He stopped, rose from his chair, and walked to a window from which he could see much of El Paso, that bustling city, but even more of Ciudad Juárez, that larger city on the other bank of the river. From Juárez rose a huge cloud of dust thrown off by one of the Mexican cement plants, and the winds were such that the heavy dust fell not upon Juárez but upon El Paso.
‘The course of history cannot be stopped at will,’ Carter said. ‘Last night, as I understand, you passed freely into Mexico and freely out. I believe it will always be that way.’ Then he offered his final judgment. Turning away from the window, he hummed a few notes of ‘La Adelita’ and said: ‘The ultimate mix could be a very good one. The soft beauty of Saltillo and the hard integrity of Kentucky. A new world along a new kind of frontier.’
ON A WINTRY DAY IN 1823 A TALL BEEFY WANDERER WITH A bland, open face like a rising sun stood with his scrawny wife, pudgy eleven-year-old son and three mongrel hunting dogs at the edge of a rain-filled bayou in the western reaches of the new state of Louisiana. A straggler from Tennessee, who had fled to avoid bankruptcy and jail, he was not pleased with what faced him.
‘Don’t mind the water, we can wade through it. Done so many times on our exploration. But I do worry about this next stretch between here and Texas.’
‘We’ll get through,’ his red-headed wife mumbled. Reaching for her rather unpleasant son, she warned: ‘You’re to stay close, Yancey. Help us load the guns if they attack.’
The three were dressed in buckskin garments, laboriously cut and sewn by the mother, who appeared to be responsible for all vital decisions while her pompous husband thrashed about deciding issues which never seemed to matter. The conspicuous thing about the family was the incredible amount of gear each member carried: guns, an ax, pots, extra articles of clothing and bundles of dried food. From every angle of their bodies useful items protruded, so that they looked like three porcupines waddling through the woods; they were so impeded that they could cover only about nine miles a day when better-organized travelers would have completed fifteen. ‘We’ll head due west,’ the father said as if he were a general, ‘make the shortest transit possible, and be safe in Texas before they know we’re about.’
His introduction of words like exploration and transit betrayed the fact that he had at some earlier time known life within a respectable Tennessee family, but a love of petty gambling and a positive addiction to idleness had led to a sad decline in his fortunes. His fall had not been spectacular, just a slow erosion of holdings and a series of disastrous lawsuits over land titles. When his family lost interest in his welfare because of his marriage to the daughter of a shiftless frontiersman, he had no recourse but to leave home, a man with no land, no prospects, and very little hope of improving his lot.
‘Will there be Indians ahead?’ the boy asked.
‘Worse. Renegades. White men turned sour.’
This man, thirty-three years old, had decided in the fall of 1822 that his condition in Gallatin, Tennessee, was so deplorable that he could escape only by taking to the road: Nashville to Memphis to Little Rock to the southwest corner of the Arkansas Territory. He and his family had struggled to reach the banks of the Red River, which he had followed into Louisiana. There they had cut west toward the Mexican frontier state of Tejas, known along the Mississippi as Texas, refuge for any American who wanted to start his life over in a new and burgeoning area.
But to reach this reported paradise from Louisiana entailed great risk, for when travelers came to these final bayous separating the civilization of New Orleans and its outriders from the wilderness of Texas, they faced, as the Jubal Quimpers did now, about thirty miles of one of the most dangerous territories in the Americas. ‘Listen,’ they were told, ‘and listen close! In the old days they called it the Neutral Ground, meanin’ it didn’t belong to neither Louisiana nor Texas. They hoped that settin’ it up like that, they’d be able to avoid conflict between Americans and Spaniards. But what did they attract? Pirates, murderers, smugglers, women who deserted their families, runaway slaves who stabbed their masters, forgers. Finally they gave it to Louisiana, but it’s still scum of the earth. Hell hides in that Strip acrost the water.’
‘I don’t want to go,’ Yancey said, but his mother caught him by the arm and moved him toward the bayou: ‘We were pushed out of Tennessee. Got nothin’ left but Texas.’ Then, touching a sack she had protected since starting their exodus: ‘We get this corn planted before May, or we starve.’
