Speedily the word of the approaching visitor spread throughout the deck, and the passengers dropped every other amusement, to watch and hazard guesses. As the boat drew nearer, it was seen to be a dug-out, hollowed from a single large log. The paddler was bearded and evidently was a white man. He wore a broad-brimmed black felt hat and a buckskin shirt; and a long-barrelled rifle leaned against the gunwale beside him. He scarcely looked up until his dug-out grazed the gunwale of the steamboat. Then he tossed a plaited hemp painter or tie-rope aboard, a couple of roustabouts held the dug-out steady, and grasping his rifle he followed the tie-rope with himself, clambering easily over the bow. He strode for the stairs. In addition to hat and shirt, he wore buckskin pantaloons and moccasins; a powder-horn and bullet-pouch, and bowie-knife in hide scabbard. Thus he appeared on the upper deck. “Howdy?” he greeted cordially, surveying the passengers. “Going or coming?” He was a spare, tall, sinewy, bronzed man, with thick black beard, eagle eye, and hooked nose. “Haw haw!” they laughed. “Wall, stranger, now you’re guessin’.” “Whar might you be from?” demanded a spokesman. “Texas――best country on earth; where all you fellows ought to be.” Texas! Magic word! Before he had left Cincinnati, and all the way down the Ohio and the Mississippi, and up the Arkansas, Ernest had been hearing of “Texas, Texas, Texas”――a country which, although a part of Mexico, seemed to be a regular goal for Americans, who journeyed there, to tracts of land which had been assigned to American colonies; and there they were given acres and acres for a mere song. And here was a real Texan, was he? “What might yore name be, stranger?” pursued the spokesman. “Dick Carroll, gentlemen; from Gonzales in the DeWitt colony.” “Fresh from Texas, be ye? Wall, what’s the chance down thar now? I hear tell you’ve been havin’ some right smart fightin’ with those thar Mexicans.” “Yes; give us the latest news, sir,” requested the lieutenant. The Texan eyed him, and thumped his rifle butt emphatically on the hot deck. “I will, and gladly. News? Full of it. Fighting? Well, I reckon you-all know what’s been the trouble. By the Mexican constitution of 1824 all the states of the Mexican Republic were guaranteed rights and privileges, same as the states of the United States, and we Texans looked forward to having our own legislature and governor. Then that Don Anastasio Bustamante rose for the presidency of Mexico, overrode the constitution, made a sort of one-hoss monarchy of all Mexico, and followed out the plan they’d tried before of putting soldiers――the wust kind, being mostly thieves and murderers from the prisons――over us in Texas, oppressing Americans with taxes, selling our lands, saying that no more American settlers should come in, and such like.” “I know,” nodded the lieutenant.