by Jeff Long
A gust of wind parted the savannah. The moon covered over. The cloud passed. With a howl the creature leapt at him.
Houston was surprised less by the attack than by the fact that this was no wolf. "God," he shouted. The instant he saw what it was, Houston wished to the deepest part of his soul that it had been a wolf.
It was a man, naked and bearded and fouled with mud and excrement. He was lean, nearly skeletal, and obviously mad. His ribs bulged in the moonlight. In one hand he clutched a human arm bone, partly eaten.
Houston had no time to grab either his knife or a rock. He could only cover his head to fend off the awful club. A cloud sank them in blackness. The assault evaporated. By the time Houston lowered his arm, the lunatic was gone, into the opposite band of grasses.
It was a ghoul. Houston had heard of such things, but never actually seen one. Poor wrecks who had lost their minds to battle, they lurked on the field, feeding on whatever they could find until disease or starvation or a farmer's bullet took them. They could haunt a region for years, spoiling crops with their bad luck, bringing drought or earthquakes or locusts. Sometimes they even outlasted the memory of the battle and became forest legends no one could explain without invoking the devil.
The savannah would provide a banquet for a cannibal like this one. Houston shuddered. He was certain the creature was a Mexican soldier who'd escaped the slaughter and didn't have the sense to reach his own lines. That made Houston's situation even more precarious, an enemy gone mad. He palmed the largest stone in his pile and prepared for any further assault. It wasn't clear the man meant him any harm, but if he did, Houston was easy pickings.
The scavenger came a second time, sprinting from a different direction. He darted out in a moon shadow. Houston threw his stone and by chance caught the man on one leg, tumbling him and drawing another inhuman cry. The clouds parted. The moon illuminated Houston's predator just long enough to show fresh scratches on his body, either from animal claws or tree limbs. The most terrible aspects were his blue eyes and red beard. This was no enemy soldier. It was one of Houston's own
men. Houston thought he recognized the wild man as a land surveyor from the Red River country who'd joined up in March. He started to call a name—any name—but the man recovered his footing and limped off into the grasses again, still bearing his bone club.
Five minutes passed. The mad soldier attacked again. This time Houston missed with his first stone, then tried again with no luck. Suddenly the rocks seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. He wanted to sleep, not fight. Even sitting with his back against the grave, he could barely keep upright.
The naked man darted close and struck Houston on the shoulder and side of the head—what felt like a big meaty palm slapping him—then raced on. Houston saw that a hand was still attached to the bone. He panted for breath; his nausea mixed with terror and spoiled his delirium.
The lunatic was growing bolder, circling the grave mound. Houston grabbed for his knife and held it up so the moonlight glinted on it. If the animal recognized the knife as a weapon, he didn't show it.
"What do you want?" Houston demanded. There was no answer. He had reached the very edge of the world. Language meant nothing out here. It was only a matter of an hour, maybe minutes, before he was going to pass out and get brained with that hideous club and picked apart for meat. It was unthinkable. But he wasn't going to last until dawn.
And then the earth parted—or the grasses did—and a figure with flame and sparks for wings came descending upon them. Mounted on a horse with thunder for hooves, the fiery angel became Deaf Smith with a torch in each hand. He drove at the madman, stabbing with one torch and throwing the other at Houston's feet.
Smith wasted no words on a creature so obviously beyond reason. He just swung the torch in searing arcs that bent the lunatic close to the ground. "By God," the scout shouted, "by God." His disgust was like a living thing.
At last, with a whimper, the madman threw the arm bone at Houston and scampered into the grasses. The field sealed shut behind him like a pool of water and only the grass stirred.
Smith's horse reared—the same mare with white stockings that had bolted and left Houston stranded. She must have returned to camp. How Smith had known to come out here,
Houston couldn't say. The scout pulled out a big pistol. He pulled the cock on it and started to give chase. But Houston stopped him.
"Wait," he said.
