Mexicans had erected
in the street beside the house. It now being midnight they concluded to
rest until the morrow. Meanwhile, they had elected Johnson their leader.

Ned was in the new attack and with Obed and the Ring Tailed Panther he
was in the Navarro house. It was the fourth that he had occupied since
the attack on San Antonio. He felt less excitement than on the night
before. It seemed to him that he was becoming hardened to everything. He
looked at his comrades and laughed. They were no longer in the semblance
of white men. Their faces were so blackened with smoke, dirt and burned
gunpowder that they might have passed for negroes.

"You needn't laugh, Ned," said Obed. "You're just as black as we are.
This thing of changing your boarding house every night by violence and
the use of firearms doesn't lead to neatness. If fine feathers make
fine birds then we three are about the poorest flock that ever flew."

"But when we go for a house we always get it," said the Ring Tailed
Panther. "You notice that. This place belongs to Antonio Navarro. I've
met him in San Antonio, an' I don't like him, but I'm willin' to take
his roof an' bed."

Ned took the roof but not the bed. He could not sleep that night, and it
was found a little later that none would have a chance to sleep. The
Mexicans, advancing over the other houses, the walls of all of which
joined, cut loopholes in the roof of the Navarro house and opened fire
upon the Texans below. The Texans, with surer aim, cleared the Mexicans
away from the loopholes, then climbed to the roof and drove them off
entirely.

But no one dared to sleep after this attack, and Ned watched all through
the dark hours. Certainly they were having action enough now, and he was
wondering what the fourth day would bring forth. From an upper window he
watched the chilly sun creep over the horizon once more, and the dawn
brought with it the usual stray rifle and musket shots. Both Texan and
Mexican sharpshooters were watching at every loophole, and whenever they
saw a head they fired at it. But this was only the beginning, the
crackling prelude to the event that was to come.

"Come down, Ned," said Obed, "and get your breakfast. We've got coffee
and warm corn cakes and we'll need 'em, as we're already tired of this
boarding house and we intend to find another."

"Can't stay more than one night in a place while we're in San Antonio,"
said the Ring Tailed Panther, growling pleasantly. "A