Chapter One - Fire in the Night

“When I came to think back on that matter,” said Magda Vogel Becker to her daughter and her great-grandchildren, many years later, “I realized that there had been omens. Your father and I did not see such at the time. All we knew on that morning in summer was John Hunter, on a wearied horse, riding up from the river.”

“Mr. Hunter, who was the country clerk for so many years?” Magda’s daughter asked.

 Magda nodded regally. “The very same, Lottie. He kept a store, like Mr. Specht and Mr. Ransleben… no, no Marie,” she added sternly to the youngest of Lottie’s grandchildren. “Manners, child. Don’t tease Mouse. He has teeth and a bad temper.” Mouse the Pekinese only rolled his bulgy eyes upwards at his mistress adoringly. He lay on his cushion at her feet, amidst the children. He was the third to bear that name, taking up the mission peculiar to their breed of being a constant and attentive companion.

 Marie instantly left off toying with the long fringes of Mouse’s ears. She and her brothers and cousins all went in terrible awe and worship of their formidable great-grandmother, a tall and straight-backed old woman who always appeared in dresses of an old-fashioned style but cut of fine materials in the black of deepest mourning. Oma Magda’s bodice fastened at the front with a line of sparkly jet buttons to a high collar at her throat, her narrow sleeves buttoned down to her wrists, and her long skirts brushed the toes of her shoes. Her hair, still thick and the color of iron, was coiffed by her maid every morning. A snowy lace and lawn house cap was pinned over the complicated weaving of Oma Magda’s long braid into a knot that tilted her head slightly back. She spoke with a heavy accent, even after more than half a century in her adopted country.

She was a being utterly unlike anyone else they knew, completely fascinating, a person from another lifetime entirely. They had never known terror, want, or sudden murder but Great Grandma Becker, their Oma Magda—she did. She was a pioneer and almost the last of the oldest generation, save for her niece Oma Anna, nearly twenty years younger. Marie’s older brother Will and some of the boy cousins insisted that Oma Magda still carried a pistol in her hand-bag on those rare occasions when she left her suite of rooms in her daughter’s brightly-painted mansion on Turner Street—as if this was not already the twentieth century! On this day, with Oma Magda being in a mood to tell stories, the boys were wild with curiosity about the Confederate cavalry saber that hung over the door of her sitting-room.  Oma Magda had never explained how it had come into her possession, saying only that it belonged to someone who had been a friend to her husband, long ago. 

The children had been raised in comfort and plenty, all speaking English and sent to good schools, to cotillions and music lessons. But they prized above all else those rare times when Oma Magda could be brought to tell stories of the early days, of the empty lands and the Llano Estacada, of Indians and cattle-drives, of raging rivers and heroes, of escapes and war. Marie and her brothers, their cousins and second-cousins, all agreed that it was much, much better than the nickelodeon.  But of all that fund of stories there was one that Magda Vogel Becker would never tell to the children:  of a day on Magazine Street, under the tree by Charley Nimitz’ hotel with a corpse in the dust at her feet.

“I was in the stillroom, pouring milk into pans, so the cream could rise to the top, when I heard the dogs barking at someone coming up the hill. My husband called to me…”

Hearing the dogs barking in the way they had for strangers coming up the hill towards the Becker house, Magda came up the stone steps from the cellar, with the empty milk can in her hand. Her baby son fussed from his little pen in the corner. Standing on sturdy fat legs, he gripped the top of the pen. He had been christened Rudolph after her husband’s older brother, Rudi; dead in the massacre at Goliad fourteen years before, cut down as he shouted at his brother to run towards the river. Magda and her husband had come to an unvoiced agreement to use the diminutive of Dolph for the baby, rather than the name by which his brother had been known, which Carl Becker still called out in nightmares now and again.

She picked up her son, and went to look out of the tall window that looked down the hill towards the green river in the shallow valley beyond. The shutters stood open to catch the cool morning breeze. From the walled orchard below, her husband put down his shovel, digging it into the mound of dirt by the hole in the ground where a small apple tree was to go,  and called up to her,

“Who is it, Margaretha?”

Carl Becker was Saxon-fair, a tall even-tempered man who had lived in Texas for all of his life, having been brought as a small child when it was still part of Mexico. He and Magda had married two years before and come to his land-holding on the Guadalupe River, where he ran a few cattle for the market in San Antonio and yearly planted just enough corn to mill for his household needs. He also had ambitious plans for an orchard, walled with stone on the northwest-facing slope below the stone house with the birds-nest carved over the door.

