The soil was poor and he had neither the desire nor the ability to try again. The West called. Texans impoverished by the war, and the riff-raff left over from the army, were spreading far and wide to the north and west, lured on by something magnetic and compelling.

Lambeth journeyed across the Mississippi, to return with sad and imperishable memories of his brother, and with the means to fulfill his old forlorn hope—to find and stock a ranch in the West.

Two of Lambeth’s younger generation of slaves, out of the many who wanted to cleave to him, he listened to, appreciative of what their help would mean on such a hazardous enterprise as he was undertaking.

“But, Sambo, you’re a free man now,” argued Lambeth.

“Yes, suh, I sho knows I’se emancipated. But, Kuhnel, I don’ know what to do with it.”

This was a problem Sambo shared with the other slaves. He had been sold to the Lambeth plantation from the Texas plains, and was a stalwart, sober negro. Lambeth had taken Sambo on his latest buffalo hunts, finding in him a most willing and capable hand. Moreover he was one of the few really good negro vaqueros. It was Sambo who had taught Terrill to stick like a burr on a horse and to throw a lasso. And he had always been devoted to the girl. This last fact decided Lambeth.

“Very well, Sambo, I’ll take you. But what about Mauree?” And Lambeth indicated the handsome negress who accompanied Sambo.

“Well, Kuhnel, we done got married when you was away. Mauree’s a-devilin’ me to go along wid you. There ain’t no better cook than Mauree, suh.” Sambo’s tone was wheedling.

Lambeth settled with this couple, but turned a deaf ear to the other loyal negroes.

The morning of their departure, Terrill walked along the old road between the canal and the grove of stately moss-curtained oaks that surrounded the worn and weathered Colonial mansion.

It was early spring. The air was full of the sweet, fragrant languor of the South; mockingbirds were singing, full-throated and melodious; meadow larks and swamp blackbirds sang their farewell to the South for that season; the sky was blue and the sun shone warm; dewdrops like diamonds sparkled on the grass.

Beyond the great lawn a line of dilapidated old cottages faced the road, vacant-eyed and melancholy. From only a few rose the thin columns of blue smoke that denoted habitation. The happy, dancing, singing slaves were gone, and their whitewashed homes were falling to ruin. Terrill had known them all her life. It made her sad to say good-by to them, yet she was deeply glad that it was so and that slaves were no longer slaves. Four years of war had been unintelligible to Terrill. She wanted to forget that and all of the suffering and the bitterness.

When she returned from this, her last walk along the beloved old canal with its water-lily pads floating on the still surface, she found the horses in the yard, and Sambo carrying out her little brass-bound French trunk.

“Missy Rill, I done my best,” said Sambo, as he shoved the trunk into the heavily laden canvas-covered wagon.

“Sambo, what’re you sneakin’ in on me heah?” demanded Lambeth, his sharp dark eyes taking in the situation.

“Missy’s trunk, suh.”

“Rill, what’s in it?” queried her father.

“All my little treasures. So few, Dad! My jewelry, laces, pictures, books—and my clothes.”

“Dresses, you mean? Rill, you’ll not need them out where we’re goin’,” he replied, his gaze approving of her as she stood there in boy’s garb, her trousers in her boots, her curls hidden under the wide-brimmed, soft hat.

“Never?” she asked, wistfully.

“I reckon never,” he returned, gruffly. “After we leave heah you’re the same as a real son to me. … Rill, a girl would be a handicap, not to speak of risk to herself. Beyond Santone it’s wild country.”

“Dad, I’d shore rather be a boy, and I will be. But it troubles me, now I face it, for really I—I’m a girl.”

“You can go to your Aunt Lambeth,” responded her father, sternly.

“Oh, Dad! … You know I love only you—and I’m crazy to go West. … To ride and ride! To see the buffalo, the plains, and that lonely Pecos country you tell me aboot! That will be glorious. … But this mawnin’, Dad, I’m sorrowful at leavin’ home.”

“Rill, I am, too,” replied Lambeth, with tears in his eyes. “Daughter, if we stayed heah we’d always be sad. And poor, too!—But there we’ll take fresh root in new soil. We’ll forget the past.