W. B. Travis, Lieut.-Col., Commanding.
P. S.—Send an express to San Felipe with the news, night and day.
Travis.
XIV
INDEPENDENCE IS DECLARED
Aroused by the clatter of hoofs in the street, while he and Dick were getting ready for bed, Ernest had rushed out, curious, for now every hurrying horseman carried a fresh alarm.
Having delivered the message, the dispatch-bearer was sitting his horse in the gloom-enshrouded main plaza, and repeating his story to an ever-increasing group of citizens around him. Captain John W. Smith, the civil engineer of Bejar, who had guided Sion’s column to the attack, and now had taken up residence at Gonzales, was there; and Jacob Darst and others.
“They came on us all of a sudden [was saying the courier]; first their advance guard, of nigh a thousand, on the twenty-second, driving in before them a couple of our scouts. We’d just time to evacuate for the Alamo, taking along what cattle we could pick up on the way, and some of the women and children. Dickinson managed to grab his wife and baby from the doorway of a house where they were staying and carry them on his saddle. We worked all night arranging things in the Alamo, for we hadn’t men enough to hold both places; and on the next day the whole Mexican army appeared—two thousand more infantry and cavalry, with Santa Anna himself. Travis sent me out with word to Gonzales, and Colonel Bonham’s gone on south for Fannin at Goliad.”
“Will Travis stay?”