ts.

Ned took a station with Obed in a clump of oaks that grew to the very
edge of the Guadalupe. There they sat a long time and watched the
surface of the river grow darker and darker. The Mexican camp had been
shut from sight long since, and no sounds now came from it. Ned
appreciated fully the need of a close watch. The Mexicans might swim the
river on their horses in the darkness, and gallop down on the town. So
he never ceased to watch, and he also listened with ears which were
rapidly acquiring the delicacy and sensitiveness peculiar to those of
expert frontiersmen.

Ned was not warlike in temper. He knew, from his reading, all the waste
and terrible passions of war, but he was heart and soul with the Texans.
He was one of them, and to him the coming struggle was a fight for home
and liberty by an oppressed people. With the ardor of youth flaming in
him he was willing for that struggle to begin at once.

Night on the Guadalupe! He felt that the darkness was full of omens and
presages for Texas and for him, too, a boy among its defenders. His
pulses quivered, and a light moisture broke out on his face. His
prescience, the gift of foresight, was at work. It was telling him that
the time, in very truth, had come. Yet he could not see or hear a single
thing that bore the remotest resemblance to an enemy.

The boy stepped from a clump of trees in order that he might get a
better look down the river. There was a crack on the farther shore, a
flash of fire, and a bullet sang past his ear. He caught a hasty glimpse
of a Mexican with a smoking rifle leaping to cover, and he, too, sprang
back into the shelter of the trees.

It was the first shot of the great Texan struggle for independence!

Ned felt all of its significance even then, and so did Obed.

"You saw him?" asked the Maine man.

"I did, and I felt the breath of his bullet on my face, but he gained
cover too quick for me to return his fire."

"The first shot was theirs and it was at you. It seems odd, Ned, that
you should have been used as a target for the opening of the war."

"I'm proud of the honor."

"So would I be in your place."

Others came, drawn by the shot.

"Was it a Mexican?" asked the Ring Tailed Panther eagerly. "Tell me it
was a Mexican and make me happy."

"You can be happy," said Obed. "It was a Mexican and he was shooting
with what the law would define as an intent to kill. He sent a rifle
bullet across the Guadalupe, aimed at our