Michener, James A. (42 page)

'A cave-house?' Mattie cried. 'Not for me!'

'Matt, old girl. Us men got to do the cuttin' of them trees, and doin' it this way . . . Figure it out. Only one wall and two halves instead of four walls. Half a roof instead of a whole one.'

'But we'll be livin' in a cave,' she protested, and her husband

said: 'Many do. And I promise you this, once I find the time, I'll cut the rest of the logs and build you a real house.'

But it took him and Father Clooney so much time and effort to cut and notch two big logs for the base of the front wall that they simplified their plan. They used the two finished logs as corner posts, sunk deep into the ground and strongly braced, and joined them together by a palisade made of saplings dug into the earth side by side.

'Now we tie all together,' Jubal said as the outside portion of the cave-house was formed. 'Yancey, Mattie, start tearin' down grapevines!' And when these were dragged in abundance to the site, everyone worked at weaving them through the saplings, which were then plastered with a heavy red clay dredged from the bottom of the river, forming a solid wall.

The roof they wove of heavier vines, covering it with sod so that grass would grow and keep it impervious. When all was done, Jubal said: 'We got us a house half in the air, half in the cave. Warm in winter, cool in summer,' but Mattie added: 'And dark all the time. And filled with smoke.'

'Don't you worry, Matt, you'll have better one day.' So the Quimpers moved into their house, with its dirt floor, hastily carpentered benches and stools, two wooden beds, a trestle table, and pegs on which to hang things. It was not what Mattie had wanted, but as she stepped inside she muttered to herself: 'We'll get out of this cave. We'll have a house with proper sides. I don't know when or how, but this ain't a proper home.'

Father Clooney, admiring the handiwork in which he had shared so vigorously, said: i think I should bless this home,' and he gathered the Quimpers for a prayer:

'We have come to Tejas seeking freedom and a better life. May this house which we have built with our own hands be a perpetual center of love. May the fields prosper. May the animals multiply. And may the owners find that joy which the Israelites found in their new home. Amen.'

As soon as the Irishman departed, carrying in his pocket Jubal .Quimper's claim for the land where the Goliad Road intersected the Brazos River, Jubal launched the project that would provide a meager and uncertain income in the new land; he started felling trees with which their raft could be enlarged, and after weeks of the most painful labor, for his hands grew raw, he had himself a serviceable ferry for lifting travelers back and forth across the

Brazos. 'Quimper's Ferry' it was called, and as such it would find an honorable place in Texas history, for across it would move men of distinction, and their cattle, and their armies.

But what most travelers remembered about Quimper's Ferry was not the husband's ferry but the hospitality which the wife dispatched, for she ran a kind of inn or stopping place, and hundreds who straggled down the Goliad Road would testify in their memoirs that the difficult travel from the Sabine River to the Brazos almost discouraged them:

We was attacked by Indians and threatened by panthers in the woods, and our food was low and we seen alligators, and one man died from rattlesnake, and we would of turned back, sick in spirit, but then we come to Quimper's Ferry on the Brazos and Mrs. Quimper welcomed us to her cave-house, and we didn't have no money at the time to pay her but she said no mind, and she fed us and give the children honey for their bread. And it was in those days we first thought Texas might be a decent place to settle.

In the autumn of that first difficult year Jubal discovered just how rewarding a place this was, for as he tramped the woods he came upon a tallish tree with fine green leaves and some husks about its trunk, carry-overs from the preceding fall: 'This is a nut tree! Look up there!' And scattered profusely through the heavy branches he saw clusters of long, plump nuts in a profusion he had not seen in Tennessee.

They were pecans, still protected by a greenish husk, and in the colder days that followed he saw that the husks curled back toward the stem which attached them to the tree. Reaching up to pick one, he inadvertently shook the tree, whereupon a waterfall of nuts fell about his shoulders as the pecan tree willingly divested itself of that year's crop.

In great excitement he gathered the unexpected harvest, stuffing his clothes with the rich food and running toward the hut, shouting: 'Matt, old girl! God sent us food for the winter!' Just as Cabeza de Vaca in 1529 had survived autumn and early winter only on pecans, so the Quimpers, nearly three hundred years later, relished the same remarkable bounty.

