A frontier knight

by Amy Ella Blanchard

He gave the younger girl a bright look. “I knew we could count on her,” he said. “I didn’t think she would desert her brother for any old——”

“Sh! Sh!” whispered Christine, putting her hand over his mouth as Uncle Brown entered.

“So you are really on the road to that cut-throat country,” he said to young Ross as they shook hands.

“It’s a pretty good country from what I have seen of it,” returned John. “It has had its little scuffles, I admit, but it’s in the Union now and I reckon it’s in for good.”

“It may be in for bad, so far as some of us are concerned,” was the reply. “Mexico will probably think she has a word to say on that subject. She hasn’t acknowledged yet that Texas is anything but one of her provinces. What will you do if she wars over it?”

“I’ll go and fight. You can’t scare me that way,” said John. “We’ve the whole United States to back us now, and I reckon we can teach Mexico where Texas belongs.”

Uncle Brown shook his head. “It doesn’t strike me that I’d like to live in such an unsettled country. Just a few years ago it was a Spanish colony, then it was an independent republic, and now it is a state.”

John looked reflectively out of the window where yellowed fields spoke of gathered harvests. “It has had its baptism of blood,” he said. “It has arisen from its ashes. Brave patriots have made it what it is. My father died for its sake. He would be glad to know that his son means to carry out what he began. When he left his family he meant to come back for us all; it was his dream to build up a home in Texas, and to have us grow up with it. Because he died in the struggle for independence is the very reason that I am the more anxious to carry out his wishes.”

The young man’s face became stern and determined. Christine crept closer to him. Her memory went back to the time when the news came of her father’s death at Goliad, and when her brother, pale and full of set purpose, registered a vow to avenge his death. Seven years later Christine had wept bitter tears at the departure of this brother to the new republic of Texas. Returning when the young state had become a part of the Union, he found Christine a fair, sweet young woman, and Alison almost as tall. The recollection of all these events, during which the elder of the two sisters had grown from girlhood to womanhood, flashed across her memory as she leaned against her brother. She understood and appreciated his desire to follow out his father’s plans. She was willing to share joy or sorrow with him, and now that Alison had cast in her lot with theirs she had not a regret.

There was another reason, too, which Christine acknowledged to no one but herself, but which carried more weight than any other when she came to think of going to Texas, and this was that her brother’s companion and partner was no other than her playmate Steve Hayward, who had been her neighbor and comrade ever since she could remember. It was he who had carried her books to school, who had helped her with her lessons, who had made her a ring carved from a peach stone, when she was but eight years old, and who had promised to marry her when they two should be grown. In later years he had not repeated the promise, but when he went away with John he had said: “I am coming back here to get my wife, Christine,” and she understood, without more words. Now it was she who was going to him, and there was not a fear in her heart, even though Uncle Brown spoke discouragingly. So she smiled up at her brother, saying: “Tell uncle all about the arrangements, John.”