The two bands often raided together since many of the Comanche had been decimated by cholera and smallpox transmitted by whites when the gold rush wagons passed through the plains. The Johnsons built a house in Elm Creek in Texas, just south of territory occupied by the warlike Comanche and Kiowa tribes. Everything was strange to them: the cactus in all its hooked varieties, the elusive antelope in white bibs and black antlers, the red sandstone dug up in plates to build chimneys and fireplaces big enough to get into in case there was a shooting situation.”Īnd indeed, a shooting situation came soon enough. Long, attentive lines of timber ran like lost regiments along the rivers and creeks. “They had come to live on the very edge of the great Rolling Plains, with the forested country behind them and the empty lands in front. Jiles, who is a poet as well as an author of novels, paints the new alien landscape of these immigrants with an artistic eye:
This historical novel was fleshed out from what little is known about Britt Johnson, a freed slave who moved with his family from Kentucky to Texas in 1863.
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