page_175 < previous page page_175 next page > Page 175 Conn remembered nothing of their early years in the coastal settlement of San Patricio, although Bridget assured them they'd been happy there with their fellow Irish immigrants. He and James had been barely past their second birthday when the war against Mexico came. Along with many of the other settlers, Daniel had taken his family to safety in Nacogdoches in far East Texas, then joined the Texas Volunteers. "He was a fighting man, your father," Bridget once said, "so brave and handsome it like to broke my heart just to gaze upon him. Not that he's lost either the bravery or the looks, praise the saints." "I fought at San Jacinto beside General Houston himself," Daniel put in, "though by Irish standards it wasn't much of a fight. When I went back to San Patricio, I found our home looted and the livestock gone. They took just about all we owned in the worldyour mother's lace tablecloth she'd brought from the old country, the Bible she'd forgotten in her rush to leave. And what they couldn't take, they destroyed." "Who, Papa?" Conn remembered asking. "Who would do such a thing?" In his innocent, protected world he couldn't imagine anyone being so bad. "Thieves, drifters, bandits who crossed from south of the Rio Grande. 'Tis a shame, lad, but there's bad 'uns everywhere." All those years after the war, his voice had still held the bitterness of the family's losses. Daniel had never been a man to forgive and forget. He'd used his soldier's land grant to claim what  < previous page page_175 next page >