in the army increased. Seeing this, Austin moved his command still
closer, and settled into a regular siege of San Antonio. The scouts,
under Colonel Bowie, surrounded the town, to give warning of the
approach of any reinforcements for General Cos, who remained within,
still barricading the streets and wondering how soon the revolutionists
would attack him.

In the meantime, a general meeting of citizens and political leaders
was held at San Felipe, and at this convention, as it was termed,
Austin was elected as a commissioner to seek aid in the United States.
This left Austin's place in the army vacant, and General Edward
Burleson, an old Indian fighter, was selected to fill the position.

General Cos was boxed up in San Antonio with a force estimated at from
twelve hundred to sixteen hundred men. Many of his soldiers belonged to
mounted companies, and it became a problem, not only how to feed the
men, but also how to feed so many animals. There were rations to hold
out for some time, but little forage. To make the matter still more
difficult for the Mexican commander, Bowie and others ordered all the
grass in the immediate vicinity of San Antonio burnt. This caused one
or two small fires among the huts on the outskirts of the town, and
came near to starting a panic.

At last General Cos felt that he must either have forage for his
soldiers' horses, or else slaughter them, and he hired bodies of the
Mexican farmers to go out, during the night, to gather such grass as
could be gotten within a reasonable distance of the town. These bodies
of men invariably went out under the protection of one or more
companies of cavalry.

The expeditions after forage brought on what was called the Grass
Fight. Among Bowie's scouts was an old frontiersman called Deaf Smith,
and one day when Smith was out he discovered a body of farmers and
cavalry, about a hundred strong. The panniers of the horses and mules
were stuffed with grass, but as the body was a long way off, Smith
mistook them for some troops come to reinforce General Cos, and
supposed the stuffed panniers to be filled with silver to pay off the
Bexar garrison.

Without waiting to make certain about his discovery, Deaf Smith rode
pell-mell into the camp of the Texans. "The reinforcements are coming!"
he shouted. "Ugartchea is here!"

"Ugartchea! Ugartchea!" was the cry taken up on all sides, and it was
not long before Colonel Bowie set off with a hundred of the best Tex