Lorenzo's Revolutionary Quest
Read Lorenzo's Revolutionary Quest Online
Authors: Lila Guzmán
REVOLUTIONARY QUEST
Lila Guzmán
and
Rick Guzmán
This volume is made possible through grants from the City of Houston through The Cultural Arts Council of Houston, Harris County.
Piñata Books are full of surprises!
Piñata Books
An imprint of
Arte Público Press
University of Houston
452 Cullen Performance Hall
Houston, Texas 77204-2004
Cover art courtesy of Giovanni Mora
Cover design by James F. Brisson
Guzmán, Lila, 1952â
     Lorenzo's Revolutionary Quest / Lila and Rick Guzmán.
          p.   cm.
     Sequel to: Lorenzo's Secret Mission
     Summary: In 1777, under orders from George Washington, sixteen-year-old Captain Lorenzo Bannister drives 500 head of cattle east from San Antonio, Texas, to feed the Continental Army while enemies, old and new, plot against him.
ISBN 1-55885-392-8 (alk. paper)
     1. Cattle drivesâFiction. 2. United StatesâHistoryâRevolution, 1775â1783âFiction. 3. SpiesâFiction. 4. OrphansâFiction. 5. West (U.S.)âHistoryâTo 1848âFiction I. Guzmán, Rick and Lila. II. Title.
PZ7.G9885Lm  2003
[Fic]âdc21 | 2003045995 |
 
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesâPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
© 2003 by Lila and Rick Guzmán
Printed in the United States of America
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Acknowledgments
Our thanks go Susan Rockhold, Helen Ginger, and Ross Sams for reading the manuscript and making invaluable suggestions. Without their insights, perpetual good humor, and multicolor pens, this book would not have been possible.
We owe a debt of gratitude to a nameless girl at Strake Middle School in Houston, Texas. She asked if Eugenie was in this book and changed the direction of
Lorenzo's Revolutionary Quest.
Special thanks to:
Jamie Slaughter, an expert on swords and dueling, for his technical help.
Virginia Sánchez, historical researcher of Hispanic genealogy, and Ronaldo Miera, president of the Hispanic Geneological Research Center of New Mexico, for answering questions about courtship and marriage in the 1700s.
Steve Parrett, of the Cowboyhat Cattle Company in Claremore, Oklahoma, for answering questions about the origins of the Texas longhorn breed.
Phyllis Helpenstine, an antiques dealer in Washington, Kentucky (
www.washingtonky.com
).
The historical interpreters of
www.soldados.org
. Their love of Spanish Colonial and Mexican history is inspirational.
Many, many thanks to Brother Edward Loch, S.M., of the San Antonio Dioceses for his expertise on San Antonio in the 1700s.
Colonel Bernardo De Gálvez, General George Washington, the Marquis de La Fayette, and Captain William Linn are historical figures. The rest are fictional.
The Spanish brought the first cattle to the New World in 1493. Texas Longhorns are their descendants.
The flatboats with barrels of beef for the Continental Army never arrived. They vanished without a trace. To this day, no one knows what became of them. It remains one of history's mysteries.
By the end of the American Revolution, the Spanish had given the patriots $5,000,000 and had loaned them 219 cannons, 30,000 muskets, 4,000 tents, and 30,000 uniforms. In 1779 Britain asked Spain to halt her aid. Spain refused.
In memory of the Lipan Apaches,
A vanished tribe,
And the vaqueros,
Mestizo forerunners of the American cowboy.
Sweat seeped down Lorenzo's back. August 1, 1777, was stifling hot. He reached for the canteen dangling from his saddle, uncorked it, and drank while his horse nibbled at wild flowers. Hand cupped over his eyes, Lorenzo scoured the plain for familiar landmarks.
The Province of Texas was an exciting place, and he was glad to be back. Here, he had learned how to track, fire a musket, and fight with a sword. Texas held sad memories, too. Here, he had lost his father, a physician for the Spanish army.
