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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.

AN AMERICAN THERMOPYLAE.

BY KIRK MUNROE.

"My!" exclaimed Bryce Gordon, with a deep sigh, as he softly closed the Greek history over which he had been intently poring for the last fifteen minutes, "I want to go and see that place some time."

"What place?" asked his army uncle, Captain Frank Gordon, looking up from the evening paper.

"The Pass of Thermopylae," answered Bryce, who had just been reading of Leonidas and his wonderful battle with the hosts of Xerxes. "That is the kind of place I want to visit whenever I have a chance to travel," he continued, with flashing eyes, "and I should think Greek boys would be awfully proud of it. I only wish we had a Thermopylae in this country; but there doesn't seem to be any such thing nowadays."

"Doesn't there?" replied his uncle, laying down the paper. "Then I am afraid you are better posted concerning old Greek history than in that of the United States; for I know of a Thermopylae in which, only sixty years ago, a handful of Americans made as glorious and heroic a defence against overwhelming numbers as was ever recorded."

"You do?" cried Bryce, excitedly. "Where is it? Tell me about it, quick! Please do!"

"Yes, tell us," pleaded Jackanapes, May, and little Miss Blue, who, scenting a story from afar, had made a magic appearance, and were now clustered about Captain Gordon's chair like so many hungry bees about a honeycomb.

"Well," laughed their uncle, good-naturedly, "I see that I am in for it, and suppose I must do as my tyrants command. So here goes. To begin with, did any of you ever hear of the Alamo?"

"Seems to me I have," answered Bryce; "but I can't remember what it is."

The faces of the others were so blank that it was evident the word held no meaning for them.

"I didn't much think you would know anything about it," continued their uncle; "for it belongs to American history, which, of course, is not half so important as that of the old Greeks and Romans. The Alamo, then, is, or rather was, an old Spanish mission located in a cottonwood grove that gave it its name--for Alamo means cottonwood--near the San Antonio River in southwestern Texas. On an opposite bank of the stream stood the Mexican town of San Antonio, built of low flat-roofed adobe or stone houses, and containing at the time of my story very few Americans, though in other parts of Texas these already formed an important part of the population. Texas was then a Mexican state, and Mexico itself had but recently thrown off the yoke of Spain. In its struggle for liberty the American residents had rendered such splendid service, that when freedom was finally gained they were granted many especial privileges by the Mexican government. These were highly prized, and everything went smoothly, until General Santa A?a headed a revolution, overthrew the existing government, and made himself Dictator.

"Hating Americans, and jealous of their increasing power, Santa A?a began to withdraw their privileges, and declared that Texas, disappearing as a separate territory, should thereafter belong to the older Mexican state of Coahuila. Worst of all, he replaced the civil with a military government, and ordered that all citizens should be disarmed. Of course the free-born sons of fathers who had fought at Lexington and Yorktown--for these things happened in 1834--would not submit to such oppression, and the first thing Santa A?a knew the state of Texas was in open revolt, declaring itself to be an independent republic. As San Antonio was its most important city, the Mexican General Cos was ordered to fortify and hold it against the rebels; but one thousand Texans under General Edward Burleson marched against him; and three hundred of them, led by brave old Ben Milam, captured the place after a three days' fight from house to house, and from street to street. General Cos and his two thousand soldiers were allowed to retire to Mexico as paroled prisoners of war, who solemnly promised never again to take up arms against the Texans.

"Soon after this, General Burleson's army scattered to different points where there seemed a chance of more fighting, until only eighty troops, under command of Colonel James Bowie, inventor of the famous bowie-knife and son-in-law of the Mexican Governor, remained to defend the city. These troops had not received one cent of pay, were poorly clad, and possessed but little ammunition. Early in February, 1835, Colonel Bowie, worn out by his efforts to obtain re-enforcements and make adequate provision for the defence of his important post, fell sick of a fever, and Colonel William Travis, who had just arrived with thirty-five men, assumed command. Soon afterwards the renowned David Crockett arrived from Tennessee with thirty more men, so that the garrison now numbered one hundred and forty-five.

"On the 22d of February the Mexican Dictator appeared before San Antonio with an army of 4000 regular troops, and marched straight into the town, the Texans crossing the river and retiring before him to the ruinous old Alamo Mission, which they hastily barricaded, and so converted into a rude fortress. They carried fever-stricken Bowie with them, and, as they retreated, gathered up a few bushels of corn and a few beef cattle, which formed their sole stock of provisions.

