The Black Jacks (32 page)

"When the convention of March 1836 was in session, who was it that rose in opposition to the Declaration of Independence? Who was it that advised those who called upon him for advice on the course they should take not to participate in the noble struggle for liberty upon which we had embarked? In his travels during those fateful days, this man called at a house located on Old River, and the fellow who lived there asked him what would happen if the members of the convention were so rash as to declare independence from Mexico. And who do you think it was that replied, 'If they do, and were I General Santa Anna, I would destroy every man, woman, and child west of the Sabine who could jabber English.' This, then was David Burnet's holy love of country. These are no idle charges I make today. Men are living who will attest to the truth of them, and to Burnet's eternal infamy and disgrace. Burnet prates about the faults of other men, while the blot of foul, unmitigated treason rests upon his own shoulders! I tell you now that David Burnet is a political brawler and canting hypocrite, whom the waters of Jordan could never cleanse of moral leprosy."

This drew a loud response from both within and without the assembly. Shouts of anger battled with exclamations of enthusiastic approval. Sam Houston stood as unmoved as a rock in the eye of this storm until the speaker of the house could quiet the solons and the citizens with a vigorous hammering of his gavel.

Houston continued. "The man who cannot act when his country demands action, regardless of threatened danger, deserves execration deeper and louder than the approbation my country has bestowed upon me, and I should be a traitor indeed if I did not risk all for her. I believe that the president who is employed by the people should preserve his oath inviolate. He should not be a blot upon your interests or carry poison to the fountainhead. He must not import strangers, to put them in high places, and include them in the highest councils of state, whose very actions savor of iniquity, and stink to the nostrils of the Almighty."

"Your reference is to Major Charles Stewart, I presume," sneered another member of the assembly, a Lamar man. "He
will
be put in a high place soon enough—a gallows. That is, however, as high as he shall ever go, in this life
or
the next."

Laughter rippled through the room. Houston's smile was cold.

"Actually, I was referring to the Count de Saligny."

A heavy silence descended upon the gathering. Houston drew a folded sheet of vellum from beneath his leopardskin vest.

"I have here a letter bearing the signature of Mirabeau Lamar. In this letter are the details of a transaction which, had it been foisted upon the people of Texas, would have been known as the Franco-Texienne Land Bill. In it, the president promises to cede millions of acres of Texas land for the loan of one million francs."

The Lamar partisan who had broached the subject of Charles Stewart now shot to his feet and aimed an accusing finger at Houston. "That's a dirty lie! Such a transaction was never even contemplated by the president. That letter is a manufactured piece of evidence, and the signature upon it is a forgery."

Another legislator spoke up. "We are all well aware that the French charge d'affaires reported his room broken into and valuable documents stolen. Apparently Mr. Houston has added common thievery to his catalog of crimes."

"I was hundreds of miles away when the event to which you refer occurred," replied Houston. "And you can't have it both ways, gentlemen. Did this letter exist, or not?" He strode to the desk of the house speaker and presented the paper. "I do not expect you will ever have evidence of this nature to prove any supposed collusion between myself and the British. I have nothing else to say, and will leave it to the people of Texas to judge."

He turned and strode from the building, swinging his walking stick, a grim smile on his lips. In the stunned silence of the assembly he imagined he could hear a sound that was music to his ears—the hammering of the last nail into Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar's coffin lid. He had played a dangerous game, and the seeds of his flirtation with Great Britain had very nearly sprouted tares instead of flowers. Now that he felt confident that the presidency of the Republic of Texas was his for the taking, Houston knew he would have to do everything in his power to prod the United States Congress into approving annexation.

As he stepped outside into the hot summer sunlight, the crowd of spectators flocked around him. A handful scowled darkly, but most of the people were shouting congratulations, jostling one another to get close to their hero. Houston kept moving through the press.

"Houston! You're a damned dirty liar and a coward besides!"

