“It surely would,” agreed Ernest. “But Sam Houston can talk to ’em if anybody can. They all trust him. And that helps Texas.”
“Reckon _so_,” admitted Jim. “Wonder, now, if Sion Bostick isn’t going to join this fracas. He ought to be coming along. Sort of looked for him at Burnam’s, but maybe he has to stay home and tend school.”
“Who’s Sion Bostick?” demanded Ernest. “Does he live down toward Beason’s?”
“Yep. Smart lad, too. His father died year before last, and that leaves the family short-handed. They came to Texas in ’28; they used to live over at San Felipe. There’s an Irishman teaches school at their house. Expect, though, if this war keep up the school’ll have to quit; and then we’ll see Sion――if his mother’ll let him come, and I rather guess she will, when he’s needed.”
Thudity-thud, thudity-thud, up the Gonzales road they all pushed, steadily rising and falling in their saddles, every eye grimly set before. They crossed the Navidad, and the Lavaca, and shortly after noon they crossed Peach Creek. With Gonzales only ten miles ahead, they strained their ears for cannon-shots. But they heard nothing. The landscape dozed undisturbed and peaceful.
“Gonzales isn’t taken _yet_,” vouchsafed Jim.
Ten miles to Gonzales――eight――five――three; and, hurrah, there clustered the little town, apparently just as when Ernest had left――so long ago, as seemed to him.
“No Mexicans in sight, boys,” cried voices in the column. “We’re in time.”
And now at thundering gallop they all forged on, into Gonzales, answering cheer with cheer.
Yes, Gonzales was still all right. No more Mexican soldiers had appeared, and this afternoon Almeron Dickinson and a party of the settlers had crossed the river and taken the corporal’s party prisoners. These were now held under guard in the Gonzales jail. The cannon had been buried in George Davis’s peach orchard, and the ground plowed over it. But it was to be dug up again, for the corporal had forwarded Alcalde Ponton’s answer, to Bejar, and also one of the soldiers had escaped; probably troops already were on their way from Bejar, which was only two days’ travel distant. So the cannon would be needed.
However, the original eighteen defenders had been increased by a dozen or more, before Ernest’s return with Jim and the other recruits; the ferry had been hidden in the slough, and every dug-out had been tied up on the east bank of the river; and this afternoon and all night more settlers flocked in――from Mina (which is now Bastrop) on the Colorado above Moore’s, and from Rutersville, beyond Hill’s place, and from Beason’s, below Burnam’s, and from San Felipe; so that in the morning of the 29th a hundred had gathered. More were coming.