“It was an awful thing to do,” he said, “but it means now that Santa Anna will never conquer Texas.  No man can do such a deed and yet triumph.  Now, tell me how it is that you are not among the slain in the Alamo.”  Ned related the story anew, and he dwelt upon the fact that Santa Anna had spared him at the mention of Roylston’s name.  But when the story was finished, the merchant was silent for quite a while.  Ned knew by the contraction of the lines upon the great brow that he was thinking.  At last, he broke the silence.

“No doubt you have wondered that my name had so much influence with Santa Anna,” he said.  “I have hinted at it before, but I will explain more fully now.  I am, as you know, a merchant.  I trade throughout the whole southwest, and I have ships in the Gulf and the Caribbean.  One of them, the ‘Star of the South,’ on which we now are, can show her heels to anything in these seas.

“Earlier in my life I came in contact with Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  Like many others I fell for a while under his spell.  I believed that he was a great and liberal man, that he would even be able to pull Mexico out of her slough of misrule and ignorance.  I helped him in some of his young efforts.  The splendid hacienda that he has near Vera Cruz was bought partly with money that I furnished.

“But our friendship could not last.  Vain, ruthless, cruel, but with genius, Santa Anna can have no friends except those whom he may use.  Unless you submit, unless you do everything that he wishes, you are, in his opinion, a traitor to him, a malefactor and an enemy, to be crushed by trickery or force, by fair means or foul.  How could I have continued dealings with such a man?

“I soon saw that instead of being Mexico’s best friend he was her worst enemy.  I drew away in time, but barely.  I was in Mexico when the break came, and he would have seized and imprisoned me or had me shot, but I escaped in disguise.

“I retained, too, a hold upon Santa Anna that he has sought in vain to break.  Such a man as he always needs money, not a few thousands, but great sums.  He has been thrifty.  The treasury of Mexico has been practically at his mercy, but he does not trust the banks of his own land.  He has money not only in the foreign banks of Mexico, but also large amounts of it in two of the great banks of London.  The English deposits stand as security for the heavy sums that he owes me.  His arm is long, but it does not reach to London.

“He cannot pay at present without putting himself in great difficulties, and, for the time being, I wish the debt to stand.  It gives me a certain power over him, although we are on opposite sides in a fierce war.  When you gave him my name in San Antonio, he did not put you to death because he feared that I would seize his English money when I heard of it.