Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/34

 ordering his soldiers to follow him. To charge through port-holes bristling with rifles and arrows was the only way of attack which could prevail. A rapid, simultaneous plunge could succeed. Stopping to rally his men, and levelling his musket within five yards of the port-holes, "he received two rifle balls in his right shoulder, and his arm fell shattered to his side." Disabled himself totally, turning he called once more to his men, and urged them to make the charge. They could not be induced to advance. There he stood till he saw that standing there in his own blood would do no good. Going then beyond the range of the bullets, exhausted, he sank to the ground. And not until the covered ravine was set on fire were the Indians dislodged from the final resort. The last rays of the setting sun shone on the ruins of the Creek nation. Volumes of dense smoke rose heavily over the bodies of painted warriors and the burning ruins of their log fortifications. Of the thousand brave warriors, the flowers of Indian chivalry, there were none to scowl on death and their assailants at Tohopeka.

Young Houston, then about twenty years old, displayed amid the perils of this hard-fought engagement such heroism as excited the admiration of the entire army. The wounds which he received remained unhealed to the day of his death. He was carried from the field of the dead and wounded, and placed in charge of the surgeon. As the surgeon said that he could not survive till the next morning, after extracting one ball, he made no effort to extract the other, as he thought it unnecessary to torture the suffering young hero. He spent a night of wretchedness with few, even, of the comforts of a soldier's knapsack. Little was done for him by his comrades, as they regarded him as a dying man, and thought that all they could do should be done for such only as were likely to live. The most brilliant day of his life was succeeded by its darkest night. Racked with the torturing pains of his many wounds, deserted in what he believed was his dying hour, stretched on the damp earth, the hours of that dreary night were an age to that young soldier. But these scenes of excitement and heroism were a part of his education. He was in training for the grand destiny which his young life presaged. He was under tuition for the leadership of that brave band of pioneers who through fierce struggles and sufferings triumphed in the peaceful enjoyment of a liberated Republic. The eye of Andrew Jackson was upon him, and the courage and daring exhibited on that bloody day at Tohopeka secured the life-long regard of the hero of New Orleans, warmly exhibited in the earnest sympathies which attended him through the fortunes of his life. Thirty years thereafter, about to pass from mortality to immortality, in the last months of his existence, Gen. Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, sent for