“I’m not sure.” From the window Magda could see beyond the fledgling orchard and its sheltering wall. The track wound along a rise from where it branched from the road that ran east and west along the river-bank, past Carl’s fields, and around the back of the house into the farmyard. A man rode up from the river, a man whose horse stumbled as if it were weary, head drooping. As he approached the house, Magda recognized him. “It is John Hunter; from town. He looks tired. You had best make yourself decent for company, my heart.”

“I suppose I should.” Her husband smiled at her and took up his shirt from where it lay on the grass next to the young apple tree. As he pulled the coarse cloth over his head, she caught a glimpse of the tangled web of scars on his left shoulder; a memento of a skirmish with a Mexican lancer before Monterray and still livid after four years. That wound had almost killed him. He was a long while recovering and when he was fit again, that war was nearly over and his final enlistment with Jack Hays’ Rangers was a thing of the past. “You haven’t seen Trap, have you?”

“Not since breakfast,” Magda answered. Trap Talmadge, who helped Carl run his farm, had taken the light wagon to a nearby cedar thicket to cut poles for repairing a fence. Meanwhile, Porfirio the Mexican stockman, young Nate Brown, and Magda’s younger brother Friedrich had gone on horseback along the river, searching for mother cows with Carl’s brand on them, so they could mark their calves. They had taken food and blankets, expecting to be several days at it.

Now John Hunter was close to the house, near enough to draw rein while the dogs romped and clamored at a safe distance from his horse’s hoofs. “Hello! Becker! Anyone at home?”

“Mr. Hunter,” Magda called from the window, “we are here. What brings you so far from town? What has happened?” Down below in the orchard, Carl had picked up his shovel and was walking toward the small gate which gave into the farmyard, next to the house.

“Nothing good,” John Hunter answered, grimly.

 Carl called out to him, “Come around to the yard. Put your horse in the corral, and tell us what has been going on.”

“They’ve burnt my store,” John Hunter said as he nudged his horse forward. Standing still by the overlooking window, Magda gasped: John Hunter’s store was on the corner of Main and Market Street, a short way from her father’s house and workshop in Friedrichsburg. Before her marriage she walked past it often; a long log house with many additions at the back, for John Hunter did much business with friendly Indians, the soldiers at the fort, and the German settlers in the district. Her arms tightened on Dolph. He squirmed, whimpering unhappily.

 The men were out of sight now, but she could hear their voices outside: her husband’s quiet and level, unhurried as always. They spoke in English, which she could follow even though she was still not comfortable speaking it herself. John Hunter’s voice sounded tense even agitated, for he was a hot-tempered and impulsive man. But losing a home and place of business was a thing which would fray at anyone’s good nature. Magda gave her son a hard-baked rusk to chew on and amuse himself while in his little pen, and busied herself setting out plates. John Hunter would be hungry, if he had ridden all the way from Friedrichsburg. She had bread, pickles, a pot of home-made cheese, dried-apple pie, cold smoked ham and sausages and preserves made from the agarita berries. She thought for a moment, and opened a box of store crackers.

She heard the men’s footsteps in the hallway, as she set out the plate of sliced cold sausage. Trap and Carl had butchered a large pig the previous fall which had fed them all winter. This was the last of the sausage they had smoked themselves. Magda would not mind if they ate it all, for they had not a sufficient amount of coriander at the time and she had insisted all winter that the resulting sausage tasted odd. Carl and John both looked to have washed up at the water-trough by the corral, but John still had black sooty streaks on his boots and trouser-legs. Even a quick scrub couldn’t erase the lines of exhaustion on his face or the blue shadows under his eyes. As they came into the kitchen, he was saying over his shoulder to Carl, “…records lost, all of them! The mob wouldn’t even let Mr. Wahrmund and the others get them out before they fired the building!”

“What of Sophie? Is she safe?” Magda suddenly recollected that John had at last married pretty Sophie Ahrens, and that they lived in back of the store. “Where is she? And my family, what of them?”

“With her mother,” John smiled wearily, “Everyone is safe— that I know of. It was only me they were after! Bless you, Mrs. Magda. I didn’t know until now that I was hungry. I sent her away as soon as the trouble started. After what happened the last time I had trouble with drunken soldiers from the fort, I thought any risk ought to be on my head, not hers.”

