the Bowie party were surely doomed.
Stephen Bowie had heard and had hastened in; was forming a company to
set out and avenge Jim, Rezin and the rest. But now a shout arose--

"Here they are! The Bowies are back! The whole party's in!"

Men and women rushed out of the adobe houses, for the plaza. All San
Antonio rejoiced. The escape was looked upon as a miracle.

One killed, three wounded, was the list; "but we fought fire as well as
Injuns." Of the one hundred and sixty-four Indians over eighty had
fallen--fifty-two of them never to rise again.

Such was "Bowie's Indian Fight," in the San Saba country of central
Texas, September 20, 1831.

The Bowie brothers did not give up. James was certain that the mine
was there, in the San Saba; it only waited to be reclaimed by brave
men. He organized another party; they were ready, and feared not, when
Texas rebelled against the unjust laws of the Mexican government. For
the next three years all was in confusion. On October 2, 1835, the
American settlers, collected at Gonzales, east of San Antonio, defied
the Mexican troops in the skirmish called the Lexington of Texas.

The noted Sam Houston was appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan
army, to fight for State rights. These were not times in which the
Bowie brothers or any other true man would search for a mere mine. On
March 2, 1836, Texas declared independence, as a republic. On Sunday,
March 6, General Santa Anna of the Mexican army stormed the old Alamo
mission of San Antonio with two thousand five hundred soldiers
supported by cannon.

Colonel Jim Bowie was among the defenders, but sick in bed. Of the one
hundred and eighty only three women, a baby, a little girl and a negro
boy were spared; and in bed Jim Bowie died, pistols in hand, face to
the doorway through which the Mexican soldiers crowded and shot
him--they were afraid to use their bayonets.

After the war Rezin Bowie went back to Louisiana. The "Bowie Mine," of
the old Amalgres workings in the dangerous San Saba country remained
unopened, for the secret of it perished with Jim Bowie himself.

CHAPTER XVII

THROUGH THE ENEMY'S LINES (1846)

THE THREE KIT CARSON COURIERS

On December 8, 1846, one hundred and twenty-five United States
dragoons, rangers and scouts were being closely besieged upon a bare
hill in Southern California by one hundred and fifty Mexican California
cavalry. The place was thirty miles northeast of San Diego,