Suddenly, the Scot tossed his tattered hat high into the air, and the Texans “poured from our dens like a pack of ravenous wolves.” Charging toward the inner door of the courtyard, Cameron and a Texan named Samuel Walker hurled aside two sentries and broke for the outer door. Their whooping comrades swarmed the astounded Mexicans, who belatedly opened fire. The hail of musketry had little effect on the melee, and a vicious hand to hand clash broke out beyond the ranch walls. The Mexicans soon wilted before the prisoners’ ferocious onslaught.

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The Texans disarmed their stunned guards, pillaged the arms and ammunition stores in an outer enclosure, and drove the Mexican soldiers into flight. Within minutes Cameron’s haughty Texans were alone in the courtyard, and shocked Mexican troops were scattering into the hills. Five Texans and five Mexicans lay dead or dying in the dust.

Leaving their wounded at the ranch with about twenty men who had not joined in the break, the Texans immediately set out for the Río Grande. But their plan held scant promise of success, as the region between Salado and the river was an unfamiliar, mountainous desert that soon would be crawling with pursuing Mexican cavalry. For several days, the escapees headed northeast on the main roadway, scavenging from small ranches and relying on their fighting prowess to carry them home. Then, in spite of Cameron’s protests, the Texans abandoned the road and were soon adrift in the trackless desert.

Wandering across the arid wastes, the exhausted escapees tossed away their weapons as they were driven by hunger and thirst to forage for insects and snakes and to burrow for water in the parched earth. Some of the men desperately shoveled moist dirt into their mouths, while others, maddened by their thirst, stooped to drinking their own urine. The bulk of the prisoners scattered across the barren valleys, where their Mexican antagonists were patiently waiting, and by February 25, all but roughly a dozen of Cameron’s men had been recaptured.

Chained in pairs and looking like sun-blistered scarecrows, the Texans lurched into Saltillo on March 1, unaware that an angry Santa Anna had ordered the execution of the entire band. The commander charged with carrying out the executions, General Francisco Mejía, defiantly declared “that he would be murderer for no man or government,” and during the next three weeks, British and American diplomats protested to the Mexican president. Santa Anna grudgingly retracted his original order, resolving instead to shoot one tenth of the prisoners.

On March 25, Colonel Domingo Huerta was waiting for the Texans when they trudged back under guard into the familiar courtyard of Salado. That afternoon the 176 debilitated prisoners received the grim, unexpected news that every tenth man would be shot at sunset. To determine who among them would face the firing squad, the Texans were to draw beans from a small earthen jar. Those who drew a white bean would live; those who drew a black one would die.

A jar filled with 159 white and 17 black beans was brought forward. Huerta, aware that Cameron would draw first, made certain that all the black beans were near the top of the pile. But the wily Cameron thrust his hand deeply into the jar and pulled out a white bean. To Huerta’s dismay, the three Texans who followed Cameron also drew white. The colonel ordered a soldier to give the jar a vigorous shake, and the fifth man to draw, Captain William Eastland, came away with the first black bean.

As the drawings continued, Mexican troops posted on the surrounding walls turned occasionally to watch the proceedings. Some, one prisoner remembered, seemed deeply moved, while others watched “as though they had heavy wagers upon the result.” Physically and mentally drained by their long ordeal, most of the Texans took their turns at the jar with stoic resignation. After the seventeenth fatal black bean had been drawn, the condemned men were allowed a final visit with their officers, to whom they gave their last requests.

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