“Sit, sit,” Magda urged him. “Who burned your store and what risk is this?”

“And do you think anyone followed after you?” Carl added, quietly. He and John sat down at the table, and Magda finished slicing bread. Dolph fussed to be let out, and Magda took him onto her lap and listened to the men.

“No, I don’t think so. Can’t be sure, though. There were a lot of folk in town.” John wolfed the food that Magda had set on his plate. “I came away first thing in the morning.  Charley Nimitz hid me at his place. He found my horses wandering in the fields above Creek Street.”

“How did it start?” Carl asked quietly. John looked sideways at Magda with Dolph in her arms, and then said carefully, “A soldier from the fort came to the store. I was in the back, taking stock when he came in. He had some friends with him, they were drunk, too, but this particular one was much farther gone. He wanted Sophie to sell him more whiskey. She told him no. I came in from the back and told him no again. Then he got ugly. Frightened Sophie pretty bad and then he said…” From the look on John’s face, Magda thought the soldier must have said something truly insulting; one of those things that men did not say to women, something that John did not want to even repeat in front of another woman. Finally, he said, “He spoke of my wife—to her face, mind you—as if she were a commodity in my store and asked the price.”

“Ah,” remarked Carl Becker, in complete comprehension. Magda looked from John’s face to his. Her husband had a little of that cold, alert look to him, an expression she had only seen once or twice. For many years he had been a soldier or a Ranger, accustomed to dealing in death and casual violence. “What did you hit him with, then?”

“My fist,” John answered. “At first. But he drew a knife, and he had his friends at his back. He came at me.” John moved his shoulders uneasily, in a sort of shrug, “I took it away from him easily enough and his friends tried to drag him away. But then he broke away from them and jumped on me again and in the melee….” John sighed. “The knife wound up stuck into his chest. Mind you, I think he was dead before he hit the floor. His friends carried him away and I sent for the sheriff.”

“It sounds like it was a fair fight,” Carl observed.

 John nodded, “So it was and there were enough witnesses on my side of it to win an acquittal in a court of law. But a bunch of soldiers from the fort came looking for me that night, ’long with some other toughs. They smashed up the store and set fire to the stock inside. There was enough shooting and hollering to wake the town and everyone else came to see what was happening, of course. The soldiers wouldn’t let anyone through to put out the fire, or even let them take away the records.” John sighed again, wearily. “They were looking close at every man’s face, searching for me. It sent them wild when they didn’t find me at the store. Charley had me lay up at his place. His idea, he said they might know where to find Sophie’s family, wouldn’t be safe for them if I was there, too. It was a wild night, Becker, men with guns patrolling all over town. The Army is supposed to protect us against the Indians, but who will protect the town against the Army?”

“The law will, if their officers don’t. It still doesn’t sound good,” Carl said, grimly. He had lived in Friedrichsburg long enough to think of it as his town, full of his friends and Magda’s kinfolk. “What do you plan?”

“I honest to God don’t know,” John said, “Except lay up for a while, out of town. Swear to God, if it weren’t for Sophie not wanting to leave her family and the humiliation of being run out of town by the blue-coat boys, I’d give a thought to selling up and leaving for good. Charley told me the next morning that there were some tough-looking customers asking after me, all over town. And not in a way that indicated concern for my health, you know, less’n tar and feathers are a patent nostrum, these days.” He grinned fleetingly, as if he had just been reminded of something amusing, “I will say this for our folk, Becker—they’ve clammed right up. As of yesterday morning, there wasn’t a soul in town who understood English if it was a stranger asking questions.” He looked at his plate in astonishment, for it was entirely empty.

“Please, eat as much as you wish,” Magda urged him. “I do not let anyone go hungry from our table. Help yourself to as much as you please. You are our guest.”

John Hunter helped himself to more bread, pickles and ham, saying, “Thank you, ma’am. This is first-rate. I haven’t eaten so well since the last dinner my wife set before me.” He looked at Carl and added, “Nothing like a Dutchwoman for setting a fine table. I’m flat amazed there aren’t more like you and I, paying court to the women who came out here with the Verein settlers.”

“They have watchful brothers and fathers,” Carl answered. He and Magda exchanged a private look of wry amusement. Dolph wriggled mightily and set up a fuss. He wanted down from her lap, but before Magda moved to put him back in his pen, Carl added, “I’ll take him—come to Papa, little man.” He scooped up his son, lifting him high above his own head.