Now the pattern of Quimper living became clear. On bright autumn days Jubal and Yancey would search out the pecan trees, shake the branches and garner the fallen nuts so rich in foodstuff. Hauling them home like conquering heroes who had risked much to catch their prey, they would toss the nuts toward where Mattie waited. 'Matt, old girl! We did it again!' Jubal would shout, and

then retire, highly pleased with himself, while his wife built a fire, heated water and dipped the pecans to soften the shell and moisten the nutmeat to make it easier to extract.

While her husband watched approvingly, she cracked the shells, sharpened a fine-pointed stick and made Yancey use it to dig out the meats, which she dried on a flat stone beside the fire. When he had extracted huge quantities, warned constantly by Jubal: 'Don't break them, Yancey,' Mattie prepared her hoard in one of three ways: 'Folks like 'em just toasted, or better if we can find a smidgen of salt, or best of all, if I coat 'em in honey real thick with just a touch of salt.'

Often when travelers stopped, the men would gorge on handfuls of Mattie's pecans as they played cards, almost fighting for the toasted nuts if they were the honeyed version. Jubal always explained the trouble he'd had in finding the trees, watching them through the ripening seasons and dragging home the garnered hoard. 'Yancey breaks a lot of the halves,' he apologized, it's a pity, but Mattie's real good at toastin' them and addin' the honey.' The Quimpers were proving that properly handled, this nut provided one of the world's complete sources of food. Yancey was not fond of pecans: 'Too much work. Now, if a family had slaves to do the pickin', that would be somethin'.'

Management of the ferry was arranged slowly and without conscious decision. Jubal had built it, and in the early days had operated it, not effectively—he did nothing effective but hunt, play-cards and find pecans—but with enough skill to earn a few coins. However, when more travelers began coming their way, he found himself occupied with gathering meat during the day and gaming with the visitors at night, which meant that he was often too busy-to man the ferry: 'Mattie, old girl, I hear a stranger callin'. Can you go fetch him 7 '

So she would interrupt whatever she was doing, go down the steep incline to where the ferry waited, and with increasing ability, pole it across the Brazos to pick up the traveler. In time she began to think of it as her ferry and to resent it if either her husband or her son, each stronger than she, interfered with her operation, for from it she accumulated small sums of money which she set aside to speed the day when she could have a real house.

The Quimpers had occupied their dwelling about seven months when the owner of their land, Stephen Austin, came up the Brazos to regularize their holding, and as soon as they saw him they liked him. He was an intense smallish man in his late twenties, with a sharp face and gentle eyes. He spoke softly, was greatly interested in the progress of the ferry, and amused by the way the Quimpers

had marked out their land. When he saw their corner stakes he burst into laughter: 'You rascals! Stretching your land along the river, preempting the good frontage! Don't you know the law of all nations?'

'What are you talkin' about?' Quimper asked, almost belligerently. He was four years older than Austin and much heftier.

Austin laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. 'Let's have a drink,' he said, and when Mattie came with a weak but sweet wine they had made from their muscadines, he explained: 'From the time of Hammurabi, in all orderly societies, governments have told their people: "Sure you want land. But at the river the frontage on the water can be only a small percentage of the depth of the field. You cannot own a long, narrow strip which prevents others from reaching the river." '

'What percentage?' Jubal asked, and he said: 'The customary Spanish grant along the Rio Grande has been nine-thirteenths of a mile facing the river, eleven to thirteen miles back from the river.'

'Outrageous!' Mattie exploded. 'That's a sliver, not a field.'

'I agree,' Austin said. 'Up here we allow a square,' and using a stick in the dust, he sketched a more legal claim.

He was also amused to find that the Quimpers had staked out a rather large chunk of land on the opposite side of the Brazos, where their ferry landed, and he told them: 'My father taught me to oppose that. "No man shall own both sides of a river." If Mexico City ever lets us have our own legislature, I'll sponsor a law saying so.'

'Our ferry has to land somewhere.'

