The camp was divided in opinion. Sion ruffled like an angry turkey-cock, and the majority of the men were almost as indignant. Some even called General Houston a coward—afraid to stand and fight. Only a few took a calmer view and stood up for him, pointing out that Sesma and Woll were being reinforced and that General Urrea was likely to come up at any moment, from below, with a new attack.

“As for Sam Houston being a coward,” spoke Dick Carroll, “you gentlemen misjudge him. No man who fought like he did under General Jackson, and had that arrow jerked out from him, flesh and all, is a coward. He charged those Creek breastworks away in front of his men. If he retreats now, he’s simply playing for time.”

Ernest glowed to hear such words. He knew that Sam Houston could be no coward.

“Well, boys,” spoke another in the group, “I’ve women and children between the Colorado and the Brazos, and I’m going to them this very evening and move ’em eastward, orders or no orders.”

A number of men did leave, to move their families. The general gave furloughs for this purpose to all who asked.

Camp was struck a little before dusk, and the march eastward toward the Brazos was begun. Passing back along the column, and eying it, the general turned and rode a short distance with Captain Robert Calder, near Ernest and Jim.

“I should be glad to have your views on this retirement, sir,” invited the general.

“I am willing to obey the orders of the commander-in-chief, general,” replied Captain Calder. “We could have whipped the enemy there at the Colorado. Our men all agree to that. But I suppose your idea is to draw the Mexicans further into the country, until you can do the job slick and clean.”

“This retirement is a necessity of war,” declared the general. “Yes, sir; we could have whipped the enemy, back at the Colorado; but we can’t fight battles without having men killed and wounded. We haven’t the means of conveying ammunition and baggage, not to speak of the wounded. A battle would handicap us fatally. Besides, a defeat of the enemy at the Colorado would inevitably have united all the Mexican columns against us. We will choose some good position on the Brazos near San Felipe, where by means of boats we can drop down or up, and give the enemy battle to our own advantage. I will do the best I can; but be assured, the fame of Jackson can never repay me for my anxiety and pain.”

The timber skirting the Colorado had been left behind when through the column spread an alarm. A body of troops were sighted, approaching across the prairie, from the south. Mexicans! A Mexican patrol—General Urrea’s advance guard? No! Scouts galloped out, to investigate, and scurrying back reported. Texans! More Texans! Reinforcements from the mouth of the Brazos!

The column was halted, to wait.

“Listen to the drum!” exclaimed Jim, as he and Ernest sat their saddles, watching. “They’ve got a drum!—and a fife!”

To brave beat of drum and piping of fife, amidst welcoming cheers the new troops arrived. Three companies they proved to be—numbering only 130 men in all—under command of Major John Forbes: Captain Amasa Turner’s company of regular infantry, and two companies of volunteers. They brought no cannon, and few horses; but, of great importance to Jim and Ernest, and Sion, they brought Leo Roark! From the wearied ranks he gaily waved response to his cavalry friends, and Sion also called his attention with a series of loud whoops.

The three companies fell into the place assigned to them by General Houston, and marched on, the drum rattling merrily and the fife tooting lustily. Music for the army!

That night at camp the four veterans of San Antonio had a reunion.

“What’s the meaning of this march, anyhow?” demanded Leo. “You-all are heading the wrong way.”

“We’re going to retreat till we can lick the Mexicans one bunch at a time,” answered Ernest.

“One man at a time, he ought to say,” growled Sion.

“Where are all your men, from your part of the country?” accused Jim of Leo. “We counted on five hundred of you. You’d better have left your drum and fife at home and brought cannon and mules.”

“Fetched in what men we could,” retorted Leo. “If you keep on retreating you won’t get anybody! The people want their homes protected. They aren’t going to fall back and leave their families. First they heard of the Alamo massacre, and now they’re hearing about Fannin’s defeat. When I left home my mother and the family were all packed up, ready to light out.”

“My folks have gone—took only the little they could carry,” said Jim, soberly.

“So have mine,” said Sion.

Ernest, hearing, was glad, for once, that his mother was in Cincinnati.

