THE BATTLE OF THE ALAMO
The scream and the pistol shot had awakened Mrs. Allison; and when the
boys appeared in the doorway with the fainting girl, she was awaiting
them.
“Put her down there,” she directed calmly, pointing to a couch covered
with a huge buffalo robe.
Under the attentions of Mrs. Allison, who was one of the women of
the border, and had been for years accustomed to sudden dangers and
calls for help, Ethel Norton quickly revived. In a very little while
she had recovered from her fright and was able to talk; and then Bill
Hutchinson introduced Walter and Ned, and they told their story once
more.
“Oh!” cried the girl, when she had heard it all and realized the
nature of the danger she had just escaped, “how can people be so cruel
and so wicked! And,” looking from one to the other of them, “how can I
thank you all for what you have done for me?”
They were still talking the situation over eagerly when the sound of
horses’ hoofs came from the trail. It was the party under old Dolph and
Jed.
“They never stopped,” cried Sid Hutchinson as he slid from the horse of
Jed, for he had been mounted behind that adventurer. “They fired back
at us, but kept right on running.”
“He means,” said Jed, with a laugh, “all of them that were able to.”
“What of Huntley and Davidge and Barker?” asked Ned, anxiously.
Old Dolph shook his head.
“They are among the ones not able to,” said he. “You youngsters need
never be uneasy about them varmints any more.”
For about a week after this Ethel Norton was quite ill, and still
another week passed before she felt able to travel; and the boys
remained in San Antonio watching the preparations going on for
receiving Santa Anna and his army; and also preparing for their own
long journey across the plains toward the Red River.
Davy Crockett gave them much good advice upon this point.
“Wait a few days,” said he; “I think a party will be going your way and
you can join them. And if there is not, we’ll have old Dolph guide you
back. We can spare one man, I suppose.”
The boys waited well into the third week; but there was no sign of a
party traveling in this direction. So Crockett consulted with Travis,
Bowie and old Dolph, and it was decided that they delay no longer.
“You were sent to get the girl to Louisville,” said Crockett to the
boys, “and I guess you’d better do it right away. In a country as
unsettled as this one is, too much delay is dangerous.”
“But you are going to stay, colonel?” said Walter.
“As long as Texas has a foe out in the open, I’ll stay,” replied the
backwoodsman. “Some day I may go back to Tennessee; but that all
depends on how things go with me. War, you know,” and he smiled in his
droll way, “is a mighty uncertain thing.”
During the remainder of that day the boys, together with the Hutchinson
brothers and old Dolph, looked to their arms and horses. A mustang
was presented to Ethel by Colonel Crockett; and at noon on the day
following the girl, the veteran Texan and the four boys mounted and
waved a good-bye to the heroes they were leaving behind--and heroes
they were--heroes such as the world has seldom seen.
Upon the day on which the young travelers recrossed the Colorado,
sentinels upon a roof top at San Antonio noted the advance of a
Mexican force. It proved to be Santa Anna with an army of seven
thousand men. The Texans quickly retreated across the river to the
Franciscan mission buildings, known as the Alamo. For there were only
one hundred and fifty men in the garrison, and they could not hope to
face seven thousand in the open.
The Alamo buildings consisted of a church, with a convent and hospital
behind it. Then there was a yard enclosed by a stone wall. The entire
place was too much for so small a force to defend; so Travis very
wisely stationed his men in the church, which was a stone structure
with powerful walls and facing the river and town.
“We have fourteen guns mounted on the walls,” said the young North
Carolinian as he swept the plaza before the mission with his keen eyes.
“And I reckon the Mexicans will know they’ve been in a fight if they
ever get within reach of them.”
Behind these cannon the Texan riflemen awaited the movements of the
force of Santa Anna. That commander at once grouped his guns in battery
formation and opened fire; the defenders of the Alamo replied with
their guns; but their deadly rifles were the most effective weapon;
with them they picked off the gunners as berries are picked from a bush.
Travis, while the way was yet open, sent out a message to the Texas
government asking that aid be sent them. All the time the force of
the Mexicans was growing larger. Colonel Fannin set out from Goliad
with three hundred men and four pieces of artillery, to the aid of the
Texans at the Alamo. But he had little provision, his ammunition wagon
broke down, and he hadn’t enough oxen to get his cannon across the
river. Fannin at length gave up the attempt and returned to Goliad.
