Empire of bones

by Jeff Long

  "Does anyone know where we are?" Rusk asked.

  "Does it matter?" John Wharton said. Obviously he didn't know this place either.

  "What now?" Colonel Sherman demanded. His shaggy red hair hung shoulder length and his nose had been sunburned so many times it looked like the pox.

  "Let's circle round on the plain," Burleson said, "a big circle round and round until they bite our tail or we bite theirs."

  "Head west," Mosely Baker declared.

  Houston wasn't really listening. He was staring at the rolling water, remembering the raft he'd once escaped with. A

  squatter had sold it to him and he'd floated down the Mississippi, burying Eliza, forgetting the governorship. For days on end he'd simply drifted with the current, sipping whiskey, chewing tobacco, fishing. With such a raft he could slip away and leave the army to its infernal hunger and bickering and go search for a less difficult kingdom.

  "No, we must cross the river," Wylie Martin advised. "We must draw the Mexicans on. Sooner or later, they'll catch us. And then we'll destroy them."

  "But gentlemen," a voice spoke behind them, "we're already caught." Over one shoulder Houston spotted Private Lamar. The little warrior must have been dipping into his investors' purse of money, for he'd gotten himself a horse, a huge bay mare with white socks. He looked quite tranquil on top of his saddle.

  "Mexicans?" Sherman asked. "There's Mexicans?"

  "Right behind us." Lamar pointed back through the trees to the bright green savannah from which they'd come. The officers wheeled their horses. Side by side the colonels held their horses to the edge of the treeline, squinting into the sunlight. Houston shouldered his white stallion in among them.

  Out beyond their fortress of shadows, the afternoon had been usurped by insects. Bees cleaved the heat waves. Cicadas buzzed. Beetles quietly rendered the horse and cow dung. Nothing else stirred out there. Paradise lay stunned silly by the yellow sun.

  "I don't see a goddamn thing out there," Mosely said.

  "They're there," Lamar said. He didn't bother to join the line of horsemen. He'd already seen what they were about to see.

  Thirty seconds passed. Perhaps a half mile off a set of Mexican dragoons materialized like August mirages. They halted on top of the long green ridge—a ripple, really—that swelled in the center of the savannah. Their blue uniforms were scarcely larger than summer buds on a gentian. Even at this distance Houston could tell when one of the soldiers took out a telescope and glassed them.

  "We've got 'em." Sherman slapped his fist against his palm.

  "Who got who?" Rusk wondered. "It looks to me like we're the ones butt up against a river and nowhere to run."

  "We've got 'em," Sherman repeated. "Now there will be a reckoning."

  After a few more minutes the Mexican dragoons melted backward into the green field, leaving Houston and his army with emptiness to stare at.

  "Look there," Rusk said to Sherman. "You scared them off."

  "Now what?" Wylie Martin said.

  Houston studied the terrain for military advantage, then gave up. The bayou's bosky foliage and the plain's flatness made this place as good as any other.

  "Shall I prepare headquarters?" Colonel Forbes asked. Even his ginger whiskers looked excited.

  Houston shrugged and pointed at the ground where they stood. He said, "Here will do."

  Forbes gave a crisp salute. "I'll see to it immediately, General." He hopped down off his horse. Then he just stood there, at a serious loss. He had no flag, no staff of subordinates, not even a tent with which to establish the spot as anything but a patch of grass.

  Houston touched his spur to Saracen's rib and started off along the edge of the shadows. It was up to him now. He had to find some shape in this shapeless swamp. There were no lines in the dirt to connect this impending battlefield, no maps to consult, no natural features that offered a logical defense, no physical reason to turn upon this point and take on the enemy here and now. There wasn't even a sense of geographic drama—a mountain, say, or a deep gorge. All he had was the soft hiss of the river and these flickering shadows among the live oak and Spanish moss. The river and the quiet messiness of the foliage reminded him of Horseshoe Bend.

  Houston regarded the sky. Nothing much was written up there this afternoon, just the Gulf clouds bunching in the heat and the sun standing there and some blackbirds going through their mating jinks. Not an eagle in sight. Maybe tomorrow, he thought.

