The First Cowboy

Frederick R. Bechdolt

1922

Exported from Wikisource on December 13, 2024

THE FIRST COWBOY

by Frederick R. Bechdolt.

“Author of “Red Blood and White,” “Adobe Walls,” etc.

IN THE days when Texas was a nation, when farmer boys along the Trinity and Brazos were carrying rifles to their evening chores for fear of lurking Indians and the men of the Southwestern settlements were constantly under arms against invading Mexicans, a number of young fellows drifted down into the country between the lower Nueces and the Rio Grande. The most of them had lost their fathers at the Alamo and in the massacre of Fannin's men at Goliad. They came hither to seek adventure and to make their livings, two projects which were at that time compatible.

The land was wild; great grass-grown pampas intersected by wide river bottoms where dense thickets of mesquite and catsclaw grew. Here in former years there had been enormous ranches, but the Mexican owners had migrated beyond the Rio Grande with the unsettled conditions of the Texan revolution; the Indians had burned their homes; nothing remained of that pastoral civilization save a few crumbling adobe walls and the bands of cattle which had lapsed to wildness like the land. These roved the prairies and browsed in the timber, shy as the antelope which wandered in the hills; lean-bodied, swift as mustangs.

The youths hunted them down. They knew nothing of the riata's uses; such few of them as had seen the rawhide ropes scorned them as they scorned everything Mexican. But all of them were expert horsemen. They made their expeditions during the periods of the full moon. By day and night they chased the wild longhorns across the open plateaus and through the timbered bottoms, relaying their ponies when they got the chance, outwearing fear-maddened herds until, through sheer exhaustion, the brutes became half tractable. Then they corralled them in stout pens and drove them eastward to the markets.

They dressed in smoke-tanned buckskin; for in this land where there were neither women nor looms a man must get his raiment as he got his meat, with his long-barreled rifle. A few wore boots but most of them were shod in moccasins. They were among the first in Texas to use the slouching wide-rimmed hat which afterward became universal throughout the cattle country. Some of them had built cabins and dugouts near the streams, but they seldom saw their habitations; save when the snow was on the ground they spent their days and nights in the open.

It was a period of Indian raids, and Santa Anna's troops were constantly crossing the Rio Grande to make brief forays against the isolated border towns. Scarcely a month went by which did not witness the galloping of horsemen who brought to ranch and village and budding frontier metropolis the call to arms. Every district had its ranger company, commanded by some local veteran, whose members were ready to seize their rifles and sling on their long powder horns at a moment's notice. The young fellows from the Nueces were well known among the other bands for their iron endurance in the saddle, their faultless marksmanship, the boldness of their fighting.

So it came that they were named by those with whom they rode, pursuing Indians or Mexicans. And the term by which men called them stuck to them through the years. It fell to them quite naturally because of their vocation. They were known as, “the cowboys.”

It was the first time that the word was used west of the Mississippi and always thereafter it retained its peculiar significance; it was handed down by these riders of the latter thirties to the booted herders who succeeded them and so it spread over all the West.

Cameron's cowboys was the way that most men put it. For as his men stood out among the Texans, the leader whom they had chosen stood out among them.

Ewen Cameron. They say that he was handsome in a fine, rugged way. He stood straight as an arrow and he weighed more than two hundred pounds. Six feet two in his moccasins, dark-haired, with clear gray eyes and heavy brows; you may picture him in his slouching broad-rimmed hat, his buckskin shirt and breeches worn from long riding; his powder horn slung by his side and in his belt the bowie-knife which was as invariable in those days as the forty-five single-action revolver was later on.

He came from the Highlands of Scotland and there was a burr in his speech. But what may help you best to see him is the love his men had for him. He had led them so boldly against both Mexicans and Indians that, as they were wont to put it, they would have followed him into the depths of hell.

In 1839, spurred on by the example of the Texans, a considerable proportion of the people in northern Chihuahua formed a government of their own and rebelled against the dictator, Santa Anna. They named their new-born state the Republic of the Rio Grande, and Licenciate Canales, a suave and polished lawyer, was given command of their troops. Some three hundred Texans crossed the river and joined the movement, among them Ewen Cameron and his Cowboys.

There was good fighting and plenty of it. In time the armies of Santa Anna triumphed; The men from Texas went back to their homes. The leaders of the unsuccessful movement made their peace with the dictator. Which has its significance in this story because, during those days of stress and battle, Canales and Ewen Cameron had quarreled bitterly.

The lawyer never forgot it. Time passed. He grew strong in the good graces of Santa Anna. And with the rancor which smoldered in his heart begins the glorious last chapter of the Scotchman's life.

