For Austin to place his trust in Santa Anna, and to ask others to do the same, seemed to Houston to raise serious doubt about Austin’s sanity—or his integrity. “It awakened no other emotion in my breast than pity mingled with contempt,” Houston told a contemporary. “He showed the disposition of the viper without its fangs. The first was very imprudent, the second pusillanimous.”Beyond what he perceived to be Austin’s woeful misunderstanding of Santa Anna, Houston took personal offense at aspersions Austin cast on his good faith and that of others in Texas who were less sanguine than he—Austin—regarding the prospects of continued attachment to Mexico. In his August letter, Austin hinted darkly at machinations by his enemies in Texas to keep him imprisoned. “I have even been told,” Austin wrote, “that if I am not imprisoned for life and totally ruined in property and reputation, it will not be for the want of exertions or industry on the part of some of my countrymen who live in Texas.”