  He rode among the trees and came across soldiers gaping out at the meadows, waiting for the horizon to fill with their enemy. "Easy, boys," he said, just to make his presence known. He saw Dr. Labadie sitting under a tree, priming his old musket. "You may prepare your hospital over there, Doctor," Houston said to him.

  "Hospital?" the doctor snorted. Their tents had all gone

  with the refugees, and so had one of their physicians, a pug-nosed fellow who'd decided he was in love with a farm girl. Their medicine had just about run out, too.

  Houston rode on. All told the perimeter stretched a full mile along the crescent of trees. He got all the way to the end of his line of soldiers before the Mexicans reappeared.

  To begin with the sound of their coming was muffled by the grassy rise and Houston blamed the cicadas for the strange hum. Then the notes got closer and took on the brassiness of trumpets. The music clashed sharply with the smear of humidity and the tangled swamp brush littering the view.

  "Ill be," Houston said. "They're playing us a song."

  "Yes," said Burleson, who had joined him. He was skittish.

  "Have you heard it before?"

  "Oh, yes," Burleson answered. "And, I'll wager it's the same tune Travis and Bowie and the boys danced to."

  "A song of the people then."

  "You could say so." Burleson smiled sweetly. "Them black hearts call it The Gueeo. That's their music for cutting throats. Can't you hear it? No quarter."

  At that an old man with wide bony shoulders and a clay jug on a string perked up. "What you say?" he screeched.

  His name was Jimmie Curtis and one of his daughters had lost a husband at the Alamo. Houston know Old Jimmie because he was the oldest man in the army and very probably its meanest drunk. It was said he'd despised his son-in-law before the Alamo fell. Ever since the fall, though, he'd decided there was more profit in loving the son and hating the Mexicans. They'd been listening to him for many long weeks now.

  "They mean to kill us all," Burleson said. "Won't be no prisoners."

  "Them?" Old Jimmie clenched his fists. "Them kill me? They kilt my Wash Cottle, goddamn 'em. I'll kill them bastards. I'll cut their goddamn throats, I will."

  About then a cannon gave a muffled boom. They heard the unmistakable snake hiss of incoming grapeshot. Those who knew what it meant ducked or sprawled in the grass. The rest stood gawking.

  The snake hiss turned to rattling as the scattered shot cut through branches and twigs overhead. Metal pattered against tree trunks. Leaves and old dried-out winter pecans came rain-

  ing down on the soldiers, and those still standing hunched their shoulders up around their ears or ran around.

  "Goddamn," Old Jimmie bellowed. "I'll kill them Meskins. I'll kill 'em."

  "You, boy," Houston called out to a wiry child. "Get up that tree and say what you see."

  The boy scampered barefoot into the upper forks.

  "Soldiers and hosses and cannon," he shouted down. His voice was just breaking into manhood.

  "How many soldiers?" Houston asked.

  "More'n I can count."

  Houston didn't despair. Things weren't always what they first appeared.

  "How high can you count?" he thought to ask.

  "Oh, twenty," the tree boy said.

  "Well, how about their cannon?"

  "How about it?"

  "Is there just one?"

  "One," said the boy.

  "Where at?"

  "Yonder." The boy pointed at an isolated grove of trees two hundred
yards away. It stood off to one side of the flatness like an island. With that much for a target, soldiers started shooting randomly at the distant thicket. Their muskets popped ridiculously in the afternoon heat.

  "Colonel Neill," Houston yelled at large.

  A head popped up from the grass out by where the Twin Sisters, their two brass cannon, had been marooned. The head was followed by the whole lank brown form of J. S. Neill, who warily climbed to his feet. Houston calmly steered his horse out into the meadow.

  "You heard that cannon, Colonel?"

  "It's a goddamn twelve-pounder," Neill complained. "They can reach from there to kingdom come with a goddamn twelve-pounder."

  "You see that thicket?" Houston asked.

  Neill nodded.

  "Can you place some grape out there?"

  "You wouldn't let us practice. These cannon ain't been fired."

  "Do your best, Colonel."

