Empire of bones

by Jeff Long

  "Houston," Mosely Baker yelled out, "we've got to go get those boys." All through camp men were priming their flash-pans and tamping charges down their barrels, ready to charge out on foot and engage the enemy. But if Santa Anna had prepared this much of a trap, he would surely have the rest of it ready to spring, too.

  "No man leaves the wood," Houston thundered to them. "We will not be drawn out."

  "But they need us!"

  "We need them. We need them to quit the goddamn field," Houston said.

  "But they'll be slaughtered out there."

  "No one leaves the wood," Houston repeated. Sherman's game of tag had turned deadly. Once again men were going to have to pay the consequences for a foolish and insubordinate leader. First Travis at the Alamo and then Fannin at Goliad and now Sherman with his doomed cavalry; they were being erased from Texas. The Mexicans were simply obliging their suicidal farce.

  Now the lancers speared one of the American riders. He fell out of his saddle, still alive but helpless in the grass. Nearby the Mexicans were encircling another of the riflemen. The

  man's horse had run off and they were on the verge of piercing him from three sides. From Houston's distance the Mexicans looked like sheepdogs cutting lambs out from the herd, one by one.

  But then a champion appeared.

  Out of nowhere Private Lamar came barreling across the plain on his huge bay stallion. The green grass parted. Lamar cast his horse straight upon a mounted Mexican dragoon. The bay's giant chest rammed the smaller horse and the Mexican flew from the saddle and his horse bowled over sideways, legs kicking.

  Lamar didn't hesitate. He spurred his bay and headed into the pack of lancers surrounding the isolated rifleman. Again he used his stallion as a battering ram and for good measure fired his pistol toward the three lancers. One of the Mexicans pitched backward.

  Before the Mexican cavalry could recover, Lamar curved back and plucked the rifleman up and onto the rump of his horse. Meanwhile the wounded American had gotten to his feet and crawled back into his saddle. Lamar caught that horse's reins with a low athletic dip to the side.

  Leading one horse, riding the other, Lamar returned to the treeline. By the time he got to safety the whole army was cheering his name, and Sherman and his tired dragoons had decided to call it a day and come back to camp.

  That night the happy camp celebrated Private Lamar's stirring heroics around their campfires. The wounded rider died, stabbed through the hip and bladder like one of Homer's terrible casualties. Houston couldn't find anyone who knew his name.

  Chapter Ten

  For weeks on end Houston had slept three hours a night, no more, sometimes less, opening his eyes to constellations that were only slightly changed from when he'd closed them. Providing sleep came to him at all, he usually woke at two or three every morning and immediately got up, never waiting to see if sleep might find him again. Sometimes he spelled the dawn watch. It was he who beat reveille on the camp drum every morning.

  But this morning Houston slept. He dreamed. It was an old dream. He heard a woman's voice, possibly his mother's, or his sister's. Maybe Rusk was right, maybe the belles talked to you from the other side. As always when she called for him, it was dark and starless, a geography of loss and yet hope. Samuel, the voice called. Samuel. She called his name—the name of God—and it seemed to echo from far away. By the time it reached him, though, the name's greatness had leached out. Its syllables dropped limp at his feet like a dead sparrow.

  In his dream he gave chase. Whoever she was, she fled from his heart, from his capturing arms. His feet became hooves and he galloped. His hands became talons. He took wing and hunted her. If it was his pitiless Eliza, it seemed possible he could reconcile with her and have all his ruin and humiliation forgiven. If it was his mother, he could return from exile. If it was the Cherokee girl Tiana, or the lonely queen Mrs. Mann, he could put his wandering to an end. Whoever she was, he could finally go home. But first he had to catch her.

  As always, she escaped. Houston was left alone. He groaned and burrowed deeper, hoping she would call once more.

  "General." His name again, another of its manifestations. "General."

  This time Houston came awake. He opened his eyes. And sunlight—brilliant, midday sunlight—blinded him. He had slept into the day!