On the afternoon of Sunday, September 25th, 1842, Ewen Cameron stood among one thousand Texans before the ruins of the Alamo. The call to arms had brought them here to resist a Mexican incursion; farmer boys from the Trinity, the Colorado and the Brazos; high officials from the capital at Austin; border rangers from the south western counties; lawyers, ministers, school teachers and gamblers from a dozen towns. They wore no uniforms.

Long marches, battles and the hardships of living tentless in the open had left the most of them ragged and weatherstained until it would be hard to tell the settler whose home was a dugout from the statesman who was famous for his oratory. Now, while they were waiting for the event which had brought them together in this spot after weeks of campaigning, a private clapped his captain on the back and called him by his first name; a major paused before a group of his men to beg a chew of tobacco from a tow-haired farm lad.

But this spirit of democracy which was perhaps stronger among the Texans than it has been in any other nation before or since, could not erase certain fundamental distinctions; and as they moved among the throng there was that in the leaders which proclaimed their standing as unmistakably as shoulder bars. So, if you had been there, you could have picked out Captain John C. Hays, the famous ranger who had led a score of forays against hostile Indians; old Matthew Caldwell, scout and plainsman just back from months in a Mexican prison after last year's ill-fated expedition to Sante Fé; Thomas J. Green, the fiery South Carolinan, graduate of West Point and a brigadier general in the War for Texan Independence, and Colonel William Fisher who had served with distinction at San Jacinto.

Among them all there was none who got more man-to-man respect from his followers than Ewen Cameron; none who looked more like a leader than the tall Scotchman in his smoke-tanned buckskin.

Of the throng that filled the space before the Alamo's shattered walls, his forty cow boys were a distinctive element. Although they had been campaigning out here on the western frontier ever since the previous April, they looked fresher and more fit than the companies which had marched into the town less than a week ago. And of all they were the most impatient for the beginning of this day's business.

The yellow September sunlight was slanting across the square when a man appeared in a gap which had been a chapel window. At once the murmur of voices died away. For a moment he stood there, enframed by the shattered walls, and looked down upon the crowd in silence. His form was lean; gray threads were beginning to show in his lank dark hair; his face was slender and his eyes were piercing black. It was Edward Burleson, Vice President of the Republic of Texas, who had led his regiment to capture Santa Anna's cannon at the battle of San Jacinto. By their votes these fighting men had made him their commander within the past week. He was about to outline a plan of campaign.

His head went back. He began speaking. He was reminding them of what had taken place that Summer.

San Antonio lay on the uttermost frontier, sixty miles from the nearest town, with one hundred and eighty miles of wilderness between it and the Rio Grande. In April, fourteen hundred of Santa Anna's troops had swooped down upon the place, to retreat across the border when the first ranger companies came hither against them. Within the last month they had returned to take a dozen of the most prominent citizens prisoners. Three hundred Texans had hurried here and fought them to a standstill just outside the town.

The speaker paused; then his voice rang as he went on to describe the fate of Captain Dawson's company of fifty who had found themselves surrounded by odds of ten to one during the battle and had surrendered—to be massacred as soon as they laid down their arms. Then the invaders had fled across the Rio Grande.

These things had taken place. They would, he said, take place again; the towns of western Texas would never be safe from such invasions—until the men of Texas put a stop to it. They could do that; and now the time was come. Let them go to their homes and recruit fresh horses; then in a month return—and he himself would lead them across the Rio Grande where they would put such fear in the hearts of the Mexicans as would keep them within their own borders.

Burleson ceased speaking and a thousand voices roared applause. He had promised them the thing they wanted. And the next morning the companies began departing from San Antonio to prepare for the coming expedition.

The weeks went by. All through Texas men talked of the projected invasion; recruits flocked to the towns; the ranger companies were gathering at San Antonio. But all the time a power greater than opposing armies was at work against them.

The dickerings of nations, which for the sake of euphemism we still call diplomacy, were as potent in those days as they are now. Texas was bankrupt. Only a European loan or annexation to the United States could save her from disintegration. England, on whose friendship a loan depended, was secretly anxious that Mexico retake the country north of the Rio Grande. And our administration at Washington demanded that the young republic remain at peace with Santa Anna. Every skirmish helped to jeopardize the hopes for annexation.

President Sam Houston knew these things. He knew also the temper of his people. Disruption would follow his refusal to sanction the expedition. So he acted, and when the companies had gathered in San Antonio they found that Burleson had been virtually forced out of the command. By proclamation of the Chief Executive, General Alexander Somerville was to lead the expedition.