The crowd parted in frantic haste, and directly in his path Sam Houston found a man he did not know standing with feet planted wide apart, a pistol in his hand, and the look of murder on his face. Unarmed, Houston's first instinct was to duck for cover. But there was no cover, and if he dodged into the milling crowd an innocent bystander might take a bullet meant for him. In the next instant a towering rage consumed him, smothering the instinct for survival. He had come too far, for Texas and for himself, to be stopped now by an assassin. Houston rushed forward, wielding his walking stick like a sword, striking at the man's gun. The pistol discharged, and the bullet tunneled harmlessly into the ground. Again Houston struck with the cane, and the would be assassin collapsed, blood streaking the side of his face. A pair of Houston supporters pounced on him while he was down and wrestled the pistol from his grasp.

"Hand him over to the sheriff, boys," said Houston. He stepped closer to the half-conscious gunman, whose arms were pinioned by the general's partisans. "When you see Burnet, tell him that the next time he wants me killed to try the job himself."

The crowd cheered. The gunman was hustled away none too gently. Sam Houston walked on, realizing that once again he had cheated death. Some had said he was a man of destiny. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty
did
have special plans for him. But for now Houston had only one plan—to hurry home to Margaret, to hold his wife in his arms, and to count his blessings.

Praise God for Margaret Lea Houston! In his hour of darkest despair, when it had seemed as though there was no hope for him, or for Texas, and when he had very nearly resorted to strong spirits to drown his misery, she had given him strength, had talked him through his crisis of confidence. She had more courage and more faith in him than he had in himself.

Another of those blessings. . . .

One of those blessings was John Henry McAllen, whose friendship and loyalty had prompted him to take steps in a bold initiative which had resulted in Sam Houston's possession of the Lamar letter.
That saved my hide, and saved Texas, too,
mused Houston. He could only hope that McAllen found that young woman, Emily Torrance. A good man deserved a good woman.

But only time would tell. . . .

Time was taking a heavy toll on McAllen. Having personally delivered Lamar's incriminating letter into Sam Houston's hands—he could not trust anyone else with the delivery of such an important document—he had returned to Grand Cane to await word from Antonio Caldero.

Not a day went by that he did not wonder what kind of fool he was for relying on a bandit like Caldero. Maybe Caldero felt as though he owed Houston and had said he would help without really intending to make much of an effort to locate Emily. And if Caldero
did
make a genuine effort, how long would he pursue the endeavor? Here was a man dedicated to one thing—the cause of keeping Texas out of the Nueces Strip—and who had played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Rangers for years. How much time and effort would he expend in search of a Texas girl kidnapped by the Comanches?

Every morning, McAllen awoke to an almost irrepressible urge to saddle Escatawpa and head west. He had to convince himself on a daily basis that if Caldero really was trying, then he had a much better chance of getting Emily back that way. He couldn't do Emily much good dead—which would be his likely fate if he ventured alone onto the Llano Estacado. Finally he decided to give Caldero two months. If he hadn't heard anything by then he would go on his own, come what may. Two months wasn't much time, but McAllen could not give more; if he waited much longer than that to get started he would be slowed by the onslaught of winter.

He tried to immerse himself in plantation affairs. There was plenty of work to do, and McAllen felt as though he had neglected his home all summer long. The sugarcane was maturing fast. Soon it would be time to cut it with cane knives. Stalks stripped of their leaves would be placed in a hopper, and the rollers, turned by mules, would press the juice from the stalks. The juice would then have to be boiled to form sugar crystals.

In the mill, or "sugar house," the raw cane juice was first placed in the largest of three kettles,
la grande,
where lime was mixed in to act as a flux for releasing impurities. As the liquid heated up, the foreign particles rose to the top and were removed with copper skimmers into a wooden trough.
La grande's
contents were then ladled into a smaller kettle,
la flambeau.
Here the juice continued to boil, creating more scum to be skimmed off. As the juice cooked, it thickened and fewer impurities were released.

