[ON THE TRAIL ONCE MORE]
On the second morning after our arrival at Fort Towson we set off once more, father and mother leading the way in the small mule cart, and I following behind the three wagons, while John and Zeba brought up the rear with the cattle, which, having had a welcome rest at the fort, were now traveling at a reasonably rapid pace, so fast, in fact, that Gyp and I had to urge the sheep along at their best speed lest we be overrun.
At the end of the first day's journey father told me that we had crossed over the border line of the republic, and were then in Texas. This was pleasing news, because the long journey had become decidedly wearisome.
[MESQUITE]
During the day we had been traveling over rolling land, which was covered with rich grass and looked not unlike what I have heard about the ocean, for we climbed over billow after billow and saw the same sea of undulating green stretched out before us, with here and there a small clump of oak or pecan trees, or thickets of mesquite.
Mesquite, of which there is so much in Texas, sometimes grows to the height of thirty or forty feet, but as a rule it is found as bushes no more than five or six feet high. It bears a pod something like a bean, which, before ripening is soft and exceedingly sweet, and so very pleasant to the taste that white people as well as Indians gather it as fruit. The wood of the mesquite, which may be found reasonably large in size, and which is of a brown or red color when polished, but exceedingly hard to work, is valuable for the underpinnings of houses, for fence posts, and even for furniture.
The next morning after we had crossed the Texas line we came upon the very thing in which I had the greatest interest, a sheep ranch, and I urged father to halt there for an hour or more that I might see how the animals were cared for here in this country, as compared with our manner of feeding and housing them in Mississippi.