He ran out of the bushes into which the wild turkeys had fallen, and gazed along the road. Just above was a curve, and around this came sweeping something which caused his heart to bound with delight. It was the white mustang. "By hookey!" came from Poke Stover. "It's him, eh, Dan?" "Yes. Oh, if only I had my lasso!" For that article was attached to the saddle of the mustang in the timber. Dan was on the point of crossing the trail when Stover caught him by the arm. "Don't scare the pony----" began the frontiersman, but he was too late. The white mustang had caught sight of Dan and he came to a halt instantly. Then he reared and plunged and swept by, and the last they saw of him, he was running toward San Antonio at the top of his speed. "We've seen him,--and that's all the good it will do us," remarked Poke Stover, as Dan gazed blankly up the road, and then at his companion. "Can't we catch him, Poke? Oh, we must!" "Might as well try to catch a streak o' greased lightning, lad." "I don't know about that. He looked tired, as if he had been running a long while." "You are sure on that? I didn't git no fair view of the critter." "Yes, he was covered with sweat. Perhaps somebody else has been following him." "Well, it won't do no harm to go after him,--seein' as how he is steerin' in our direction," said the old frontiersman, and, picking up the dead turkeys, they ran for their mustangs and leaped into the saddles. Several miles were covered, and they were on the point of giving up the chase when they encountered a settler with his prairie schooner, or big covered wagon, on his way to Guadalupe. "Ye-as, I seen thet air white critter jest below yere," the settler drawled. "He war goin' 'bout fifteen miles an hour, I reckoned. Looked tired. I wanted to go arfter him, but Susy, she wouldn't allow it." "No, Sam Dickson, ye sha'n't go arfter no game or sech," came from the interior of the schooner. "Ye'll settle down an' go ter farmin', an' the sooner the better 'twill be fer yer hide, mind me!" And the dark, forbidding face of a woman, some years older than the man, appeared from behind the dirty flaps of the wagon-covering. At once the settler cracked his whip and drove on. Poke Stover chuckled to himself. "Thar's married life fer ye, Dan," he remarked. "Do ye wonder I'm a single man?" "My mother wasn't of that kind," answered the youth, and then Stover abruptly changed the subject, and away they galloped again after the white mustang, little dreaming of the trouble into which that chase was to lead them. CHAPTER XXVII. THE MEXICAN ARMY AT SAN ANTONIO. The day was almost spent when, from a slight hill, they came in sight of San Antonio, the setting sun gilding the tops of the church steeples, and making the sluggish river appear like a stream of gold. "No white mustang yet," said Dan. "I reckon we might as well give up the chase and go right into the city."