“Well, you never know which way those paisanos are going to jump,” quoth Jim.
The two prisoners were conducted to headquarters by Deaf Smith. The “little fellow” proved to be a guide for Santa Anna; and the other prisoner was a captain in the Mexican army, who had been carrying dispatches from General Filisola the Italian to Santa Anna. Deaf Smith had caught both of the men on the main road for Harrisburg.
The guide told General Houston that the Santa Anna army numbered 500 infantry and 100 cavalry. As for the dispatches in the leather bags——
“Jiminy!” cried Sion, who with Leo sought out the other boys, after having skirmished for the true news. “Deaf Smith says those dispatches were so fresh that the ink on ’em was hardly dry yet. Those were Travis’s deerhide saddle-bags—had his name on ’em. The dispatches told us just what we want to know. Santa Anna’s ahead, all alone, with only six hundred men. Urrea’s clear down at Matagorda. Gaona’s away back up north, toward Bastrop. He got lost. Filisola and Sesma are at the Brazos, near Fort Bend below San Felipe; and the only thing that’s liable to interfere is Cos the parole-breaker. Filisola’s hurrying him forward with five hundred men.”
“Yes,” put in Leo, “and Deaf Smith says Harrisburg was burned on the fifteenth, and the Mexicans got to the bay just in time to see President Burnet setting out in a skiff for Galveston Island. Only three printers were left in the town. Then Santa Anna started on for New Washington and Lynch’s Ferry, to cut us off if we retreated east. But when he finds we’re here to fight him, and have cut him off, in a pocket, he’ll have to get out either over the bayou again, or else by Lynch’s Ferry. He doesn’t know we’re here—he thinks we’re retreating to the Trinity and Nacogdoches. That’s what all the settlers have told him. And if we hurry we can beat him to the San Jacinto, and he’s our meat!”
“He sure is!” exulted Jim. “This army can lick any six hundred Mexicans that ever were born.”
“I reckon Sam Houston knew his business, after all,” admitted Sion.
That night the camp was impatient for the dawn. Deaf Smith estimated that the Mexican army were less than a day’s march away. If they weren’t overhauled before they crossed the juncture of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River they’d have a clear lead again, and could go on up to Nacogdoches, and summon the Indians of the northern prairies, and perhaps unite with the Gaona column.
General Houston and Colonel Rusk, the secretary of war, had had a conference.
“We don’t need to talk,” the general was reported to have said. “You think we ought to fight, and so do I.”