Magda said severely, “You spoil him! How will he learn proper manners, when you play games like that at the table?”

“He’s a baby,” Carl answered serenely. “He doesn’t need manners yet.” He bounced Dolph energetically on his knee and gave him another rusk. The baby settled onto his father’s lap, chewing messily and happily. Magda was teased again into smiling at the sight of them. The likeness between them was so marked, it was comic: the same sturdy features and fair hair, the same sky-colored blue eyes, even the expression of mild amusement in them. Dolph adored his father and Carl made much of his baby son. He thought nothing of taking him out into the yard and setting him on the back of his horse, Three-Socks. Dolph clutched the horse’s mane in his little hands, his baby-dress rucked up almost to his diapers and his fat little legs drumming against the horse’s withers, while Three-Socks took no more notice of the child than he would a flea.

“You’ll have him riding a horse before he can even walk by himself?” Magda had remonstrated.

Carl replied, “Not such a bad thing, in this country.”

Now John Hunter looked across the table, saying, “That’s a fine little youngster you got there.”

Carl looked ridiculously pleased.  “He’ll be out of the cradle and into the saddle in no time at all. We need another hand around the place, don’t we, son?” Dolph gurgled agreeably and his father returned to the business at hand. “Thinking on your problem, then— I guess you’re planning to stay away from town for a while, until feelings calm down?”

“Not for too long,” John Hunter sighed, “I’ve got a business to run and I’m an elected official, besides. I’ve got responsibilities.”

“So you need to make sure you’re covered on the flank,” Carl chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of bread and sausage and moved his plate out of Dolph’s reach. “No, not for you, son. All right, John, stay here and rest up for a day or so and then I think you ought to go to Bexar, into San Antone—go to the magistrate there and surrender. At least, go through the legal forms and serve notice that it was self-defense. And…” he brightened, as if he had just thought of a particularly good idea, “go talk to Sam Maverick first. He’s a lawyer, but he used to ride with me in Jack Hays’ company. Tell him I sent you, that you’re a friend of mine. They’re back in Bexar now. Look for a large house on Houston Street by the Plaza. He’ll see you right.”

John Hunter already looked more cheerful, as Carl outlined this plan. “I like it,” John mused. “I suppose it’s just far enough away from the hotheads. I can complain to the Army, too, while I’m at it. Damn it—sorry, Mrs. Magda—things are at a pretty pass, when the scum of the barracks can run a man out of his own town.” Out in the farmyard one of the dogs barked, but not in the urgent way that they barked at strangers. This was someone they knew. She got up and looked out the window; Trap Talmadge, driving a wagon loaded with cedar fence-poles.

“Not for long,” Carl answered cheerfully. “They’ll calm down right enough. But just in case, I’ll send my foreman with you. He used to ride with Jack as well. If anyone is still looking for you, they won’t get past Trap Talmadge. He’s about three parts wild-cat and as wily as they come. Spend the night with us, rest yourself and your horse, and set off in the morning.”

“’Preciate the hospitality,” John answered gratefully. “Can’t tell you how much it means, having a place to rest up and think.”

“Any time,” Carl said. Tucking his son under his arm, he went out to the farmyard to tell Trap what was going on.

That night, as John Hunter slept the sleep of the exhausted in the guest bedroom, Magda and her husband lay together in bed and talked quietly. The window shutters again stood half-open, letting in an occasional breath of cool air. Such a strange country, Magda thought. Even after six summers in it, she still found it strange that the hottest time of the day was in the late afternoon, not when the sun stood high overhead at noon. And her husband put no credence in the dangers of night air. “How could that be, since I have slept outside more often than not, and never taken any hurt from it?” Sleep did not always come readily when the day’s heat lingered after sunset, and her shift stuck to her by sweat. Tonight, she thought her husband seemed very quiet. Presently she rolled onto her side, and asked, “You are worried about the boys, out looking for our calves?”

He was a long while answering, as was his habit. Not a hasty man was Carl Becker, but one who considered his answers carefully. “No,” he answered at last, “not the boys. Porfirio’s a good man, and Nate was raised in these parts. The neighbors around here, they’re all good folk, apart from Waldrip and his friends. The boys have nothing to fear but maybe an angry mama cow…”

“Then more trouble for John Hunter?” she asked again, and she could tell by the sound of his voice that he smiled at her, reassuringly.