  Just then a bumblebee or a hornet—something—slapped against Houston's left rein midway between his hand and Saracen's neck. Looking closer, Houston found a neat half-moon bitten out of the leather.

  "By gum," Neill choked. His face pinched up. "The goddamn Meskins got snipers shooting at us."

  Houston was out of practice at being shot at. But he wasn't about to show his alarm, especially not to Neill. The poor man was more convinced than ever that the Alamo was going to catch up with him.

  "Never mind," Houston said. "Let's just rake that thicket there."

  Under Houston's watchful eye they dumped in measures of powder, then plucked pieces of chopped iron scrap from an open barrel and slid them down the throats of the guns. They tamped the charges tight. Meanwhile a man with a face full of smallpox scars was striking a small fire in a nest of wet grass. Neill gave the word. Not quite together, but almost, two men took burning twigs and set them to the touch holes. There were two explosions and the Twin Sisters bucked on their makeshift carriages.

  "Boy," Houston yelled up at the high branches of the oak tree. His sentinel was perched higher near the top like a treed wildcat. "Say what you see." Everyone went quiet to hear what devastation the Twin Sisters had wreaked upon their enemy.

  The boy's report came back through the muggy air. "Don't see nothing," he said.

  "Maybe them Meskins gone to siesta," one of the cannoneers cracked.

  "I believe we kilt 'em all," his partner decided and patted the thick brass tube affectionately.

  The rest of the afternoon went quietly enough except for the occasional boom of cannonfire. Every ten or fifteen minutes the artillery exchanged shots. The Mexicans consistently overshot the Twin Sisters, looping their loads into the trees. Mexican grape balls raked the upper branches, showering men with leaves and sometimes dropping upon them like hard hot berries.

  Around five o'clock they took their first casualty, Colonel Neill. Out of some seven hundred soldiers, the Fates touched him alone. The shot sizzled among them, followed by the bleat

  of a hit man. By the time Houston reached him, Neill was stretched out on one side in a cradle of green grass. He had blood on his hands and a bite stick in his teeth. The veins stood thick on his neck while he tried hard not to scream. Dr. Patrick had come out from the woods and was kneeling over him. Men were standing in a somber curve.

  "How bad off is he?" Houston asked, preparing for the worst. It looked critical, all that blood and the soldiers' gloom. Houston was awed. Poor Neill's premonitions had come true.

  "He'll live," Dr. Patrick pronounced. He stood up and cleaned his hands on a bunch of grass.

  "But he's maimed."

  "I can pretty much guarantee he'll walk again." The doctor had the severity of a gravedigger. "My concern, frankly, is that the colonel might sit funny for the short term."

  Houston digested that. "You're not saying . . ."

  Dr. Patrick played it just right. "Yes, sir. I'm afraid they've shot Colonel Neill in the meat of his arse, sir."

  The bite stick snapped in Neill's teeth and he yelled in pain or humiliation or their combination. The soldiers' faces lit up.

  "First blood," one cried out, "the dirty Meskins drew first blood." They all started laughing.

  Houston maintained a straight face. Glory could be a cruel belle. "I suggest you remove your patient to the hospital," he instructed Dr. Patrick. The comic relief was almost worth the loss of Neill, but now he was without an artillery commander. He looked around.

  "You there," Houston said to one of the youngsters by the cannon. Tad was among them but wouldn't meet Houston's eye. "What's your name?"

  "Ben McCulloch," answered a boy with a blond caterpillar for a moustache.

  "What's your experience with artillery?"

  "All told?"

  "Roughly."

  The boy held up two fingers.

  "Two what, son?"

  "Two shots, General."

  Houston looked at the others. "How about you all?"

  A teenager with a goiter and a broken nose held up one finger. His pinkeyed neighbor shrugged, and their third party

  just stared with his mouth open. Houston returned his attention to the first boy.

  "How's your eye, Mr. McCulloch?"

  "I was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, General," the lad proudly answered.

  "Crockett country." Houston had given up resenting the congressman's deification.

  "McCulloch country, too," the boy said.

  "Well," said Houston. "Let's go ahead and make you the gunny for this piece here."

