“Then it’s a good place for Americans, is it?” asked the lieutenant.
“Yes, sir. It’s been a good country, and now it’ll be a better one. Where else in this world can a man with a family get three squar’ miles of the best soil, best grass, best water, in the best climate and among the best people on earth, for thirty dollars down, and the rest pay as he goes? We’ve all declared in favor of Santa Anna, the Mexican troops have gone to help him lick Bustamante; as soon as he’s made president he’ll give us what we want under the constitution of ’24. So come along, everybody. There’s land a-plenty and room for all.”
“Wall, stranger, you make a good talk,” spoke a passenger. “But what mought you be doin’ now, if it’s any of our business? You’ve said whar you’re from, but whar you goin’, out of such a fine country?”
“I’m on my way to Fort Gibson. Saw this boat p’inting down stream, so I borrowed a Choctaw dug-out and came to learn the news from above. What’s doing, up ’round Gibson?”
“Haw haw!” they laughed. “Cain’t tell nary thing by the looks of this boat, stranger. Fust we’re p’intin’ one way an’ next we’re p’intin’ ’nother, like a bob-tailed hoss in a millpond. We’re calkilatin’ on Gibson, ourselves. An’ what mought be yore business at Gibson?”
It was a great crowd for asking questions.
Sam Houston! This was another name, almost as familiar as Texas. Sam Houston! Why, he was the man who as a young officer had fought so bravely in the battle of Horseshoe Bend, in March, 1814, when General Andrew Jackson had saved Alabama and her sister states from the ravages of the fierce Creek Indians. He was the same man who when a boy had been adopted by the Cherokee Indians, in Georgia, and had lived with them; and he had been lieutenant in the regular army, and United States congressman from Tennessee, and had risen to be governor of Tennessee, and only a couple of years ago had quit everything and run away, back to the Cherokees again, in the Indian Country. And ’twas said that when now and then he reappeared in Washington he wore Indian costume! He certainly seemed to be a queer character.
“And what mought you be wishin’ with Sam Houston?”
The Texan was very patient under these queries. He rested on his long rifle, and spoke deliberately, surveying his audience.