Michener, James A. (58 page)

The man on the bed asked in the darkness: 'Are you married, Macnab?' and after the slightest hesitation Finlay replied. 'No.' They were pleased at this information, for it meant that if all else failed, he could marry a Mexican woman and get a quadruple portion.

'Why do they make it so complicated?' he asked.

'With Mexicans, nothing is ever allowed to be simple.'

A RICKETY OLD STEAMBOAT CARRIED THIRTY AMERICAN ADULTS,

nine children and twenty-two slaves down the tortuously winding Mississippi south of New Orleans. Passengers marveled as they crept past beautiful moss-hung plantations of the lesser sort, for as a deckhand explained: 'If'n they got money, they has a plantation above New Orleans, not below.' Here the air hung heavy and insects droned in the heat as travelers prayed for some vagrant breeze to slip in from the Gulf of Mexico. Entire sections of land became swamps inhabited only by birds and alligators, swamps interminable, until at last the steamboat reached the strangest termination of any of the world's major rivers: a bewildering morass of passes seeking the Gulf, of blind alleys leading only to more swampland. Often it was impossible to determine whether the area ahead was fresh-water river, or salt-water Gulf, or firm land, or simply more weed-grown swamp.

'How can he tell his way?' Otto asked one of the deckhands.

'By smell.'

The answer was not entirely frivolous, for as the great river died, the smell of the vast, free Gulf intruded, and soon Otto himself could detect the larger body of water.

As soon as the vessel waiting in the Gulf became aware of the approaching steamer, its captain fired a small cannon to signify that all was in readiness, and Otto, seeing for the first time an ocean-going craft, shouted: 'There she is!' These last days had been a journey through a primeval wonderland, more challenging by far than that along the river to the north of New Orleans, and to see the sloop Carthaginian waiting motionless at the end of the passage was like seeing a light in the forest.

As they threw ropes to the steamer, sailors shouted the good news: 'We sail for Galveston!' and travelers who had hoped to make that important landing cheered. Fare to Texas would be twenty-one dollars total, five paid to the steamboat, sixteen to the

sail-borne sloop. But no transfer from one craft to another was ever made easily, no matter how gentle the sea, and now when the steamboat dipped slightly, the sloop lifted, and contrariwise. Shins were barked and baggage imperiled, but finally the adults were safe aboard the vessel, the children could be handed across, and the slaves were able to follow. The returning steamboat, having picked up passengers for New Orleans, blew its whistle three times in farewell. The emigrants cheered. And the trip across the Gulf was begun, with the passengers having only the slightest comprehension of their destination.

'We're making for Galveston,' an officer explained, 'but if the weather's bad, we may have to put in at Matagorda Bay.'

Galveston was some four hundred miles, almost due west, and since there was a sharp breeze from the southeast, the ship could make four knots, or about one hundred and ten land miles a day. 'The trip won't require more than four days,' the officer assured the passengers, 'and I doubt that it will be rough.'

Otto loved the swaying of the ship, and whereas some of the passengers experienced a slight seasickness, he roamed everywhere and ate large quantities of everything. It was a holiday for him, but some of the travelers were agitated by the uncertainty of destination: 'We hoped to put in at Matagorda. Our people are there.'

'You can walk from Galveston to Matagorda,' a sailor said easily, as if the trip were a matter of hours.

'Why can't we go direct to Matagorda?'

'Because on this passage we never know. I don't even know if'n we'll be able to land in Galveston.'

'What kind of ship is this?' one man growled.

'It ain't the ship. It's Texas,' and the sailor outlined the problem:

Texas is a great land, I'm sure. It's got ever'thin' a man might want —free land, free cattle, beautiful rivers, and mountains too, I hear, in the west. But one thing it ain't got is a safe harbor. None.

'It has fine big bays, best in the world. Galveston, Matagorda, Corpus, Laguna Madre. I been in 'em all, and they ain't none better. Only one thing wrong with 'em. No way you can get into 'em. God made Hisse'f these perfect bays, then guarded them with strings of sandbars, harassed islands, marshes, and ever' other kind of impediment you could imagine.

