He noticed a man standing at the landing, watching the ferry’s return across the water. The stance was familiar. When the man turned, James knew.

“Sly Shipman.”

Mordecai nodded. “He caught up to us at the Blackwoods. He’s stayed with us the rest of the way.”

James wondered if Shipman knew about Annie’s condition. Annie started to climb down from the wagon. James watched the gentle way Shipman helped her. He knew.

“I ought to kill him,” James muttered.

Mordecai looked surprised. “Why?”

“You’re too young to understand.”

“You’d make a widow out of Aunt Annie if you did.”

“A widow?”

“They found a preacher in camp right after we got here.”

James’s mouth dropped open. “They’re married?”

Mordecai smiled. “They stood out in the mud while the preacher married them. Wasn’t nothin’ fancy, but they sure did draw a crowd.”

Shipman saw James for the first time. James walked up and shook his hand. “Mordecai tells me you’re a Lewis now.”

“I taken a wife. I didn’t take a new name.”

“As strong-minded as Annie is, she’ll have you thinkin’ you did. You goin’ to take everybody to your place up on the Sabine?”

“No, I’m seein’ them onto the ferry, then I’m goin’ to find Houston’s army.”

“I was figurin’ on the same. We can ride together if it’s all right with you.”

“I got no objection.” He studied James intently. “You don’t look as eager as you did that time at Velasco.”

“I’m older now. I hope I’m smarter.”

As the ferry pulled in, James shook hands with Frank and the youngsters, then hugged the four women. Annie and Shipman said a long good-bye, holding one another until the ferryman shouted that he was in a hurry.

The two men stood together, watching the ferry pull away. James said, “We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

Shipman nodded, taking one last look at the ferry and its precious cargo. “Let’s be gettin’ about it, then.” They mounted their horses and started south.

XXVII

SAM HOUSTON’S troops looked nothing like James’s idea of an army, certainly nothing like those of General Cós, whom he had faced in the siege of San Antonio de Bexar. There were no uniforms, save for a few imaginative getups worn by officers who had followed their individual fancies. The men wore all manner of clothing, from buckskins to the muddied and torn remnants of what had probably once been suits fit to wear to a wedding. They wore wool hats, skin caps, wide-brimmed Mexican sombreros. They were farmers, hunters, trappers, old Texas settlers, and new volunteers from almost every part of the United States. About the only thing they had outwardly in common was that they were bearded and dirty, muddied from the struggle that had carried them across a large part of American Texas, retreating, halting, retreating again in the face of Santa Anna’s relentless march. They were hungry-looking, for rations were short. Only a few of the luckier ones, mostly officers, had tents to shelter them from the chilly April rains. They exhibited little of the discipline James had witnessed in the Mexican soldiers under Cós.