IT WAS on the morning of November 22nd that they marched out from San Antonio on the old Laredo road. There were more than seven hundred men in line. Two hundred pack animals and three hundred head of cattle followed the column toward the Rio Grande. Ewen Cameron and his cowboys, who had been chafing at the multitude of recent delays, ceased fretting on that Indian Summer morning, for they knew that there were not enough troops in all of northern Mexico to stop them.

The fine weather lasted less than a week. The rains came. General Somerville moved his little army in a manner that was beyond the understanding of men or officers. For nearly three months he marched and countermarched them through boggy river bottoms and over the wild prairies. When Mexican troops were reported in one direction he took another. They used up their meat; their clothing was in tatters. The howling northers cut them to the bone. There was no fighting, and it seemed as if they would never reach the Rio Grande.

Several companies became disgusted and departed for their homes. At last Ewen Cameron got a number of the officers together and they made so formidable a protest that the commander reluctantly moved the troops to the boundary. But on the fourteenth day of December, when they had been dallying for a week or so along the river's banks, Somerville astonished them all by ordering that they disperse to their homes.

Two hundred of them went back. There remained three hundred. Five days after the departure of their companions they elected William Fisher as their commander and prepared to invade Mexico.

When one remembers that only four years before one hundred and twelve Texans under Captain S. W. Jordan had defeated two thousand Mexican troops at Saltillo and had retreated all the way to the Rio Grande with a total loss of five men, the project does not seem so mad. The whole world boasted no better marksmen than these six tattered companies who were encamped on their country's border on the nineteenth of December, 1842; their long-barreled muzzle-loading rifles were the deadliest small arms in modern warfare; there were those among their number who had killed more than a score of Mexicans apiece. Moreover, they belonged to a breed which never did like to turn back.

So they went on. Fisher, their colonel, had fought in this section during the brief-lived Republic of the Rio Grande. Thomas A. Murray was his adjutant. Colonel Thomas J. Green, the West Pointer, was put in command of a flatboat flotilla. The captains of the companies were Ewen Cameron, William M. Eastland, J. G. W. Pierson, William N. Ryan, Claudius Buster and C. K. Reese. They moved downstream, took the town of Mier without opposition and levied on its people for food and clothing.

On the afternoon of Christmas day while they were waiting for the arrival of these promised supplies on their own side of the Rio Grande, they learned that twenty-four hundred Mexican troops had entered the village. The officers went into council and unanimously decided to attack the enemy.

Mier lies on the right bank of the Alcantra river, seven miles or so from the point where it empties into the Rio Grande. The town has not changed much with the years; you may still see the same flat-topped adobe buildings whose thick gray-brown walls gave shelter to the men of Texas on that December day of 1842; the same narrow streets which literally ran red with the blood of Santa Anna's soldiers. But through the idiosyncrasies of American historians the glory of that day has been wellnigh forgotten. The name of Mier means nothing when men hear it spoken now.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when the officers arrived at their decision. They left forty-two men to guard their camp, crossed the Rio Grande and marched up the Alcantra. At seven in the evening they halted on the summit of a high bluff just across the river from the town. It was black dark; a drizzling rain was falling.

Mexican outposts held the opposite bank; a quarter of a mile or so beyond, the lights of the first houses glowed faintly through the dampness. Colonel Green took a dozen riflemen down a narrow path which wound along the bluff's sheer side to the river, and while these held the attention of the pickets, the others felt their way along the trail. They reached the bank, stole up-stream to the ford and crossed without discovery.

In the confusion of the advance Joseph Berry had fallen over the bluff and broken his leg. So nine men were detailed to remain with him. In the events which were to follow this little party had its own large share.

If one believed in such things he would surely be justified in saying-that Fate was busy arranging matters right from the beginning. General Ampudia and General Canales shared the joint command of the Mexicans. In the days of the Republic of the Rio Grande Ampudia and Colonel Fisher had become firm friends. It has been told how Canales hated Ewen Cameron.

That was the situation at midnight when the Texans lined up on the river bank in the darkness and started toward the town. It was so black that a man could barely see his hand before his face. When they had gone a hundred yards or so a dense mass seemed to emerge from the night before them and a voice called—

“Quien vive?”

Three of the captains answered at the same time and with the same sharp order—

“Fire!”

A hundred rifle flashes cut the darkness. Then they heard the Mexican colonel who was in command of the outpost calling on his men to charge. There had been fifty of those men. Now there were not a dozen left to obey him.

A few moments later the Texans reached the outskirts of the town. According to old custom the enemy should be occupying the plaza. So they felt their way between the adobe buildings toward the square and as they were crossing one of the narrow streets at the end of a block, there came a great flash off their left; the night was shaken with the roar of a fieldpiece. They knew where the plaza was now.

