Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1917-08-11
CHAPTER ~.
At Las PaImas.

|
southwest Texas are fiat and badly
watered, they possess a rich soil. They
are favored too, by kindly climate
subtropic in its mildness. The Rio
Grande, jaundiced, erratie as an in
valid, wrings It's saffron blood from the
| clay bluffs and gravel canyons of the
hill country, but near It's estuary winds
quietly through 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
ternational line one must, for several
hundred miles, avail oneself of horses,
mules or motorcars, since rail transpor-
tatien is almost lacking. And on his
way the traveller will traverse whole
counties where the houses are jacals,
where English is a foreign tongue, and
where poems pillow their fields with
crooked sticks as did the ancient
Egyptians.
That part of the state which lies
below the Nueces river was for time
disputed territory, and long after Tex
ans had given their lives to drive the
eagle of Mexico across the Rio Grande
much of 1t remained forbidden land.
Even today 1t is alien. 1t is a part of
our Southland, but South different
to any other that we have. Within it
there are no blacks, and yet the whites
number but one in twenty. The rest
are 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 lowe Rio
Grande, and among these "Old Ed"
Austin was pioneer. Like the other
cattle barons, he was hungry for land
and took 1t 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, acquisitive, mastered by the en-
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
nent did Las Palmas increase and |
prosper. 1t comprised an expanse of |
'ich overland backed by miles of
'ange where BOX A" cattle lived and
'red. In his later years when the old
nan handed Las Palmas to his son.
Young Ed" as wedding gift, the
'aneh was known far and wide for it's
'ize and richness. Las Palmas had
greatly since Austin, senior,
scrawled his slanting sigma
ure to the deed. 1t was different
now to what the old man had
inown; indeed, 1t was doubtful If he
would have recognized 1t, for even the
house was new.
Alaire had some such thought in
nind as she rode up to the gate on
he afternoon following her departure
rom the water hole, and she felt
brill of pride at the acres of sprouting
'orn, the dense green field of alfalfa
70 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 care
or her horse, Mexican woman greet
"a her as she entered the wide, cool
lall and went to her room. Dolores
liked bath and laid out clean clothes
WITH running accompaniment of chat
er concerned with household affairs.
me was great gossip, and possessed
UGH a talent for gaining information
hat through her husband, Benito, the
ange boss, she was able to keep her
Mistress in fairly intimate touch with
anch matters.
Alaire, as she leisurely dressed her
elf, acknowledged that 1t was good to ,
eel the physical comforts of her own
ouse, even though her Homecoming
ave her no especial joy. She made 1t f
religious practice to dress for dinner. 6
egardless Of Eds presence, though y
ften for weeks at time she sat In Y