Oh, I tell you she was a land of plenty."

The pioneers of Texas belong to a day and generation which has almost
gone. If strong arms and daring spirits were required to conquer the
wilderness, Nature seemed generous in the supply; for nearly all were
stalwart types of the inland viking. Lance Lovelace, when I first met
him, would have passed for a man in middle life. Over six feet in
height, with a rugged constitution, he little felt his threescore
years, having spent his entire lifetime in the outdoor occupation of a
ranchman. Living on the wild game of the country, sleeping on the ground
by a camp-fire when his work required it, as much at home in the saddle
as by his ranch fireside, he was a romantic type of the strenuous
pioneer.

He was a man of simple tastes, true as tested steel in his friendships,
with a simple honest mind which followed truth and right as unerringly
as gravitation. In his domestic affairs, however, he was unfortunate.
The year after locating at Las Palomas, he had returned to his former
home on the Colorado River, where he had married Mary Bryan, also of the
family of Austin's colonists. Hopeful and happy they returned to their
new home on the Nueces, but before the first anniversary of their
wedding day arrived, she, with her first born, were laid in the same
grave. But grief does not kill, and the young husband bore his loss as
brave men do in living out their allotted day. But to the hour of his
death the memory of Mary Bryan mellowed him into a child, and, when
unoccupied, with every recurring thought of her or the mere mention of
her name, he would fall into deep reverie, lasting sometimes for hours.
And although he contracted two marriages afterward, they were simply
marriages of convenience, to which, after their termination, he
frequently referred flippantly, sometimes with irreverence, for they