San Felipe was not behindhand in enthusiasm over the tidings from Gonzales. Delegates to the General Consultation were coming in, and the committee, on hearing the news, sent out a circular calling upon each man in Texas to decide for himself whether or not he would submit to the tyranny of Mexico, and if he would not submit, “let him answer by mouth of his rifle.” This charge was not needed. Men poured in from every quarter carrying their rifles, shot-pouches, and powder-horns; the look of grim determination on their faces meant “liberty, or war to the death.”  
66
Austin, by permission of the convention, left San Felipe for Gonzales, arriving there on the 10th of October. He was elected to the command of the volunteers there assembled, about three hundred and fifty strong, and marched almost immediately for San Antonio, hoping to capture and hold that important post. He encamped on the 20th at the Mission of La Espada on the San Antonio River. Recruits came in rapidly. Sam Houston, who had given his last five-dollar bill to a messenger to spread the call for volunteers, arrived with a detachment of men from East Texas. Bowie and Travis, Crockett and Fannin, Milam, Burleson, “Deaf” Smith, Rusk, Wharton,—these gathered in groups about the camp, little dreaming that each man of them carried within his own breast something of which the history of Texas was to be made.
 
 
Mission of La Espada.
 
67
General Cos had arrived and had taken command at San Antonio. He scornfully rejected Austin’s summons to surrender, even threatening to fire upon his flag of truce. Austin, whose army now numbered about six hundred men, did not feel himself strong enough to make an attack, but decided to move nearer the enemy. Accordingly on the 27th he sent Captains Bowie and Fannin with ninety-two men to reconnoiter and to choose a suitable position. They marched up the riverbank and encamped at nightfall in a bend of the river, near the old Mission of Concepcion.
 
The next morning at sunrise, through the mist that hung like a grey curtain around the camp, they heard something like the wary tread of horses’ hoofs. At the same time a sentinel[19] posted in the high tower of the mission gave warning, and a shot echoed from the outer picket-line.
 
The Texans sprang to arms; a slight lifting of the fog showed them a solid phalanx of Mexican cavalry hemming in the camp on three sides. There was a breathless interval of preparation, but no confusion; and by the time the enemy’s infantry came in sight trailing their arms, the Texans were ready for the fight. It was a short and sharp one.
 
The encampment had been well chosen; the triangular bottom land in which it lay by the riverside was skirted by heavy timber, and the bluff surrounding it made a sort of natural parapet.
 

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