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They entered another straggling town, smaller than San Felipe. Dick exchanged greetings with the people whom he passed; he turned his horse and Ernest’s into the public corral, for the night, and led the way, through the dusk, for supper and bed in his own cabin, which was to be Ernest’s also.

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Ernest awakened in the morning full of curiosity. While Dick Carroll was attending to some business matters, after breakfast, he himself had time to explore his new home. Gonzales was not much of a town, as yet, being smaller than San Felipe. However, it was lavishly laid out, six miles square, in blocks divided off by broad straight streets, which ran out into the open country, the majority indicated only by surveyor’s stakes and some indicated not at all. There were a Market Square, and a Military Plaza, and other public parks (as required by Mexican law); a hotel called Turner’s Inn; a sort of a fort, in case of Indian attacks; a store or two; and about twenty houses of logs and clapboards, and well scattered. On many of the squares there was only a single house; and on others none at all. The main residence section was the southwest corner of the tract, called the “inner” town. To north and east extended the “outer” town, sparsely occupied by ranches.