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Boot-Hill
by
Thus in the forefront pass lean forms clad for the most part in garments fringed with buckskin. You can see where some have torn off portions of the fringes to clean their rifles.
Old-fashioned long-barreled muzzle-loaders, these rifles; and powder-horns hang by the sides of the bearers. They are long-haired men; and their faces are deeply burned by sun and wind, one hundred and eighty-three of them; and where they died, fighting to the last against four thousand of Santa Ana’s soldiers, rose the first boot-hill. That was in San Antonio, Texas, at the building called the Alamo; and in this day, when schoolboys who can describe Thermopylae in detail know nothing of that far finer stand, it will do no harm to dwell on a proud episode ignored by most text-book histories.
On the fifth day of March, 1836, San Antonio’s streets were resonant with the heavy tread of marching troops, the clank of arms and the rumble of moving artillery. Four thousand Mexican soldiers were being concentrated on one point, a little mission chapel and two long adobe buildings which formed a portion of a walled enclosure, the Alamo.
For nearly two weeks General Santa Ana had been tightening the cordon of cavalry, infantry, and artillery about the place. It housed one hundred and eighty-three lank-haired frontiersmen, a portion of General Sam Houston’s band who had declared for Texan independence. The Mexicans had cut them off from water; their food was running low. On this day the dark-skinned commander planned to take the square. His men had managed to plant a cannon two hundred yards away. When they blew down the walls the infantry would charge. It only remained for them to load the field-piece. Bugles sounded; officers galloped through the sheltered streets where the foot soldiers were held in waiting. There came from the direction of the Alamo the steady rat-tat-tat of rifles. The hours went by but the cannon remained silent.
A little group of lean-faced men were crouching on the flat roof of the large out-building. The most of them were clad in fringed garments of buckskin; here and there was one in a hickory shirt and home-spun jeans. Six of them, some bareheaded and some with hats whose wide rims dropped low over their foreheads, were clustered about old Davy Crockett, frontiersman and in his day a member of Congress. Always the six were busy, with ramrods, powder-horns, and bullets, loading the long-barreled eight-square Kentucky rifles. The grizzled marksman took the cocked weapons from their hands; one after another, he pressed each walnut stock to his shoulder, lined the sights, pulled the trigger, and laid the discharged piece down, to pick up its successor.
He crouched there on the flat roof facing the Mexican cannon. As fast as men came to load it, he fired. Sometimes a dozen soldiers rushed upon the muzzle of the field-piece surrounding it. At such moments Davy Crockett’s arms swept back and forth with smooth unhurried swiftness and his sinewy fingers relaxed from one walnut stock only to clutch another; his hands were never empty. Always a little red flame licked the smoke fog before him like the tongue of an angered snake. He was getting on in years but in all his full life his technic had never been so perfect, his artistry of death so flawless, as on this day which prefaced the closing of his chapter. The bodies of his enemies clogged the space about their cannon; the rivulets of red trickled from the heap across the roadway. The long hours passed. Darkness came. The field-piece remained silent.
Long before daylight the next morning the four thousand were marching in close ranks to gather for the final assault. The sun had not risen when they made the charge. The infantry came first; the cavalry closed in behind them driving them on with bared sabers. The Americans took such toll with their long-barreled rifles from behind the barricaded doors and windows that the foot-soldiers turned to face the naked swords rather than endure that fire. The officers reformed them under cover; they swept forward again, and again fell back. Santa Ana directed the third charge in person. They swarmed to the courtyard wall and raised ladders to its summit. The men behind bore those before them onward and literally shoved them up the ladders. They overwhelmed the frontiersmen through sheer force of numbers. Colonel W. B. Travis fell fighting hand to hand here. The courtyard filled with dark-skinned soldiers.