They halted as they were, half of them on one side of the street and half on the other. Colonel Green took a dozen riflemen into the roadway. They fired, and before the artillery company had reloaded they fell back into the shelter of the buildings. The cannon's flare made the night red again. The Texans leaped into the street and let go another volley. They kept this up for something like a half hour. In the mean time their companions were entering the houses on both sides of the thoroughfare.

Low structures, some of limestone and some of adobe, they lined the street to the plaza's edge. The captains sent their best marksmen to the windows and rooftops. They put the others to work at battering down the intervening walls. Thus they went slowly on from one room to another; and as the riflemen established themselves in each new stronghold, the pioneers attacked the next barrier.

The fieldpiece bellowed in the plaza. The lean and sunburned marksmen lay along the roofs lining their sights when its flashes gave them light, aiming by guesswork in the intervening periods of darkness. Swarthy foot-soldiers swarmed to the building tops beyond the open square, and the rattle of musketry grew into a long roll. The rifles answered slowly; and when dawn began to creep up over the skyline, leaking down upon the landscape, the Texans saw the bodies drooping over the low parapets and damming the shallow gutters by the roadway.

The morning dragged on. They gained the last buildings fronting the plaza. While the men in the close rooms sweated at their picks and crowbars to open loopholes, the fieldpiece battered the thick walls from without. The riflemen leaped to each growing aperture. And now the heaps of corpses grew fast about the cannon. Some time toward noon sixteen Mexicans made a last rush to serve the piece, and-when the little spurts of smoke cleared away from window and parapet fifteen of them lay dead. The artillery was silenced for good now.

Noon passed. There came a lull in the fighting. A bugle sounded in a side street; the riflemen atop the buildings heard the beat of hoofs, the tramp of feet. The Mexicans were gathering for a charge.

In the last rooms on both sides of the roadway the dust rose thick, shrouding the forms of the sharpshooters by the loopholes. Here one was busy cleaning his rifle; another doled the black-grained powder from the long horn, then tamped the wadding down upon it with his ramrod. Grime stained their faces, and the sulfurous smell of old volleys was heavy on the air. A wounded man was moaning in a corner.

A shout came from the roofs. An officer hurried forth to learn what new development had come, and dallied on the parapet, held by the spectacle which had provoked the cheering. Less than half a mile away, across the river on the bluff top which they had occupied the night before, a stirring drama was being enacted.

The nine men, who had been left with Joseph Berry at the beginning of the advance, had taken shelter in a little stone building. Ten Mexican cavalrymen forded the stream on reconnaisance and approached the place. The Texans opened fire. Two of the troopers remained alive when the smoke had cleared away. They fled back to the town.

Now three hundred horsemen and a fieldpiece crossed the Alcantra, and while the artillery was taking a roundabout course toward the summit of the bluff the cavalry deployed. They began closing in on the stone building. The Texans waited until the circle had grown narrow. Then they came forth, nine men against three hundred, and charged straight upon the advancing line. They fired as they drew near; then broke full speed for the gap which their bullets had made for them. Four of them fell dead. Berry was slain in the bed where he was lying helpless. Two survived to reach their companions in the adobe buildings by the plaza. And three were taken prisoners.

The men who were watching the struggle from the housetops never dreamed of the part which one of those captives was unwittingly to play against them within the hour.

Now the bugles sounded again in the hidden streets. Eight hundred Mexicans swept around a corner and as they advanced into the plaza, divided into two charging columns. So it fell that Ewen Cameron and Colonel Fisher found themselves on opposite sides of the street, each in command of his own detachment, repelling separate attacks.

Cameron took his cowboys from the building which they had been holding into a yard beside the plaza. A low wall of loose rocks enclosed the place. They dropped on their knees behind it.

Four hundred of Ampudia's picked infantry advanced toward them at the double quick. Half way across the plaza they slackened their pace; a curtain of smoke unrolled before the front ranks; musket balls spattered against the wall and snarled above the heads of the kneeling Texans. The crash of the volley died away; the smoke cloud cleared. They saw a thick mass of blue and red whose front bristled with leveled bayonets sweeping upon them.

“Now, boys,” said Ewen Cameron, “we will go at it.”

They fired at will. Gaps showed in the advancing lines. They wavered briefly; then the gaps closed and the mass swept on.

“To the stones, boys,” Cameron shouted.

They tore the loose rocks from the wall and met the charge with such a rain of missiles that the hundreds broke and fled before it. That evening, when there was time for noting such things, men counted a dozen who lay with their brains dashed out from the deadly rain. The cowboys were reloading when the rout began. But the column did not rally.

Meantime another force attacked the building on the opposite side of the road way, and Colonel Fisher took twenty picked men who hurled themselves upon the Mexicans in a countercharge so savage that the enemy turned and fled.