“No, he’ll have no trouble, once the hot-heads calm down. Their officers will see to that. There may be places in Texas where you can raise an angry mob at the drop of a hat but Friedrichsburg probably isn’t one of them. Your Verein-folk take a lot to get their dander up.”

An owl hooted in the darkness outside. Carl half sat up, leaned on an elbow and listened. In a moment he swung his feet to the floor and padded silently towards the window. Magda watched him silhouetted against the star-strewn sky outside, standing in the darkness a little back from the window-frame, as wary as a wild animal himself. In the heat of summer he slept naked for comfort, like an Indian. The owl hooted again and Carl relaxed in some infinitesimal way; he must have seen the owl flying.

When he returned to the bed, lying down next to her, he said, “I’m just calculating the odds on Trap being tempted into going on a spree when he gets into Bexar. I’ll need him back here, not passed out in a ditch or locked up in the calaboose.”

“How did you come to hire him, knowing that he drinks?” Magda asked, for it had long been a sore point. Surely her husband could hire a more reliable man than a broken-down old Ranger sergeant, even if he was a friend.

“Most men drink,” Carl answered quietly, “They get a little merry, raise a little ruckus and have a sore head in the morning. But for some of them, they can’t stop. It’s like a sickness, they can’t help themselves. Sometimes they are strong enough to be able to quit entirely. General Sam was one of those.” He laughed a little and Magda felt him roll onto his side, stirring the bedclothes a little. It was too hot to sleep comfortably curled into each other but his hand strayed across her shoulder and down to gently cup her breast. It was his way when they slept, to be always touching her as if for reassurance. “He was a legendary drunk before he married. He boarded at my sisters’ once, but she threw him out the morning after he went on a spree and took it into his head to chop down the bedposts with an ax. No one had an idea why he did that, himself least of all. Margaret was furious, though.”

Margaret, Carl’s formidable older sister, ruled over a sprawling household in Austin. It included her second husband, four sons and a vast collection of boarders who tended to be grave and sober businessmen, leavened with legislators and lawyers.

“It was her house, she had a perfect right,” Magda said, indignant on her sister-in-law’s behalf.

“So she did,” Carl agreed. “And when he sobered up, I expect he was the first to apologize. As for Trap—he’s all right, as long as he’s at work. He was all right on a long scout, the best there could be. But whenever we came back to town, I don’t think Trap drew a sober breath until we saddled up to ride out again.” He sighed, adding, “It was just the way it was. And then he got banged up for good and all, wasn’t fit to enlist again. I saw him in a tavern in Bexar, didn’t hardly recognize him. Sam told he was still around, and in a bad way. And if I could, I ought to do something for him. That was the year after I went into the Llano with Meusebach. I was buying the things that Berg needed so’s he could build this house.”

“What did you do? What did you say to him?” Magda asked. That was also the year that he had courted her, had decided to settle on this land and plant an apple orchard. When he answered, she could tell by the sound of his voice that he was smiling. “He was in a tavern and stinking drunk—not so far gone that he couldn’t talk, or not recognize me. He looked up and said, “Damned if it isn’t Dutch Becker. Don’t you have a home to go to, boy?” and I said “As a matter of fact, I do. I’m going to it this very minute and you’re coming with me.” And then I picked him up by his collar and belt and threw him into the back of the wagon.”  He chuckled, and added, “Well, Sam did ask for me to do something for him. Three days it took for him to sober up enough to say yes, when I asked if he would work for me. He’s back-slid a couple of times, nothing serious. If Porfirio and the boys were back, I’d go with him, make sure he stays out of trouble, but you’d be here alone with the baby and I won’t have that.”

“Mr. Talmadge is a man grown,” Magda said, sternly, “You should not have to watch after him like that.”

“No?” Carl sighed, “He watched after me and Jack, too, when we were both as green as the grass on our first enlistment with Smith’s company. I always thought I owed him something—for keeping us from killing ourselves out of sheer reckless stupidity, if nothing else.”

“If he cannot guard himself from the drink, what can you do?” Magda asked. “You give him work, a place to live and some kind of purpose. If that is not enough, then it is not enough. Temptation will always be there; he will fall to it every time if he cannot make himself walk away, like your General Sam did.”

“Maybe it will be enough,” Carl said, but Magda thought he sounded more hopeful than sure of it.