"I'll be back," Smith promised. "First I have to hunt that thing down and shoot him."
"No sir," Houston said.
"That one's lost to us forever," Smith insisted. "He won't ever come back."
Houston's dread and disgust were receding, even though the arm bone lay across his legs. There were human teeth marks on it. "You're probably right," he said.
"Then let me shoot him down. The man needs to be gotten rid of. You don't leave a rabid dog to wander and bite someone else."
When Houston didn't answer him, Smith added, "He would have killed you." He stood in his stirrups to try and keep the creature in view.
"I don't think so," Houston said. And suddenly he believed that. He cast away the gory limb, then wiped his hand clean on the grass. His composure was returning. Now that Smith was here and he was safe, Houston's supernatural combat seemed foolish and exaggerated.
"It's just a poor critter," Houston said.
"No," Smith said. "That was a man." But he was calming down, too. He took a deep breath, then half-cocked his pistol and dismounted and brought over a gourd of water. He meant to hold it for Houston whose hands were shaking, but his own shook, too.
"He has suffered his share," Houston said.
"But we can't have him running loose."
"He was protecting her," Houston explained. Until that instant Houston hadn't even considered the possibility. The words just came out.
"Dear Lord," Smith whispered.
It was a simple thought, but Houston knew that was where the greatest truth hid sometimes. Then it came to him. The clouds scudded away and the whole field came clear.
"Maybe they know what's wrong, after all," Houston said. "Maybe they just don't know what's right."
Chapter Fifteen
"Samuel?"
He stirred at her calling.
There was a babel of excited voices out there, a rushing about that shook the earth. The air stank of rotting flesh still, but it was nearing that point where life takes over and taxes the dead and makes them yield the future. He could smell the edge of fertility. Flowers would bloom and break down the remains. Cattle would eat the bones for their salt. Crops would grow. Childlike, her voice was inviting him to resurrect himself and join the green riot of spring.
Part of Houston wanted to stay in the darkness and sleep on. Even in here the terrible wound hurt him, and it would become much worse if he emerged. In here he could close himself to the pain forever. But to sleep would be to end the dreaming, and there was too much of that left to do.
The choice was his. He chose. Houston clawed his way from the dark belly, out into the light. He opened his eyes and she was waiting, high overhead and wearing the golden sun for a bonnet. He blinked at the radiant image. Her hair hung in long braids and she had been crying. She had been grieving over him.
"Mama," the girl said. "He's awake, look."
"Hush, Rose," a woman said. "General Houston has fever and he's dying. Give him peace."
"But he smiled at me."
"Come away now. You've seen him. Let the other people have a look, too."
The girl disappeared, pulled away by her mother. Houston jerked at the full brightness of the sun. Other faces, other shadows replaced the child.
"Is that him?"
"He is the hero of San Jacinto."
Houston let his head loll to one side. The Yellowstone —her name was painted in black on the hull—sat upon the silky red waters, her twin smokestacks billowing white clouds upriver upon the northerly breeze. Parts of her deck and the engine room were wa
lled with stacks of cotton bales, five hundred pounds each, against Mexican bullets and cannonballs.
The ship had come then, and with it people. It was impossible to say how long the Yellowstone had been here or how long he'd been unconscious or what exactly was going on. Houston studied the crowd for clues.
His barbarians were mixing with clean new folk. The soldiers were easy to distinguish by their rags and animal skins and the gunsmoke bluing their flesh and the filth and gore caking their long hair and beards. They looked so thin and frail among the well-fed newcomers. Houston saw Ben McCulloch and his gang of cannoneers in the shade of a tree, gawking at a ring of strangers that was gawking at them. The warriors were children once again, accepting bits of food and candies from the crowd, blushing at praise, wearing garlands of bluebonnets and paintbrush. Could it be there was a return to innocence?