"From this place of refuge, when Santa A?a demanded its unconditional surrender, Travis replied with a cannon-shot. He knew that the longer he could hold the Mexican army in check the more time would be allowed the men of Texas to gather and organize for the defence of their homes. Upon receiving this defiant reply, Santa A?a displayed blood-red flags from every church-tower in the town, to signify death without quarter to the rebels, and began a furious bombardment of the Alamo. This was continued almost without intermission, by night as well as by day, until the 6th of March, or through two weary weeks. During that time Travis managed to despatch several couriers in different directions, with urgent messages imploring assistance. In every message he wrote, 'We are determined neither to surrender nor retreat, but will maintain our position to the bitter end.'

"Every now and then the little garrison made desperate sorties for the destruction of some galling battery or to seize a few supplies, and during those twelve fearful days whenever a Texas rifle was fired a Mexican soldier fell dead. In the early morning of the 1st of March a great shout of rejoicing rang out from the battered mission, for Captain John Smith, who, with thirty men, had hastened from Gonzales to the assistance of his friends, had succeeded in passing the enemy's line and gaining the shelter of the fort. Now the bombardment became so fierce that all the outlying walls of the mission were demolished, and only its stout stone church remained standing. Into it the Texans retired, barricading every entrance and repairing every breach.

"Shortly before sunset on the evening of the 3d the fire of the batteries suddenly ceased. Two thousand fresh troops, the army of General Cos, which had been captured and paroled at this very place, had retraced their steps, and now, in violation of their pledged word, were prepared once more to fight against their conquerors. While they were being welcomed with acclamations and every form of rejoicing by the Mexicans, the grim walls of the Alamo were witnessing one of the most solemn and pathetic scenes of history. In their dim shadow Colonel Travis paraded his handful of heroes in single file, and addressed them in substantially these words:

"'My brave comrades, stern necessity compels me to employ the moments afforded by this probably brief cessation of conflict in making known to you the most interesting, yet the most solemn, melancholy, and unwelcome fact that humanity can realize. Our fate is sealed. Within a few days, perhaps a few hours, we must all be in eternity. Our provisions are gone, our ammunition is nearly spent, and our strength is almost exhausted. My calls for assistance remain unanswered, and the probabilities are that our couriers have been cut off. The enemy surrounds us in overwhelming and ever-increasing numbers. Then we must die, and have only to choose such method of death as may best serve our country. Shall we surrender, and be deliberately shot? Shall we try to cut our way out through the Mexican ranks, and be butchered before we can kill twenty of our adversaries? I am opposed to either plan, but leave every man of you to his own decision. Should any one choose to surrender, or attempt to escape, he is at liberty to do so. My own choice is to remain in this place, and die for my country, fighting so long as breath shall remain in my body. This will I do even if you leave me alone. Do, then, as you think best; but remember that no one of you can die with me without affording me comfort in the hour of death.'

"Here Colonel Travis drew his sword, and with its point traced a line on the earthen floor extending the whole length of the motionless file. Then resuming his position in front of the centre, he said:

"'Now let every man who is willing to remain here and die with me cross to this side of that line. Who will be the first? Forward! March!'

"Tapley Holland leaped the line at a bound, exclaiming, 'I am ready to die for my country!' And in another instant every man, save one, of that heroic file had followed him and stood beside their gallant leader. Every wounded man who could move crawled or tottered across the fatal mark. Colonel Bowie, too weak to lift his head, called out feebly, 'Don't leave me behind, boys!' and in a moment four men had lifted his cot over the line. The other helpless ones begged that they too might be lifted across, and finally only Moses Rose remained behind. He stood alone, with his face buried in his hands. Travis, Bowie, and Crockett all spoke to him kindly, and asked him if he were afraid to die. When he answered that he was, and believed in the possibility of an escape, they bade him go in peace. So he left them, scaling a rear wall of the church, dropping to the ground outside, and finally escaping, after eluding innumerable dangers. It is from him alone that we have a description of that memorable scene, for of all that devoted band whom he left in that gloomy fortress no man was ever again seen alive beyond its walls."

"Then he was the Aristodemus of your American Thermopylae," interrupted Bryce, who was listening with breathless attention to this tale of modern heroism.

"Yes," replied Captain Gordon, "only he was more of a coward than Aristodemus, for the latter did not escape until after his comrades had been killed, and, if you remember, was himself killed in battle the following year, after performing more valorous deeds than any of his fellow Spartans."

"I suppose Moses Rose was more truly a coward," admitted Bryce; "but lot's not stop to talk about him now, Uncle Cap. What became of the splendid fellows he left in the fort? Did they finally surrender, or were they captured, or what?"