It was mid-afternoon now. A second lull came in the fighting. The Texans had lost ten killed and twenty-three wounded. The Mexican casualties numbered eight hundred. The cannon was silenced. But Colonel Fisher was lying in his headquarters, racked with nausea. A musket ball had severed his thumb at the joint and torn a nerve. Body and mind and will were limp from agony.

Just at this time the cavalrymen who had made the sortie across the river brought their prisoners before General Ampudia. Dr. Sinnockson, the surgeon of the expedition, was one of the trio. He knew nothing of the battle's progress or where the advantage lay.

“You will take a white flag,” General Ampudia instructed him, “and go to Colonel Fisher. Tell him that his old friend Ampudia sends him this message: 'You are outnumbered ten to one, and seventeen hundred fresh troops are on their way to me. These reenforcements are already close to the town. If you fight on, you and all your men will surely be killed. If you surrender I will grant you all proper treatment as prisoners of war. I will give you five minutes for decision.'”

That was the purport of the message. Dr. Sinnockson found Colonel Fisher in the throes of nausea. The other officers were called into conference, and while they stood there astonished at the demand, the sick man raised himself with a great effort.

“I think,” he said, “it is our only hope.”

Then Ewen Cameron cried out that he would die first and Thomas Green turned around to face the soldiers who stood close by.

“If a hundred of you will go with me, I'll take you back across the Rio Grande,” he shouted.

Fisher was on his feet now.

“Let the men be brought to attention,” he ordered.

And when this had been done he asked them for a vote.

But there was no vote. There was nothing but a great confusion, a medley of upraised voices, oaths of astonishment, shouts of anger.

Then several of the overwearied threw down their rifles. There was, they said, no use in going on. Two or three started off toward the Mexican lines. Cameron's cowboys yelled in derision.

“Go,” one called after them, “and rot in chains. You belong there.”

But Fisher had already sent back word that he would sign a capitulation. And so by the chain of strange coincidence, in the moment of their victory, these men of Texas became prisoners.

That night Licenciate Canales came to the town church where they lay under guard and saw his old enemy Ewen Cameron among them. The next day the lawyer-general set forth for the City of Mexico to bring the news to Santa Anna. That was his official mission, but he had a private errand of his own with the dictator.

Five days later the prisoners started on the long march to the City of Mexico. General Ampudia and his staff went on ahead with Colonel Fisher, Thomas J. Green, Murray the adjutant and two or three privates who were to act as servants for the captive officers. Colonel Barragon and two hundred and fifty soldiers followed with the rest. The six captains remained with their companies. So it came about that Ewen Cameron was henceforth the leader of the Texans.

Ewen Cameron was leader. None chose him; there was no word spoken of captains or command. For a long time there was no talk of plans. Fifteen to twenty miles a day, they marched along the highway between the lofty arid mountains. At every town their guards conducted them, as the ancient armies used to lead their captives, in triumphal procession through the streets all hung with banners; and some in the crowds spat upon them as they passed. At night they slept in thick-walled cuartels or in the cattle corrals at the outskirts of the dreary villages.

The swarthy soldiers who watched them marveled at their songs and laughter. Always it was the cowboys of the Nueces who sang loudest. They danced in couples on the earthen floors of musty jails. They dropped on all fours in the stock pens, with lowered heads, and played that they were bulls. They pawed the earth and bellowed challenges; they fought mock battles while the others roared with mirth. They were the first to whisper the word that was in every man's mind now—

“Escape.”

At first a word; the time came when it was a definite project. The cowboys were its foremost advocates; and Ewen Cameron was the man who planned its details.

The days dragged on, one weary march after another, and every night time saw them farther from the Rio Grande. He waited for a favorable opportunity. They reached Monterey, where ten of their countrymen who had been taken prisoners in other border forays were added to their number. On February tenth they came to the Hacienda Salado, one hundred miles beyond Saltillo. And here, when Cameron had talked with the five other captains, he gave out word that the next morning they should rush the guards.

THE Hacienda Salado lay in the depths of a narrow valley. On either side steep mountain walls rose to the sky. Only the Spanish bayonet and cactus grew on those peaks; their flanks were earthless. A savage sun had stripped them bare. They were the skeletons of mountains. Under their enclosing sides the hamlet of flat-topped adobes was almost indiscernible, a few scattered specks lost to the eye in the enormous confusion of arid granite.

As the cold twilight of dawn seeped down from the sky's whitening rim, revealing the enfolded ridges, wiping away the shadows in which the cliffs lurked, to crawl at last along the valley's floor, there came the beat of hoofs, the tramp of infantry. Somewhere a horse neighed; a bugle call climbed from the depths, growing fainter as it mounted from rock to rock. The guards were gathering for the day's march.

