“That’s what I say,” vaunted Ernest. “We can lick those Mexicans to a finish. They can’t fight. They run.”
“I don’t know,” dubiously said Jim. “Ugartechea has four hundred regulars in Bejar, and if Cos joins him with those five hundred more we might have to do a lot of chewing before we could swallow.”
“Shucks!” grunted Leo. “Down our way we calculate one Anglo-Texan settler can lick ten Mexicanos. Look at what we did in ’32 when we drove out the Bustamantists. Anyhow, seems like the whole country is arming now. We passed a lot of people on the road. Fannin’s ‘Brazos Company’ is somewhere behind us.”
“A company of Brazos people who organized at San Felipe, I hear tell. Jim Fannin is their captain. He’s from Georgia and he’s been in Texas only a year; but he’s all man.”
“Doesn’t take long to make a Texan,” asserted Jim, much to Ernest’s satisfaction.
The “Brazos Company,” under Captain James W. Fannin, Jr., arrived. Speedily, indeed, the camp and town were full of notables. There was boyish William Travis, who so hated Mexican tyranny; and Colonel Pat Jack, who with Travis had been cast into a Mexican dungeon, at Anahuac in 1831; and Henry Karnes, a trapper from Arkansas, whose hair was so red that the Apache Indians thought it was his “medicine” charm, and let him go after they had captured him; and Colonel Edward Burleson, who had served under General Andrew Jackson, along with Sam Houston, against the Creek Indians, in Alabama; and Dr. James Grant, a Scotchman who owned a great estate in Coahuila; and Captain Jesse Burnam, of Burnam’s Crossing; and Colonel Branch T. Archer, who had been an Aaron Burr conspirator and had fled from Virginia on account of a duel; and Rezin Bowie, Jim Bowie’s brother――the real inventor of the Bowie knife and as good a man as Colonel Jim. Colonel Jim was in Bejar, ’twas said, with his wife; but he could be counted on.
“I reckon Ben Milam wishes he was here, too, instead of in prison at Monterey,” quoth Ernest; and his companions gravely nodded.
Meanwhile scouts were out and sentries were posted, for Colonel Ugartechea, in command of the Mexican post at San Antonio, would not long be idle after the defeated Lieutenant Castañeda reported to him; and General Cos was marching westward from the coast to reinforce him. The camp was full of rumors and alarms.