Jubal was about to plunge into the muddy water when a voice from the east halted him: ‘Hey there! Tejas, mebbe?’
The family turned to see a remarkable sight, a roundish, white-haired, ruddy-faced Irishman in the habit of a Catholic priest, holding his hat in his left hand and puffing heavily as he anxiously endeavored to catch up, for like the others, he was frightened of the Strip.
When he overtook the Quimpers they saw that he carried very little baggage: a small knapsack made from untanned deerskin, a simple bedroll of sorts and a battered book, apparently a Spanish Bible, for its spine carried in faded gold lettering the words Santa Biblia. From its ragged leaves protruded ends and bits of paper, for it served as his file. ‘I am Father Clooney’—puff-puff—‘of County Clare’—gasp-gasp—‘servant of God and the government of Mexico.’ He uttered the first syllable of his name and of his native county in a beautiful Irish singsong, which made his round face break into radiant smiles as he proudly said the words.
‘I’m Jubal Quimper, Methodist, Gallatin, Tennessee, on my way to Texas, and what are you doin’ in these parts?’
The priest told a most improbable yarn: ‘When the wine was red, I told my bishop in Ireland to go to the devil, and before firing me he advised: “Francis Xavier Clooney, you may think that your bishop should go to eternal damnation but you must never express it.” I could find no assignment in Ireland. Bishops have evil memories.
‘So I emigrated to New Orleans and could find no parish there. Bishops have long arms. When the Spanish government, some years back, announced that they wanted priests to serve in Tejas, few Spaniards being willing to work there, I sailed to Mexico and volunteered. I was about to take charge of all Tejas north of San Antonio, when the Mexicans threw the Spaniards out, and me job was gone again. The new rulers in Mexico City told me: “We’re sending our own people to Tejas. We need no strangers.” So back I sailed to New Orleans. But they soon found that Mexican priests were just as reluctant to move into Tejas as Spaniards had been. So back they came running: “Father Clooney, we need you!” ’
‘Did you learn Spanish?’ Quimper asked, and the priest, still puffing from his run, said: ‘Some. I can conduct prayers … in Latin … much like Spanish. And you?’
‘You wander through these parts, you pick up words here and there. Did you say you’re an official of the Mexican government?’
‘In north Tejas, I’ll be the Catholic church. I’m to conduct the baptisms, the marriages, the conversions.’
‘Conversions?’
‘Yes! You told me you were Methodist, a respectable religion I’m sure, but not the right one. Unless you convert to my religion, you’ll get no land in Tejas and you may even be thrown out.’
‘I can’t believe that,’ Quimper said, but it was his wife who made the stronger statement: ‘We’ll stay Methodists.’
‘Then go no farther,’ the priest said, and from his ragged Bible he produced a paper, printed in Mexico City and delivered to the Mexican consul in New Orleans, which laid down the rules. Spreading it in the rain, he and Quimper, with their fractured Spanish, deciphered the explicit law:
No immigrant will be allowed to take residence in Tejas or acquire land there unless he brings with him documents proving that he is of law-abiding character. And if he is not already a member of the Roman Catholic Church, he must convert.
Quimper showed the document to his wife, and then asked Father Clooney how the law could be evaded, if one was of reasonably good character but not a Catholic.
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‘Impossible,’ the priest said. ‘And I’m surprised you’d ask me such a question, since I’m sent here to uphold the law.’
‘What can I do?’ Quimper asked, his big, undisciplined body betraying his agitation.
‘You can become a good Catholic, like the law stipulates.’ Father Clooney had a singing vocabulary acquired in the Catholic schools of Ireland and was always introducing words like stipulate into his conversation. ‘I’m being sent into Tejas to convert men just like you, Quimper, so that you can legally take up your league-and-a-labor.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The Mexican government is considering a new law. Every Catholic immigrant will get free land. Much more if he’s married.’ Consulting his document again, he said: ‘A league is four thousand four hundred and twenty-eight American acres, a labor is a hundred seventy-seven. The rule is that you get a labor of free land if you intend to farm it, plus an entire league if you run cattle.’ He coughed, folded the document, returned it to his Bible, and wiped the rain from his round face: ‘If I were you, I’d claim I intended running cattle.’
‘We have no cattle.’
