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Mr. Carroll laughed.

“Down yonder we’ll find ’em,” he said. “But the country’s not crowded. Every man has plenty room. This is principally Comanche range—and those fellows we don’t want to see!”

After such long travel that Ernest completely lost track of the days, they came to the first real token of civilization: a straight, well-travelled road, with marks not only of horses’ hoofs but of wheels.

“The Royal Road,” explained Mr. Carroll, pausing. “Laid out by the Spanish before the Texas settlers entered. Runs clean across the middle of Texas between Nacogdoches of the east and San Antonio of the west. But we don’t follow it. We strike down by the San Felipe trace, for Gonzales. If we followed the San Antonio road we’d pass too far north.”

Presently he turned off, to the left, upon a much lesser road—another of those Texas trails or “traces.” Evidently this was the San Felipe trace. Now they met a few people, mainly hunters on horseback; and that night they stopped with a settler family at whose ranch-house, a rude log cabin, glassless and floorless, they were made more than welcome to a supper of corn-bread, venison and honey, and to a husk bunk.