“Hardly, my lad,” said Jim, grandly. “What do you think we’re made of? Colonel Moore sent the message on to San Felipe, with a right smart note to Colonel Austin, asking him to hurry along with more men, and while we waited we’d entertain Ugartechea and Cos, too, if he came. We’d hold ’em off some way.”
“If Cos and Ugartechea don’t come to us we’ll go to them,” added Leo. “We Brazos people enlisted to take Bejar and drive the Mexicans across the Rio Grande, where they belong. We won’t sit ’round here very much doing nothing. We want to finish this war and go home.”
The day proved to be a disturbing one. More scouts were ordered out, westward, to spy on the enemy’s advance; rifles and pistols were cleaned, the six-pounder brass cannon was placed in a better position (“so Ugartechea and Cos can find it easy!” laughed the men), and a general council of war was convened, at the Colonel Moore headquarters, to discuss matters. Colonel Moore was elected commander of the whole camp, until a commander-in-chief of the Texas army was chosen.
Expresses continued to arrive, with dispatches and tidings from the east.
“Suppose you’ve heard the latest about Sam Houston, boy?” hailed Dick Carroll, passing where Ernest was sharpening his knife on his boot-leg.
“Is he coming? Where is he?”
“Oh, he’ll come, when he’s needed. But just now he’s still down at San Augustine and Nacogdoches. He’s been elected commander-in-chief of all Eastern Texas, and the Redlanders [these, as Ernest knew, were the settlers in the Red River country, on the Texas northeastern border] are flocking to him by hundreds.”
“Good for the Redlanders!” cried Ernest. This news from Sam Houston certainly sounded like business. “What’ll we do? March to Bejar and clean the Mexicans out of Texas?”
“Go slow,” cautioned Dick. “You’re just like all these other fellows; spoiling for a fracas. Want to eat the Mexicans at a bite and go back home to their folks and crops. We’ve less’n three hundred men, and Bejar isn’t the only post we’ve got to tackle. There’s Victoria, and Goliad, south, on our flank—and I understand a hundred men are to be sent off against those places. As I calkilate, we gain by waiting a bit, and like as not some of those Mexicans who can’t stomach any dictator business will help us. De Zavala’s come in to San Felipe already, and offered himself to Austin.”
“Who! Lorenzo de Zavala, Dick?”