  "By God," the boy whispered.

  "Now what I want is, every two times they fire at us, you fire back one time. That way we save on powder but let them know we've still got some teeth to our bite. Can you do that?"

  "I reckon so, by God."

  "All right then."

  The two armies traded a few more blasts. Then a sentinel in the tree—a new monkey, one who could count—announced that the enemy was pulling back. He called down that the Mexicans had brought up a small mule train and seemed to be stripping their forward artillery position of balls and powder. For the moment the Mexican cannon appeared to have been left without a guard.

  Colonel Sherman came cantering out from the right flank trailed by a small phalanx of younger horsemen, his lieutenants and admirers. Among them rode Private Lamar with his half smile and green spectacles.

  "General Houston, sir," Sherman addressed him. "My cavalry wishes to go capture that Mexican cannon. That cannon is naked out there. Until they return with their mules, it is ours for the taking." Not far in the background Sherman's cavalry was all ears and radiant determination.

  Houston lowered a piece of jerky from his teeth, then retired it to his jacket pocket for later work. "That cannon is nothing but bait," he said. "They mean to draw us out and cut us up."

  "But you can't mean to wait for an attack, sir." It was not a question.

  Houston wiped his mouth, exasperated. "Colonel, besides turning this army over to you, what can I do for you?"

  Sherman sucked at his teeth for a minute. Clearly he had

  promised his cavalry some action. "What about a reconnaissance patrol?" he asked. "We could at least go out and take the lay of the land."

  Houston could see the horsemen eager and waiting, and allowed that a little bending wouldn't hurt.

  "A reconnaissance," Houston said. "No more. If the enemy appears, I want you to return to camp immediately. Don't bother with their cannon. Do not engage the enemy. We can't afford to lose our cavalry."

  Sherman and his horsemen mounted up and hurrahed each other, then streamed out onto the savannah. The golden sun was sinking onto the magnolias, casting sweet long light. With the right imagination, the dragoons looked like knights issuing into a fairytale battle. As they dashed forward the rest of the army cheered.

  Almost immediately Sherman disobeyed. He made no pretense at reconnoitering the field, instead aiming straight for the thicket that sheltered the Mexican cannon. Houston cursed. There was nothing to
do about it except watch and wait from the trees and hope that Santa Anna hadn't rigged a trap. It was too much to hope for.

  No sooner did Sherman and his valiant cavalry crest the slight hill than they came to a halt and wheeled around and came galloping back down. Not fifty yards behind came the Mexican cavalry.

  "Goddamn it all," Houston swore. This was exactly what he had dreaded, a battle in the open and with night only a few hours away. There were more Mexican cavalrymen than American, and they were better horsemen and mounted on faster horses. The span between the two cavalries eroded rapidly. The best that could happen now would be for Sherman and his men to swallow their pride and dash back into the safety of the treeline.

  For a minute it looked like they might even exercise some wisdom. Sherman's cavalry sprinted directly for the sanctuary of the forest and the Mexicans slowed to stay out of range. But with an audience of hundreds, Sherman's men weren't about to admit defeat so easily. As soon as the Mexicans disengaged and started back across the savannah, Sherman rallied his men with an upraised sword and they spurred off after the enemy. Houston lowered his head in disbelief.

  It went on like that for another half hour. The Mexican and American cavalries chased one another back and forth like puppies. Their warfare seemed tiny and irrelevant. For a while no one bothered to fire a weapon. They just took turns pursuing one another.

  The Mexicans were armed with tall lances which further cemented the bizarre medieval tone. The advantage of the lances became clear when a half dozen of Sherman's men finally did fire their rifles. In order to reload, they pulled over to one side and several dismounted. It was what the Mexican lancers had been waiting for. They rode pell-mell for the dismounted Americans and would have skewered them, too. But Sherman and his other troops saw the predicament and circled back to protect their comrades.

  Houston groaned. It was plain what was about to happen. The Mexicans had divided them into easy prey. A wing of Mexican cavalry detached to the left to engage Sherman's main body, while the remainder pressed hard to ride down the dismounted riflemen.