“That’s what we hear,” agreed Leo. “But the best thing that’s happened is bread! Think of that! Real bread, made out of corn flour! I’m so blamed sick of jerked meat and bacon slivers that I can’t hardly swallow. But bread! Wait till I set my teeth in a slab of bread!”
“I don’t know,” mused Jim. “Bread’ll be mighty good, but what I liked to hear was about the cannon and reinforcements. I reckon we’ll need ’em, at Bejar, if Cos has fortified it the way Jim Bowie says he has. There are eight hundred men at Bejar and we’ve got less’n five hundred.”
“Do we have to wait till those New Orleans companies get here?” asked Ernest.
“Nobody’s said so,” answered Jim. “But we may wait for the Redlanders. Those East Texas folks want a chance, don’t they. And Austin’s looking powerful sick. We hear tell he offered the job of commander-in-chief to Houston, but Houston wouldn’t take it without being regularly elected. Anyway, I reckon Houston and a lot others’ll have to go in to San Felipe to that consultation. It meets on the first.”
“I don’t reckon we’ll retreat east of the Guadalupe, just the same,” asserted Leo, doggedly. “We ought to clean up Bejar, so we all can go home for Christmas. Sabe that?”
IX
WITH JIM BOWIE AT THE HORSESHOE
At any rate, the order came to move forward to the old mission Espada, where Colonel Bowie had reconnoitered and obtained the promise of provisions. The full name of the mission was San Francisco de la Espada—Saint Francis of the Sword. It had been located here in 1731, or more than one hundred years ago, but now was abandoned; the priests and the Indians their pupils had gone, and only a few Mexican paisanos and rancheros remained. By the empty mission building flowed the San Antonio River; and less than eight miles northwest up the river was Bejar.