It was nine o’clock in the morning, and the Alamo had fallen.  The defenders were less than nine score, and they had died to the last man.  A messenger rushed away at once to Santa Anna with the news of the triumph, and he came from the shelter, glorying, exulting and crying that he had destroyed the Texans.

Ned followed the dictator.  He never knew exactly why, because many of those moments were dim, like the scenes of a dream, and there was so much noise, excitement and confusion that no one paid any attention to him.  But an overwhelming power drew him on to the Alamo, and he rushed in with the Mexican spectators.

Ned passed through the sallyport and he reeled back aghast for a moment.  The Mexican dead, not yet picked up, were strewn everywhere.  They had fallen in scores.  The lighter buildings were smashed by cannon balls and shells.  The earth was gulleyed and torn.  The smoke from so much firing drifted about in banks and clouds, and it gave forth the pungent odor of burned gunpowder.

The boy knew not only that the Alamo had fallen, but that all of its defenders had fallen with it.  The knowledge was instinctive.  He had been with those men almost to the last day of the siege, and he had understood their spirit.

He was not noticed in the crush.  Santa Anna and the generals were running into the church, and he followed them.  Here he saw the Texan dead, and he saw also a curious crowd standing around a fallen form.  He pressed into the ring and his heart gave a great throb of grief.

It was Crockett, lying upon his back, his body pierced by many wounds.  Ned had known that he would find him thus, but the shock, nevertheless, was terrible.  Yet Crockett’s countenance was calm.  He bore no wounds in the face, and he lay almost as if he had died in his bed.  It seemed to Ned even in his grief that no more fitting death could have come to the old hero.

Then, following another crowd, he saw Bowie, also lying peacefully in death upon his cot.  He felt the same grief for him that he had felt for Crockett, but it soon passed in both cases.  A strange mood of exaltation took its place.  They had died as one might wish to die, since death must come to all.  It was glorious that these defenders of the Alamo, comrades of his, should have fallen to the last man.  The full splendor of their achievement suddenly burst in a dazzling vision before him.  Texans who furnished such valor could not be conquered.  Santa Anna might have twenty to one or fifty to one or a hundred to one, in the end it would not matter.

The mood endured.  He looked upon the dead faces of Travis and Bonham also, and he was not shaken.  He saw others, dozens and dozens whom he knew, and the faces of all of them seemed peaceful to him.  The shouting and cheering and vast chatter of the Mexicans did not disturb him.  His mood was so high that all these things passed as nothing.