His
face is done off in a nest of white hair and beard, and is patriarchal
in character. In 1836 he came out from Virginia to "take toll" of the
Mexicans for killing some relatives of his in the Fannin Massacre, and
he considers that he has squared his accounts; but they had him on the
debit side for a while. Being captured in the Meir expedition, he
walked as a prisoner to the city of Mexico, and did public work for that
country with a ball-and-chain attachment for two years. The prisoners
overpowered the guards and escaped on one occasion, but were overtaken
by Mexican cavalry while dying of thirst in a desert. Santa Anna ordered
their "decimation," which meant that every tenth man was shot, their lot
being determined by the drawing of a black bean from an earthen pot
containing a certain proportion of white ones. "Big-foot" drew a white
one. He was also a member of Captain Hayes's company, afterwards a
captain of Rangers, and a noted Indian-fighter. Later he carried the
mails from San Antonio to El Paso through a howling wilderness, but
always brought it safely through--if safely can be called lying thirteen
days by a water-hole in the desert, waiting for a broken leg to mend,
and living meanwhile on one prairie-wolf, which he managed to shoot.
Wallace was a professional hunter, who fought Indians and hated
"greasers"; he belongs to the past, and has been "outspanned" under a
civilization in which he has no place, and is to-day living in poverty.
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