When the Texan government and the Texan army, numbering combined about a
hundred men, followed by most of the population, numbering fifty or
sixty more, filed off for Gonzales, the two sat once more on the same
porch, smoking their cob pipes. They were not ordinary men. They were
not ordinary scouts and borderers. One from the north and one from the
south, they were much alike in their mental processes, their faculties
of keen observation and deep reasoning. Both were now stirred to the
core, but neither showed a trace of it on his face. They watched the
little file pass away over the prairie until it was lost to sight behind
the swells, and then Smith spoke:
"I reckon you an' me, Hank, will ride toward the Alamo."
"I reckon we will, Deaf, and that right away."
Inside of five minutes they were on the road, armed and provisioned, the
best two borderers, with the single exception of the Panther, in all the
southwest. They were mounted on powerful mustangs, which, with proper
handling and judicious rests, could go on forever. But they pushed them
a little that afternoon, stopped for two hours after sundown, and then
went on again. They crossed the Colorado River in the night, swimming
their horses, and about a mile further on stopped in dense chaparral.
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