The exploitation of Earth’s treasures is a question not confined to nations. It concerns the whole family of mankind.
In all this there is not one iota of agrarian doctrine—not a thought of it. He who makes these remarks is the last man to lend countenance to communism.
It is true that, at the time spoken of, there were ruffians in Texas who held the life of a red-skin at no higher value than an English gamekeeper does that of a stoat, or any other vermin, that trespasses on his preserves. No doubt these ruffians are there still: for ten years cannot have effected much change in the morality of the Texan frontier.
But, alas! we must now be a little cautious about calling names. Our own story of Jamaica—by heaven! the blackest that has blotted the pages of history—has whitewashed these border filibusteros to the seeming purity of snow!
If things are to be judged by comparison, not so fiendish, then, need appear the fact, that the young officers of Fort Inge were some little chagrined at not having an opportunity to slay a score or so of red-skins. On learning that, during their absence, Indians had been seen on the other side, they were inspired by a new hope. They might yet find the opportunity of fleshing their swords, transported without stain—without sharpening, too—from the military school of West Point.
It was a fresh disappointment to them, when a party came in on the same day—civilians who had gone in pursuit of the savages seen on the Alamo—and reported: that no Indians had been there!
They came provided with proofs of their statement, which otherwise would have been received with incredulity—considering what had occurred.
The proofs consisted in a collection of miscellaneous articles—an odd lot, as an auctioneer would describe it—wigs of horse-hair, cocks’ feathers stained blue, green, or scarlet, breech-clouts of buckskin, mocassins of the same material, and several packages of paint, all which they had found concealed in the cavity of a cottonwood tree!
There could be no new campaign against Indians; and the aspiring spirits of Fort Inge were, for the time, forced to content themselves with such incidents as the situation afforded.
Notwithstanding its remoteness from any centre of civilised life, these were at the time neither tame nor uninteresting. There were several subjects worth thinking and talking about. There was the arrival, still of recent date, of the most beautiful woman ever seen upon the Alamo; the mysterious disappearance and supposed assassination of her brother; the yet more mysterious appearance of a horseman without a head; the trite story of a party of white men “playing Indian”; and last, though not of least interest, the news that the suspected murderer had been caught, and was now inside the walls of their own guardhouse—mad as a maniac!