The six-pounder brass cannon, which had been sent to Gonzales, from the presidio at Bejar, for protection, was kept ready. Gonzales thought highly of that brass cannon. And while on herd with his horses Ernest carried his little rifle, and watched sharply.
The year 1834 passed; Stephen Austin had not returned, although he might be expected any week, for Santa Anna was “meditating” upon the reforms that he had promised to Texas. Mr. Austin, writing in March, declared that the national congress was considering statehood instead of a territory, and in his opinion the president was about to report “decidedly in favor” of it. Good news, this, for Texas!
But the same month the legislature down in Coahuila sold 400 square leagues of Texas land for $30,000—about a cent and a half an acre.
However, Santa Anna did not like this; the government wanted to use those lands. He declared the sale illegal.
Bad news soon followed, to upset the good. Santa Anna had determined to draw a new constitution; Coahuila, like Texas, stood firm for the republic’s constitution of 1824, which granted so much liberty. Santa Anna sent troops into Coahuila, under his brother-in-law, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, who from Saltillo ordered the militia at Monclova, where the legislature met, to disband. Governor Viesca opposed this, and with the state papers, the militia and Ben Milam and Dr. John Cameron and several other Texans, tried to change the capital to San Antonio de Bejar. He was captured—he and his party; and was sent as prisoner to old Mexico, and Ben Milam and John Cameron with him.
The word that Ben Milam had been taken created much excitement in Gonzales.
What stirred Texas the deepest, aside from the matter of a new constitution, was the order from Santa Anna to reduce the militia. Only one militia-man for each 500 inhabitants was permitted, and all the other militia must surrender their arms to the government! Many Americans had been enrolled in the militia, and their arms were their own.
“Never!” cried Dick Carroll, when he heard of the order. “What! Give up our rifles, and let the Injuns murder us all? A Texan can’t live, in these days, and protect his family, without guns.”
Anybody could understand this. Why, that very spring of 1835 had not Mr. Castleman, who had moved onward fifteen miles west from Gonzales, come riding furiously, with word that the Comanches had attacked and murdered a party of traders right on his place (just as they had tried to murder him a year and a half before, as Ernest well remembered), and that help was needed at once. A bold spirit was John Castleman, whose ranch house was a sort of fortress for travellers on the trail. From his house he and his wife had seen the massacre—and a horrid sight it was. So a posse immediately rode out from Gonzales—“Old Paint” Matthew Caldwell, Dan McCoy, Almeron Dickinson, Zeke Williams, Jacob Darst, Tom Malone, and twenty others, including, of course, Dick, with Bart McClure as captain. Ernest would have joined, but they would not accept him. They caught the Comanches and threshed them well. But supposing no guns had been allowed! Santa Anna, as said Dick Carroll, could go “plumb to thunder.”