with lance and
bayonet, while the Americans, after firing their long rifles, clubbed
them, and fought desperately, one against many; and they also used their
bowie-knives and revolvers with deadly effect. The fight reeled to and
fro between the shattered walls, each American the center of a group of
foes; but, for all their strength and their wild fighting courage, the
defenders were too few, and the struggle could have but one end. One by
one the tall riflemen succumbed, after repeated thrusts with bayonet and
lance, until but three or four were left. Colonel Travis, the commander,
was among them; and so was Bowie, who was sick and weak from a wasting
disease, but who rallied all his strength to die fighting, and who, in
the final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with
his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then these
fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy Crockett.
Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his back to the wall,
ringed around by the bodies of the men he had slain. So desperate was
the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who thronged round about him
were beaten back for the moment, and no one dared to run in upon him.
Accordingly, while the lancers held him where he was, for, weakened
by wounds and loss of blood, he could not break through them, the
musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined
to give him mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he
was taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his fate
cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was left alive.
At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over. Every one of the
hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in death. Yet they died well
avenged, for four times their number fell at their hands in the battle.

Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his bloody and
hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling Texas plains, going
north through the Indian Territory, had told Houston that the Texans
were up and were striving for their liberty. At once in Houston's mind
there kindled a longing to return to the men of his race at the time of
their need. Mounting his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was
hailed by the Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their
forces, eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto,
he and his men charged the Mexican host