But the New Year had come, January in its turn had passed, and the news drifting in from a thousand sources, like dust from the desert, grew more alarming. The army organized by Santa Anna at San Luis Potosi was the largest that had ever been gathered in Mexico, with powerful artillery and a numerous cavalry. Santa Anna himself was at his best, drilling, planning, and filling his officers with his own enthusiasm. In Saltillo itself the people grew bolder. They openly said that it was time for the Americans to run if they would save themselves from the invincible Mexican commander and president. It seemed to many of the Americans even that it would be wise to retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, but the old general, his heart full of bitterness, gave no such order. He had begun the campaign in victorious fashion, and then he had been ordered to stop. He had asked to be allowed to serve as second to Scott in the great campaign that would go forward from Vera Cruz, and that had been refused. Then he had asked that more of his troops, especially the regulars, be left to him, and that, too, had been refused. He was expected to yield the ground that he had gained, and retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy. Phil saw General Taylor many times in those days. Any one could see him as he passed about the city and camp, a gray, silent man, with little military form, a product of the West and the frontier, to which Phil himself belonged. It was for that reason, perhaps, that Phil could enter so thoroughly into the feelings of the general, a simple, straightforward soldier who believed himself the victim of politics, a man who felt within him not the facility for easy and graceful speech and manners, but the rugged power to do great things. He was very gentle and kind to his men in these days. The soldier who had spent a lifetime on the frontier, fighting Indians and dealing with the roughest of his kind, was now more like the head of a great family, a band knitted all the more closely together because they were in a foreign land confronted by a great danger. Phil was picking up Spanish fast, and his youth, perhaps, caused the people about the city to make more hints, or maybe threats, to him than they would have made to an older man. Santa Anna had with him the whole might of Mexico. He would be before Saltillo in three days, in two days, to-morrow perhaps. The very air seemed to the boy to be charged with gunpowder, and he had his moments of despondency. But he had been through too much danger already to despair, and he allowed no one to think that at any time he was apprehensive.