The building where the Texans were confined was the only one of any size in the place. A tall stone wall enclosed an outer courtyard in whose center the prison stood. A company of foot-soldiers came down the narrow road and halted before the wall's main gate; a troop of cavalry drew up beside them, dismounted and stood at ease among the horses.

Within the courtyard one hundred and fifty infantrymen were smoking their after-breakfast cigarettes, awaiting the order to form at attention. Their muskets were stacked; the cartridge boxes hung in clusters from the bayoneted muzzles. Two sentries were pacing back and forth across the outer gateway; two others stood within the building's open door with loaded muskets at their shoulders.

Inside the long earthen-floored room the Texans awaited their great moment; two hundred and fourteen ragged men, unarmed, gaunt from underfeeding, foot-sore from weeks of marching. Ewen Cameron was to give the signal by throwing his hat in the air. Then they would attack two hundred and fifty soldiers with their bare hands.

As cattle stirring on the holding ground they moved about. They talked in low tones; now and again one laughed or clapped his fellow on the back in passing. The light crept through the barred windows, and as it grew within the room Cameron began to approach the doorway. Samuel H. Walker was lounging near the threshold smoking a cigaret. He was to rush one sentry while the Scotchman fell upon the other.

Now Cameron stopped to speak a word to one of his cowboys, who grinned with the marvelous serenity of youth, making some careless answer. Now he came on as one indifferent to where he strays. He paused again to chat with a fellow captain. He took a few steps toward the threshold. Then he halted and glanced around at his followers.

“Well, boys,” he said coolly, “we will go at it.”

And with that he flung his hat to the ceiling.

He sprang upon the nearest sentry, and Walker made his leap in the same instant. They were big men, these two; the clipping thud of their great fists came distinct and sharp into the silence; the soldiers went down before them like a pair of pole-axed oxen. And now the leaders bounded back from the senseless forms, brandishing the captured muskets. The whole roomful surged after them through the doorway.

They poured into the courtyard where the companies of infantry were lounging in the pallid sunrays. Some in those swarthy groups glanced about at the noise of footfalls and ran to the stacked muskets. They seized the first pieces that their hands fell upon and turned to face the rush. The sentries at the outer gate fired into the mass; and then the place was filled with an eddying confusion of swiftly moving forms; a score of hand-to-hand fights were raging at once.

A tall farmer boy from the Bexar country had got hold of a bayonet and was stabbing desperately at an infantryman who was sweeping about him with his clubbed gun. Young Captain Barragon, son of the guard's commander, was standing with his back to the wall waving a broken sword in defiance at a group of cowboys who had surrounded him and were demanding his surrender. His soldiers were already beginning to scatter. The roar of voices swelled, then died, and the sound of blows on bare flesh succeeded it. The most of the Mexicans were in full flight now. Four or five bodies lay before the gateway.

Ewen Cameron broke through the group who were closing in on the beardless captain.

“I surrender only to an officer,” the boy was shouting.

“I am an officer,” Cameron answered and took the broken sword.

He turned to his men.

“To the gate, boys.”

They followed him and were in the forefront of the rush.

The soldiers in the street had formed, the cavalry afoot beside the infantry. Their muskets flamed. Dr. R. F. Brenham and Patrick Lyons fell before the volley. The others swept on. Some of them bore captured guns and some were fighting with brickbats. They charged with the desperation of men who had rather die than not, and the troopers fled before them, abandoning their horses. The infantry fell back around a corner. Captain Fitzgerald called for volunteers. Fifty fell in behind him and rushed the companies as they were reforming. A spattering of shots sounded as they turned the corner. Fitzgerald fell dead. The rest hurled themselves upon the close-formed ranks and scattered them.

It was all over now. Two hundred and fourteen unarmed men had defeated two hundred and fifty who were equipped for battle. The Mexican officers surrendered formally. The Texans gathered up all the horses and muskets in the village. By ten o'clock they all were in the saddle—all save the wounded, whose proper care had been made the main condition of the capitulation. The Rio Grande lay four hundred miles away. After what they had done that distance seemed a little thing.

There were one hundred and ninety-three of them when they started northward that morning. They rode for fifty miles and halted at midnight long enough to water their horses. Then they swung into the saddles and went twelve miles farther. Here they slept for two hours while the wearied animals got a bite to eat.

The sun was rising when they resumed their journey. Now and again that day they passed a ranch or hacienda. Soldiers were guarding all of these places. Toward evening they saw a few small squads of cavalry in their rear. But the troopers hung back beyond rifle shot, for all the world like bands of coyotes that follow a herd of sheep, awaiting a favorable opportunity to make a dash on some lagging animal when the shepherd is looking elsewhere.