'This is maybe the most dangerous coastline in the whole damned world. Look at the wrecks we'll see when we try to get into one of them bays. Wrecks everywhere. First steamboat tried it, wrecked. Next

steamboat, went aground, and you'll see it rottin' there if'n we're driven to Matagorda. The coast of Texas is hell in salt water.'

The weather remained good, the sloop did make for Galveston, and the same sailor came back with one bit of comforting news: 'Maybe I overdone it. This is a mighty tough coast, as you'll see, but one worry we don't have. They ain't no beetlin' rocks stacked ashore. And they ain't none hidin' submerged to rip out your bottom. Anythin' you hit is soft sand.' But he returned a few minutes later with a correction: 'Of course, most of the wrecks you'll see did just that. They hit soft sand, held fast, and then turned over.' Otto noticed that he never said what happened to the passengers.

But as the Carthaginian neared Galveston toward the close of the fourth day, a strong northerly wind blew out from shore, creating such large waves that as the sun sank, the captain had to announce: 'Waves get that high, takes them days to subside.'

'Can't we push through?' asked a man whose home ashore was almost visible.

'Look at the last ship that tried,' the captain replied, and off to starboard, rocking back and forth in the grasping sands, a sailing ship of some size was slowly being broken to pieces. On her stern Otto read: skylark new Orleans.

'It'll have to be Matagorda Bay,' the captain said, and only a few daring souls whose hearts had been set on Galveston demurred, for the others realized that any attempt to land there would be suicidal.

That night, as the ship made its way southwest through calmer seas to the alternate landing, Otto remained topside, running with his dog along the deserted decks, while his father and Zave Campbell remained below at their evening meal. When they were finished, the two men pushed back their plates and lingered in a corner of the cabin, piecing together a rough assessment of their fellow passengers: 'Twenty-three families, but only seven wives. What happened to the other sixteen? Did they all die?'

Not at all. The twenty-three men represented a true cross section of those coming into Texas at this time. Seven were married and with their wives along; four were legitimate widowers eager to launch new lives; three had never been married and looked forward to finding women in Texas, American or Mexican no matter. The nine wandering men like Macnab had left wives either abandoned permanently or clinging to some vague promise: 'If things work out well, I'll send for you and the kids.' Few were likely to do so.

Curiously, four of these iron-souled wife-deserters had, like Macnab, brought their sons along—one man from Kentucky with two—but none had brought daughters, and few would ever see them again. These were powerful stubborn men, cutting themselves loose from society.

'On one thing I seem to have been dead wrong,' Macnab confided, i wrote to Austin asking if most of the newcomers were criminals escaping jail back east. From what 1 can judge, there isn't a criminal in the lot.'

i wouldn't trust my money with that tall fellow from Tennessee,' Campbell said.

Macnab was correct in his guess, Campbell wrong in his. Among these men there was not one criminal, not one who had had to leave Connecticut or Kentucky under even a minor cloud. They may have been men who had failed emotionally with their wives and families, but they had not otherwise failed as citizens. The popular canard that everyone who headed for the wild freedom of Texas did so because the sheriff was in pursuit was disproved, at least by this sampling.

In fact, among the twenty-three, there were not even any who had suffered a major financial loss that might have propelled them outward from their society. Most of them had actually prospered back home, and this had enabled them to leave their abandoned wives in rather gratifying security: 'You can have the store and the fields, Emma. I'll not be needin' them.'

Macnab chuckled when he thought of his own case, and Campbell asked: 'What you laughin' about?'

'Leaving Baltimore. I didn't steal their damned cattle.'

'Nobody here said you did.'

i just sold them. They got a fair profit.'

Wrien Macnab thought of his wife, Berthe, and her sniveling brothers he considered himself luckier than most to have escaped, and he would never have conceded that he had in any way been forced out of Maryland: 'Tell you the truth, Zave, I left her a lot better off than when I met her. She and the girls will have no trouble.'

Campbell summarized it well: 'We ain't fleein' from nothin'. We're fleein' toward freedom.' And Macnab added: Those two over there, who stay together all the time. I'd say they were fleeing toward life itself.'

