“Aw, ginger!” complained Jim, to Ernest, at the orders to unsaddle. “Why don’t we go ahead to San Anton’? These nights are getting right chill, and my blanket’s toler’ble thin and wearing thinner. ’Most of us fellows came in a hurry, to fight and get back again. We didn’t fetch any saddle-bags, expecting to camp!”
“We couldn’t take Bejar with only two hundred men, could we?” reminded Ernest.
“We could keep warm trying, anyhow,” grumbled Jim.
The discontent over the delay did not last long. Anybody could understand that to meet the trained Mexican soldiers in a place of their own choosing was not like a skirmish or a surprise; and that it was better to be slow than be sorry. Even Leo, who was more stubborn than Jim, finally admitted that perhaps they couldn’t fight Mexican soldiers as they’d fight Indians.
General Austin emphasized this in an address that he made, at inspection on the second day after the Guadalupe was crossed. He told the troops that he had drawn up a set of regulations for the Texas army; and so much depended upon this campaign against Bejar that it would be necessary that these regulations be closely obeyed, for the sake of good order and discipline. Otherwise, with every man acting as he pleased, there would be only disorder and confusion.
After the address the troops passed in review, the flag brought by the Harrisburg company floating gaily. Already the camp duties and guard-mountings under arms had had a good effect, for the different companies, both cavalry and infantry, marched in lines like veterans.
The regulations, posted in front of each company headquarters, covered every phase of army life so well that now anybody could see how badly needed they were.
The next day camp was broken. Colonel Milam and a company of scouts were sent ahead to spy upon the movements around San Antonio; and the army followed in military formation at last, with front and rear guards, and skirmishers out on the flanks.
“We sure aren’t pretty, but we’re awful tough to chew,” commented Jim, glancing back from where, beside Ernest, he rode in the Dickinson column of cavalry.
And, indeed, this first Texan army did not pretend to be pretty. The men were in their plain citizen-settler clothes――flannel shirts and calico shirts and buckskin shirts; trousers of buckskin and of homespun cloth; footgear of moccasins, boots and ragged shoes; headgear of caps from coonskins, foxskins and other pelts, and of broad-brimmed hats, black, gray, and beaver brown. Long-barrelled muzzle-loading rifles, muskets, shot-guns, and Mississippi yagers (that kicked tremendously), dragoon pistols and hunting-knives were the arms; and some of the men were not armed at all. The brass six-pounder from Gonzales was hauled by a yoke of oxen; a few provisions were packed on mules. General Austin, accompanied by Colonel Moore, Adjutant Warren Hall, Judge-Advocate William Wharton, and others of his staff, led.