Читать книгу With Sam Houston in Texas онлайн

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He apparently had not noticed Mr. Carroll and Ernest. But the two other men, taking another trail, saluted civilly as they passed.

“Well,” remarked the Texan, to Ernest, and gazing after the rapidly receding form of the general, “I reckon Sam Houston’s bound for Texas, all right. Didn’t I tell that steamboat captain and the rest of you that Houston would rise again? He’s made up his mind and nothing can stop him.”

Thus speaking, the Texan touched his horse, and with Ernest rode onward into the south.

That evening they half waded, half swam their horses, across a ford of a rapid river. On the farther bank Mr. Carroll raised his hat as if in a salute, and turned to Ernest with a smile.

“Now you’re in Texas, lad,” he said. “That was the Red River.”

They made camp, and lay down together in their wet clothes, feet to the fire, while a flock of turkeys (minus one which had supplied a supper) querulously piped in the trees beside the water before they, also, settled for the night.

Texas! Was ever a land elsewhere so vast and yet so beautiful as this, thought Ernest, as throughout the next day he and the Texan steadily rode onward, threading deeply-grassed prairies, circuiting patches of rich timber, crossing streams and swamps, and seeing scarce a sign of human life, but horses and deer and turkeys in abundance. Where were the Texas settlers?