8 The Wilderness Hunter. 



Very characteristic in its way was the career of quaint, 

 honest, fearless Davy Crockett, the Tennessee rifleman 

 and Whig Congressman, perhaps the best shot in all our 

 country, whose skill in the use of his favorite weapon 

 passed into a proverb, and who ended his days by a 

 hero's death in the ruins of the Alamo. An even more 

 notable man was another mighty hunter, Houston, who 

 when a boy ran away to the Indians ; who while still a 

 lad returned to his own people to serve under Andrew 

 Jackson in the campaigns which that greatest of all the 

 backwoods leaders waged against the Creeks, the Span- 

 iards, and the British. He was wounded at the storming 

 of one of the strongholds of Red Eagle's doomed war- 

 riors, and returned to his Tennessee home to rise to high 

 civil honor, and become the foremost man of his State. 

 Then, while Governor of Tennessee, in a sudden fit of 

 moody anger, and of mad longing for the unfettered life 

 of the wilderness, he abandoned his office, his people, and 

 his race, and fled to the Cherokees beyond the Missis- 

 sippi. For years he lived as one of their chiefs ; until 

 one day, as he lay in ignoble ease and sloth, a rider from 

 the south, from the rolling plains of the San Antonio and 

 Brazos, brought word that the Texans were up, and in 

 doubtful struggle striving to wrest their freedom from the 

 lancers and carbineers of Santa Anna. Then his dark 

 soul flamed again into burning life ; riding by night and 

 day he joined the risen Texans, was hailed by them as a 

 heaven-sent leader, and at the San Jacinto led them on 

 to the overthrow of the Mexican host. Thus the stark 

 hunter, who had been alternately Indian fighter and In- 