‘We have no sunshine,’ said Father Clooney, ‘but we expect to have some soon.’
‘I must become a Catholic?’
‘There’s no other way.’
‘And you can make me one?’
‘That’s me duty. That’s why I’m here.’
‘What do I do?’ Lest he seem too eager to reject his inherited religion, Quimper added: ‘I’m a good Methodist, you understand, but I must have land.’
‘You kneel, and your wife and your son kneel, and I ask you a few simple questions.’
The three Quimpers moved apart, the big, fleshy father of weak character, the thin, tense wife of tremendous moral force, and the flabby son who understood little and cared less and who now said: ‘This paper says just what he said it did.’
‘I will not accept land on such terms,’ Mattie Quimper said, and from the stern tone of her voice Jubal realized that once more he was going to have difficulty with his headstrong wife: ‘You take the oath, or you go back to Tennessee. I’m bound for Texas.’
‘I will swear to no such blasphemy,’ she said, and since nothing he could say persuaded her otherwise, it looked as if the Quimpers would end their escape to Texas at this bleak frontier.
But now Father Clooney exercised that gentle logic for which he had been famous among his friends in Ireland. He did not have a superior mind, no one ever claimed that, but a friend at the seminary once said: ‘He’s highly flexible. Finds solutions which you and I would never discover.’ Brushing Jubal aside, he took Mattie by the arm and asked in that sweet voice: ‘Me daughter, it’s land you crave, is it not?’ When she nodded, he continued: ‘They told me in Mexico there were parcels along certain rivers in Tejas which exceeded that of Jerusalem or Ireland. Now, me girl, if you want to share in that land …’ He stopped, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Must I?’ she asked, and he replied: ‘You must.’ She then asked: ‘But does swearin’ mean I give up my own religion?’ and he said, smiling at her benignly: ‘Well, yes and no,’ and she said: ‘I believe you, Father,’ and she allowed him to lead her back to her family.
So the three Quimpers knelt in the Louisiana mud, their faces turned west toward Texas. It was a solemn moment both for them and for the priest, for they were formally rejecting a religion which had nurtured them and he was performing his first official act as an agent of his new government. All were nervous as he whispered through the pattering rain, probing at his converts with a series of significant questions: ‘Do you accept the Body of Christ? Do you acknowledge in your hearts that the Holy Roman Catholic church is the ordination of Jesus Christ Himself? Do you accept without reservation the supremacy of our Worldly Father, the Pope? Are you willing to announce yourselves publicly as members of the Roman Catholic church?’
When the three supplicants replied in whispers more muted than his own, Father Clooney administered the oath, but young Yancey noticed something that the white-haired priest could not see: his mother, holding her hands behind her back, kept her fingers crossed. His father did not, and as soon as the final blessing was given, making them good Catholics, Jubal leaped to his feet and said: ‘Now, can we have this in writin’?’ and gladly Father Clooney drew from his untidy Bible a printed document which he now filled in, attesting to the fact that Jubal Quimper et uxor et filius were good Catholics.
But this did not satisfy Quimper: ‘You must write down that we’re entitled to our league-and-a-labor.’
‘I have no authority to issue such a statement,’ Father Clooney said, whereupon Jubal grabbed the certificate and was about to shred it: ‘Then I’m not a convert.’
‘Wait!’ the priest said. ‘Is it so important to you?’ and Quimper replied: ‘I’m willin’ to abide by the laws of any land I live in. But I demand that my new country put in writin’ its promises to me.’
‘My words would carry little weight,’ Father Clooney protested, but Quimper said: ‘I’ve found that words on documents carry terrifyin’ weight. I’m here in this swamp because of words on documents. And I want your words on this one.’ So the priest rummaged through his bedroll until he found a pen and a vial of ink.
The paper he signed still exists in the archives of Texas. It is rain-spotted and not legally binding but its import is unquestioned, and was the foundation of everything good that was to happen to the Quimpers in Texas:
This document testifies to the legal conversion into the true Holy Roman Catholic Church of Jubal Quimper, his wife Mattie and their son Yancey aged eleven. By the laws of México this entitles them to take up free and without hinder a league-and-a-labor of the best land, as he may identify it.