They escapin' hangin'?' Zave asked, and Macnab explained: 'Their doctors warned them: "You stay in this city two more years, you'll be dead of tuberculosis. Go to Texas. Let your lungs heal themselves in that good, dry air." '

Now the two men tried to tot up the educational background of the passengers, and they found out that of the twenty-three men, twenty-one could read and write, and of these, fourteen had completed academy or high school and had some knowledge of Latin, Euclid and world history. Probing further, Macnab came up with some even more surprising information: 'Did you know, Zave, that six of those men over there have been to colleges like Yale and Transylvania? I know that those two by the door studied law, they said so, and that short fellow who talks so much has a law degree from Virginia.' What the amateur investigators could not know was that five of the immigrants had been to Europe, three of them knew the principles of banking, and one was a medical doctor with service in the United States Navy. Texas was getting prime citizens.

Two other things Macnab and Campbell could not know that autumn day in 1831: four passengers were keeping journals—two men, two women—which would in later years prove invaluable; and of the men, eighteen would soon be serving in battles of one kind or another against Mexico, and of these, seven would become senior officers.

On the most important question of all—the possibility of revolution against Mexico—the two men had no opinion whatever. Few members of this group openly espoused such action; some had vague expectations that Texas would eventually, by means not yet determined, free herself from Mexican control, but they certainly did not come expecting to incite rebellion, as would their successors in 1835 and 1836. This sample of immigrants came primarily in search of free land and a fresh beginning. For example, Macnab and Campbell entered Texas honestly, without the slightest intention of causing trouble. However, like the Quimpers before them, once they settled, they would find it impossible to accept the systems of government, law and society which their new homeland, Mexico, was painfully trying to establish.

As the two men concluded their assessment, Macnab said: 'I do believe you're the only Catholic in the group,' to which Zave replied: 'From what I hear, you'll all be joinin' me within the week. If you want land.'

There was another factor which differentiated the group, as Campbell pointed out: 'Northern, against slavery but quiet about it, maybe nine. Southern, for slavery and ready to fight if you speak against it, maybe fourteen.'

Macnab volunteered two final guesses: 'Every man who can read, save you and me, Zave, has brought his quota of books, and all but one seems to be fond of strong drink.' The abstemious one

was Campbell, who explained in a loud voice: i used to love it too much. But once you've been a bartender, you know the dangers. And if I got started again, I'd be as bad as an Irishman.' The cabin laughed at this, for all could appreciate its relevance: of this contingent of thirty adults, all but Campbell had reached America after family affiliation with the Protestants of Northern Ireland.

They were Scots-Irish, the whole cantankerous bundle of them, with all the turbulent, wonderful capabilities that the name implied.

Following these ruminations, Macnab went on deck to be with his son as Otto peered into the darkness, hoping for a glimpse of the long sand finger which delineated Matagorda Bay. He had been there only a few moments when a commotion erupted in the cabin, and when voices rose and oaths reverberated, he hurried back to find a gentleman from Alabama shouting: 'Why can't Mexico ever do anything right? Why didn't they tell us?'

'Now, now, Templeton! The solution is an easy one.'

'Not if they propose to deprive me of my property.'

'It says that, to be sure, but . . .'

'Why weren't we told?' the Alabama man shouted, and Finlay wondered what could threaten him half as much as the danger which hung over the Macnabs: the loss of their entire investment.

'What you do, Templeton, is what we've all done.'

'But why weren't we warned?'

'In a new land, you learn one thing at a time. Now you're learning that Mexican law absolutely forbids slavery and outlaws the importation of any slave.'

'Damned good law,' a man from the North growled, but softly enough so that Templeton did not hear. That outraged gentleman asked: 'If niggers are outlawed, how are you bringing yours in?'

'By the simple tactic we all use to import our property,' the conciliator said, and he spread upon the cabin table a set of papers, carefully drawn, which both amazed and delighted the man from Alabama: 'Capital! Can I do this?'

'We've all done it,' and the Southerners had. Bowing to the irrevocable law that banned slavery throughout Mexico on pain of severe punishment—and Mexico was one of the first nations to enact such a law—the Southerners had devised a foolproof tactic, and Mr. Templeton now put it into effect. Carefully copying the documents laid before him, he penned seven forms replete with legal language, then summoned his seven slaves, but the captain of the sloop warned: 'W ; e allow no niggers in the cabin,' so he went on deck, where he collected his slaves, handed each in turn a pen,