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260 "Don't make a light ag'in," were the frontiersman's first words. "It may cost us our lives. We will keep still and lay low," and then he became partly unconscious again.

The hours which followed were like some horrible nightmare to Dan, whose nerves had been wrought up to the top notch of excitement by the scenes in the courtyard and the church. From a distance he heard calls and groans and an occasional shot. The Alamo had fallen and now Santa Anna was himself upon the scene, to make certain that not one of the Texans should escape. "I told them what to expect," he is reported to have said, and then, when five men were brought before him, and his own officer, General Castrillon, interceded for the Texans, he gave Castrillon a lecture for his soft-heartedness, and the prisoners were speedily put to the bayonet. Such was Santa Anna, now high in power, but who was destined in time to be shorn of all rank and to die in bitter obscurity. His last act of atrocity at the Alamo was to have the bodies of his victims piled up with layers of brushwood and burned.

The hours passed, how slowly or swiftly neither Dan nor Poke Stover knew. No one came to disturb them, and at length the boy sank into a doze due to his exhausted condition.

When he awoke he found the frontiersman also