The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1893-03-09
A ROMANCE OF HISTORY.
An Incident Of Mexican Cruelty on
the Texas Border.

tilS IO8dS 6Oru0r.
A little restaurant overlooking the
San Antonio river. Two men with
chairs tilted back and feet against the
projecting rail of the balcony, were
smoking their evening cigarettes
The dusk lay above them like bats
wing, ready to fall swiftly and sudden
ly, as it does in southern latitudes
Both were young and of goodly pres
| ence. Western suns and winds had
tanned their cheeks and burned in the
red Of youth to rich tropic hue.
Across the brow of one-a brow
| whose boyish contour moved women
with mother instincts to sudden long
ing to caress-lay loose waves of soft
| yellow hair. Beneath looked out eyes
/ of dark gray, heavy with the long
thoughts of those early, desperate
days-days when republic worked
out in blood her long probation. The
other had fairer countenance, more
| lightsome and full of happy promise
No dark prophecy brooded in the
sunny shadows of the bright blue eyes,
and laughter sprang as lightly to the
lip as the blush to the cheek of maid
Superadded tonight to his native
exuberance was some fore gn element
of joyousness, which seemed to master
spirit and muscles alike He was full
of movement Tossing away half
finished cigarette, he claspcd his hands
back of his curly head and broke the
silence with sudden speech.
Med, am too happy to smokes am
the happiest man in all this border
land. Nellie Hcrndon has promised
to be my wife. It's a secret yet but l
couldn't keep it from you any more
than | could keep my love from her
There is not another woman like her.
north, east, south or west. Did you
ever notice the gold of her hair? 1t Is
like sunshine spun into threads. When
ever | look at her ] think of some
quaint old words my mother used to
read out of book long years ago
when ! was boy back in my old
Georgia home. They went this way:
Whose shoes latchct am not worthy
to unloose.' l suppose the preachers
would call that irreverent but God
will bear me witness there's no irrev-
erence in my heart when I think of
her."
At Harvey Armstrong; first words
the color was washed out of Ned Fos-
ter's face as with sponge, his very.
eyes seemed to pale.
Bringing the chair to the ground,
concealing his face with his hands, he
leaned over the railing and looked
down into the sluggish waters of the
river flowing few feet below.
How old and wise they looked, those
waters, in their calm, unfretted flow.
Good for you, old fellow" he said,
as he extended his hand "May you
have centuries of happiness. If any
man deserves her it is you, Harvey"
This was in the summer of 1S41.
! In the autumn of 1842, when Presi-
dent Houston ordered out Gen. Somer-
veil to the Rio Grande to organize
troops and avenge the insulting raids
of Vasquez and Woll, Ned Foster was
among the first to respond to the call
tur volunteers.
About one hundred and eighty miles
south OF Saltillo, on the road to the
City of Mexico is an old fort, known
in history as the Hacienda Salado
To this place, on the Goth of March,
lS43, were brought the recaptured rem
nant of the unfortunate Mier expedi-
ton, that gallant band of three hun.
dred and sixty men, the flower of
western militia, who went forth to do
battle for the honor of the young re-
public and We're so treacherously
dealt with by the followers of Santa
Ana, to whom they surrendered as
prisoners of war. All readers of Texas
history know how the terms of the
treaty were broken and the BETRAYED
men shown no mercy but marched into
the interior, subjected to incredible
hardships, and finally imprisoned miles
away from home and friends
Feeling keenly the indignity of their
treatment, and fearing worse at the
hands of such perfidious foes, they
overpowered the guard and escaped,
to be retaken ten days later and re-
turned to the same inc!osure whence
they had fed.
All this is history; but we have no
written record of that interval between
the escape and the recapture. when the
little company wandered, lost and
helpless. among the fastness of un-
familiar mountains; no record of those
ten days and nights when the sun rose
and set but to mark another and dark
er experience in the calendar of human
pain.
Ned Foster and Harvey Armstrong
were among the number Stronger
than the multiplied threads of the ca
ble had grown the bond of friendship
between these two men in the awful
realism of danger and su ffering
For four days the weary and footsore
had travelled down a deep canyon
whose steep sides narrowed and mar
rowed until they closed and barred