  Deaf Smith was kneeling beside him, dressed in a braided leather jacket that was too short for him. The old scout's sombrero hung against his back on a string, and the sun was lighting his orange hair so that he looked like some archangel with flames licking up around his kindly face. He was a fearsome sight and yet a welcome one.

  "Mr. Smith," Houston whispered.

  Behind Smith soldiers stood gawking in a distant clump. They'd grown used to being woken by their general. Their expressions at seeing him laid out flat in the dirt in the morning light ranged from curiosity to shock and fear.

  "A hot time is preparing for us," the scout quietly reported. The worry sounded in his high voice.

  Houston closed his eyes. He felt immensely heavy, as if pinned down. He tried moving his arms, but they seemed far away. Every finger felt tied to the earth. After a moment the sun warmed his blood and some of the weight slid away. He had slept! Houston couldn't get over that. He'd been waking in darkness for so long he'd started to feel like some nocturnal creature banished from the human race. But he was among his people once again.

  He blinked at the brilliant blue sky and suddenly what had been missing all these weeks was no longer missing. Houston lifted his head from the pillowing coil of rope. Drafting on vapors high above the bayou, it was his eagle, returned.

  "The sun of Austerlitz has risen again," he murmured. It was a morning like Napoleon himself might have wished for. At long last the eagle was with them.

  "What's that he say?" a soldier sniffed.

  "Hell," someone grumbled. "Who knows." The soldiers dispersed, no longer interested.

  Houston rolled onto one shoulder, in toward his wound, and pushed himself to a sitting position. He folded his legs

  Indian-style and lay his sheathed sword across his lap, dazed by so much sleep.

  "Are you suffering, General?" Smith asked with concern.

  Houston shook his head no. There was no suffering to this. His daze felt close to ecstasy. The world seemed remote and peaceful, similar to the garden at Jackson's Hermitage with its fruit orchards and long beds of roses and bougainvillea. But he didn't try explaining that.

  "The enemy is increasing," Smith confided. "Santa Anna is getting reinforcements. I counted five hundred. But nobody knows except you now."

  Houston struggled to match the scout's concern. "Who knows besides us?" he asked.

  "I kept it to myself," Smith said.

  But at that moment a horseman from Sherman's cavalry came thundering into Houston's camp. "The Meskins," he yelled. "Look, there's a thousand more Meskins marching in." The man pointed and sure enough, what appeared to be an endless line of dots was moving from right to left across the savannah's far skyline. It looked like a string of tiny ants.

  Colonel Burleson heard the alarm and came stamping over, his long rifle in one hand. He was livid. "Goddamn it, Houston," he shouted. "Didn't we tell you, yesterday was the day. We could have fought part of them. Now look, we have to lick their whole goddamn army."

  From the other direction Sherman and Mosely Baker and others came riding up. "If we don't attack on the instant, all is lost," Sherman declared. Houston noticed a little silver star Sherman had pinned to his collar, a general's star. He must have brought all the trappings of majesty with him from Kentucky. Now wasn't the time to confront the self-promotion, however.

  "Give the go-ahead, let our men fall upon that line of reinforcements," Wharton demanded. "We can destroy them."

  "We're outnumbered," Houston said. "It would be a disaster to attack now." Even as he spoke the line evaporated. The savannah was once more empty. Santa Anna's reinforcements had safely made it into the Mexicans' ma
in camp.

  "It will be a disaster if we don't attack," Wharton pressed. "You told the soldiers today is the day. Well I say this hour is the hour. We must attack."

  "Did I say today is the day?" Houston asked. He honestly couldn't remember.

  Wylie Martin shook his weapons in frustration. "You've made us fight you every inch of the way. Today I quit the fight with you. I take my fight to the Mexican."

  "If we wait they will come to us," Houston said, knowing the officers would never agree.

  "We will go to them," Wharton said.

  "Boys," Wharton preached loudly. "There is no other word today but fight. Fight! Now is the time."

  "Fight," Burleson seconded. His scorn was a clear warning. The colonels had decided upon mutiny if Houston restrained them one minute longer.

