David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [141]
Originally, Crockett had thought he would be going all the way to the Rio Grande to help in the Texian cause. Once he got to Washington-on-the-Brazos, however, he seems to have changed his focus. His eyes turned to San Antonio de Bexar, where many of the anti-Jackson forces had gathered. They were fully prepared to defend the city and make their stand at the Alamo despite the orders of Houston to destroy the old mission and depart as soon as possible. The senior ranking men at the Alamo were not keen on Houston and wanted him replaced as commander in chief. When it came to choosing between the two sides, Crockett—despite his friendship with Houston—allowed his hatred of Jackson to cloud his better judgment. Crockett went to San Antonio.
After several days in Washington-on-the Brazos, Crockett and the other riders were San Antonio–bound. They took their leave and ferried across the Brazos River below its confluence with the Navasota River. As they headed west, the riders encountered the Swisher family at a settlement that came to be called Gay Hill.
“At the time I saw Colonel Crockett, I judged him to be about forty years old [Crockett was forty-nine],”13 recalled John Swisher many years later. At the time, Swisher—a Tennessee native who moved to Texas with his family in 1833—was only seventeen years old, and although he was nine years shy when guessing Crockett’s age, his physical description appeared to be accurate in every detail. “He was stout and muscular, about six feet in height, and weighing 180 to 200 pounds,” Swisher wrote in his memoirs.
He was of a florid complexion, with intelligent gray eyes. He had small side whiskers, inclining to sandy. His countenance, although firm and determined, wore a pleasant and genial expression. Although his early education had been neglected, he had acquired such a polish from his contact with good society that few men could eclipse him in conversation. He was fond of talking and had an ease and grace about him which, added to his strong natural sense and the fund of anecdotes that he had gathered, rendered him irresistible.14
Swisher—who would go on to serve as the youngest Texian at the Battle of San Jacinto—was skilled with a rifle, and when he lugged home a freshly killed deer, Crockett praised the youngster and challenged him to a friendly shooting match, which ended in a draw when Crockett handicapped himself to give the young man a chance. The “young hunter,” as Crockett called Swisher, was so thrilled that he declared he “would not have changed places with the president himself.” Crockett enjoyed his stay of several days with the Swisher family and each night entertained them with his growing arsenal of stories. “He conversed about himself in the most unaffected manner without the slightest attempt to display any genius or smartness,” Swisher recalled. “He told us a great many anecdotes, many of which were common place and amounted to nothing within themselves, but his inimitable way of telling them would convulse us in laughter.”15
The laughter spread to San Antonio de Bexar when Crockett and about a dozen companions rode into town beneath a cold drizzle during the second week of February. Crockett’s presence boosted the spirits of the Alamo defenders. He spoke to the citizen soldiers and townsfolk in one of San Antonio’s plazas: “Fellow citizens, I am among you. I have come to your country, though not I hope, through any selfish motive whatever. I have come to aid you all