Michener, James A. (54 page)

'Did you say buy? 1

'Yes. You deliver this scrip to the Mexican officials, and presto —they invite you to go out and survey your three or four thousand acres.'

'I was told I would get a league-and-a-labor free, something like four thousand acres.'

'No, no! You're entitled to the league-and-a-labor, and it's there waiting for you. But you have to bring the scrip to prove your

legality. My firm vouches for you, says you're of good character, and you get the land.'

Macnab felt deflated. For some days now he had been visualizing his four thousand acres of choice land, his for the asking, and now to find that he must buy something in order to qualify was disheartening. He supposed the cost per acre would be something like a dollar or two, and so large a debt he would not be able to manage: 'How much is this scrip?'

'Five cents an acre.' Clendenning, noticing the relief in his prospect's face, said heartily: 'That's what 1 said. That's what I meant. Five cents an acre, just to make it legal.' While Finlay was congratulating himself on such a bargain, Clendenning added encouragingly: 'So what our more responsible customers do, they put up one thousand dollars and get title to twenty thousand acres. Then they are really in business.'

'Can I get so much?'

'Dear friend! Mexico wants you to come. They want you to settle their vast empty spaces. You can have forty-thousand acres if you wish, but I've been recommending only twenty. More manageable.'

'Have you been there? Have you seen the land?'

'Macnab, do you know the passage in the Holy Book, "A land flowing with milk and honey"? Some day we'll find that a man from Texas wrote the Bible, for that describes the land precisely. One day I was walking beside the Trinity River—marvelous stream—and what did I see? A shattered old tree whose insides were filled with honey bees, millions of them. There was enough honey in there to feed a regiment. And right beside that tree one of the sturdiest cows ever you saw, aching to give milk. A land flowing with honey and milk, just like the Bible says.'

'How many acres would you go for, if you were me?'

The salesman did not answer. Instead, he turned to Otto, and with a benign look suffusing his face, said: 'I would think only of my son. If I could get twenty thousand acres securely in my hands, and improve it, when I died I would leave this lad'—and here he stroked Otto's head—'a fortune of incalculable wealth.' In the pause which followed this sensible advice, he smiled at Otto, then added: 'Can you imagine your son at age twenty, with his bride at his side, taking command of a farm of twenty thousand acres? The cattle? The fields of com? The faithful slaves working the cotton? And you sitting on the porch, surveying it all like a proud patriarch in the Old Testament?*'

Mr. Clendenning did not press Macnab to make a decision that day, but as the three left the boat Finlay did furnish a useful bit

of information: i could handle the thousand dollars, if your company guaranteed that I'd get the land.'

'Guarantee?' Clendenning cried as if his integrity had been impugned. 'Look at these guarantees! These ironclad papers.' He made no attempt to close the deal, but when the boat sailed next day for New Orleans, he did leave behind a set of handsomely printed papers which specifically ensured the legality of any sale which might develop.

Being a cautious Scot, Finlay carried them next morning to the office of a German lawyer with whom his employer did business to seek an opinion, but before the lawyer, a man with a high collar and long-tailed coat, would give it he handed Finlay a card on which was printed:

ALL A LAWYER HAS TO SELL

IS HIS TIME AND HIS JUDGMENT

THEY'RE AS VALUABLE TO HIM

AS THE BANKER'S GOLD COINS ARE TO HIM

'How much?'

'Two dollars.'

'Good.'

The lawyer studied the documents left by the representative of the Texas Land and Improvement Company, then shrewdly pointed out: 'This is a Boston company presuming to do business in Mexico. I find nothing that binds the Mexican government to honor the promises made here. I'd be very reluctant to hand my good money over to such an agent, with so little to back his claims.'

'I wondered.'

'How much is he charging for the land?'

'Five cents an acre.'

The lawyer was dumfounded, and showed it. Land touching Cincinnati was selling for two hundred dollars an acre, and he had during the past week supervised the sale of some four hundred acres. Five cents was meaningless.

'How many acres . . . ?'

'Twenty thousand,' Finlay said.

