ily the "bowie-knife" was being adopted by the hunters,
backwoodsmen, desperadoes and all. Some wore it in their belts; some
wore it in their boots.

The Spanish from the south had been in Texas long before the Americans
were admitted; the Spanish military post of San Antonio de Bejar was
founded in 1718, to protect the Catholic missionaries there. Two
hundred miles to the northwest of San Antonio the Spanish priests had
started the mission of San Saba, in 1857, among the Lipan Apaches; but
that had been destroyed in the spring of the next year by the
Comanches, Wichitas, Tawehash, and other Indians who hated the Apaches
and the Spaniards both.

They had other reason, than revenge upon the Lipan mission Indians and
the Spanish who were helping their enemies. Along the San Saba River
there were rich veins of silver which the Tawehash owned. Miners from
the mining district of Amalgres, Mexico, came to the mission and worked
the veins, and sent the precious metal away. The Indians did not wish
to have their silver taken; and they set out to close the mines. This
they achieved in one stroke--wiped the mission and the pupils and the
miners from the face of the valley.

For almost seventy-five years the "New Amalgres" mines, as they were
known, of the San Saba, remained only as a secret to the Indians. No
outsider could get near them; no Indian would show them to the
stranger: and of course the longer they were hidden from view, the
richer they grew in story and guess.

About the time that he was married to the lovely daughter of
Vice-Governor Juan Veramendi, Jim Bowie himself, with a party of thirty
other fearless bordermen, started from San Antonio to prospect, and
discover the storied Amalgres mines, which would make their fortunes.

Before swinging north they traveled one hundred miles west, to the Frio
River country; here they came upon an outcrop of silver and sunk a
shaft; at the same time they built a rock fort near a spring on a ridge
between the forks of the Frio, so as to stand off the Indians.

The Indians found them very promptly; in the early morning drove them
from their shaft to the rock fort, and besieged them hotly all the day.
These Texans were good shots; they were Texan Ranger stuff--and the
Texan Rangers have been unmatched as frontier fighters. But though the
Indians could not get in, they themselves were out-numbered and could
not get out; could not even get to the spring, and what with t