  Houston grunted at them, weary of their brittle black cawing. He slipped part of his sword from its scabbard and ran his finger across the rust. "Then fight," he said. "Fight and be damned. But it will be on my word."

  "When will that word be?" Baker demanded.

  Houston looked up at the sun. His eagle had flown on.

  "At one o'clock draw your men into a line."

  Their agitation vanished. "Well, then," Wharton said, and rode off to ready his bunch.

  "Maybe you'll prove a white man after all," Sherman dared to sneer. Burleson stalked off, the rest of them spurred their mounts away. Houston was alone again with his scout. Deaf Smith waited with his squint-eyed patience.

  Houston turned to him. "I have a task for you," he said. "Go wreck the bridge."

  "General?"

  "Burn it. Or cut it down with axes. But we can't afford to have more Mexicans crossing over."

  Smith considered the proposition. "They can still cross lower, down to New Washington, then come up."

  "That would take some time," Houston said.

  Smith spoke his real hesitation. "If we cut that bridge, there will be no escape," he pointed out. "Maybe some of us would get across the river. The rest would die on these banks."

  "Yes," Houston said.

  Smith started to ask a question, then comprehended he'd just heard his answer. Houston was indeed sealing them in with the enemy. By destroying the bridge Houston was eliminating

  further retreat. If the battle went poorly, they would die with their decision.

  "You told me a long time ago, it's a sin to kill your command."

  "But you heard them. They'll have it no other way."

  "I don't like it," Smith said.

  Houston didn't either. Part of him thrilled to the act of faith, though. There was a tale that Bowie had once shut himself into a dark house with another knife fighter. Only one man had emerged. This savannah bordered by hyacinths and slow water and yellow sunshine was that dark house. Here was their Alamo.

  "I'm not asking you to lie," Houston said. "You can tell the men. Just wait until after the bridge is down."

  "I will," Smith said.

  One o'clock came and went without the army getting assembled. Sherman's cavalry was all mounted up and ready on the far right flank, and some of the infantry companies showed the beginnings of linear organization. But the remainder of the army was too excited to toe a line.

  Everywhere soldiers bustled around for flints or balls or powder horns or good luck pieces, or just to go check on pieces of meat left roasting at their mess fires. No sooner would one decide he was ready than his neighbor would remember something he'd forgotten to do. Houston had never seen so many fidgety men nor so many needing to piss so many times. He finally had to tell them to quit going back in the trees and just piss where they stood.

  At around three Houston started an inspection ride down the line. They had been on the trail for weeks—some of them, months—and during that time the army's numbers had vacillated wildly. Opportunists and glory hunters had swelled their ranks as high as a thousand when things were going well. Today Houston estimated there were seven hundred men standing along the front of the treeline. Another sixty or so were mounted to the far right edge where they could sting the Mexican flank. By arranging the men two-deep and spacing them out, Houston got the line stretched hundreds of yards wide. They were going to be attacking a fixed position of unknown strength and he wanted to keep his ranks thin enough so Mexican gunfire wouldn't gouge them too badly.

  Houston rode slowly, measuring their chances man by man. He was not encouraged. Some of the men were walking skeletons, ravaged by the army's diseases and by the near famine they'd been surviving. Many had jaundiced skin and golden-yellow eyes and were barely fit to hold a rifle, much less load and carry one. Trembling with fever, a few stubborn souls looked like they were held upright by nothing more than the breeze and a few stems of grass. Here and there he noticed boys who had started the campaign as children and were now sporting little moustaches and creeping sideburns. And some of the grownups who'd begun this as vital men in their prime had turned into graybeards and gaunt scarecrows. Along with losing sleep and weight, they'd lost teeth, hair, and major portions of their clothing. No one among them looked whole.

