It left the thicket bare to the blackened branches and shriveled cactus-lobes. Every inch fumed with the acrid smoke.
"Raise that breastworks. It's all we've got, boys. We'll have to fight from inside it."
"Dat Jim nigger 'lowed he was in a toler'ble fight, but 'twa'n't nothin' 'side ob dis," chattered boy Charles.
They toiled, piling their rampart ring higher, while they constantly peered right, left, before, behind, expecting a charge.
"The reds are going! They've had enough!"
That seemed true. The Indians had taken away their dead and wounded; they were commencing to follow, but some of them remained in sight.
The sun set. It had been a short day. In the dusk the Texans got fresh water, at the creek. Soon they were ready for the morrow. All that night the Indian death chants sounded. Morning came. There was silence, while inside their little circle of rocks and sod amidst the scorched brush the five able-bodied white men and two boys waited.
No Indians appeared near. They were somewhere, burying their dead. It was found out afterward that they were in a cave, not far off.
This night Bob Armstrong and Caephus Ham stole away, and examined the other side of the hill.
"Forty-eight blood signs we counted," Bob reported, "where Injuns had been laid."
"I reckon we'd best stay here awhile, just the same," Captain Jim Bowie counseled. "And we've got a man or two who ought not to be moved yet."
On the ninth morning after the fight they started home, with their three wounded and their baggage on horses, but themselves mainly afoot; traveled ten days, and reached San Antonio in early night.
They met with a great reception. The Comanches had been there, to tell of the danger and to say that the Bowie party were surely doomed. Stephen Bowie had heard and had hastened in; was forming a company to set out and avenge Jim, Rezin and the rest. But now a shout arose--
"Here they are! The Bowies are back! The whole party's in!"
Men and women rushed out of the adobe houses, for the plaza. All San Antonio rejoiced. The escape was looked upon as a miracle.
One killed, three wounded, was the list; "but we fought fire as well as Injuns." Of the one hundred and sixty-four Indians over eighty had fallen--fifty-two of them never to rise again.