Leo had enrolled in the company from Velasco, near where he lived. He’d traded his shot-gun for a musket, but otherwise he was the same manly Leo of the campaign against Bejar.

On the next day, which was Palm Sunday, March 27, the timber along the Brazos River was reached. And when the march crossed the San Felipe road, from the Colorado to the Brazos, rain had begun to fall, so that all the bottom-lands were heavy with black mud.

Scores of settler families were pressing through the mud, for safety in the east. Carts filled with the feeble and the children and household goods were stuck fast in boggy places, and people, young and old, mainly women and children, were trudging ankle deep—many with no shoes, all wet and miserable.

“That’s sure a runaway scrape,” remarked Jim. And as the Runaway Scrape is the frenzied flight still known. “An awful pity, too. Expect my mother is out in the rain and mud, just like the rest. And Sion’s and Leo’s.”

Morning dawned damply upon a muddy camp. When orders to march were given, Captain Moseley Baker’s company refused to retreat any further; and the wagon oxen of the Captain Wiley Martin company could not be found. These two companies stayed behind; but the general, to avoid any quarrel, ordered Captain Baker to remain at San Felipe and guard the river crossing against the Mexicans, and for Captain Martin to guard the Fort Bend crossing below. So for a little time Jim and Leo and Ernest did without the pugnacious Sion.

In torrents of rain, Monday, the retreat continued, plastered with mud and drenched with water. Creeks were forded. The wheels of the baggage wagons that had been collected bogged to their axles, and several times General Houston clambered off his horse and impatiently put his shoulders to the tires, helping the men and oxen. His thin black coat was soaked through and through.

“The general of the army has no blanket,” Ernest and Jim heard him proclaim loudly, as he rode along with two or three of the officers. “I had a very good one; it might shelter me from this pitiless storm, but some scoundrel stole it. I am told,” he added, “that evilly disposed persons have reported that I am going to march you clear to the Redlands border of Texas. This is false. I am going to march you up into the Brazos bottoms to a position where you can whip the enemy ten to one, and where we can get an abundant supply of corn.”

It rained hard all that night—and a miserable night it was. Several beeves were driven in and killed for food. The army huddled around huge fires, cooking slices of beef and trying to dry their feet. The ground was too wet to lie on. General Houston sat on his saddle, his feet on a block of wood, and a borrowed blanket over his shoulders. Somebody at one of the messes started a song, in a pleasant tenor voice.

That was the way it began. The words drifted from fire to fire, in a plaintive melody. Jim, squatted beside Ernest—both of them soaked—grunted.

“That’s surely a fine song,” he said. “Talk about a bed of roses!”

“I’ll take a good hard plank for mine,” quoth Ernest. “Without dew. Am wet enough already!”

He nodded off, into a dose, but was awakened by Jim nudging him.

“Look at the fire,” bade Jim, in low tones. “San Felipe’s burning!”

The sky in the south was red, and growing redder. The rain had ceased, and upon the overcast sky the lurid glow mounted high and higher. All the camp was awake, watching, in a state of fresh alarm.

General Houston had arisen from his saddle seat, and was stalking from mess to mess.

“I gave no orders for this,” he repeated. “The citizens have done it. It is a military measure, to anticipate the enemy. But there is no battle. We hear no guns. The enemy shall not cross the Brazos. It is well defended. Should they reach the west bank at San Felipe they will find no shelter and supplies.”

However, the burning of the town—the first American town in Texas, located by Stephen Austin—put the army in the dumps again, and the song of “Will You Come to the Bower” was not renewed when the men prepared for another dismal march. Three taps of the drum, by the general himself, as the reveille, fell flatly on the heavy atmosphere. Some of the men had left families on the Brazos near San Felipe—some owned houses in San Felipe itself; and they hated to move further on, while behind them the smoke pall hung. Where were the Mexicans? Henry Karnes and the “Deaf Smith Spy Company” were constantly out, on the scout, but they brought in no definite news.

On March 31, which was Thursday, camp was made in the bottom-lands near Groce’s Ferry, of the Brazos between San Felipe and Washington. It looked as though this was to be a camp for several days, at least, for the general set everybody at work clearing away the brush on the margin of a large pond back from the river.

