When I made the proposal he was eager as a child for it.
He did not want to delay an hour. He remembered the ethereal, vivifying
airs of Western Texas, and was quite sure if he could only breathe
them again he would be well in a short time. He was carried in a litter
to Vera Cruz, and then taken by sea to Brownsville. And really the
journey seemed to greatly revive him, and I could not help joining
in his belief that Phyllis and Western Texas would save him.
"But when we reached the Basque there was a sudden change, a change
there was no mistaking. He was unable to proceed, and I laid his
mattress under a great live oak whose branches overshadowed space
enough for our camp. I cannot tell you, Elizabeth, what a singular
stillness and awe settled over all of us. I have often thought and
wondered about it since. There was no quarreling, no singing, nor
laughing among the men, who were usually ready enough for any of them;
and this 'still' feeling, I suppose, was intensified by the weather,
and the peculiar atmosphere. For we had come by such slow stages, that
it was Indian summer, and if you can imagine an English October day,
spiritualized, and wearing a veil of exquisite purply-grey and amber
haze, you may have some idea of the lovely melancholy of these dying
days of the year on the prairie.
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