Chapter 2

"Hey, did you know," Sam piped up from the backseat, and in the front, Dean groaned. Sam paused, looking up from his book uncertainly. He'd been starting sentences like that for the past six hours. And that was just today. There was also the 10 hours the day before, and the eight the day before that.

They had only today made it to the Texas border, and while the 18 hours in the car the first two days had gotten them through the first five states, it was going to take about 14 to get them from the southeastern border of this one to their target in the Panhandle. Dean didn't know if he could take another eight hours of "Did you know."

He looked over at John, hoping he was also finding it irritating – ideally, enough so to put a stop to it. But as far as Dean could tell, Dad had heard neither Sam's question, nor Dean's groan. His ability to tune them out was unparalleled. Which was why Dean gave up and resigned himself to another lesson in Texas history. Sam's working theory was, you never knew when he might find something in his studies of the places they were moving to that would prove useful to Dad in a job. It was his way of trying to help, since he wasn't old enough to actually help yet. And it made Dean feel bad that Dad probably heard less than 10 percent of it. Even if he was pretty sure that the fact that cowboys slept with their eyes open was not going to help John find whatever had killed those two hunters.

It was kind of cool, though. He wondered if he could train himself to sleep with his eyes open. Sure'd be useful.

"What?" he finally relented.

Sam didn't reply right away, so Dean turned to look back at him, wincing as the sudden influx of air over his back made him realize how wet his T-shirt was. Air conditioner was out again, which hadn't been that big a deal in South Carolina's April, but was proving ever more painful the farther west they traveled.

"What?" he said again, trying for genuinely interested. Sam held his gaze for a moment, looking for evidence that he really did want to know, and Dean felt another twinge of guilt. He knew it would never occur to Sam that there were facts that other people weren't burning to find out.

Sam accepted the second "what" for the apology it was, and started back up.

"Did you know that the Battle of San Jacinto only lasted 18 minutes?"

"San Jacinto?" Dean repeated, before he'd thought it through. He should have just given the requisite "Wow, no, I didn't know that" and turned around. Oh well. Too late now.

"Yeah. The last battle of the Texas Revolution," Sam said, checking his facts on the page in front of him, before gearing up for a lecture. "It was 900 Texans against 1,400 Mexicans, and the Texans won in 18 minutes. They killed 630 Mexicans, wounded 208 and captured 730. Only nine Texans were killed, and only 26 wounded."

OK, so that actually did kind of deserve a "Wow, no I didn't know that." Dean let out an impressed whistle. "Geez," he said. "What were they fighting for?"

"Independence from Mexico. They were led by Sam Houston, who is the only American to have been governor of two different states, and the only governor of an American state who had also been president of another country. Their battle cry was 'Remember the Alamo.'"

Sam said all of this matter-of-factly, reeling off trivia as if he'd been born in Texas, rather than having made it to the state just about four hours ago.

"Like, Davy Crockett and the Alamo?" Dean said, interested against his will. He'd watched some of those old Disney reruns, and the man had been played by John Wayne and Johnny Cash. This was history that interested Dean.

"Yeah," Sam said, sounding a little surprised by Dean's sudden interest in what he was saying. "And Jim Bowie and William Travis."

"Jim Bowie, the Bowie Knife Jim Bowie?"

Sam nodded eagerly. "That's the one."

"Huh."

"Though, actually, his brother made him that knife. He just made it famous, when he used it to gut a man who'd double crossed his friend in a duel and stabbed him with a sword cane after he'd already been shot."

"Christ," Dean said.

"Yeah," Sam grinned, then turned thoughtful. "Actually, he reminds me a little of you."

"Hell, yeah," Dean laughed.

"No, I mean it. He's supposed to have been all tough and badass –" Here Sam snapped his mouth shut and shot a guilty look toward the back of John's head. And though he'd yet to acknowledge a single other word of the conversation, John heard that and raised a censuring eyebrow in the rearview mirror.

"Sorry," Sam mumbled. "But it's true! Says here: He is supposed to have ridden alligators, won sit-down knife fights on logs in the Mississippi River, fought Indians and sailed with pirates. People stared at him wherever he went, saying he had never lost a fight, nor had he ever started one."

Dean wasn't sure what to say to that. John took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at him.

"You been riding alligators?" he said, laughter hiding just behind his words.

Dean flushed and slid back around to face forward. "Shut up," he grumbled, not really aiming it at anyone in particular. John chuffed, but didn't say anything else. In the passenger side mirror, Dean watched Sam frown in their general direction for a minute or two before shrugging and turning back to his book.

OOO

Duh. Sam knew Dean didn't ride alligators. They'd totally missed the point. And they hadn't let him finish and tell them the rest about Jim Bowie. And he hadn't even got to tell them about William Travis at all. Besides being the colonel who'd inspired the men of the Alamo to stay and defend the mission against impossible odds – 182 against 2,000, which divided out to 11 to 1, and even though all the Texans were killed, more Mexicans were killed, about 600 hundred, which was, like, more than three times as many – Travis was a lawyer and kept a list of the books he'd read. Everything from novels by Sir Walter Scott to history by Herodotus and Napoleon. Sam hadn't read those yet, but they were going on his list of things to get at the library.

And Travis was credited with writing a letter called the "sublimest document in American history." Sam wasn't sure exactly what sublimest meant, but it sounded really good. And he liked the letter, which ended, "If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due his own honor and that of his country. Victory or death."

But mostly he liked the idea that your words, what you thought, could be part of what made you a hero.

He killed a couple of hours of the drive imagining himself pacing in front of dozens of men, rallying them with his words to "sell their lives as dearly as possible" and drawing a line in the sand. And maybe Dean was watching, stoic and proud, from his cot where he'd later fight to the death, even though he was too sick to stand up.