“Texas,” declared the man with the strong voice which the lads had heard while upon the deck, “was never made for Mexicans. It’s a great country, and none but white men are fit to own it. I, for one, am going down there with a rifle that can snuff out a candle at fifty yards, and I’m going to have a personal word for Santa Anna if I ever run across him.”
A shout went up from the adventurers, rifle butts rattled upon the cabin floor and brawny fists thumped tables and the arms of chairs.
“Now you’re shouting!” cried another man, a lank backwoodsman in a fringed buckskin shirt. “Let them stop palavering and get to work. Greasers’ll never do anything but talk if you talk with them. Lead’s my way of conversing with such folks—lead out of a rifle barrel, and with a good eye behind it.”
“What’s the committee that’s got charge of things doing down there?” asked a booted and burly man in a soiled flannel shirt and a huge Remington revolver sticking in his belt. “Why don’t they get to some kind of an agreement, and let Sam Houston loose to march against the Greasers. As my friend here says, talk’s no good, if it’s not backed up by rifles. What they need is to give Houston about five thousand men who know how to shoot, and in three months’ time you’ll never hear another word from Santa Anna and his gang.”
While they talked, the boys kept their eyes fixed upon the people in the cabin, watching for Huntley or his shadow. Just then the whistle of the steamboat shrieked and the engine slowed down in answer to the pilot’s bell.
“We’re about to make a landing,” said Ned, his gaze going to a window. “See how near the Tennessee shore is.”
“It’s a place called Randolph,” said a planter who sat near by.
“Going to take on some passengers, I suppose,” said Ned.
“And while the boat’s doing that,” said Walter, steadily watching two figures who were pushing their way through the crowded cabin toward them, “I think you and I’ll be entertaining Colonel Huntley and his friend Mr. Barker.”