y. Ned, after a
while, opened his eyes and looked at them dimly. He knew in a vague way
that these were familiar faces, but he remembered nothing, and he felt
no surprise.

"Ned! Ned! Don't; you know us?" said Will Allen. "We're your friends,
and we found you lying here in the bush!"

The clouds slowly cleared away from Ned's mind and it all came back, the
terrible and treacherous slaughter of his unarmed comrades, his own
flight through the timber his swimming of the river, and then the blank.
But these were his best friends. It was no fantasy. How and when they
had come he did not know, but here they were in the flesh, the Panther,
Obed White, Will Allen, "Deaf" Smith and Henry Karnes.

"Boys," he asked weakly, "how did you find me?"

"Now don't you try to talk yet a while, Ned," said Obed White, veiling
his feeling under a whimsical tone. "When people come back from the
dead they don't always stay, and we want to keep you, as you're an
enrolled member of this party. The news of your trip into the beyond and
back again will keep, until we fix up something for you that will make
you feel a lot stronger."

These frontiersmen never rode without an outfit, and Smith produced a
small skillet from his kit. The Panther lighted a fire, Karnes chipped
off some dried beef, and in a few minutes they had a fine soup, which
Ned ate with relish. He sat with his back against a tree and his
strength returned rapidly.

"I guess you can talk now, Ned," said Obed White. "You can tell us how
you got away from the Alamo, and where you've been all the time."

Young Fulton's face clouded and Obed White saw his hands tremble.

"It isn't the Alamo," he said. "They died fighting there. It was
Goliad."

"Goliad?" exclaimed "Deaf" Smith. "What do you mean?"

"I mean the slaughter, the massacre. All our men were led out. They were
told that they were to go on parole. Then the whole Mexican army opened
fire upon us at a range of only a few yards and the cavalry trod us
down. We had no arms. We could not fight back. It was awful. I did not
dream that such things could be. None of you will ever see what I've
seen, and none of you will ever go through what I've gone through."

"Ned, you've had fever. It's a dream," said Obed White, incredulous.

"It is no dream. I broke through somehow, and got to the timber. Maybe a
few others escaped in the same way, but all the rest were murdered in
cold blood. I know that Santa Anna ordered it."