By Jim Warren

On the prairie
October 19, 1850

Dear Mom,

We got real lucky in Victoria. The town is bigger than Goliad and Smith hadn’t been there long enough to make the rounds and get acquainted with the "rough bunch," so it took two days to pick up his trail. While we were there the Lt. hired a local matron to come out to our camp and cook for us. She was used to cooking for a bunch of cowhands and she and her husband had their own chuckwagon with all the equipment. The first night she made what they call "camp bread" in a bunch of Dutch ovens and it was so good and so long since we had anything but our own cooking that we talked her into mixing up some more! We ate so much of that bread that we couldn’t hold another bite. I got her to write down the recipe for you, and even though you are the best cook in the world, I know nothing can ever taste better than that bread did! If you even come close you’ll have to cook it out in the yard and use mesquite wood coals.
Well, back to the Smith episode! We didn’t have any luck at the Victoria saloons. Lt. Underwood said he figured Smith knew we would be looking for him there and avoided them. We finally talked to a blacksmith who said he put shoes on a mule for a fellow answering Smith’s description. At first he wouldn’t talk, but after he found out Smith was an army deserter he opened up because he was a veteran of the recent Mexican conflict and had no use for deserters. He said Smith paid him a dollar to not tell because his in-laws were after him for leaving his wife who was a real nag.
Anyway the smithy said he had asked about the road to Indianola and how far it was so we are headed in that direction now. The first day out of Victoria the weather clouded up and the wind kept changing around and blowing out of one direction and then another. Valentin said he and his brother were caught in a hurricane in Veracruz one time when they delivered a bunch of mules to be shipped to New York. He said the weather was just like this before the storm blew in. I hope he is wrong, but it sure looks like something is about to happen. The clouds are moving so fast they look like great flocks of birds flying overhead and they are getting darker and lower all the time.
At the last creek we crossed Valentin found a set of mule tracks with new shoes which we feel must be Smith’s. The Lt. thinks we’ll be able to get to Indianola tomorrow and is hoping we’ll catch up to him there.
I’ve got to quit now and do some patching on my stirrup leathers. My saddle is an old Ringgold model and is about to fall apart. We hear that the army is working on an improved saddle made by a man named Grimsley. I hope we get them before I have to ride bareback.

Write real soon,
Your son,
Henry

(Jim Warren is an archaeologist living in George West.)