final struggle, slew several Mexicans with his revolver, and with
his big knife of the kind to which he had given his name. Then
these fell too, and the last man stood at bay. It was old Davy
Crockett. Wounded in a dozen places, he faced his foes with his
back to the wall, ringed around by the bodies of the men he had
slain. So desperate was the fight he waged, that the Mexicans who
thronged round about him were beaten back for the moment, and no
one dared to run in upon him. Accordingly, while the lancers held
him where he was, for, weakened by wounds and loss of blood, he
could not break through them, the musketeers loaded their
carbines and shot him down. Santa Anna declined to give him
mercy. Some say that when Crockett fell from his wounds, he was
taken alive, and was then shot by Santa Anna's order; but his
fate cannot be told with certainty, for not a single American was
left alive. At any rate, after Crockett fell the fight was over.
Every one of the hardy men who had held the Alamo lay still in
death. Yet they died well avenged, for four times their number
fell at their hands in the battle.

Santa Anna had but a short while in which to exult over his
bloody and hard-won victory. Already a rider from the rolling
Texas plains, going north through the Indian Territory, had told
Houston that the Texans were up and were striving for their
liberty. At once in Houston's mind there kindled a longing to
return to the men of his race at the time of their need. Mounting
his horse, he rode south by night and day, and was hailed by the
Texans as a heaven-sent leader. He took command of their forces,
eleven hundred stark riflemen, and at the battle of San Jacinto,
he and his men charged the Mexican hosts with the cry of
"Remember the Alamo." Almost immediately, the Mexicans were