However, a bold leader, at the head of thirty-two daring followers,
arrived on the night of March first and slipped through the Mexican
lines. This was Captain Smith and his little command from Gonzales; and
the defenders welcomed them with cheers.
On March fourth Travis sent off a last message to the Texan
authorities; this was carried by the brave Captain Smith, who set his
comrades’ lives above his own safety. The message said in part:
“... although we may be sacrificed to the vengeance of a Gothic enemy,
the victory will cost that enemy so dear that it will be worse than
a defeat.... A blood red flag waves from the church of Bexer and in
the camp above us, in token that the war is one of vengeance against
rebels. These threats have had no influence upon my men but to make
all fight with desperation and with that high souled courage which
characterizes the patriot who is willing to die for his country;
liberty and his own honor; God and Texas; victory or death!”
On the day following the sending of this message, Santa Anna assembled
his troops for an assault upon the Alamo; but it was not until the
succeeding day that the attack was delivered. Twenty-five hundred
troops were divided into four columns commanded by Colonels Duque,
Romero and Morales; they had bars, axes and scaling ladders. All the
Mexican cavalry were drawn up around the mission to see that no one
escaped.
Early in the morning the four columns, at the sound of the bugle,
dashed forward; the Texan cannon and the long rifles spat death in
their faces. The column under Duque recoiled from the north wall, their
commander badly wounded. East and west the attack also failed; the
Mexicans swarmed in a shouting mob upon the north side. Their officers
shouted and struck at them, forcing them to scale the walls. Once more
the sleet of bullets from the American rifles came forth, and once
more the attackers fell back. But again the officers forced them to
the walls; this time they scaled it and fell over it in crowds. By
sheer weight of numbers they forced the Texans across the convent yard
and into the hospital.
The captured cannon were turned upon the ’dobe walls of the hospital
and smashed them in; a howitzer, loaded with musket balls and broken
iron, was fired into the building and the Texans fell like sheep. Then
a desperate hand-to-hand conflict ensued. Crockett, Travis and Bonham
fought like the heroes of old. Knife, pistol and clubbed rifle played
their parts. Jim Bowie had been wounded while defending the wall early
in the fight. He lay upon a bed, coolly firing one pistol after another
as the Mexicans showed themselves. But he was finally killed by a
musket shot.
From room to room fought the Texans, contesting every step of the
way; the proof of their desperation is the great number of Mexicans
who fell in this bloody close-quarters fight; forty-five bodies were
counted in one spot after all was over.
[Illustration: A DESPERATE HAND-TO-HAND CONFLICT ENSUED]
Travis fell here, and so did the brave Colonel Bonham. With his loved
rifle clubbed in his hands and with many a foeman stretched beside him,
fell that gallant Tennessean, Davy Crockett, defending a doorway. Like
fiends, the Mexicans, urged by the bloody minded Santa Anna, stabbed
and shot, and when the fight was done, every Texan in the Alamo was
dead.
* * * * *
News traveled slowly in those days and the boys had reached the
Mississippi once more, they had said good-bye to Sid and Bill
Hutchinson and Dolph, and were about to embark upon a steamboat for
Louisville, when a New Orleans newspaper caught their eyes. And in it
they saw the first news of the fall of the Alamo, and of the noble
death of Colonel Crockett.
Ethel Norton was as shocked at the news as they were, for the boys had
been telling her of the backwoodsman’s good nature and rare qualities
of heart.
“And to think,” said she, the big tears starting in her eyes, “that all
his high hopes should end in death.”
“But it will not be for nothing,” said Walter Jordan. “Men like Colonel
Crockett and Travis and Bowie do not die this way without making a
stir. Who knows but their death will so arouse Texas and the Texans
that they will not wait to be attacked--that it may make them carry the
war to Santa Anna, and so set their country free.”
And it was not long after the three had arrived in Louisville, and
Ethel Norton with the services of the elder Mr. Jordan had proved her
identity, that news from far-away Texas showed Walter’s judgment to
have been good. Texas had declared herself free; Santa Anna had marched
another army against her, and was met by a force under the celebrated
Sam Houston on the San Jacinto River. The Mexicans were utterly
defeated, Santa Anna was a prisoner, and the Lone Star flag had taken
its place among the emblems of the world.