Early the next morning John Hunter and Trap rode away, along the river towards the shallows and the fording place where the road between Friedrichsburg and San Antonio crossed over. If Carl still had a concern about Trap going on a spree, he didn’t voice it. On the following day, Porfirio and the boys returned from a calf round-up farther along the river, dirty, exuberant, and ravenously hungry.

“Twenty-seven,” Porfirio reported. He and Nate and Friedrich turned their horses into the small corral, inside the palisade that connected all the farm buildings together. Magda gathered eggs in the henhouse enclosure and listened to her twelve-year old brother chatter excitedly about his adventure, working cattle with the older boys. “Over two days, Señor Becker. I t’ink if we went another day, we would not find any more. They are all close to the river, now that the grass is green in the valley.”

“Should be upwards of forty new calves this year,” Carl said, pensively. “And all along the river in the usual places for this time of year.  I just thought you’d find more than that. When Mr. Talmadge gets back, maybe we should try searching a little further up the river.”

“Where is Señor Talmadge, then?” Porfirio asked, with no particular curiosity.

Carl answered, “Running an errand, down to Bexar… he’ll be back in a couple of days.”

“There is one t’ing,” Porfirio uneasily turned his hat around in his hands, “Somet’ing you should know. I did not say to Fredi, but I think Nate saw too. We found two calves, all alone. Their tongues had been split so they could not nurse.”

Carl Becker looked very grave; he knew the reason for this as well as Porfirio, and what it meant as far as his herd was concerned. “How long ago had it been done?”

Porfirio shrugged. “Long enough to heal, but not yet long enough to come back and brand. An’ before you ask, Señor. I have not seen any new brands, or more than ‘dere should be of the old ones.”

Carl nodded, a decision made. “Good… then we will go farther up the river, and look for more calves… and soon. Someone’s playing a dirty game, and I’m damned if I’ll let them get away with it. Not at my expense. I’ll let the Browns know, too.”

Porfirio tipped his hat respectfully to them both and sauntered away towards the cabin where the hands lived, and which Friedrich had insisted on sharing with them. “What did he mean?” Magda asked, “about the calves?”

“Someone is fixing it so the calf can’t nurse and wanders away from the mother cow.” Carl explained. “The mother cow which has my brand on it. Once it’s wandering off on its own, why, then it belongs to the first person who comes along and slaps a brand on it! Unless we actually catch them at it, there’s not a damn thing I can do besides be careful about branding my stock. And yes,” he looked at Magda as she was about to ask another question, “my suspicions go the same way yours do. Towards the Waldrips. Naturally.”

“Is there any dirty business that they don’t have a finger in?” Magda asked, bitterly.           

Her husband made a great show of thinking, before answering with a wry smile, “They aren’t writing yellow-covered novels, or keeping a workhouse for orphans … but that’s about it, that I can think of.” The smile faded, and he added, honestly, “Will and Sylvester aren’t so very much out of plumb, but J.P. is about two degrees off from being a madman.”

“He is vicious,” Magda said, with a shudder. “He is like a Caligula or a Nero. He would hurt people for the fun of watching. I think even his brothers are afraid of him.”

“Well, I’d not turn my back on him,” Carl agreed, “brother or not. Still,” he sighed, “I’d be the first to wish they would just move on, squat a little farther down the trail.”

“They are dug in,” said Magda, bitterly, “like a tick, growing fat on other’s blood and work, sinking their hooks deeper and deeper. I do not like them, hearts-love, any of them; and I am afraid of them, too.”

“Why is that, then?” her husband asked, reasonably. “Except for J.P., they’re no better or worse than most of the settlers who came out expecting better than they found.”

“Haven’t you seen the way they look so hatefully at this house, this farm?” Magda rounded on him. “Men! You do not see the way J.P. Waldrip looks and envies? He wants it, without the trouble of working as hard as we do and he hates that we have such and he does not.”

“Can’t say that I ever noticed,” Carl said, mildly.

“It’s like the heat from a stove,” Magda retorted. “His brothers and their friends may be no better and no worse, but he is insane with envy. He would not hesitate to do us harm, if he could do so without hazard to himself.”

“Then I will take very good care that he will never have that chance,” Carl said, kissing his wife affectionately on the forehead. “Don’t worry about Waldrip, Margaretha. He will pick the wrong fight with someone, someday. The world won’t miss him when that day comes and neither will his brothers.”

