So many summers have come and gone. Half of a century has ensued, blotting out all but a few nebulous, fragmented memories: a stifling Texas sun beating down on pools of rippling blue water… whales and dolphins dancing over their holding tanks as if celebrating life in the Oceans of Eden...

The early Anglo military campaigns into the three forks of the Trinity had hardly been decisive. But if they had intimidated the Indians at all, if they had compelled the warriors to move their main camps with their women and children westward, then the expeditions had served a purpose...

The seventy men rode in the semblance of a military column through the north Texas prairie, the grass tall and still green from the spring rains. However, the men's clothing displayed no semblance of military uniform. They wore coats, vests, shirts, and breeches of homespun cotton or wool...