The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1917-05-31
CHAPTER w.
At Las PaImas.

Although the lower counties Of
southwest Texas are fat and badly
watered, they possess q rich soil. They
are favored, too, by a kindly climate,
lsubtropic In It's mildness. The Rio
iGrande, jaundiced, erratic as an In
valid. wrings Its saffron blood from the
clay bluffs and gravel canyons of the
hill country, but near Its estuary winds
quietly through a low coastal plain
which the very impurities of that blood
have richened. 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
lternational line one must, for several
hundred miles, avail oneself of horses,
mules or motorcars, since rail transport
tation Is almost lacking. And on his
way the traveller will traverse whole
counties where the houses are jacals,
where English Is d foreign tongue, and
where poems plow their fields with
crooked sticks as did the ancient
Egyptians.
That part OF the state which lies
Below the fsueces river was for n time
disputed territory, and long after Tex
AM had given their lives to drive the
eagle OF Mexico across the Rio Grande
much OF 1t remained q forbidden land.
Even today 1t is alien. It is q part of
our Southland, but q South different
TO any other that we have. Within 1t
there are no blacks, and yet the whites
number but n In twenty. The rest
r swarthy, black-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 tillers Of the soil, were
the first to invade the lower Rio
Grande. and among these "0ld ED"
Austin was a pioneer. Like the other
cattle barons, he was hungry for land
and took Il where or how he could.
Those were crude old days; the plo-
neers who pushed their herds into the
xar pastures were lawless fellows, ruth
Hess. acQuisitiye, mastered by the en-
gpire-builder's urge for acres and still
more acres.
As other ranches grew under the
hands Of such unregenerate owners, so
also under "0id Ed Austin's manage
Rlasnt did Las palmas Increase and
prosper II comprised en- expanse OF
rich overland backed by miles of
range where @Box AZ cattle lived ard
bred. In his later yenrs when the old
man handed Las Palmas to his son,
young I'd" as q wedding gift, the
ranch a known far and wide for its
size and richness. Las Palmas had
changed greatly since Austin, senior,
painfully scrawled his slanting sigma
lture to the deed. 1t was q different
ranch now to what the old man had
known; indeed, 1t was doubtful if he
would have recognized it. for even the
house was new.
Alalre 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 q
thrill OF pride at the acres OF sprouting
corn, the dense green field Of alfalfa
sc@ nicely btfna hatssean their fences.
They were like clean. green squares Of
mntting spread for the feet Of summer.
A Mexican boy came running to care
for her horse, a Mexican woman greet
I'd her ais she entered the wide. cool
hall and went TO her room. Dolores
i3xed d bath and laid out clean clothes