Free Bittersweet by Susan Wittig Albert Page A

with greater confidence. “So what happened to Texas after Sam Houston beat Santa Anna?”
    â€œWell, after that it was a republic, with a president and an army and everything, until people decided it should be a state. That was in 1845. Itwas a slave state,” she added darkly. “Mostly, the slaves were in East Texas, where people grew a lot of cotton and some sugar, too. But some slaves worked on ranches. I guess they were cowboys.”
    â€œUh-oh,” I said. “Not good at all. What happened after Texas became a state?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she confessed. “We stopped there. My teacher said we’ll do the rest in seventh grade.”
    â€œWell,
I
know,” I said, “since I’m past seventh grade.” That got a giggle out of her, and I went on. “When the Civil War broke out, Texas seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy. But some Texans supported the North, and after the fighting was over and people came back home, there was a lot of fighting between the Confederates and Unionists. Down here in Uvalde County, violence was such an everyday event that the county tax assessor had to hire armed guards, and there were a couple of years when they couldn’t find anybody brave enough to pin on the sheriff’s star.”
    â€œThe Wild West,” Caitie put in. “Awesome.”
    â€œReally wild,” I agreed. “Desperadoes, smugglers, horse thieves, cattle rustlers. They liked to hide out in places like that canyon over there.” I pointed to the steep-sided canyon we were passing, opening out into a meadow along the road. “They would wait until the stagecoach came along and rob the passengers. And there were cattle rustlers, too. They were after the maverick long-horned cattle that had been abandoned by the first Spanish settlers back in the 1600s. When they gave up and went back to Mexico, they left their cows behind.”
    Now it was Caitie’s turn to widen her eyes. “They just
left
them? Poor things! They had nobody to feed and water them.”
    â€œOh, but these cows were tough, Caitie. With those long horns, theycould defend themselves and their calves against the mountain lions, so they got along just fine all by themselves. And since the range was pretty much open, if you wanted a couple of hundred cows to sell, you and your cowboys would round them up and head out for New Orleans or Kansas City. If rustlers showed up to take them away from you . . . well, there’d be a shoot-out.”
    â€œThat’s when there were cowboys and trail drives on the Chisholm Trail.” Caitie leaned forward. “I saw it on television. The cowboys would drive the Longhorns up to the railroad in Kansas City, where they’d be shipped east.”
    â€œExactly,” I said. “Although the people back east weren’t real crazy about eating Longhorns. No matter how you cooked it, the meat was as tough as shoe leather, especially after the cow had walked all the way from Texas to Kansas City. And that’s where Sam’s ranch comes into the story. And Sam’s great-grandfather, Ezekiel Richards. Want to hear it?”
    â€œSure,” Caitie said, settling back into her seat. “Sam is a really neat guy. But I’ve never heard about his great-grandfather before.”
    â€œHere we go, then. In 1872, Ezekiel moved to Uvalde County from Dallas and started a ranch on the Sabinal River—the place that Sam and your grandmother call the Bittersweet Nature Sanctuary. But just about the time Ezekiel got started in ranching, something big happened that changed everything.”
    â€œWhat?” Caitie was paying serious attention.
    â€œBarbed wire.”
    Caitie turned to stare at me. “Barbed wire? You mean, like in a fence?”
    I nodded. “Barbed wire came to South Texas in 1875, when a guy named Bet-a-Million Gates convinced the San Antonio city council to let him