God, Guns, and Texas

by Janie Harrison

released in January 2012.

Driven by a romantic nature and a curiosity of ancestral history, the author shares her discovery of a rich family heritage of love of God, love of country, and love of family. An actual account dating from revolutionary America, to the Civil War, to the development of early Texas, and finally to present day and her Magnificent Seven.

   His shivering body crowned with a fevered brow and hands too weak and limp to wipe it, knowing his inevitable demise was near at hand, may have deemed death a welcome friend. In the lucid moments, he may have traced the steps, the days, the circumstances that brought him to this place. Did he curse his decision? Did he blame others? Did he feel he had done his duty? Did he wish an unseen Minie ball had showered him in his own warm blood, sending him to the great beyond in an instant?
    A thousand miles from home and a million dreams away from his love, he lay in a makeshift bed, cold and alone, knowing his life was waning. He must have longed to feel Kitty’s soft body lying next to him, to listen to the whisper of her breath, to hear her utter his name. It had to be that he dreamed he was in her arms. Her gentle touch and loving words would have soothed him, even healed him. If she were with him, he would rise from this pallet of doom, for men draw strength from women.
    Some days, his dreams would seem so real. He would return to hold the children, to walk the fields with a tiny hand clasped in his. The childish laughter and playful smiles that faded in and out of his memory, he struggled to retain, but the cruel monster, delirium, snatched them. In the knowing moments, he would have longed to feel the hot Texas sun on his back as he harnessed up the team, to watch the steady plodding of the animals when he snapped the reins, to hear the wagon wheels part the water of the creek bed; to smell the intoxicating sweetness of the wild plums blossoms, to gaze on Kitty’s contented face framed by her sunbonnet as she sat next to him on the wagon seat. A longing for his peaceful life would seize his mind.