In Texas with Davy Crockett

The towering stacks of the steamboat “Mediterranean” sent their clouds of smoke, black and wind rent, across the sky; her sharp bow cut the yellow waters of the Mississippi and dashed the spray as high as her rails.

The cabins were thronged with passengers; the forward deck was tiered high with bales and barrels and boxes of merchandise.

Two boys sat by the rail upon the upper deck; their faces were earnest and they talked in low tones.

“Are you quite sure that Sam Davidge is on board, Walt?” asked one.

“I’d know him among a whole city-full, let alone a cabin-full,” answered Walter Jordan. “And I’ve seen him three times to-day.”

The other boy frowned and looked out over the wide river toward the Arkansas shore.

“It’s queer,” said he. “It’s very queer that he should just happen to be going down the river at the same time we are.”

Walter Jordan gave his friend a quick look.

“Ned,” said he, “chance has nothing to do with it--as I think you know.”

Ned Chandler nodded.

“He’s on board because we are; he’s trying to find out where we are going.” The boy ran his fingers through his short light hair, and his blue eyes snapped. “I never did think much of Davidge; and I think less of him now than I did before.”

Walter Jordan leaned back in his chair and clasped one knee with his hands. He was a tall, well-built young fellow of eighteen with a broad chest and shoulders, and a good-looking, resolute face.

“When we boarded the ‘General Greene’ at Louisville,” said he, “I thought I saw Davidge in the crowd. But you know what a miserable, wet night it was and how the lamps on the pier flickered. So I couldn’t be sure.”

“You never mentioned it to me,” said Ned, complainingly.

“I didn’t want to until I was sure. I thought there was no use getting up an excitement about a thing that might turn out to have nothing behind it.”

From somewhere around the high tiers of bales, a negro deck hand picked a tune out of a banjo; and the rhythmic shuffle and pit-pat-pit of feet told of another who danced to the music.

“All the way down the Ohio on the ‘Greene’ I noticed you were very quiet and watchful,” spoke young Chandler. “But to me it only meant that you were careful. I never thought of anything else.”

Walter Jordan looked at his friend, and there was a troubled look in his eyes.

“And Sam Davidge isn’t all we have to worry us,” said he, in a lower tone. “When we reached the Mississippi, and changed to this boat, I noticed something else.”

Ned caught the troubled look, and though he did not in the least suspect the cause of it, his own round face took on one just like it.

“What was it?” he asked.

“Have you seen a man on board whom they all call Colonel Huntley?”

Ned’s eyes went to the cabin door where he had noticed two persons a few moments before; the two were still there and intently examining them.

“Yes,” said Ned. “I know whom you mean.”

“I didn’t understand it, and I don’t like it,” said Walter, the troubled look growing deeper, “but there is never a time I look toward him that I don’t find his eyes upon me.”

“Humph!” said Ned. And then: “Well, Walt, he’s not changed his ways any. Don’t look around just yet, or he’ll see that we’ve been speaking of him. He’s over by the cabin door behind you, and he’s looking this way for all he’s worth.”

“Alone?” asked Walter.

“No. That fellow Barker is with him.”

“Barker’s like his shadow,” said Walter. “You never see one without the other.”

Colonel Huntley was a man of perhaps forty years, tall and powerfully built. He wore a long frock coat of gray cloth, doe-skin trousers, and long shining boots. Upon his head was a bell-crowned beaver hat with a curling brim. In the immaculately white stock about his neck was a large diamond set in rough gold.

The person beside him was a young fellow of perhaps twenty, with huge, thick shoulders and a round bullet head.

“Tell me,” said Ned, his eyes upon the two but his mind, apparently, upon a subject altogether foreign to them, “do you think Colonel Huntley has anything to do with Davidge?”

“I feel sure of it,” replied Walter. “When either of us is about, Sam keeps hidden. But when the coast’s clear, or they think it is, he is to be seen in out-of-the-way corners, earnestly discussing something with Colonel Huntley.”

“I can see that I’ve been missing a great deal,” said young Chandler. “But that’s past. In the future I’m going to keep both eyes wide open. Earnest conversation in out-of-the-way corners means only one thing. And that is: that something is under way which has a good bit to do with our trip to Texas.”

There was a silence for a space. Ned continued covertly to inspect the two at the cabin door. Walter gazed ahead along the broad stretch of the Mississippi; on the left was the thickly timbered shore of Tennessee; and that of Arkansas frowned at them from the right.

The “Mediterranean” was a large boat; she was deeply loaded with cargo and carried a great throng of passengers. But passengers were always plentiful in those early days of the year 1836; for the situation between Texas and Mexico had grown acute; war had spread its sombre wings for a terrible flight across that new land; the adventurers and soldiers of fortune of the States were swarming toward the southwest.

Those men who had fought in the many wars with the Indians, who had carried the line of the frontier forward step by step, who had leveled the wilderness and subdued the forces which spring up in the path of civilization, had long ago turned their eyes toward the vast empire north of the Rio Grande. They saw it loosely held by an inferior race; they saw a hardy, fearless band of Americans resisting oppression and preparing to repulse the advance of Santa Anna. And so each steamer down the Mississippi carried a horde of them, armed and ready to do their part.

Since boarding the boat the boys had heard little else but Texas. The name seemed to be on every tongue. And even now, as they sat thinking over the turn that seemed to have taken place in their own affairs, the loud voices that came to their ears from the cabin held to the subject.

“A pack of mongrels, that’s what they are,” said a voice above the clatter. “And not a good fight among them. The idea of their trying to dictate to a free people like the Texans what shall and what shall not be done.”

Another man seemed stunned by the immense area of the new land.