becoming involved in a quarrel, decided to settle it in approved fashion by a duel, and, accompanied by their friends, among whom was Bowie, adjourned to a convenient place and took a shot at each other without doing any damage.  They were about to declare honor satisfied and to shake hands, when a dispute arose among their friends, and before it was over, fifteen were killed and six were badly injured.  Bowie distinguished himself by stabbing a man to death with a knife made from a large file.  The weapon was afterwards sent to Philadelphia and there fashioned into the deadly knife which has ever since been known by his name.  The prospect of trouble in Texas naturally attracted him, he was made colonel of militia there, and dispatched to The Alamo with a small force by General Houston early in 1836.

Here, then, in this old and crumbling Spanish mission, toward the end of February, were gathered a hundred and fifty Texans, a wild and undisciplined band, impatient of restraint or control, but men of iron courage and the best shots on the border, with Travis in command; while without was the army of Santa Anna.  On February 24th, Travis, in a letter asking for reinforcements, announced the siege and added that he would never surrender or retreat.  Early in March, thirty-two men from Gonzales, knowing they were going to well-nigh certain death, made their way into the fort, raising its garrison to 180.

Santa Anna demanded unconditional surrender, and Travis answered with a cannon-shot; whereat, on the morning of the sixth of March, the Mexican army stormed the fort from all sides, swarmed in through breaches and over the walls, which the Texans were too few to man, and a desperate hand-to-hand conflict followed.  To and fro between the shattered walls the fight reeled, each tall Texan the centre of a group of foes, fighting with a wild and desperate courage; but the odds were too great, and one by one they fell, thrust through with bayonets or riddled by bullets.  Colonel Travis fell, and so did Bowie, sick and weak from a wasting disease, but rising from his bed, and dying fighting with his great knife red with the blood of his foes.  At last a single man stood at bay.  It was Davy Crockett.

Wounded in a dozen places, ringed about by the bodies of the men he had slain, he stood facing his foes, his back against a wall, knife in hand, daring them to come on.  No one dared to run in upon that old lion.  So they held him there with their lances, while, the musketeers loaded their carbines and shot him down.  Not a man of the garrison was left alive, but each of them had avenged himself four times over, for the Mexican loss was over five hundred.  So ended one of the most heroic events in American history.  “Thermopylae had its messengers of death; The Alamo had none.”

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