“Get your horses, boys!”
“No! Wait. Here comes the main army!”
And coming it was, in battle array: the infantry at quick step, the horses at an amble, the Lone Star flag of the Harrisburg company in the front; skirmishers out before and on either flank, and General Austin and his staff leading.
“Let’s find Leo,” proposed Jim. “Let’s meet ’em. There’s nothing more to do here. Some of the other men are going—see?”
For Colonel Bowie had left, and Henry Karnes, and several more, as if to report and to exchange news. Nothing loth was Ernest to follow their example. It was not pleasant, on this bloody prairie where so many bodies were lying. Why, around the cannon itself were sixteen.
He and Jim ran to seize their ponies, saddled and waiting in the protection of the timber skirting the bottom-land; and away they loped, to where the Travis troop and the main army had come together.
“We must follow them right into town,” was exclaiming General Austin. “Take them before they’ve recovered.”
“No!” protested Colonel Bowie. “That would be madness, general. Don’t try it. They’ve cannon enough mounted on the walls of the town and the Alamo to cut us to pieces on that open prairie. I’ve seen the cannon, and I know.”
“From what Bowie tells of the fortifications and the number of men manning them I agree with him, general,” added Captain Fannin, arriving.
Ernest looked in vain for General Houston, but he did not see the big form and the big hat anywhere.