The road wound through steep-walled defiles, mounting the flanks of the enclosing peaks to pass from one cañon to the next. The country all about was waterless, a nest of savage mountains whose sides radiated heat waves under a blazing sun.

ON THE morning of February 12th, they left the highway to avoid Saltillo and struck off into the untracked mountains. For twenty-four hours they climbed among the granite ridges. During that time they did not see a drop of water. They found no food. Huge buzzards sailed overhead, keeping pace with their slow advance, biding their time. On the dawn of the thirteenth they struck the road again. Two hours later they found a little spring. There was a sup for every man, and every horse was allowed a single swallow.

That day they passed more ranches, and at every one they saw a detachment of red-capped soldiers. Rather than risk the delay of an engagement they kept on, although thirst was beginning to torture all of them. It was evident that the alarm had gone before them. Evening was coming on when they met a Scotchman who had been in the country for a year or two. He told them they were on the main road and advised them to stick to it; but several of the officers feared treachery from this passer-by and prevailed on Cameron to leave the highway. That night they struck off into the mountains again.

The little trail which they had taken dwindled out before they crossed the first ridge; and when they reached its summit they rested among the rocks till dawn came, revealing a dead world of naked peaks whose scorched sides stood out scarred by avalanches, cloaked by a wavering film of overheated air. A Mexican shepherd met them as they began their march that morning. They asked him of the country. He shook his head. There was no water in this part of the range, he told them.

They had been twenty-four hours without a drink. The horses were staggering from weakness. The shoes of the men were torn to pieces. That day they killed the animals and drank the blood. They stripped the meat from the bones. They made rude sandals from the saddle flaps. They started on; and a cloud of buzzards settled down upon the place before they had fairly left it.

There was no pretense at formation now; there were no orders from the officers. Cameron and one or two companions kept to the front, looking over the savage ridges and the sunbaked cañons from every high point, to pick the route. The others straggled along behind them. Some of those in the rear were throwing away their captured muskets. Now one dropped out, and now two or three departed up a branch cañon, lured away by fancies that the defile might hide water. So they toiled on for three days. Many were holding pebbles in their mouths; some were chewing the leaves of nigger head and prickly pear; and others were staggering aimlessly along, talking to themselves in thirst's delirium.

Cameron had sent three of his cowboys ahead to search for a spring. On the fourth day they returned and reported that there was not a drop of water in the country. The Scotchman looked about him. He saw some whose swollen tongues were protruding between their lips and some who were scooping dry dirt into their mouths. Then he gave the order to turn to the right. Better to risk the soldiers on the road than to die out here.

That evening they came out of the last cañon and saw the road ahead of them. Cameron was in the lead; some fifty odd men hung close behind him. The rest were scattered along for miles in little groups.

One of his cowboys pointed to a column of smoke which wound into the sky. The captain bade two go on and reconnoiter. They were back within a few hours with the news that squads of cavalry were patrolling the highway and a troop was guarding the next pass.

Their last chance was gone. They waited for the dawn; and with the sunrise came the soldiers. The Scotchman called his men together; they loaded their muskets and deployed to receive the enemy.

They were barely able to stand from weakness. But when an officer rode out before the column and ordered them to surrender Cameron replied:

“On one condition only. We shall be treated as prisoners of war.”

And on that condition General Mexia, the governor of the province, received their arms. It is only fair to say that he did all a man could to see the promise kept.

For a week the cavalry were busy gathering in the last stragglers, until they had one hundred and eighty-one in custody. Four had escaped to make their way to the Rio Grande. Eight had died out in the sunbaked mountains. Within the next few days five more succumbed to what they had gone through.

Mexia saw to it that they were humanely treated. By his orders the thirst-stricken captives were given a few sips of water at first, and a few morsels of food. As time went on the allowance was increased, and they were taken back to Saltillo. Here they were held pending the arrival of instructions from Santa Anna.

It has been told how the lawyer Canales had an errand of his own with Mexico's ruler when he set forth to bring the news from Mier. Now after all these weeks of waiting he saw his opportunity to carry out his private mission. He did it so effectively that Santa Anna sent an order to execute the prisoners to the last man.

A storm of protest rose in Saltillo. A score of letters went to the dictator from prominent Mexicans who cried out against the black injustice. Governor Mexia wrote that he would resign his commission rather than do this thing. The American and British ministers in Mexico City added their voices to the clamor.

Then Santa Anna modified the sentence. Let one man of every ten be led out and shot, was the purport of his new instructions. He sent Colonel Domingo Huerta northward to carry them out; and before Huerta left the capital Canales had a quiet word with him.

