How Colonel William Travis died has two tellings. In the better-documented one, drawn from his slave Joe's account, he was shot through the head early in the assault as he fired down from the north-wall battery. The other is the one this set stages: that Travis, his weapon empty, drew his sabre and crossed blades with a Mexican officer who had gained the wall, holding him off in a brief hand-to-hand fight before he was bayonetted. The two versions are not really rivals — a man shot in the head might well have swung a sabre first — and both have been told since 1836. What they share is the picture of the young commander fighting at the wall he had refused to surrender.

King & Country's two-figure set "The Duelists" freezes that sabre fight — Travis in a blue frontier coat and grey wide-brimmed hat, lunging with his blade, against a Mexican officer in a gold-laced blue coatee, red sash, and shako, the two crossing swords on separate groundwork bases. This is a slightly smaller 54mm set rather than the 60mm of the main Alamo range, and it is now retired. It pairs with the other portraits of the same man — W. Britain's William B. Travis and King & Country's Gallant Colonel Travis — and set before The New Alamo Facade it stages the north-wall duel at the centre of a Travis diorama.

Model: RTA095 / King & Country / 54mm scale / matte finish / 2 piece set / retired — this example in excellent condition with its original box