What next? Nobody seemed to know. The army had retreated over 200 miles from Gonzales, and now had dwindled down from the 1300 men at the Colorado to only a little more than 500 men. But the general was energy itself. He never quit for a minute. The steamboat Yellowstone, commanded by Captain Ross, was found at Groce’s Ferry loading with cotton for the Gulf. The general ordered this seized and held, to be used should the army cross to the east bank.

He formed the little army into regiments. General Burleson commanded the first, and Lieutenant-Colonel Sidney Sherman of the Kentucky volunteers (the company with the beautiful flag) was promoted to command the second. The cavalry were attached to this regiment, and now for the first time Jim and Ernest were under a settled officer. Leo remained in the infantry, under Colonel Burleson, and Sion was still down opposite the ruins of San Felipe, with the Captain Baker company.

The camp was aroused each morning by the three taps of the drum at the general’s quarters, and there were daily drills. There also was rain—rain, rain, rain, until the camp was a mud island, for the river Brazos overflowed and surrounded it. Rain, mud, and measles, and bad water; half the men ill with one disease or another, and the general laid up, part of the time, in a tent that he had procured.

Then, on the second of April, came bad news. It permeated the discontented camp like wild-fire. Colonel Fannin and his men had not been paroled, but had been killed: shot down, or bayoneted, on Palm Sunday, March 27, at Goliad, by the Mexican companies! Three hundred and twenty—think of it—320 of the rank and file, marched out upon the prairie, and slain by the Mexican soldiers! Santa Anna himself had sent the orders.

The New Orleans Grays, the Red Rovers of Alabama, the Mustangs of Kentucky, and all—all except twenty-six or twenty-seven who had dodged the bullets and had escaped in the brush. Colonel Fannin and Colonel Ward of the Georgians had been shot separately. It was worse than even the Alamo.

Now news was received, at last, from the Mexican army. The Deaf Smith Spy Company, who had been out on a long scout, returned with the word. The army were coming in three separate columns. Santa Anna was leading the centre column, from Gonzales straight eastward for Beason’s on the Colorado and thence to San Felipe. A southern column under General Urrea was marching from Goliad northeast for the coast. A northern column under General Gaona was marching by way of Bastrop (or Mina), on the Colorado above Moore’s Retreat for Nacogdoches in the far east. Six thousand soldiers in all was given, by the spies, as the number—and they were sweeping Texas with orders to shoot every Texan caught bearing arms. All the country was in full flight; the roads from the Brazos east were crowded with panic-stricken settlers.

Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president, joined the camp, with a company of eighty men from the Red Lands. He reported that Thomas J. Rusk, the secretary of war, was on his way to help in the fighting; and that two cannon from Cincinnati had been landed at the coast and were being hurried forward.

The general sent the Redlanders down river to reinforce Captain Baker’s company opposite San Felipe at the San Felipe crossing, and gave strict orders that no man was to leave the camp without permission. Secretary Rusk arrived on April 4; but even he could not calm the discontent. Were the army to stay here while the republic was being ravaged by Santa Anna? What was the matter with that Sam Houston, anyhow? Leo raged, Jim was sarcastic, and even Ernest felt his courage ebbing.

On April 7 the general issued an army order:

“Big words,” fumed Jim. “But what do they mean? Here we are, squatting in the mud and growing web feet. Couldn’t get off this island if the Mexicans were right opposite. Oh, yes; we’re safe; but what of the rest of Texas? What of our folks? Next thing, we’ll hear of some more massacres, down the river. I’m sick; I’ve had the measles and now I’ve got a cold. What we need is another general.”

That day cannon shots were heard, from down the river. A battle! The Mexicans were trying to cross at San Felipe. Now the camp was in a fever, indeed. Would Captain Baker and the Redlanders hold the crossing? The three boys listened with anxious hearts, for Sion was there in the fight.

