If ever there was a proof, from the results of pursuing an opposite course, that honesty is the best policy, it is to be found in the present state of Texas.
Chapter Twenty.
Happily for me and my two companions, there still remained two or three gentlemen in San Antonio. These were Colonel Seguin and Messrs Novarro, senior and junior, Mexican gentlemen, who, liberal in their ideas and frank in their natures, had been induced by the false representations of the Texians not to quit the country after its independence of Mexico; and, as they were men of high rank, by so doing they not only forfeited their rights as citizens of Mexico, but also incurred the hatred and animosity of that government.
Now that they had discovered their error, it was too late to repair it; moreover, pride and, perhaps, a mistaken sense of honour, would not permit them to remove to Mexico, although severed from all those ties which render life sweet and agreeable. Their own sorrows did not, however, interfere with their unbounded hospitality: in their house we found a home. We formed no intimacy with the Texians; indeed, we had no contact whatever with them, except that one day Roche thrashed two of them with his shillalah for ill-treating an old Indian.
Inquiries were made by Colonel Seguin as to where the Comanches might be found, and we soon ascertained that they were in their great village, at the foot of the Green Mountain, upon the southern fork of the head-waters of the Rio Roxo.
We made immediate preparations for departure, and as we proposed to pass through Austin, the capital of Texas, our kind entertainers pressed five hundred dollars upon us, under the plea that no Texian would ever give us a tumbler of water except it was paid for, and that, moreover, it was possible that after passing a few days among the gallant members of Congress, we might miss our holsters or stirrups, our blankets, or even one of our horses.
We found their prediction, in the first instance, but too true. Six miles from Austin we stopped at the farm of the Honourable Judge Webb, and asked leave to water our horses, as they had travelled forty miles under a hot sun without drawing bit. The honourable judge flatly refused, although he had a good well, besides a pond, under fence, covering several acres; his wife, however, reflecting, perhaps, that her stores were rather short of coffee or silt, entered into a rapid discussion with her worse half, and by-and-by that respectable couple of honourables agreed to sell water to us at twenty-five cents a bucket.
When we dismounted to take the bridles off our horses, the daughters arrived, and perceiving we had new silk sashes and neckerchiefs and some fine jewels, they devoured us with their eyes, and one of them, speaking to her papa, that most hospitable gentleman invited us to enter his house. By that time we were once more upon our saddles and ready to start. Roche felt indignant at the meanness of the fellow, who had received our seventy-five cents for the water before he invited us into the house. We refused, and Roche told him that he was an old scoundrel to sell for money that which even a savage will never refuse to his most bitter enemy.