  The long march had changed them. Their physical decline concerned Houston less than how they had altered from what they once were. Two months ago these had been farmers and clerks and physicians and lawyers and laborers and walking poor. They had been fathers and husbands and sons and brothers. But just as the retreat and hardship had melted their muscles down to bone and sinew, so the unrepentant wanting—for land, for money, and finally just for food and a fire and a dry patch of sod to sleep on—had rendered them into something other than what they'd been. Houston could feel it in himself, a hardening that felt powerful and yet regrettable at the same time. He wondered what it could mean and knew he was about to find out.

  Their eyes followed him as he rode along. Houston nodded to some, greeted others with a few words about their gun or knife or just said their name. How many of you will I bury? he sadly wondered. Or will you bury me?

  He paused by the artillery. Young Ben McCulloch had pretty obviously picked his cannon gang from among his friends, little different from the schoolboys Houston had tutored in Tennessee. He ran a professional eye across the crew.

  "Are you prepared, sir?" Houston asked the cannon master.

  "She's loaded up, General." McCulloch pointed at Tad, who held a smoking torch. "Here's my fire. You say when and she goes."

  "Good man. Tell me, does she shoot straight?"

  "With them chopped horseshoes, she shoots straight plus some. I'd not want to be on the taking end of it."

  "Nor me, Sergeant."

  It took the youth a moment to digest that. "Sergeant?" he asked.

  "I guess so," Houston said. "At this rate, you'll make general any day." The boys in McCulloch's crew were awestruck by what was going on, the promotion, the easy bantering between their peer and the general. "Why it could happen to every one of you gentlemen," he said to the other boys and got a blush out of the whole crew.

  "I declare," one of them whispered.

  "Carry on, men," Houston said. He gave them a little salute and rode on.

  The army was getting highstrung and fractious. Up and down the line men were firing their rifles into the grass and the air. "Stop that shooting," Houston commanded.

  "We're just clearing out the old powder," a soldier said.

  "I don't care. I don't want one more trigger pulled until I say." But as he traversed the line, the soldiers continued their shooting. Farther on Houston reached Company D just as Mosely Baker was finishing up with a speech of some kind. He turned to greet the general. "I was telling the boys how to take prisoners," he said. "But I'm done. You can throw in, too, if you please. I believe they'd like that."

  The soldiers had the bright eyes of starvation. Houston rustled through his old oratory, stirring together the kind of stew ministers dished up for saving souls—a pinch of pepper, a splash of vinegar, some gamey meat.

  "Boys," he spoke, "we cannot hope that the bosom
of our beautiful prairies will soon be visited by the balmy breezes of peace. . . ." But it was the wrong speech, Houston could tell. He cut himself short. The soldiers' faces had gone blank and resentful. There was a time for high language, and a time for brute, horse-gutting slang, and he had misjudged.

  "The boys were just electing a color for our company flag," Mosely informed him. Clearly he was pleased to see Houston at a loss.

  "Not white, I trust," Houston joked.

  "Well let's just see," Mosely said and he reached inside his

  jacket. The men's eyes were glittering. Their jaws were set. Duelists had this look on the morning of settlement, a fixity that sharpened certain details and ignored everything else.

  "Right here," the colonel said and drew out a square red rag. "It does seem to be that red got voted up."

  Houston glared at the grinning colonel. His heart darkened. Company D had made a pact. They meant to kill their prisoners, a devil's work. He bent in the saddle and got closer to Baker's ear.

  "No quarter?" Houston snarled. "That's a commander's decision, goddamn it. Don't you dare mount that rag on a staff, do you hear me."

  The grin never left Baker's face. Turning to his company, he announced, "The general wants to give us our war cry."

  "Hurrah, the general," someone yelled out.

  "Give it to us," a soldier called. "We will smite them bastards. God give us strength."

  "Aye," said Mosely. "Give us our word, Houston."

  Houston straightened in the saddle. Their fighting spirit was stoked hot. He could throw water on it or he could hope for the best and trust in their humanity. They might look and sound like savages at this moment, but once the troops obtained victory, he felt confident they would show mercy. And if they lost to the Mexicans, the issue of taking prisoners was going to be meaningless anyway. At that point, mercy would be something Company D and the rest of Houston's army were on their knees praying for.