'But you can't own both sides of the river. That would tempt you, in time of trouble, to close down the river.'

'What can we do?'

'Keep your dock over there. Keep your road up to higher ground. And even build a small warehouse, if you wish. I'll certify to the Mexican government it was necessary ... for public convenience.'

Austin stayed with them for two weeks, paying liberally for his lodging, and in this time they had an opportunity to assess his character: he was straightforward, pedantic, stern in protection of what he viewed as his rights, and a loyal Mexican citizen: 'I have surrendered all thoughts of ever returning to the United States. We have an honorable government in Tejas, and under its protection we can live in dignity and security.'

They did not learn then, or ever, whether Austin was a true convert to Catholicism or not; some travelers insisted that he had been a stout Catholic back in Missouri, others that they knew

people there who had seen him attending a Protestant church. It was definite that he had claimed Catholic membership when seeking permission to assume the huge grant which his father had acquired shortly before his death, and certainly the Mexican government considered him a loyal Catholic.

This interpretation was strengthened when Austin spoke highly of Father Clooney: 'When sober, he's a devout man of God, and we're lucky to have him in our colony.'

But the religious problem became more complicated in the early months of 1824 when Joel Job Harrison came south from his cabin on the Trinity to organize his clandestine Methodist services. He took lodging with the Quimpers and convened his first study group at their makeshift inn, a gathering of nine families who had converted in order to get land, but whose secret sympathies were still strongly Protestant. At their first meeting up north, Quimper had not liked Harrison, for he had recognized the tall, angular man as the kind of fanatic who plunged his friends into trouble, and the man's frenzied words had strengthened this adverse impression. But now when he saw Harrison engaged in his pastoral work and watched the compassion with which the Methodist greeted these lonely souls along the frontier, he had to admit that the gawky preacher was a man of God, as simple and honorable in his way as Father Clooney was in his, and as eloquent:

'It is our holy mission here in the remote woods of Texas to keep alive the sacred fire of Protestant vision. Surely it is the destiny of this great land of Texas to be like the rest of the United States, a haven of Protestant decency and security. We are Methodists and it is our duty to preserve our faith and keep it strong for those who follow. How shameful they will see us to have been if we allow our sacred faith, the noblest possession a man can have, to wither. Friends, 1 implore you, be of stout heart and soon we shall see our churches flourish openly in this wilderness We are the beginners, the sowers of seed, the keepers of the sacred flame.'

He made the simple act of gathering for quiet worship away from the watchful eyes of the Mexican authorities an affirmation of religious and political principle, and he implied that any who did not participate were morally defunct and not worthy of the exalted name of Protestant or Texan, for he identified one with the other. He was incapable of believing that a real Texan could be a Catholic, and although he never preached his treason openly, he also doubted that a Texan could be a true citizen of Mexico.

When Quimper asked him about this, Harrison explained: Tm sure that what you say is true. Of course Austin pays homage to

Mexico. He must. Otherwise he loses his land. And I'm sure he wants the public to consider him a Catholic, for this confirms his ownership. But in his heart, what is he? I'll give you my right hand, up to the elbow, if Austin is not an American patriot waiting to take Texas into the Union, and a loyal Protestant just waiting to open our churches in this colony and in the rest of Texas.'

The two men left it there, with Harrison convinced that the Quimpers were still faithful Methodists prepared to summon their fellow religionists to prayer sessions whenever he had an opportunity to visit his Brazos territory, i suppose in my heart I'll always be a Methodist,' Jubal told his wife when Harrison returned north, 'but I don't like worshipin' in secret, especially when it could get us into trouble.' One evening as the pair sat and watched deer graze beneath the far oaks, Jubal asked: 'Mattie, do you consider yourself a Mexican citizen?' She pondered this, then said: 'I never considered myself a Tennessee citizen. I get up in the morning, do my work, and go to bed.'

'But could you be a Mexican? Are you goin' to learn Spanish?'

'Enough people come through here speakin' it, I'll have to.'

'Well, are you a Catholic?'

She evaded a direct answer: 'Two of the best men I've met are Father Clooney and Reverend Harrison. I like them both.'