order across the rag-rug, with Jamie’s corn-husk soldiers and Johnny’s toy wooden horses. Margaret and Margaret Lea Houston exchanged amused glances.

“A good general,” Margaret remarked, “And very good with children. He took as good a care of his soldiers as if they were his sons – or so my husband said.”

“I know,” Margaret Lea knelt in a pool of whispering silk, to examine the gilt-lettered backs of the books on the lower shelves. “And I think to myself sometimes, Mrs. Vining, that it is unfair that he will then take such little care of himself, and share his deepest confidence with so very few. Yet he has been my teacher, as much as your husband was yours.”

“He is a great man,” Margaret said honestly, “Perhaps one of the greatest men in Texas. But not entirely without flaws – no man truly is. Even my husband had faults, and I confess that my father has many of them. I have come to think that a wife’s duty is to . . . either ameliorate such faults, or to encourage a husband to rise above them by bettering himself. ”

“I agree with you that the General . . . my husband,” Margaret Lea acknowledged, with earnest determination, “Is a great man – and that my task is to help him become greater still, as he is capable – but to do so humbly. For I do not think he would willingly accept a greater master, unless it was our Lord and Master of all.”

“You have done very well so far,” Margaret observed; really, she did very much like the General’s Margaret. For looking so sweet and shy, she had a spine of steel under that silk, and perhaps they were better matched than appeared so at first. “You have tamed a wily, scarred old tom-cat, the veteran of many battles who has run through at least three or four of his own lives – into being a tame puss who wants nothing more than a bowl of milk and to curl up on a soft cushion before the parlor fire.”

“You think?” Margaret Lea smiled sideways at her, “Oh, he is scarred – some of them dreadful, enough to break your heart to look at and think of the pain it costs him and still does – but he does have plenty of wildness left in him. You have not seen – and I pray you never do – the suit that he first wished to wear to be inaugurated in. All of green velveteen, with a hideous sort of flat Indian turban.”

“All of it?” Margaret asked in disbelief and Margaret Lea nodded. “Oh, what you have spared us, my dear!” and they laughed companionably over the books. Meanwhile, the boys and General Sam were down on their knees on the rag rug; the General demonstrating how the thin line attacked Santa Anna’s Mexican army at San Jacinto – a single rank of corn-husk soldiers, with Johnny’s horses to one side to represent the cavalry, and a pair of thread-spools from Margaret’s mending basket for the two cannon; cast in Cincinnati by a subscription among sympathizers to the cause of Texas freedom and sent at great expense down the river to New Orleans and by sea to Velasco. The afternoon passed with remarkable swiftness, so swift and pleasurable that Margaret was hardly aware of it, until a beaming Morag came into the parlor bearing a tray with a china coffee-pot and cups and plates, and a plate of fresh-baked bread and jam and butter. She brought another plate of it for the boys, who were immediately distracted from their recreation of the great battle by the prospect of something to eat. General Sam dusted off the knees of his trousers and joined his wife and Margaret at the table.

“Fine boys,” he said, with admiration and approval, “This was another reason and cause, my dear, to envy Horace Vining.”

“We shall have our own, in good time,” Margaret Lea answered, with serene confidence, “As they are given to us.”

General Sam took a healthy bite of bread and butter. “And clever, too,” he added. “The youngest – Jamie is it? Now, he is the bold lad; a born soldier, if I ever saw one – and I know the breed well, for I was such a one myself.”

“He is not the youngest,” Margaret said, “That is Peter – but he is only two years old. The saddest thing for me is that Peter was just a baby when my husband went back East. He will not remember his father at all. The other boys – oh, they recall him well and dearly. But Peter will have no recollection of him at all…”

“Save in the hearts of those who thought well of him, and continue to burnish his memory,” General Sam affirmed stoutly, “And will speak of him and his qualities to those who cannot remember at first hand. Dear Mrs. Vining – that is our history, the best and finest of our people – and we must recall them and their noble deeds to those lately born and still unborn! How can we remember what we are, and what we may yet be called to become, if we lack the example and inspiration of our forbearers? Raise your sons with the memory of their noble father and those of his deeds which are most valorous always on your lips.”

And leaving the memory of his most ignoble deed in my heart, Margaret thought. It was the General himself who counseled me in this, saying that scandal will eventually die when gossip has no purchase. He did not ask the reason for my distress, that day when he met me by the riverside, and I was weeping because I had just discovered that Race was married to another woman besides myself. He asked nothing, only listened, and advised that we settle it between ourselves, that it was no one’s business but our own. She met General Sam’s shrewd and sympathetic eye, and knew without a doubt that he also was also recollecting that day.

“Good lads,” General Sam remarked again, “For you, Mrs. Vining, they are an ornament better than any jewels, eh?”

