James looked back once before the wagons passed out of sight. “You don’t reckon he’ll have any trouble gettin’ into Texas?”

“I doubt it. But I won’t be surprised if he causes a lot of trouble after he gets there.”

The Mexican government’s prohibition against further immigration into Texas from the United States of the North remained officially on the books, but after a few months it had begun to be honored mainly in the breach. Newcomers filtered across the border in ever-growing numbers, or arrived by ship at the mouth of the Brazos and other ports. They were hampered but little by a small military force that at first could not begin to catch them all and after a time did not seriously try. Officials in Mexico’s interior wrung their hands over the Americanization of Texas, but they could do little. Internal power struggles and recurring revolutions kept the central government hamstrung. It could not control the upheavals close at hand, much less do anything of consequence in distant Texas, a northern adjunct to the border state of Coahuila. One after another, presidents and statesmen deplored the fact that Texas had become more American than Mexican, but concern over their own individual survival took precedence over this affront to national honor.

James paid little mind to the turmoil that kept festering to the surface deep in Mexico except as it might affect the trading business he conducted in a loose partnership with Sly Shipman. He found many settlers in agreement with him that this instability was a potential hindrance to the peaceful settlement of Texas, and he wondered aloud sometimes if Travis might be correct in saying that Texas should attach itself to the United States and cut its ties to Mexico. He found many of the newcomers to be of that mind. The older settlers, in the main, were more inclined to bide their time and hope that conditions in Mexico would finally settle down. Mexico, they said, had been good to them in terms of generous grants of land. They had much to lose by angering Mexico into punitive action.

That, he remembered, had been the sentiments of his brother Andrew. He had never heard Michael express much of an opinion on politics. Michael was a doer, not a talker. On matters of this kind, James pondered what Michael would do, and did likewise.

James had traveled over much of settled Texas in his trading enterprise, though he avoided San Felipe and the upper Colorado where his brothers and sister lived. Messages relayed to him by Michael and Annie through old Villaret warned him that the army officer who had sought his blood was still around, still appearing periodically at the Lewis cabins without warning in hopes of catching James there on a visit.

“We would love to see you,” Annie had written, “but we fear the time is not yet. Wait and have patience. Officers change stations. The land does not move away, nor do we. Someday, dear brother. Someday.”