"They neither surrendered nor were made prisoners, but fought with the stubbornness of desperation for three days longer. At length, on the 5th of March, Santa A?a, believing the Americans to be too exhausted to offer a serious resistance, ordered the Alamo to be carried by assault at daylight of the following morning. At that hour the thunder of bombardment was again stilled, and as though the silence were a signal, dark masses of Mexican infantry, provided with scaling ladders, and driven to their deadly work by a pitiless cavalry pressing close on their rear, rushed at the walls of the devoted church.

"Less than one hundred of the defenders were left to resist those thousands; but three times did this handful of dauntless fighters repel their swarming assailants, and three times did the furious Mexican General drive them back to the assault. At length the defenders had fired away their last grain of powder, the crowding Mexicans forced an entrance, and after another hour of the most terrific hand-to-hand fighting and awful slaughter, the Alamo was theirs. At nine o'clock two murderous discharges of double-shotted grape and canister from a cannon planted in the doorway of the room used as a hospital, and filled with helplessly wounded Americans, ended the bloody tragedy, for of Travis's noble band no man remained alive. So terribly had they fought that five hundred and twenty Mexicans were killed in that final assault, and as many more were wounded, while, including all who had fallen beneath the unerring Texas rifles during the siege, the Alamo ing with one foot lifted tentatively--ready for a forward step if the fates seemed kind--and was regarding Billy Louise fixedly with one yellow eye. "Take it and go!" cried the donor, impatient of the scrutiny. She picked up the wooden pail and went down to the creek behind the house, by a pathway bordered thickly with budding rosebushes and tall lilacs.

Billy Louise first of all washed her face slowly and with a methodic thoroughness which characterized her--having lived for ten full years with no realization of hours and minutes as a measure for her actions. She dried her face quite as deliberately upon her starched calico apron. Then she spent a few minutes trying to catch a baby trout in her cupped palms. Never had Billy Louise succeeded in catching a baby trout in her hands; therefore she never tired of trying. Now, however, that rash promise nagged at her and would not let her enjoy the game as completely as usual. She took the wooden pail, and squatting on her heels in the wet sand, waited until a small school swam incautiously close to the bank, and scooped suddenly, with a great splash. She caught three tiny, speckled fish the length of her little finger, and she let the half-full pail rest in the shallow stream while she watched the fry swimming excitedly round and round within.

There was no great fun in that. Billy Louise could catch baby trout in a pail at home, from the waters of the Wolverine, whenever she liked. Many a time she had kept them in a big bottle until she tired of watching them, or they died because she forgot to change the water often enough. She could not get even a languid enjoyment out of them now, because she could not for a minute forget that she had promised to wash Marthy's dishes--and Marthy always had so many dirty dishes! And Marthy's dishpan was so greasy! Billy Louise gave a little shudder when she thought of it.

"I wish her little girl hadn't died," she said, her mind swinging from effect back to cause. "I could play with her. And she'd wash the dishes herself. I'm going to name my new little pig Minervy. I wish she hadn't died. I'd show her my little pig, if Marthy'd let her come over to our place. We could both ride on old Badger; Minervy could ride behind me, and we'd go places together." Billy Louise meditatively stirred up the baby trout with a forefinger. "We'd go up the canyon and have the caves for our play-houses. Minervy could have the secret cave away up the hill, and I'd have the other one across from it; and we'd have flags and wigwag messages like daddy tells about in the war. And we'd play the rabbits are Injuns, and the coyotes are big-Injun-chiefs sneaking down to see if the forts are watching. And whichever seen a coyote first would wigwag to the other one..." A baby trout, taking advantage of the pail tipping in the current, gave a flip over the edge and interrupted Billy Louise's fancies. She gave the pail a tilt and spilled out the other two fish. Then she filled it as full as she could carry and started back to pay the price of her sympathy.

"I don't see what Minervy had to go and die for!" she complained, dodging a low-hanging branch of bloom-laden lilac. "She could wash the dishes and I'd wipe 'em--and I s'pose there ain't a clean dish-towel in the house, either! Marthy's an awful slack housekeeper."

Billy Louise, being a young person with a conscience--of a sort--washed the dishes, since she had given her word to do it. The dishpan was even more unpleasant than experience had foretold for her; and of Marthy's somewhat meager supply there seemed not one clean dish in the house. The sympathy of Billy Louise therefore waned rapidly; rather, it turned in upon itself. So that by the time she felt morally free to spend the rest of the afternoon as she pleased, she was not at all sorry for Marthy for having lost Minervy; instead, she was sorry for herself for having been betrayed into rashness and for being deprived of a playmate.

