Читать книгу With Sam Houston in Texas онлайн

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Thus he appeared on the upper deck.

“Howdy?” he greeted cordially, surveying the passengers. “Going or coming?”

He was a spare, tall, sinewy, bronzed man, with thick black beard, eagle eye, and hooked nose.

“Haw haw!” they laughed. “Wall, stranger, now you’re guessin’.”

“Whar might you be from?” demanded a spokesman.

“Texas—best country on earth; where all you fellows ought to be.”

Texas! Magic word! Before he had left Cincinnati, and all the way down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and up the Arkansas, Ernest had been hearing of “Texas, Texas, Texas”—a country which, although a part of Mexico, seemed to be a regular goal for Americans, who journeyed there, to tracts of land which had been assigned to American colonies; and there they were given acres and acres for a mere song. And here was a real Texan, was he?

“What might yore name be, stranger?” pursued the spokesman.

“Dick Carroll, gentlemen; from Gonzales in the DeWitt colony.”

“Fresh from Texas, be ye? Wall, what’s the chance down thar now? I hear tell you’ve been havin’ some right smart fightin’ with those thar Mexicans.”