Finally the syrup was ready for the smallest and hottest kettle,
la batterie.
Here the syrup was boiled to the consistency needed for crystallization, at which time the batch was ready for "striking," removal to the cooling vats. Throughout the cooling process the syrup continued to granulate. Completely cooled, the raw sugary material called
massecuite
was transferred into large barrels for the final purging of molasses. What remained were brown crystals, or raw sugar, ready to be marketed. Arrangements would have to be made to transport the sugar and the molasses down the Brazos by boat.

In addition, a large quantity of wood would need to be cut and stored for heating and cooking during the winter months. In the process, fences that needed mending would be attended to. Early corn had already been picked, and a second crop was being planted. These and a dozen other tasks demanded attention. But McAllen's problem was that Jeb had proven himself an extremely efficient overseer and quite capable of handling everything in a more than satisfactory manner. So McAllen's involvement wasn't necessary, which meant he had to motivate himself, and that wasn't easy. He had only one thing on his mind—the only thing that seemed to matter. Emily.

Bits and pieces of important news reached him. Major Charles Stewart was found guilty of the murder of Jonah Singletary and sentenced to hang. Many people had expected Sam Houston to intervene on the major's behalf, ironically, it was President Lamar who stepped in to save Stewart from the hangman's noose. Lamar commuted the Englishman's sentence, and then went so far as to pardon him. McAllen presumed that the president had struck a deal with Stewart, giving the Englishman his life in exchange for political ammunition in the form of details regarding the connection between Houston and Great Britain. But Lamar was flogging a dead horse. His actions demonstrated the extent of his desperation. The accusations he hurled at his opponent had no effect on public opinion. Having made his own secret deals with the French, Lamar was the pot calling the kettle black.

Stewart, however, did not leave Texas alive. After arriving in Galveston to seek passage on a British ship, he was found dead in an alley near the wharves. The consensus was that a gang of Irish wharf rats had attacked him—the corpse had been stripped of everything of value. But McAllen had a sneaking suspicion that Leah's father might have been behind the killing. Assuming he knew that Stewart had raped his daughter, Henry Pierce would not have let the Englishman escape justice. Of course, Pierce was an important man in Galveston—important enough to get away with murder. If there
was
a connection, no one was going to look very hard to find it.

The French chargé d'affaires, Saligny, was more successful than Stewart in leaving Texas. Having had all he could stomach of Bullock's pigs, the count had shot and killed one of the innkeeper's prized Berk-skires and then had to flee for his life from the dead pig's irate owner. There was more to his departure than that, McAllen was certain. The revelation of the Franco-Texienne Land Bill made Saligny's position in Texas untenable. Lamar could not afford to have anything more to do with him.

Brax Torrance, having recovered from the amputation of his foot, disappeared from Grand Cane, and rumor had it he had gone to join the Texas Rangers. As for Yancey, McAllen never expected to see his friend again.

Finally, in early October, McAllen's suit for divorce, on the grounds of adultery, was adjudicated and finalized.

The very next day, Jeb came running up to the main house to give McAllen a note found pinned by a knife to the door of the sugar mill:

I have found her. Meet me at the Caves of the Colorado in a fortnight.

There was no signature, but then there didn't need to be.

Within the hour McAllen was ready to go. Joshua had the horses saddled, and Bessie had put some provisions in a gunnysack. Before mounting up, McAllen handed Jeb a piece of paper. Jeb looked it over—McAllen had taught him to read. But Jeb couldn't believe he'd read it right.

"As you can see," said McAllen, "it's been witnessed by Dr. Artemus Tice. Whether I come back or not, Jeb, you and the others are free. I've sent a copy to Robert Mills, my factor. You know him. If I die, you'll get your own section of land. If I come back, I'll pay everyone who wants to stay a percentage of what we make off the crops."

"You'll come back, Marse John," said Jeb. "And I reckon we'll all be right here waitin'."

McAllen nodded, climbed into the saddle on the gray hunter, and with a wave to Bessie and Roman, who stood on the porch, rode down the lane with Joshua following. Jeb joined the others on the porch and read them the letter.

"Lawdy, lawdy," moaned Bessie. "Dat mean he don't think he be comin' home."