“So you say.” Magda sounded unconvinced, for she had come to loathe the rabble of Waldrips, especially the oldest brother, the man with the odd-colored eyes whom she had first seen being thrown out of Mr. Ransleben’s store in Friedrichsburg. They had moved around the district, squatting on various plots of unclaimed land along the Guadalupe River, building untidy cabins of un-peeled logs and scratching out enough of a farm-plot to grow a crop of corn. Trying to pass counterfeit coin off on Mr. Ransleben was not the least savory act that the Waldrips were suspected of committing, nor was appropriating unbranded cattle.

Once brought to mind, thoughts of the Waldrips were nearly as hard to banish as they were in person. Around the corner of the house that very afternoon, pulling weeds from the larger vegetable garden, Magda heard horses on the road and the dogs making their usual fuss. But Carl was in the lower field with Nate, spreading out a load of well-rotted muck transferred from the pile next to the stable and she heard Porfirio and her brother out in the yard, so she went on pulling weeds. She thought it must be Nate’s father or brothers, come to see about the calf-branding and wondered why they had not stopped to speak to Carl rather than come all the way up to the house. Until she heard a strange voice calling, “You—boy, c’mere. There’s been a murder done, hereabouts. You seen any strangers hanging about?”

That was not Nate’s father. She stood up, bundling the pulled weeds neatly into her apron, and came around the corner—to face the Waldrip brothers. Her brother Friedrich stood nervously in the middle of the yard, by the small corral, with a coiled lariat in his hand. The three Waldrips on their horses half-surrounded the boy; J.P. with his odd eyes, one blue and the other near to colorless, his brothers on either side of Friedrich. They had backed him and Porfirio up almost into the pile of muck with a shovel stuck into it, the straw and waste cleaned out from the stable and chicken house. In the German way, Carl made use of it once it was rotted, in the fields and around his precious trees. They hadn’t seen her, they were intent on poor Friedrich who was looking this way and that, uncertain and confused. Magda’s brother was twelve years old, grown tall but still a child in many ways. The Waldrips would think it amusing to push both of them into the muck. Magda could see that very well, and knew also that Friedrich would not have understood much of the English that the Waldrips were speaking.

Porfirio looked angry; he spat out something in Spanish and stepped aggressively towards the Waldrips, but J.P. only said coldly, “I asked you, boy! I don’t palaver with Mexes,” and jerked the reins of his horse so that the animal sidled menacingly close to Porfirio. But Porfirio had spent all of his life around horses and was not intimidated. He caught the bridle with the swiftness of a snake striking out.

Friedrich stammered, “No one. No strangers have I seen.” Then he added in German, “And I don’t know about any visitors, either.”

“Foreigners.” J.P. Waldrip looked disgusted. “Suddenly they’re everywhere, hereabouts. Like lice on a dog.” His parti-colored eyes suddenly fell on Magda, as if noticing her for the first time. “Ma’am,” he said coldly. He did not sound polite at all. “Me and my brothers are out to do justice for a murderer. You seen any strangers around here, mebbe in the last two days or so?”

“I have not seen such,” Magda answered through lips suddenly stiff and cold, as her heart sank with the realization of who the Waldrips must be after. “We know nothing of a murder. What talk is this?”

It was not two days since John Hunter had stayed with them, saying that men had been looking for him. Had either she or Carl said anything to Fredi and the boys about that? She thought not, for the boys had been too full of their adventure and Porfirio too concerned about calves with split tongues. No, she was confident that Friedrich knew nothing of John Hunter’s visit. In any case her younger brother was completely frightened out of the English that he knew.

J.P. Waldrip took off his hat, as if something had suddenly reminded him of what most folk thought of as good manners. “There was a soldier murdered in a knife-fight, three nights ago,” he answered. Magda barely repressed a shudder as she looked at him. Curiously, he might not have been so ill-appearing a man, even with the odd eyes. He had fine, regular features—it was the expression and his manner that made him repulsive. “The man who done it left town in a hurry. We aim to make things right, ma’am. You don’t think it’s right that someone can kill one of our fine boys in blue an’ walk away without justice being done?”

“We don’t know anything about a murder,” Magda repeated firmly, but with a rising sense of panic. J.P. had an avid expression on his face, as if he were enjoying all this. “My brother knows nothing about any guests.”

“What about your pet Mex, here?” J.P. suddenly unshipped a heavy revolver from his saddle holster and pressed the end of it against Porfirio’s forehead. “Him with his filthy Mex hands on the bridle of my horse?!”