Again the lawyer gasped: 'I can't imagine such a piece of land.' Taking a pen, he multiplied some figures and said: 'One thousand dollars. I could find you some wonderful land here, out in the country to be sure. But one thousand dollars is a lot of money.'

'Twenty thousand acres is a lot of land.'

'And Texas is nowhere.' The lawyer rose and placed his arm about Macnab's shoulder: it's Mexico, remember, and from what we hear up here, that's a most unstable country. It's not like

Prussia, even England and God knows it's not like the United States.'

'They tell me it soon will be part of us.'

'But you do not buy land on such a fragile expectation. Very dangerous, Macnab. Now, if you seek a farm, I know some excellent ones, but if you want full value for the two dollars you paid me, take my advice and buy several plots 1 know which abut on the river. Growth there is unavoidable.' He even quit his office to show Finlay the land he had in mind, and it was a splendid pair of lots that fronted on the river, so for some days Finlay's dreams deserted Texas and focused upon a chandler's shop on the Ohio.

He never saw Mr. Clendenning again, but toward the end of January 1829, another salesman from the Boston firm came ashore from an upriver boat, and where Clendenning had been persuasive, this man was brutally forceful: 'Macnab, the land's selling like icicles in hell. You'd better grab your twenty thousand.'

'I've heard bad reports about the influx of criminals. Men who've been there say it's a madhouse.'

'One or two men fleeing their wives, a handful escaping unjust debts, and that's about it. I'd judge Texas to be one of the most moral states in Christendom.'

When Finlay demurred, the salesman grew angry, a tactic which worked along the frontier, where men appreciated harsh opinions firmly stated: 'Damn it all, Macnab, if you're so lily-livered, write to Stephen Austin hisself and ask him,' and he wrote out for Finlay directions as to how to address the founder of the American settlements in Texas. That night Macnab drafted his letter:

Bell's Tavern Cincinnati, Ohio 27 January 1829

Dear Mr. Austin,

My son Otto, aged seven, and I are contemplating a permanent remove to Texas and feel great solicitude about the nature of the population which will inhabit your country. We have been informed that you permit no one to settle within the limits of your colony unless able to produce vouchers of good moral character. This we can do, from Ireland of the north, from Baltimore and from this town, and we should like to live among other settlers of equal repute.

We are, however, much disturbed by rumors current here that only the worst venture into Texas and that our prisons are filled with persons of low character who swear that as soon as they are turned out they will head for Texas, for they say that it is a territory in which a man with

ideas and courage can make a go of it, by which they mean that criminals thrive in your colony.

My son and I are part of a responsible crowd gathered here willing to try our fortune in Texas, and we are awaiting the return of a Mr. Kane who left us last September to explore your country. If he gives a good report, we shall want to join you, but in a letter from the east bank of the Sabine River dispatched in October he warned us: 'Tomorrow I shall cross over into Texas. Pray for me, because I am told that no man is safe west of the Sabine.' What are the facts?

We are also apprehensive about becoming citizens of Mexico, for we hear that it is a country ruled by brigands who have a revolution twice a year. Again, Sir, we are desirous of true information.

Respectfully yours, Finlay Macnab Presbyterian

Remembering the lawyer's warning that the scrip carried no guarantee that Mexico was bound to honor it, Finlay wanted to ask Austin for clarification, but the salesman protested: 'You wouldn't want to worry an important man with a trivial matter like that!' So the question was not posed.

In the weeks following the posting of this letter Macnab interrogated many travelers regarding Texas and received conflicting reports. Said a Georgia man: 'A noble land. More salubrious than either Alabama or Mississippi. Ideal for the propagation of slaves, and high-spirited. I've never had a regretful thought since establishing my plantation there.'

But an Arkansas woman who had fled the colony for the civilization of Cincinnati groaned: 'Texas no more! They call where me and my man lived a town. No stores, no schools, no church with a steeple, and no cloth for sewin'. My old man and me had a race to see who could get out the fastest, and I won.'

But then came a response from Stephen Austin himself:

San Felipe de Austin, Coahuila-y-Tejas 20 April 1829

Dear Mr. Macnab,

Your letter of 27 January reached me yesterday and I now put aside all other occupations to answer the sensible enquiries you make relative to this country.

