his dread feeling became most acute, I reined up my
horse, half resolved to gallop back; but again the wild idea passed from
me, and I continued irresolutely on.

Something of prudence, too, now restrained me from returning: it would
no longer have been safe to go back to the rancheria. As we issued from
the piazza, we could hear distant jeering, and cries of "_Mueran los
Tejanos_!" It was with difficulty I could restrain the rangers from
turning to take vengeance. One, the worse for mezcal, had loitered
behind--under the influence of the drink fancying himself secure. Him
the _pelados_ had "bonneted," and otherwise maltreated. They would have
murdered him outright; but that some of them, more prudent than their
fellows, had counselled the mob to let him go--alleging that the Tejanos
were yet "too near, and might come back."

Again I had strife with my men: they would have returned and fired the
place, had I permitted them. Fortunately, he who had been ill-treated
was a good-for-nothing fellow--scarcely worth the sympathy of his
comrades--and I was well satisfied at his having received a lesson. It
might be useful, and was much needed, for "straggling" was one of the
ranger-crimes most difficult to cure.

Along the road, we saw signs of a guerrilla. Shots were fired at us
from a hill; but a party sent to the place encountered no one.
Horse-tracks were observed, and once a brace of mounted men were seen
galloping away over a distant slope. It might be the band of Ijurra,
and doubtless it was so; but we fancied at the time that Canales himself
was near; and as an encounter with his large and well-organised force
would be a very different affair from a skirmish with the other, we felt
the necessity of advancing with caution.

The prospect of a "fight" with this noted partisan created quite an
excitement in the ranks. To have captured Canales--the "Chapparal Fox,"
as the Texans termed him--or to have made conquest of his band, would
have been esteemed a feat of grand consequence--only inferior in
importance to a pitched battle, or the taking of "Game-leg" (Santa Anna)
himself.

I confess that to me the idea of measuring strength with the famed
guerrillero was at that moment rife with charms; and the excitement
derived from the hope of meeting him, for a while abstracted my mind
from its painful bodings.

But we reached the town without seeing aught of the Chapparal Fox. It
was not likely that he was on our