The firing continued for two days, on and off. Then it ceased. Colonel Alex. Somervell came in with the report that the Mexican advance guard had retired without crossing. But there was considerable talk about making Colonel Sidney Sherman the commander-in-chief. However, in the morning notices, signed by General Houston, were stuck up with wooden pegs on the trees, saying that any man who attempted to organize volunteers from the army would be “court-martialed and shot.” This stopped much of the talk.

More recruits joined from East Texas. Among them was one especially nice-looking man, with the high-sounding name of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. He was from a famous Georgia family; had been a newspaper editor, and could write poetry. He had walked almost all the way up from Velasco to join the Texan army as a private. The men agreed that he would not remain a private long.

Colonel Rusk, the secretary of war, was reported to have been sent by the government on purpose to urge General Houston to fight. And a tart dispatch was received from the president.

The general appeared to pay no attention to this interference, as if he were bent upon pursuing his own plans. But it was rumored that one column of the Mexican army had crossed the Brazos, at last, and was heading eastward. This might be so, for on the morning of April 12 orders were issued to break camp and prepare to leave. All that day and half of the next day the steamboat Yellowstone and a ferry flat-boat were busy carrying the 523 men, the wagons and the horses and oxen, from the west bank to the east bank.

Affairs looked brighter. At Groce’s, on the east bank, the two cannon from Cincinnati were found waiting. They were iron six-pounders and had been presented by the citizens of Cincinnati to the Republic of Texas. It seemed good to Ernest to see something that had been in Cincinnati. He rather believed that his mother had looked upon these cannon. He wondered if she had guessed that they were coming straight to him—and why she had not thought to put a note in them!

No cannon shot accompanied them; all had been lost on the long way. But blacksmiths were set at work cutting up horseshoes and chains and other iron, to be tied in cotton bags, as canister. Colonel Hockley was placed in charge of the cannon.

Yes, one column of the Mexican army had crossed the Brazos. A dispatch from Captain Wiley Martin told this. A portion of the column had threatened him at Fort Bend, while the rest of the column had gone below and seized a ferry kept by an old negro. They had yelled to the negro in English, and he had thought that they were some Texans wanting the ferry.

The general promptly issued a proclamation, to reassure the people of Eastern Texas. He said:

But the Mexicans were marching on!

That night, tired of the nagging from Jim and Leo, who sided with the men who thought that they knew more than the general did, about a campaign, Ernest sought out Dick Carroll for comfort. He and Dick, at least, would stand by the general. There were others, too.

“Don’t you worry about the general, boy,” assured Dick. “He’ll hoe his row, in spite of the stones. And some day this army, and all Texas, will thank him. It takes a big man to manage a retreat. Anybody can fight, but few have the nerve to hold off till the proper time to fight. A lot of these complainers aren’t reasonable. Hyar we are, porely armed, porely drilled, porely provisioned, pulling all ways—some of us skipping off home without staying to fight—and we’re expected to stop right in their tracks an army ten times our size, veteran soldiers, the best in Mexico, and commanded by a general who’s never known defeat. We’ve got to oppose strategy to force. This one army is up ag’in really three armies, all bigger; and we can’t fight and run away to fight in another place, on account of the floods. Besides, we’ve got the Injuns to look out for. These East Texas settlements are open to attack from the prairies, and that northern column of Gaona is liable to fetch along Injuns. The Comanches and Cherokees are ready for the warpath, I hear tell.”

“But the general’s letting the centre column get ahead of us,” hazarded Ernest.

“No, he isn’t. He’s letting it get in front of us, and that means we’re behind it. It’s got to look two ways, now. And it’s marching further and further, and separating more and more from the other columns. Sam Houston wants it to run on the rope a bit longer; then he’ll lick it, and have time to tend to the others. That’s my notion of what Sam Houston is up to.”

“Where do you think they’re going, Dick?”

“Who? The centre column that crossed the Brazos? To Harrisburg, I reckon, and try to capture the government cabinet.”

“Is Santa Anna with them?”

“Don’t know. Nobody seems to know yet. But we’ll find out. About twenty miles beyond here the road forks: one fork continues on east to the Trinity and Nacogdoches, the other fork bends south for Harrisburg. And if we don’t take the south fork I miss my guess.”