Red, a bear of a man with fire-red hair and a scraggly beard, reined in beside him and sleeved his forehead dry. He uncorked his canteen. “How much longer, Captain?”
It took Lorenzo a moment to react to the title. He still wasn't used to it. “We'll be in San Antonio by late afternoon.”
This was Lorenzo's first command. He had been surprised and delighted when George Washington commissioned him a captain in the Continental Army a month earlier on his sixteenth birthday. But then, a major on General Washington's staff was only nineteen, and so was the Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who had left his wife and come to America to offer his services.
General Washington had placed an important mission square on Lorenzo's shoulders. If it didn't succeed, the Continental Army would starve when it went into winter encampment. Finding enough food for an army
of ten thousand was difficult, but five hundred head of cattle would definitely help.
A half league back, Lorenzo's soldiers, two Pennsylvania woodsmen and a Frenchman, plodded along in a cloud of hoof-churned dust. Wranglers trailed behind them with the extra horses, called the remuda. Lorenzo had used a portion of the letter of credit issued by Congress to buy extra mounts to make the trip faster. In San Antonio, he would exchange them for range horses trained to drive cattle.
Lorenzo felt a twinge of guilt. Anxious to reach San Antonio, capital of Spain's northernmost province, he'd been driving the men hard, making them rise before first light and ride until dusk, with stops every two hours. By nightfall they would be stuffing themselves with fresh tortillas and cooling off in the San Antonio River. The trip would be little more than a bad memory.
One night, shortly after leaving New Orleans, Lorenzo had overheard a conversation between an old horse wrangler and Red.
“Captain Bannister looks wet behind the ears,” the man had remarked. “Do you think he's up to the task?”
“I sure do,” Red had replied. “Captain Bannister's got more common sense and gumption than most men twice his age. I've known him for about a year, and there ain't nobody I'd rather serve with.”
Lorenzo appreciated the sentiment and felt the same way about Red.
Side by side, they rode through knee-high grass.
“The Spanish king owns all this, huh?” Red said.
“Every mesquite tree, armadillo, and mockingbird.”
“I'd keep that under my hat if I was king. So far, I ain't seen nothing to brag about.”
“Hey! Watch what you say about Texas,” Lorenzo exclaimed in mock outrage. “This is home.”
“I figured you called New Orleans home.”
“It has definite charms,” Lorenzo said, thinking of his
fiancée, Eugenie, “but Texas will always be special to me.”
“Don't see why. It's hotter than Hades.”
Lorenzo laughed. “It could be worse. We could be in uniform.”
The mission to San Antonio required them to travel in disguise, so he and his men wore buckskin and moccasins. They had to keep secret from the British, that General Washington had sent him to buy cattle from the Spanish.
Lorenzo and Red stopped on a knoll and took shade beneath an oak tree.
Fifty or so head of cattle topped the ridge opposite them. Bawling and lowing, they surged over the hill in a cloud of dust.
“You asked what long-horned cattle look like.” Lorenzo gestured toward them. “See for yourself.”
“Good Lord!” Red exclaimed.
Lorenzo couldn't help but smile. He had grown up around them, and even he found them awe-inspiring. Full-grown bulls easily weighed two thousand pounds. Their horns curved out and twisted up.
“Look at that one.” Red pointed toward a huge rust-colored bull with a jagged blaze on its forehead. “Must be five feet from one horn tip to the other.”
“Sharp as bayonets, too.” A sudden thought struck Lorenzo. He drew a spyglass from his saddlebag and trained it on the brand burned into a cow's rump. It showed a circle topped by a cross.
“Those are mission cattle,” Lorenzo said. “What are they doing this far from the ranch?”
“Sure are moving fast.”
“Too fast. I have a bad feeling about this.” Lorenzo swung the telescope to the men driving them. He knew the vaqueros who worked the mission ranch, but none of these men looked familiar.
Lorenzo collapsed his telescope. He frowned. “Last
year cattle rustlers stole seven hundred head from the mission.”