“Wait a few days,” said he; “I think a party will be going your way and you can join them. And if there is not, we’ll have old Dolph guide you back. We can spare one man, I suppose.”
The boys waited well into the third week; but there was no sign of a party traveling in this direction. So Crockett consulted with Travis, Bowie and old Dolph, and it was decided that they delay no longer.
“You were sent to get the girl to Louisville,” said Crockett to the boys, “and I guess you’d better do it right away. In a country as unsettled as this one is, too much delay is dangerous.”
“But you are going to stay, colonel?” said Walter.
“As long as Texas has a foe out in the open, I’ll stay,” replied the backwoodsman. “Some day I may go back to Tennessee; but that all depends on how things go with me. War, you know,” and he smiled in his droll way, “is a mighty uncertain thing.”
During the remainder of that day the boys, together with the Hutchinson brothers and old Dolph, looked to their arms and horses. A mustang was presented to Ethel by Colonel Crockett; and at noon on the day following the girl, the veteran Texan and the four boys mounted and waved a good-bye to the heroes they were leaving behind—and heroes they were—heroes such as the world has seldom seen.
Upon the day on which the young travelers recrossed the Colorado, sentinels upon a roof top at San Antonio noted the advance of a Mexican force. It proved to be Santa Anna with an army of seven thousand men. The Texans quickly retreated across the river to the Franciscan mission buildings, known as the Alamo. For there were only one hundred and fifty men in the garrison, and they could not hope to face seven thousand in the open.
The Alamo buildings consisted of a church, with a convent and hospital behind it. Then there was a yard enclosed by a stone wall. The entire place was too much for so small a force to defend; so Travis very wisely stationed his men in the church, which was a stone structure with powerful walls and facing the river and town.
“We have fourteen guns mounted on the walls,” said the young North Carolinian as he swept the plaza before the mission with his keen eyes. “And I reckon the Mexicans will know they’ve been in a fight if they ever get within reach of them.”
Behind these cannon the Texan riflemen awaited the movements of the force of Santa Anna. That commander at once grouped his guns in battery formation and opened fire; the defenders of the Alamo replied with their guns; but their deadly rifles were the most effective weapon; with them they picked off the gunners as berries are picked from a bush.