ly
overhauled the little party. They saw the woman trying to urge her horse
to greater speed. But the poor beast, evidently exhausted, made no
response. The woman, turning in the saddle, looked back at her pursuers.

"By all that's wonderful!" exclaimed Obed White, "the bundle that she's
carrying is a baby!"

"It's so," said Smith, "an' you can see well enough now that she's one
of our own people. We must show her that she's got nothin' to fear from
us."

He shouted through his arched hands in tremendous tones that they were
Texans and friends. The woman stopped, and as they galloped up she would
have fallen from her horse had not Obed White promptly seized her and,
dismounting, lifted her and the baby tenderly to the ground. The colored
boy who had been walking stood by and did not say anything aloud, but
muttered rapidly: "Thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!"

Three of the five were veteran hunters, but they had never before found
such a singular party on the prairie. The woman sat down on the ground,
still holding the baby tightly in her arms, and shivered all over. The
Texans regarded her in pitying silence for a few minutes, and then Obed
White said in gentle tones:

"We are friends, ready to take you to safety. Tell us who you are."

"I am Mrs. Dickinson," she replied.

"Deaf" Smith looked startled.

"There was a Lieutenant Dickinson in the Alamo," he said.

"I am his wife," she replied, "and this is our child."

"And where is----" Smith stopped suddenly, knowing what the answer must
be.

"He is dead," she replied. "He fell in the defence of the Alamo."

"Might he not be among the prisoners?" suggested Obed White gently.

"Prisoners!" she replied. "There were no prisoners. They fought to the
last. Every man who was in the Alamo died in its defence."

The five stared at her in amazement, and for a little while none spoke.

"Do you mean to say," asked Obed White, "that none of the Texans
survived the fall of the Alamo?"

"None," she replied.

"How do you know?"

Her pale face filled with color. It seemed that she, too, at that moment
felt some of the glow that the fall of the Alamo was to suffuse through
Texas.

"Because I saw," she replied. "I was in one of the arched rooms of the
church, where they made the last stand. I saw Crockett fall and I saw
the death of Bowie, too. I saw Santa Anna exult, but many, many Mexicans
fell also. It was a terrible struggle. I shall see it again every day of
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