Contents ▼▲
Front Matter Dreams of a Sheep Ranch Sheep Raising Herding Sheep Something About Texas Land Grants The "Texas Fever" Why I wanted to Go Hunting in Texas Father Spys the Land Our Plantation Father Comes Home The Bigness of Texas Where We were Going What I Hoped to Do Cattle Driving How We Set Out A Laborious Journey Comanche Indians Father to the Rescue Arrival at Fort Towson Preparing for a Storm A Dry "Norther" Two Kinds of Northers How Turkeys Kill Snakes Deer and Rattlesnakes A Corral of Wagons On the Trail Again Mesquite A Texas Sheep Ranch Profits from Sheep Father's Land Claim Spanish Measurements The Chaparral Cock Night on the Trinity Standing Guard A Turkey Buzzard Plans for Building a House The Cook Shanty A Storm of Rain A Day of Discomfort Thinking of the Old Home Waiting for the Sun Too Much Water The Stream Rising Trying to Save the Stock The Animals Stampeded Saving Our Own Lives A Raging Torrent A Time of Disaster The Flood Subsiding A Jack Rabbit Reparing Damages Rounding up the Stock FAfter the Flood Waiting for Father Recovering Our Goods Setting to Work Sawing Out Lumber In the Saw Pit Wild Cattle A Disagreeable Intruder Odd Hunting A Supply of Fresh Meat "Jerking" Beef Searching for the Cattle Our New Home Planting and Building Bar-O Ranch An Odd Cart The Visitors Zeba's Curiosity Possible Treachery Suspicious Behavior Gyp's Fight With a Cougar In a Dangerous Position Hunting Wild Hogs Treed by Peccaries Gyp's Obedience My Carelessness Vicious Little Animals Father Comes to the Rescue Increase in my Flock Unrest of the Indians Texas Joins the Union War with Mexico Selling Wool Peace on the Trinity My Dream Fulfilled

Philip of Texas - James Otis




Waiting for The Sun

The negroes gathered about father and me, in order to take advantage of the shelter afforded by the wagon. We remained silent a full ten minutes before father strove to cheer our spirits by suggesting that a storm at this season of the year could not last very many hours, and that by the following morning we should be rejoicing in the heat and the brightness of the sun.

[Illustration] from Philip of Texas by James Otis

He was at fault in this prediction, however. During the remainder of the day we came out from the shelter now and then to make certain that the cattle, the mules, and the sheep yet remained within the valley, and then crept back once more to keep mournful silence, seldom breaking it, save when the meals were ready.

The rain continued to fall steadily, and yet it was necessary we stand guard against the coyotes, who began to howl, and scream, and bark as soon as night came. No longer dreaming of making my fortune at sheep raising, I went off with Zeba just before darkness covered the earth, to begin the weary march around and around our herd of cattle and flock of sheep. I was soon drenched to the skin, and wished that father had never been attacked by the Texas fever.

I wondered during that long, wet, disagreeable time of watching where the other newly arrived settlers had begun to make homes in Texas. I knew that hundreds of families near us in Bolivar County, and from Kentucky and Missouri, had come into this republic of Texas, and it seemed, as I thought it over, most singular that we had failed to meet with any of them.

The storm, the darkness, and the irritating calls of the coyotes had so worked upon my mind that I came to believe that all the stories we had heard of people who were to make homes in this new country had been false. It seemed to me that we were the only persons in the United States who had been so foolish as to venture across the Red River with wild dreams of fertile ranches and rapidly increasing herds of cattle or flocks of sheep.