In another part of camp, soldiers were hawking battle trophies to the tourists. Houston saw a shattered Brown Betsy held aloft, then a boiled human skull. Elsewhere he saw people carrying scalps like colorful ribbons at a county fair, and a gentleman strolled by wearing a necklace of blackening Mexican ears.
Houston felt someone's fingers plucking at his clothing. He looked down and a friendly enough character was sawing through the cuff of Houston's left pantleg with a shiny butcher knife. He gave a big smile that showed more gum than teeth and said, "Pleased to meet you, General."
Houston figured the man was a freshly landed surgeon. But once he got the pants cuff cut free, the man put it in his pocket and walked off. Now Houston saw that he was missing swatches of homespun all over his clothing. The souvenir hunters had been busy while he slept. At this rate the emperor truly
would have no clothes. After a minute another fellow decided to take a piece of Houston's ankle bandage. Houston aimed a kick at the man's face with his good leg. But to his chagrin he barely had the strength to raise his knee a few inches and the foot stayed put. The feeble motion didn't deter Houston's tormentor one bit.
"Someday people will say it was you fathered a mighty nation," the man cheerfully explained while he cut away at the crusty rags. "There will be cities and ships and trains called Sam Houston, maybe even mountains and oceans. Why, if I ever have sons I mean to name every one of them after you. And their children and grandchildren will have this relic to remember the father of Texas."
"Get off." Houston tried bellowing. What surfaced was a high-pitched creak. He had seized tight inside and his tongue clapped like dry meat. The carrion birds had taken human shape and he was helpless to stop their cannibalizing.
"Clear away," someone demanded. "Goddamn it, give the general some blue sky." Tom Rusk shoved his way through the spectators, and he was trailed by Dr. Labadie and another man. When he spotted the fellow snipping away Houston's bandage, Rusk sent him backward with the flat of his brogan. "Back off of him, you jackal. Get on." When the crowd still didn't disperse, Rusk drew his sword.
"I'm from Tennessee and we're free men," a tall man in bright yellow buckskins shouted back at him. "Don't you order us."
"We'll go where we goddamn please," another declared. "Texas is a free country, or ain't you heard."
The possibility of a ruckus drew more spectators. The mob, Houston wearied, always the mob. If they weren't burning him in effigy they were worshiping his very rags and bones. Houston felt sick enough to puke, but his stomach was empty. The crowd grew larger.
"We're Texians," a fat man with red cheeks shouted at Rusk. "Maybe you ought clear away."
The tourists and curiosity seekers jostled closer.
"Texas belongs to us now," the Tennesseean in buckskins declared. "Before he come here to fight to the death for American democracy Old Davy told me, Be sure you are right, then Go Ahead. Now here I am. And I ain't budging."
From out of nowhere one of Fannin's survivors—a stick of a man—appeared in front of the hardy Tennesseean. He didn't speak a word nor give the fellow a chance to even smell him, which might have backed anyone off. Instead he made a quick little motion. There was a glint of steel, then a scream, and the yellow buckskins acquired their first blood. The Tennesseean clapped both hands to his split earlobe and dropped his long rifle and his neighbors backed away from the drops of blood.
"Look it there," a man said, "jingle-bobbed, by God."
"Maybe he'll hear better now," Rusk said. "Maybe you all will."
Since that seemed to be the end of the controversy, the crowd lost interest almost immediately. The spectators trickled away, going off to bedevil the Mexican prisoners in the corral or to buy trinkets or dicker over military land bounties that Houston's soldiers were eagerly pawning off. Houston closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the bustle of commerce. Off in the distance he could hear an auctioneer offering Mexican mules for sale.
Dr. Labadie gave Houston some water. "You must have given your kingdom in hell," he said, "otherwise you couldn't have come back to us. You've been under, sir, deep under two days and two nights."
Rusk led the stranger forward by the elbow. The man was gray and emaciated, a thousand years old. "This here is Dr. Kenner," Rusk said. "He lost a boy at Goliad and the Mexicans shanghaied him to tend their army. Somehow he made it through the battle. I wanted him to take a second look at that ankle there."
