Читать книгу Adventures of Big-Foot Wallace: The Texas Ranger and Hunter (Illustrated) - John Crittenden Duval - Страница 4

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William A. Wallace was born in Lexington, Rockbridge, County, Virginia, in the year 1816. He went to Texas in 1836, a few months after the battle of San Jacinto, for the purpose, he says of taking pay out of the Mexicans for the murder of his brother and his cousin, Major Wallace, who both fell at “Fannin’s Massacre.” He says he believes accounts with them are now about square.

He landed first at Galveston, which consisted then of six groceries and an old stranded hulk of a steamboat, used as a hotel, and for a berth in which he paid at the rate of three dollars per day. From Galveston, Wallace went on to La Grange, then a frontier village, where he resided until the spring of 1839, when he moved up to Austin, just before the seat of government was established at that place. He remained at Austin until the spring of 1840, when finding that the country was settling up around him too fast to suit his notions, he went over to San Antonio, where he resided until he entered the service.

He was at the battle of the Salado, in the fall of 1842, when General Woll came in and captured San Antonio. The fight began about eleven o’clock in the day, and lasted until night. General Woll had fourteen hundred men, and the Texans one hundred and ninety-seven, under Caldwell, (commonly known as “Old Paint.”) Between eighty and one hundred Mexicans were killed, while the Texans lost only one man, (Jett.) Forty men, however, from La Grange, under Captain Dawson, who were endeavoring to form a junction with them, were surrounded and captured by the Mexicans, who massacred them all as soon as they had surrendered their arms.

In the fall of 1842, he volunteered in the “Mier Expedition,” an account of which appears in this volume. After his return from Mexico, he joined Colonel Jack Hays’s Ranging Company, the first ever regularly enlisted in the service of the “old Republic,” and was with it in many of those desperate encounters with the Comanches and other Indians, in which Hays, Walker, McCulloch, and Chevalier gained their reputation as successful Indian-fighters.

When the Mexican war broke out in 1846, Wallace joined Colonel Hays’s regiment of mounted volunteers, and was with it at the storming of Monterey, where he says he took “full toll” out of the Mexicans for killing his brother and cousin at Goliad in 1836.

After the Mexican war ended, he had command of a Ranging Company for some time, and did good service in protecting the frontiers of the State from the incursions of the savages. Subsequently he had charge of the mail from San Antonio to El Paso, and, though often waylaid and attacked by the Indians, he always brought it through in safety.

He is now living upon his little ranch, thirty miles west of San Antonio, where, with true frontier hospitality, he is always ready to welcome the wayfarer to the best he has.