On the twenty-fifth day of March, 1843, the thing was done. The Texans had been brought to the Hacienda Salado. In the room from which they had escaped more than a month before, they were lined up and Alfred S. Thurmand interpreted the dictator's written order to his companions.

Chance would decide on the victims. So said the document which Thurmand read. Two soldiers brought a jar; they poured into its mouth one hundred and fifty-nine white beans and seventeen black ones.

Colonel Domingo Huerta had done his work neatly, down to the last detail. No lottery ever looked fairer than this grim game which he had set before the Texans. The officers were to have the first choice. Cameron's name headed the list.

But William F. Wilson had been standing near the jar from the beginning and had noted something which had escaped the eyes of the others. Now, when Cameron stepped forward to plunge in his hand—

“Dip deep, captain,” Wilson whispered.

For he remembered that the black beans had been poured in last and there had been no stirring.

Cameron glanced about the room.

“Well, boys, we have to draw,” he said. “Let's be at it.”

He thrust his fingers into the jar's mouth. Whether he had heard Wilson no man knows; it may have been blind luck. But when he withdrew his hand he held a white bean, and the cheers of his companions shook the rafters.

So Canales lost for the time being.

Then Wilson, who had some days since refused a proffer of intervention from the British consul at Saltillo—for he was an Englishman—saying that he meant to share whatever fate came to the Texans, took his turn and won his life. In after years the State of Texas named a county for him.

Captain Eastland was the first officer to get a black bean. He held it up for all to see, shrugged his shoulders and stepped back for the next man without changing his expression.

“Boys, I told you so,” Major Cook said when his turn was done and he had his death sentence between his fingers. “I never failed to draw a prize.” He shook his head and smiled. “Well, they only rob me of forty years.”

He had just passed his thirtieth birthday.

When one plucked a white bean from the jar, those awaiting turns loudly cheered his luck which jeopardized their own chances by that much more.

“This,” said one who had been a well-known gambler in Austin the Spring before, “beats raffling all to ——.”

He was looking at his bean when he spoke, and it was black.

“Ruther draw for a Spanish hoss and lose him,” shouted Talking Bill Moore, and won the right to live.

Two brothers by the name of Beard quarreled because one insisted that if he should get a white bean and his brother a black one, they must trade. The Mexican corporal in charge of the jar cut them short and both drew white.

When Henry Whaling saw his fate between his fingers, “They don't make much off of me,” he said lightly. “I've killed more'n twenty-five of the yellow-bellies.”

So it went on until the last black bean was shown; and then the shackles were knocked off from the luckless ones. They were taken out to die.

News moved slowly in those times. When the details of the execution reached the City of Mexico the remaining captives were on the road far south of the Hacienda Salado. Canales heard how Ewen Cameron had escaped, and he went again to Santa Anna. The dictator sent out another order. It met the procession of shackled prisoners one evening at a little hamlet within a hundred miles of the capital.

That night Ewen Cameron was taken from the room where they were housed; and in the morning when they were departing the Texans heard the volley of the firing squad which he was facing, as he had faced all his enemies in days gone by, with head erect, unflinching.

So he died. But his memory lived after him. It helped to steel the nerves of twenty of his cowboys who tunneled through the thick walls of the fortress of Perote a few months later under the noses of the guards. The most of them were recaptured; but a few managed to make their way back to their own country.

Months went by. The prisoners were kept at making roads and cleaning up the streets about the palace of Santa Anna. They never lost heart. And the bitterness which grew within them was made sterner every time the name of Ewen Cameron was spoken. There came a day when the efforts of the American and British ministers and the pleas of Santa Anna's wife resulted in an order from the dictator releasing those who still remained in custody.

So they returned to Texas and they told the story. Thomas J. Green, who was among the party escaping from Perote, wrote down the details of the whole expedition. And there was a time when all the Southwest rang with the name of Ewen Cameron.

The Mexican War came on. Major Walter P. Lane of Texas, who was leading a number of troops on a scouting expedition toward San Luis Potosi, departed from his route and crossed the mountains to the Hacienda Salado. Here he compelled the major domo to exhume the bones of the seventeen who had drawn black beans on that March afternoon five years before, and to furnish mules to transport them back across the Rio Grande. They were buried with full honors of war at La Grange, Texas.

But the grave of Ewen Cameron remained unmarked, So he sleeps, like many a one of the bold young riders who succeeded him and his companions of the Nueces, without so much as a headboard to remind men of his resting place.

Had he a monument, perhaps the most fitting inscription on its face would be:

EWEN CAMERON

THE FIRST COWBOY

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Table of Contents

Title page

The First Cowboy

About