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What he and Mr. Carroll talked upon, late into the night, Ernest did not know—he did not stay awake to hear.

“Thirty miles to-day,” quoth the Texan, as in the morning he and Ernest ambled out of San Felipe. “Fifty to-morrow, and then we’re there.”

The trace continued into the west. And again it was a rather lonesome trail, save for the very few ranches, and an occasional traveller by horse—now and then an American in buckskins or coarse cloth, and now and then a swarthy Mexican enveloped in a blanket. If there were 20,000 Americans settled in Texas, they must be settled at great intervals; and this Ernest soon learned was true.

“Yon’s the Colorado,” informed Mr. Carroll, toward evening, as they jogged slowly, saving their horses for the longer ride to-morrow. “The Burnams live across on the west bank. Hope the captain’s at home. Want you to meet him. He’s four-square. One of the original Austin settlers, he is. Came out hereabouts from East Texas along in ’22. Took sick in the War of 1812, and he was the porest man in Texas, I reckon. Born pore, in fact—and when he married, in Tennessee, his wife had to sell her stockings to get plates to eat off of. But he’s getting ahead, now, and he’s a powerful Injun fighter. That’s the kind of stuff we have in Texas, to make a state; and it’s the right stuff, too.”