You
must tuck your bowie-knife and your revolvers in your belt,
and take your rifle in your hand, and be ready to help us
drive the Mexican force out of this very city."
"When it comes to that I shall be no laggard."
But he was deathly pale, for he was suffering as men suffer
who feel the sweet bonds of wife and children and home,
and dread the rending of them apart. In a moment, however,
the soul behind his white face made it visibly luminous.
"Houston," he said, "whenever the cause of freedom needs me,
I am ready. I shall want no second call. But is it not
possible, that even yet--"
"It is impossible to avert what is already here. Within a few
days, perhaps to-morrow, you will hear the publication of an
edict from Santa Anna, ordering every American to give up his
arms."
"What! Give up our arms! No, no, by Heaven! I will die
fighting for mine, rather."
"Exactly. That is how every white man in Texas feels about
it. And if such a wonder as a coward existed among them, he
understands that he may as well die fighting Mexicans, as die
of hunger or be scalped by Indians. A large proportion of the
colonists depend on their rifles for their daily food. All of
them know that they must defend their own homes from the
Comanche, or see them perish. Now, do you imagine that
Americans will obey any such order? By all the great men
of seventeen seventy-five, if they did, I would go over to the
Mexicans and help them to wipe the degenerate cowards out of
existence!"
He rose as he spoke; he looked like a flame, and his words cut
like a sword.
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