You express an understandable solicitude as to the kind of settler who will inhabit Texas. In 1823 when I returned from Mexico City to

proceed with settlement of my colony, I found that certain criminals had infiltrated and I immediately adopted measures to drive them away.

I forced them to cross back over the Sabine River, but from sanctuary in Louisiana they conducted raids into Texas, and what was worse, they lied about our colony, circulating every species of falsehood their ingenuity could invent. They were joined by others of their kind who had come to the Sabine, hoping to invade our colony, and there they sit in their bitterness, circulating lies about us.

I can assure you, Mr. Macnab, that the citizens of Texas are just as responsible and law-abiding as those of New Orleans or Cincinnati, and that ruffians will never be allowed in this colony. The settlers already here are greatly superior to those of any new country or frontier that I have ever seen and would lose nothing in comparison with those of any southern or western state. They are, in my judgment, the best men and women who have ever settled a frontier.

You say you are apprehensive about living under the Government of Mexico. Let me assure you that the policy which Mexico has uniformly pursued toward us has been that of a kind, liberal and indulgent parent. Favors and privileges have been showered upon us to such an extent that some among us have doubted their reality, so generous have they been. The present ruler of Mexico is a man to be trusted, and the Constitution of 1824, under which he rules, is just and liberal, and in no way inferior to the constitutions of your various states 1 can foresee no possible trouble that you might have with the Government of Mexico, which is now stable and far-sighted, and of which 1 am proud to be a citizen.

The minor disturbances which do sometimes arise down in Mexico never affect us here. We stay clear and have nothing to do with them. All that is required in Texas is to work hard and maintain harmony among ourselves. This is a gentle, law-abiding, Christian society and we would be most pleased to have you join us.

Stephen F. Austin

When Macnab received these warm assurances he surrendered all doubts about Texas, telling his son: it may have a few rascals, but so did Ireland, and I can name several in this town.' He began to collect all debts owed him and to set aside those few and precious things he and his son would carry with them to Texas, but now two problems arose. Austin's letter had been so reassuring that Finlay, despite being a cautious Scot, had buried his uneasiness about the validity of scrip; he was eager to buy some, but found no one at hand to sell him any. And he had developed a real fear of riverboats. Four different steamboats, which he himself had provisioned, had blown up, with heavy loss of life, and he became

apprehensive lest the one he chose for passage to Texas become the fifth.

Otto, of course, was eager to board anything that floated, and each day he kept his father informed as to what boats were at the wharf. When one sailed south without the Macnabs, Otto would list its replacement: 'Climax left, but River Queen tied up.' To Macnab's surprise, this particular newcomer brought him an urgent letter:

Finlay Macnab Bell's Tavern

1 shall be in Cincinnati shortly. Make no move till I arrive

Cabot Wellington

Texas Land and Improvement

Boston, Massachusetts

Now Macnab had to consider seriously his passage to New Orleans, and as he was talking with experienced men at the tavern, one chanced to mention an alternative to boats: 'Have you ever thought of walkin' down to Nashville and pickin' up the Natchez Trace?'

'What's that?' Finlay asked, and several men crowded in, eager to explain. They said that in old times, before the advent of steam, carpenters along the Ohio used to build huge floating houses-on-rafts on which traders drifted down the rivers, sometimes all the way from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, but often terminating at Natchez-under-the-Hill, where they sold their rafts as house lumber, transferring their goods to real boats that conveyed them in orderly fashion to New Orleans.

'How did they get back without their rafts?' Finlay asked, and the men pointed to a surly-looking fellow who was drinking alone.

'Ask him.'

One of the men accompanied Macnab to the table where the lone man sat, and asked: 'You a Kaintuck?'

'I am.'

'Can we join you?'

'No charge for chairs, I reckon.'

The go-between explained. 'Any man who goes downriver on a raft and comes back is known as a Kaintuck. Doesn't mean he's from Kaintucky. Where you from?'

'Kaintucky.'

'Tell my friend here how you came back from Natchez.'