d. "How do you get all this information, Ord? You
recite it like you had read it all some place--like it were history."

Ord merely smiled. "Oh, I don't know _everything_, colonel. That is why I
had to come here. There is so much we don't know about what happened.... I
mean, sir, what will happen--in the Alamo." His sharp eyes grew puzzled for
an instant. "And some things don't seem to match up, somehow--"

Travis looked at him sympathetically. Ord talked queerly at times, and
Travis suspected he was a bit deranged. This was understandable, for the
man was undoubtedly a Britainer aristocrat, a refugee from Napoleon's
thousand-year Empire. Travis had heard about the detention camps and the
charcoal ovens ... but once, when he had mentioned the _Empereur's_ sack of
London in '06, Ord had gotten a very queer look in his eyes, as if he had
forgotten completely.

But John Ord, or whatever his name was, seemed to be the only man in the
Texas forces who understood what William Barrett Travis was trying to do.
Now Travis looked around at the thick adobe wall surrounding the old
mission in which they stood. In the cold, yellowish twilight even the
flaring cook fires of his hundred and eighty-two men could not dispel the
ghostly air that clung to the old place. Travis shivered involuntarily. But
the walls were thick, and they could turn one-pounders. He asked, "What was
it you called this place, Ord ... the Mexican name?"

"The Alamo, sir." A slow, steady excitement seemed to burn in the
Britainer's bright eyes. "Santa Anna won't forget that name, you can be
sure. You'll want to talk to the other officers now, sir? About the message
we drew up for Sam Houston?"

"Yes, of course," Travis said absently. He watched Ord head for the walls.
No doubt about it, Ord understood what William Barrett Travis was trying to
do here. So few of the others seemed to care.

Travis was suddenly very glad that John Ord had shown up when he did.

On the walls, Ord found the man he sought, broad-shouldered and tall in a
fancy Mexican jacket. "The commandant's compliments, sir, and he desires
your presence in the chapel."

The big man put away the knife with which he had been whittling. The
switchblade snicked back and disappeared into a side pocket of the jacket,
while Ord watched it with fascinated eyes. "What's old Bill got his
britches hot about this time?" the big man asked.

"I wouldn't know, sir," Ord said stiffly and moved on.

_Bang-