They turned from the forest into the prairie and rode northward at a good gait.

“That was a fine scheme of yours, Ned,” repeated the Ring Tailed Panther, “an’ nobody could have done it better.  You set the fire an’ here we are, together ag’in.”

“I was greatly helped by luck,” said Ned modestly.

“Luck helps them that think hard an’ try hard.  Didn’t that fellow, Urrea, give you the creeps?  I had my doubts about him before, but I never believed he was quite as bad as he is.”

But Ned felt melancholy.  It seemed to him that somebody whom he liked had died.

“I saw him talking to you and Obed,” he said.  “What was he saying?”

The Ring Tailed Panther frowned and Ned heard his teeth grit upon one another.

“He was sayin’ a lot of things,” he replied.  “He was talkin’ low down, hittin’ at men who couldn’t hit back, abusin’ prisoners, which the same was Obed an’ me.  He was doin’ what I guess you would call tauntin’, tellin’ of all the things we would have to suffer.  He said that they’d get you, too, before mornin’ an’ that we’d all be hanged as rebels an’ traitors to Mexico.  He laughed at the way he fooled us.  He said that spat he had with Sandoval was only make-believe.  He said that we’d never get San Antonio; that he’d kept Cos informed about all our movements an’ that Santa Anna was comin’ with a great army.  He said that most of us would be chawed right up, an’ that them that wasn’t chawed up would wish they had been before Santa Anna got through with ’em.”

“Many a threatened man who runs away lives to fight another day,” said Obed cheerfully.

“That’s so,” said the Ring Tailed Panther, “an’ I say it among us three that if we don’t take San Antonio we’ll have a mighty good try at it, an’ if it comes to hangin’ an’ all that sort of business there’s Texan as well as Mexican ropes.”

They reached another belt of forest about 3 o’clock in the morning, and they concluded to rest there and get some sleep.  They felt no fear of the Mexicans who, they were sure, were now riding southward.  They slept here four or five hours, and late the next afternoon reached the first settlement on the Brazos.

Ned and his companions spent a week on the river and when they rode south again they took with them nearly a hundred volunteers for the attack on San Antonio, the last draft that the little settlements could furnish.  Very few, save the women and children, were left behind.

On their return journey they passed through the very forest in which Ned had made his singular rescue of Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther.  They saw the camp and they saw the swath made by the fire, a narrow belt, five or six miles in length, ending as the Ring Tailed Panther had predicted at a curve of the creek.  The Mexicans, as they now knew definitely, were gone days ago from that region.

“Perhaps we’ll meet Urrea when we attack San Antonio,” said Ned.