The white woman’s baby began to cry. The impatient Antelope wrested it from its mother’s arms and impaled it on a spear. The baby quivered and died while the woman screamed.

Buffalo Caller thought that a regrettable waste. The child might have grown up to be useful. He did not feel pity for mother or child, however. Both were Texan, and pity on an enemy was a dangerous indulgence for a warrior. An enemy spared was an enemy who might have to be faced again another day.

Linnville was a small but prosperous seaport, its several warehouses holding goods brought in by ship for wagon and cart transport to such inland towns as San Antonio and Nacogdoches.

As had been the case at Victoria, the townspeople took little notice of the approaching warriors. Buffalo Caller guessed the huge horse and mule herd had misled them into assuming the visitors were traders like the Mexicans at Victoria, bringing animals to barter or sell.

Citizens of the town began to shout and scream as they belatedly recognized the disaster thundering down upon them. They were too late to mount a defense the way those in Victoria had done. By dozens they scrambled toward the shore. Men, women, and children ran in desperation. They piled into small boats tied to the wooden pier and frantically rowed away into the sea.

Farther out, Buffalo Caller saw what appeared to be a large house floating, a curl of black smoke rising from its tall chimney. Beyond the steamship, he could see nothing but water and more water, endless to the horizon, reflecting the sunlight and burning his eyes. He stared in wonder. People had told him of such strange things, wooden houses that sat atop the water, but he had never quite believed them.

He saw warriors kill a white man and drag two struggling women out of a boat, one white and one whose skin was black. They also captured a child.

Antelope shouted, “Too many are getting away.” He forced his horse out into the surf, trying to catch one of the boats and its shrieking passengers. Buffalo Caller followed so far that the water rose up and soaked his moccasins, chilling his feet. He loosed a couple of arrows, but the boats bobbed like fallen leaves on the waves, and the stone-tipped shafts fell harmlessly into the gulf. He chose to waste no more, though Antelope kept trying. Buffalo Caller turned back, for the town lay open and defenseless, awaiting the raiders’ pleasure. Several townspeople lay dead in the streets, caught and killed before they could reach the boats.

Buffalo Caller moved toward a large building a short distance from the docks. The Mexican guides had promised that the warehouses would be full of goods wondrous beyond imagination. The People could take whatever they wanted and be welcome to it. There was no shame in stealing from Texans, the biggest thieves of all.

Some of the boats went all the way out to the ship that lay offshore. Others stopped and simply floated along out of range, their passengers watching helplessly while the town fell to the invaders like wild plums dropping from a tree.