The Huttig news., 1917-03-10
CHAPTER w.
At Las PaImas.

Although the lower counties of southwest Texas are fiat and badly Watered. they possess rich soil. They are favored. toe, by kindly climate, suhtropic in it's mildness. The Rio Grande, jaundiced. cratic as an in- valid, wrings it's saffron blood from the clay bluffs and gravel canyons of the hill country. but near its estuary winds quietly through q low coastal plain which the very impurities of that blood have riehened. Here the rivers banks are smothered in thickets of huisache, ebony. mesquite oak and alamo.
 Railroads are so scarce along this division of the border that to travel from Brownsville north along the in- ternational line one must, for several hundred miles, avail oneself of horses. mules or motorcars, since rail tranSpor- fation is almost lacking And on his way the traveller will traverse whole counties where the houses are iaeaIs. where English is foreign tongue, and where peons blow their fields with crooked sticks as did the ancient Egyptians.
 That part of the state which lies below the NueceS river was for a time disputed territory. and long after Tex ans had given their lives to drive the eagle of Mexico across the Rio Grande much of it remained forbidden land. Even today it is alien. It is a part of our Southland, but South different to any other that we have. Within il there are no blacks. and yet the whites number but one in twenty. The rest are swarthy, blacs -haired men who speak the Spanish tongue and whose citizenship is mostly a matter of form.
 The stockmen, pushing ahead of the nesters and the tillcrs of the soil, were the first to invade the lower Rio Grande, and among these "Old Ed Austin was q pioneer. Like the other cattle barons, he was hungry for land and took it where or how he could. Those were crude old days the pio- neers who pushed their herds into the far pastures were lawless fellows, ruth less, acquisitiye, mastered by the em- pire-buider's urge for acres and still more acres.
 As other ranches grew under the hands of such unregenerate owners, so also under "Old Ed" Austin's manage ment did Las PalmaS increase and prosper. It comprised an expanse of rich river-land backed by miles of range where Box A cattle lived and bred In his later years when the old man handed Las Palmas to his son. "Young Ed as wedding gift, the ranch WAS known far and wide for it's size and richness. Las Palmas had changed greatly since Austin, senior painfully scrawled his slanting sigma ture to the deed. It was different ranch now to what the old man had known: indeed, it was sdoubtful if he would have recognized it, for even the house was new.
 Alaire had some such thought in mind as she rode up to the gate on the afternoon following her departure from the water hole, and she felt Il thrill of pride at the acres of sproutina corn, the dense green field of alfalfa so nicely fitted between their fences. They were like clean. green squares of mating spread for the feet of summer A Mexican.boy came running to cara for her horse. a Mexican woman greet ed her as she entered the wide. cool hall and went to her room. Dolores fixed bath and laid out clean clothes with running accompaniment of chat ter concerned with household affairs She was great gossip. and possessed such talent for gaining information that through her husband Benito, the range boss, she was able to keep her mistress in fairly intimate touch with ranch matters.
 Alalre. as she leisurely dressed her. ===----=-=----=