Ned uttered a cry of grief, and it was taken up by all the Texans who had seen their leader fall.  A half dozen men rushed forward and dragged away his body, but that night they buried it in the patio.  His death only incited them to new efforts.  As soon as his burial was finished they rushed another house in their slow advance, one belonging to Antonio Navarro, a solid structure only one block from the great plaza.  They also stormed and carried a redoubt which the Mexicans had erected in the street beside the house.  It now being midnight they concluded to rest until the morrow.  Meanwhile, they had elected Johnson their leader.

Ned was in the new attack and with Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther he was in the Navarro house.  It was the fourth that he had occupied since the attack on San Antonio.  He felt less excitement than on the night before.  It seemed to him that he was becoming hardened to everything.  He looked at his comrades and laughed.  They were no longer in the semblance of white men.  Their faces were so blackened with smoke, dirt and burned gunpowder that they might have passed for negroes.

“You needn’t laugh, Ned,” said Obed.  “You’re just as black as we are.  This thing of changing your boarding house every night by violence and the use of firearms doesn’t lead to neatness.  If fine feathers make fine birds then we three are about the poorest flock that ever flew.”

“But when we go for a house we always get it,” said the Ring Tailed Panther.  “You notice that.  This place belongs to Antonio Navarro.  I’ve met him in San Antonio, an’ I don’t like him, but I’m willin’ to take his roof an’ bed.”

Ned took the roof but not the bed.  He could not sleep that night, and it was found a little later that none would have a chance to sleep.  The Mexicans, advancing over the other houses, the walls of all of which joined, cut loopholes in the roof of the Navarro house and opened fire upon the Texans below.  The Texans, with surer aim, cleared the Mexicans away from the loopholes, then climbed to the roof and drove them off entirely.

But no one dared to sleep after this attack, and Ned watched all through the dark hours.  Certainly they were having action enough now, and he was wondering what the fourth day would bring forth.  From an upper window he watched the chilly sun creep over the horizon once more, and the dawn brought with it the usual stray rifle and musket shots.  Both Texan and Mexican sharpshooters were watching at every loophole, and whenever they saw a head they fired at it.  But this was only the beginning, the crackling prelude to the event that was to come.

“Come down, Ned,” said Obed, “and get your breakfast.  We’ve got coffee and warm corn cakes and we’ll need ’em, as we’re already tired of this boarding house and we intend to find another.”

“Can’t stay more than one night in a place while we’re in San Antonio,” said the Ring Tailed Panther, growling pleasantly.  “A restless lot we are an’ it’s time to move on again.”