It was generally known that all the companies down the Brazos had been ordered to meet the main body at Donoho’s Ranch, five miles east. This looked like business. To-night the camp was more cheerful. The fife played the tune “Will You Come to the Bower,” some of the men sang, and even Jim and Leo sought their blankets less disgruntled.

The next noon, of April 14, camp was made at Donoho’s, to await the companies that had been ordered up from below. This camp was rather hard on the Donoho place, for most of the fence rails were torn down to feed the camp fires. A number of refugee families were collected here on their flight to the Trinity River and eastward still. Jim looked in vain for his “folks.” The wearied outfits with their carts and oxen hastened onward, fearful lest the army pass them and leave them exposed to the enemy.

Captain Baker arrived to report that his company were on hand, camped by the road about three miles further on. Captain Martin also came in. He said, very distinctly:

“General, I have brought but my sword. On hearing that you are retreating to Nacogdoches my company refuse to remain with you, and declare that they must protect their families.”

“Are you and your men willing to retreat beyond the Trinity to Nacogdoches, captain?” asked one of the men, of Captain Baker.

“Never, never!” answered the captain, determinedly. “If General Houston will not take us to meet the enemy, we will elect a commander who will!”

The general was standing talking with Captain Martin only a few feet away, and heard. But he replied not a single word.

An old negro also arrived from below. He said that he had been the ferry-man near Fort Bend, whom the Mexicans had bamboozled. They had held him several days.

“Dey gwine straight on to Harrisburg to ketch the gubberment,” he proclaimed. “Santa Anna wif ’um. Yessuh, he wif ’um. I done saw him. He say: ‘You tell Sam Houston I know he up dere in de bushes, an’ when I get done wif dese land-robbers down hyar I’se comin’ up to smoke him out,’ Yessuh; dat’s what he say.”

Camp was made the next evening at Mr. McCurley’s ranch, thirteen miles east. More refugees were here. The Martin company had been ordered by the general to proceed on and to protect the settlers crossing the Trinity from the Indians. That suited the company better. But the Baker company were picked up, and Sion joined his three comrades again. He was gleeful, but also critical.

“We drove those Mexicans back from the river, all right,” he asserted. “We got fooled, though, once. Thought we saw a thundering big lot of cavalry coming full tilt, and after we’d set fire to the town, against ’em, we found out they were only a bunch of cattle. Anyway, here we all are, now. And if Sam Houston doesn’t let us take the Harrisburg road to-morrow, to meet up with Santa Anna, we’re going to elect a general who will.”

“Colonel Rusk says we’re going to Harrisburg,” spoke Ernest, hopefully.

“He does, does he?” responded Sion. “Huh! Maybe he’s the boss and maybe he isn’t. We’ll mighty soon find out, to-morrow.”

The march was resumed in a driving rain. The men trudged heavily, and even the horses seemed to share in the rebellious feeling. But General Houston had given no indication of what he had decided, and rather a pathetic figure he made, as he rode along in the pelting storm. He still wore his thin old black coat; his whitish hat flopped on his head, his legs were clad in baggy snuff-colored trousers and cowhide boots; and his sword was tied around his waist by buckskin thongs. A month’s beard covered his face.

The fife and drum had played a tune at the beginning; but when the Roberts ranch, where the road forked, was reached, the music stopped, and the rear of the column crowded up against the hesitating van. General Houston had spurred ahead. Mr. Roberts the rancher was standing at his gate, talking with several officers, as the general arrived. With the cavalry, in the advance, Ernest heard the words plainly.

“Is that the road to Harrisburg?” demanded the officers.

“Yes, sir,” answered Mr. Roberts; and he pointed. “This right-hand road will carry you down to Harrisburg as straight as a compass.”

“To the right, boys! To the right!” shouted the officers, galloping away.

As the word passed, a great cheer arose. The head of the column promptly turned into the south, on the right-hand trail. The music struck up blithely. The general sat his horse, watching, with a little smile on his haggard face.

And down the Harrisburg road briskly marched the column, to find Santa Anna, now fifty miles in the lead.