The paper was signed boldly by Father Clooney, formerly of Ballyclooney, County Clare, now an ecclesiastical representative of the Mexican government. Since these were his first conversions in his new assignment, he carefully dated the paper ‘3 Enero 1823, Provincia de Tejas, México,’ and when Quimper pointed out that they were not yet in Texas, Clooney said with that elasticity which would always characterize him: ‘In spirit we are. So let’s make speedy tracks to take up our inheritance.’
Father Clooney, who had watched many struggling people trying to survive in a harsh world, was always concerned with the physical welfare of those he counseled, and now he gave the Quimpers solid advice: ‘You’ve got to buy a mule. You can’t lug all that gear into Texas.’ But Jubal asked: ‘Who can afford a mule?’ and Clooney replied: ‘We’ll find a way.’
It was providential for both the Quimpers and the priest that they had joined forces at the bayou, for the transit of the Neutral Ground where law did not prevail proved more dangerous than even Jubal had anticipated. ‘I want all guns to be loaded,’ Quimper said as they entered the Strip, and when Father Clooney warned: ‘The powder may get wet if we load now,’ Jubal said: ‘That’s the risk we take.’
They were less than six miles inside the area when three Kentucky ruffians, fugitives from murder charges, accosted them and demanded tribute. When Father Clooney refused to surrender the few dollars and Spanish coins he had collected, they threatened to kill him as a conniving priest: ‘We don’t want your kind in Texas.’ And they might have slain the four travelers had not one of the robbers dropped dead with a bullet through his head.
Mattie Quimper, off to one side, had listened to the threats and had quietly reached for her husband’s gun. Holding her breath to steady her arm, biting her lip to still her nerves, she had aimed not at the biggest Kentuckian’s chest but at his head, and when he dropped, she threw Father Clooney one gun and her husband another, and these two men happened to fire at the same survivor, killing him too. The third renegade escaped through brush, and for the next two days the four immigrants kept a round-the-clock watch lest the escapee return with others to seek revenge.
As they were about to leave the Strip they came upon a sma
ll settlement perched on the left bank of the Sabine River, the boundary line between American Louisiana and Mexican Tejas, and here they were accosted by an extraordinary man, sour of face, lean of body and profane of speech: ‘Ran me out of xxxxx Alabama, printin’ xxxxx dollar bills better’n the xxxxx gov’mint. Now, if you have any xxxxx Spanish coins, I can earn you a tidy xxxxx profit.’
He had been a blacksmith by trade and might have made a good living almost anywhere in America, or Texas, had he applied himself to his calling, but he had an insatiable habit of manipulating coinage, and now he offered his services to the Quimpers: ‘What I do, I take a Spanish coin, pure silver, and I smash it so fartin’ flat and in such a clever way’—into even a simple statement like that he was able to introduce three horrendous expletives—‘that I can cut it into quarters.’
‘Everybody does that,’ Quimper said, and he was right, for coinage was so scarce throughout America that the fracturing of dollars into four quarters or sometimes even eight bits was common.
‘Of course ever’body does it,’ the forger acknowledged. ‘But they cut a dollar into four quarters. I cut mine into five.’
And he did. Taking a Spanish coin provided by the priest, he hammered it in such a way that in the end, with the identifying marks preserved, he produced five pieces. Quimper was afraid to risk his own money in this criminal activity, but Father Clooney approved the inventiveness, and from his voluminous robes produced a handful of coins, which the forger quickly cut into fives, keeping for himself one-tenth of the gain.
As the priest was pocketing his profit, a dirty, ill-kempt boy of nine or ten ran up, shouting: ‘Black Abe done killed his woman!’ and everyone ran to see what new tragedy had struck an area accustomed to disaster.
Black Abe, a white man from Missouri with an infamous reputation even among his evil companions, had tired of his woman’s nagging and had stabbed her many times with a long knife. When the priest reached her she was still breathing, but the flow of blood was so copious that she obviously could not survive. ‘Do you seek peace with your Maker?’ Clooney asked softly. ‘No filthy papist touches me!’ she managed to whisper, and with that farewell to an ugly world she died, whereupon Father Clooney knelt by her bed and pleaded with God to accept the soul of this bewildered woman.