"I don't s'pose Marthy doctored her right, at all," she considered pitilessly, as she returned down the lilac-bordered path. "If she had, I guess she wouldn't have died. I'll bet she never gave her a speck of sage tea, like mommie always does when I'm sick--only I ain't ever, thank goodness. I'm just going to ask Jase if Marthy did."

On the way to the root cellar, which was dug into the creek-bank well above high-water mark, Billy Louise debated within herself the ethics of speaking to Jase upon a forbidden subject. Jase had been Minervy's father, and therefore knew of her existence, so that mentioning Minervy to him could not in any sense be betraying a secret. She wondered if Jase felt badly about it, as Marthy seemed to do. On the heels of that came the determination to test his emotional capacity.

At the root cellar her attention was diverted. The cellar door was fastened on the outside, with the iron hasp used to protect the store of vegetables from the weather. Jase must be gone. She was turning away when she heard him clear his throat with that peculiar little hacking, rasping noise which sounded exactly as one would expect a Jase to sound. Billy Louise puckered her eyebrows, pressed her lips together understandingly--and disapprovingly--and opened the door.

Jase, humped over a heap of sprouting potatoes, blinked up apathetically into the sudden flood of sweet, spring air and sunshine. "Why, hello, Billy Louise," he mumbled, his eyes brightening a bit.

"Say, you was locked in here!" Billy Louise faced him puzzled. "Did you know you was locked in?"

"Yes-s, I knowed it. Marthy, she locked the door." Jase reached out a bony hand covered with carrot-colored hairs and picked up a shriveling potato with long, sickly sprouts proclaiming life's persistence in perpetuating itself under adverse circumstances. He broke off the sprouts with a wipe of his dirty palm and threw the potato into a heap in the corner.

"What for?" Billy Louise demanded, watching Jase reach languidly out for another potato.

"She seen me diggin' bait," Jase said tonelessly. "I did think some of ketchin' a mess of fish before I went to sproutin' p'tatoes, but Marthy she don't take no int'rest in nothin' but work."

"Are the fish biting good?" Billy Louise glanced toward the wider stream, where it showed through a gap in the alders.

"Yes-s, purty good now. I caught a nice mess the other day; but Marthy, she don't favor my goin' fishin'." The lean hands of Jase moved slowly at his task. Billy Louise, watching him, wondered why he did not hurry a little and finish sooner. Still, she could not remember ever seeing Jase hurry at anything, and the Cove with its occupants was one of her very earliest memories.

"Say, I'll dig some more bait, and then we'll go fishing; shall we?"

"I--dunno as I better--" Jase's hand hovered aimlessly over the potato pile. "I got quite a lot sprouted, though--and mebby--"

"I'll lock you in till I get the bait dug," suggested Billy Louise craftily. "And you work fast; and then I'll let you out, and we'll lock the door agin, so Marthy'll think you're in there yet."

"You're sure smart to think up things," Jase admired, smiling loose-lipped behind his scraggly beard, that was fading with the years. "I dunno but what it'd serve Marthy right. She ain't got no call to lock the door on me. She hates like sin t' see me with a fish-pole in m' hand--but she's always et her share uh the messes I ketch. She ain't a reasonable woman, Marthy ain't. You git the bait. I'll show Marthy who's boss in this Cove!"

He might have encouraged himself into defying Marthy to her face, in another five minutes of complaining. But the cellar door closed upon him with a slam. Billy Louise was not interested in his opinion of Marthy; with her, opinions were valueless if not accompanied by action.

"I never thought to ask him about Minervy," occurred to her while she was relentlessly dragging pale, fleshly fishworms from the loose black soil of Marthy's onion bed. "But I know she was mean to Minervy. She's awful mean to Jase--locking him up in the root cellar just 'cause he wanted to go fishing. If I was Jase I wouldn't sprout a single old potato for her. My goodness, but she'll be mad when she opens the cellar door and Jase ain't in there; I--guess I'll go home early, before Marthy finds it out."

She really meant to do that, but the fish were hungry fish that day, and the joy of having a companion to exclaim with her over every hard tug--even though that companion was only Jase--enticed her to stay on and on, until a whiff of frying pork on the breeze that swept down the Cove warned Billy Louise of the near approach of supper-time.

"I guess mebby I might as well go back to the suller," Jase remarked, his defiance weakening as he climbed the bank. "You come and lock the door agin, Billy Louise, and Marthy won't know I ain't been there all the time. She'll think you caught the fish." He looked at her with a weak leer of conscious cunning.

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