“They are everything to me,” Margaret answered. “My daily care is to see that they are educated well, and take up a profession that their father would have approved. He did not own much property in Texas – only a small town-lot in Gonzales.”

“You should apply for a grant of land in your name, as the widow of a veteran,” The General suggested. Inwardly, Margaret cringed; she would have to file affidavits and statements regarding her status as her husband’s widow. She could not bear the thought of an investigation and what that might reveal.

“I will consider that, when the year is up,” she answered, calmly. “Truly, there is so much land that I fear it is not so much valued. If it were dear, I might value it altogether more. A good town-lot in a prosperous region – that is of more use to me than a thousand acres of wilderness, even if the land is rich and well-watered.”

“You should consider it applying in any case,” General Sam advised. “Even in quantities, land has a value – if not for yourself, then for the boys. It is a pity though – that you must be living so far out at the edge of our settlements, though. Have you never considered moving to a more settled part of Texas, to Galveston or to Harrisburg? Even to Bexar, perhaps.”

“I would not,” Margaret shook her head, “We lived in San Felipe for a time, and then Gonzales with my husband – but this is where we made our home and I have become so fond of it that I would never leave. And after the next Legislative session, I am planning to enlarge the house once again.”

“I fear that it will take a long time for this place to be truly secure,” General Sam answered, and for a moment, Margaret thought that a shadow passed over his face – and that he would say something more, but he did not.

They talked a little while longer, the casual companionable talk of friends, with Margaret realizing with some surprise that General Sam and his Margaret were both well on the way to becoming her friends, friends of the heart. At last, with the afternoon sun dropping low and touching the edges of the trees with gold and silvering the reaches of the distant Colorado, General Sam and his Margaret took their leave. They could not stay to supper, having a previous invitation, and Margaret saw them to the door, thanking them again for their company.

“I think this must be a notable occasion,” she confessed, “A consolation visit – and I have actually been consoled by your presence!”

“It was our profound pleasure,” General Sam answered, with a glint of amusement in his eyes, as he tipped his hat to her, and Margaret Lea’s smile once more revealed her dimples. The trap rolled away, down the long sweep of hillside, between the rows of Alois Becker’s treasured apple trees, with their bare branches holding up the swelling blossom buds to the sky.

Margaret straightened her shoulders, feeling at least a little guilty for having spent the afternoon in the parlor, when there was supper to be prepared. But oh – it had been so pleasant! She had spent the last year under a shadow, and now she felt as if she had come out of it, out into the sunshine again. There was only one small speck of disquiet in her mind – which she could not quite put her finger upon. Something in General Sam’s expression, when she had mentioned expanding the house, after the Legislature next met. He had looked . . . Margaret searched for a word, and could not find it – but his expression was so like Jamie’s, when he had been caught in some mischief and was considering an evasive answer. Yes, that was it; General Sam had some notion in mind, something he knew but did not want to say anything of. He was a man, as her husband had once acknowledged, who played his cards very close to his vest, taking no one into his confidence. And this very day, Mrs. Eberly had said something about rumors of the Legislature meeting elsewhere. Could General Sam – having been reelected as President – now change the capitol city of Texas once again? Just by ordering it? The thought made Margaret most uneasy; General Sam had never liked having the Legislature meet in Austin – too close to the frontier, too vulnerable to Comanche raids, or from Mexico. But she, and Mrs. Eberly, Seamus O’Doyle the carpenter, Mr. Cronican the printer, and so many others – they had invested, built businesses in the expectation of the town of Austin growing and growing well. Margaret frowned. This was something that she should have one of her ‘thinks’ about; one of those matters that she must contemplate quietly and at length.

As she turned to go back into the house, her father came around from the barn and stable-yard at the back of the house, a pair of his oxen clumping obediently after them; he had been at work all afternoon, plowing the first of the two cornfields he still kept in cultivation. He was scowling, as usual – a big man with thinning fair hair and an untidy beard, grubby and burned by the sun after a day working in the open.

“They gone yet?” he growled, in German – the language that Margaret and her brothers had grown up speaking. “If they had stayed much longer, I swear they would have spent the night.”

“Yes, they have just departed,” Margaret answered. Her father grunted – he sounded neither pleased nor unhappy, and Margaret asked, on impulse, “Papa – would you ever consider leaving this place, and taking up a plot of land elsewhere.”

“No, I would not,” he answered, gruffly. “This is where your mother and Rudi lived and were happy; not Mexicans, Indians nor your guests would ever make me leave the hearth that I built for them.”

“That is what I thought, Papa.” Margaret said. She closed the door behind her; Papa might have built the hearth, she thought, but I have made it into our home – and neither of us will ever leave.