Magda gasped, horrified, seeing Porfirio suddenly turning very pale under his dark-tanned face. He dropped his hand from the bridle and held himself rigidly still save for his lips, which moved silently.

J.P.’s brothers moved uneasily and one of them protested, “J.P., ain’t that going a li’l too far…” as J.P. Waldrip began to laugh. It wasn’t a man’s laugh, but a high-pitched maniacal giggle that raised the flesh on the back of her neck. She knew why J.P.’s brothers obeyed him; it was because they feared him, and what he might do.

“No, Will, we ain’t going far enough!” J.P. laughed again, as if he had made a happy jest. “Jus’ not far enough a’tall…How about I splatter this one’s brains all over the ground? Wouldn’t you like to see….”

“Your brother is a sensible man, J.P. That is quite far enough.” Carl appeared like a miracle, stepping silently from behind the Waldrips with a hay-fork in his right hand. Friedrich looked like he had been rescued from drowning and Magda herself went limp with relief. She had not heard him and neither had the Waldrips. He could walk so silently, like an Indian or a ghost; a startling skill possessed by a man so tall. In the instant that J.P. gaped in sudden astonishment, Carl reached up with his free hand and swiftly twisted the revolver out of J.P.’s hand, pulling the short barrel away from Porfirio’s forehead where it had left a pale circular mark in his flesh. Carl was none too gentle about it, judging from the grinding sound of J.P.’s hand bones or the way that J.P. grimaced. “You’ve got no call to threaten my hired man,” he added mildly. “And my wife just gave you an answer. If it isn’t the answer you wanted to hear, that’s just hard cheese.”

J.P. glowered and nursed his empty hand against his chest. Magda, her arm around her brother, saw him look from side to side, unexpectedly cornered like something vicious and feral, looking for a way out. The manic laughter was gone, but not the dislike in those odd-colored eyes as he looked down at the Beckers and Porfirio, who was cursing in Spanish, below his breath. His brothers shifted nervously, under Carl Becker’s unreadable regard.

“Didn’t mean any real harm, Becker. Jus’ having a bit of fun.” J.P. grumbled. “You got too many foreigners on your place. I’d be doing you a favor if I cut down on the numbers….”

 “It’s my place,” Carl pointed out mildly and shot a look towards Porfirio. “Far as I know, there isn’t any rule that I have to get your approval over who I hire or who comes to visit. If you know any different, I’d very much like to hear about it.”

“What about when there’s been a murder?” Waldrip fairly spat. “You draw any lines about that?”

“’Bout the same lines as you do, J.P. ‘Specially when I haven’t heard anything about a warrant, or any posse being raised lawfully. Until then, I tend to stay at home and mind my own business.” Carl’s voice was even, deliberate. Then he flashed a blandly cheerful smile and added, “Now, if you’re all het up about doing justice and pursuing the lawful, lately, there’s someone going around along the river slitting calves’ tongues.  I expect in a few days they might be back to brand them, once those calves get used to getting along eating grass. If you see anyone that don’t work for me branding calves on my land, I’ll expect a man of your dedication to justice and the law to let me know. That is, if you see anything of the sort.”

“We surely will,” one of Waldrips’ brothers answered hastily while J.P. scowled. “We’ll surely let you know, we see anything like that.”

“Right neighborly of you.” Carl’s smile broadened to an outright grin. “I expect you’ll be moving along now, since my wife and brother-in law-answered your question?”

“I’ll take my gun back, Becker,” J.P. growled. Carl turned it over in his hand, as if it were something he had just discovered.

“One of the new Colts,” he remarked, sounding almost pleased. “It’ll need cleaning though.” And he deliberately dropped it into the freshest part of the muck-pile. “Help yourself, J.P. But you might want to keep this in mind, next time you’re in Bexar; you just don’t want to mess with a dark alley and a Mex with a knife and a grudge.”

Magda drew in her breath. J.P. Waldrip appeared almost incandescent with fury, and his brothers looked as if they hardly dared breathe. But her husband still had the hayfork with its sharp tines, and J.P. was not yet so lost to reason as to forget that. He flung himself off his horse and retrieved his property. They were gone in a thunder of hoofs and up-flung dust.

Porfirio cursed after them and Carl said, calmly, “I was going to let you keep the Colt, if he let it go,”

But  Magda shivered suddenly.

“You shouldn’t have shamed him like that, my heart. Now he has every reason to hate you.”