"I'm sorry about your son," Houston said.
"I met you once," the gray man said. His voice was dull. His ordeals had cost him a chunk of spirit and Houston wondered whether his senses were addled. He didn't want a crazy man fiddling with his ankle, but when the two physicians squirreled down to peek inside the ankle wound Dr. Kenner was the gentlest.
Rusk sheathed his sword with a hiss and a crack and sat on an ammunition box beside Houston's head.
"Where's the president at?" Houston rasped. He was asking about Santa Anna. Rusk took him to mean the president of the Republic of Texas.
"Burnet came in on the Yellowstone just about an hour ago," Rusk said. "But I don't think you want to see him, not at present. That old boy doesn't like to get his thunder stolen and you stole it. He's using some strong language just now. He thinks you ought to be court-martialed."
Houston smiled at that, even at the price of splitting his lips. "What charge?"
"Victory." Rusk shrugged. "He's trying to convince the citizenry you could have won at Gonzales the same as you won here. He says if you hadn't run away, you could have spared the Republic all the excitement."
"I'll be," Houston said.
"Nobody has much taste for his nonsense," Rusk added.
Dr. Labadie pulled something out of the hole. "For Christ's sake," Houston gasped.
"He's very near to lockjaw," Dr. Kenner said to Dr. Labadie, probing carefully. "The line of infection is creeping. See there?"
Whatever the two physicians were doing to the ankle, it felt like wickedness itself. Houston didn't look.
"And the Mexican army?" Houston asked with teeth gritted.
"Santa Anna wrote the order," Rusk said. "Deaf Smith delivered it. The Mexicans have begun to withdraw. One of Se-guin's men reports that Santa Anna's troops have demolished the outer walls of the Alamo and sunk their cannon in the San Antonio. Looks like we're the new landlords."
"Tell me Santa Anna's condition," Houston said. "I trust he's been unchained from that tree."
Rusk and Dr. Labadie exchanged a look.
"The man is suffering severe melancholy," Dr. Labadie wiped his hands on his pants. "Every time I try to bleed him he refuses. He only wants his opium. I've warned his guards to watch out for suicide attempts."
Houston frowned. "I don't understand. He should be pleased. On my promise, he's going home."
"He's partway there anyhow," Rusk confirmed. "He's aboard the Yellowstone. But not for long, not if Burnet gets his way. It seems a brand new company of volunteers has showed up from the States—fancy uniforms, a flag, the works. They're mad as can be at missing the fight. To make up for it they want to hang Santa Anna."
"What an od
d people," Houston whispered.
"Burnet has fastened onto the popular sentiment," Rusk said. "He thinks an execution would help promote the health of the nation. He wants Santa Anna returned to shore for a court martial. But there's some boy who won't budge from the presidentss doorway. He's mean as a cat. Says it has to be you to tell him quit before he'll quit."
Tad was still doing his penance then. "Good for him," Houston murmured. "Did you tell Burnet I gave my word?"
"Moses Bryan has testified to that effect repeatedly." Rusk ran his fingers through his thick greasy hair. "But Mr. President claims you exceeded your authority. According to him you had no right to negotiate on behalf of the Republic."
"There wouldn't be a goddamn republic if I hadn't traded." Houston wanted to be angry, but there was no time. He had to try and think around the problem before he passed out again. It seemed the future of Texas, at least the future as it involved him, was going to jerk forward in these spasms of consciousness.
"When does the Yellowstone depart?" Houston asked. The sooner the steamboat left, the less chance Burnet would have to destroy Houston's pact with Santa Anna.
Dr. Labadie looked up at Rusk. "It departs when you do, Sam," Rusk said. Dr. Labadie lowered his head again.
"Leave Texas?" Houston protested. There was too much to do, an army to dismantle, a government to build, visions to articulate.
"You can't stay, General." Dr. Kenner was firm.
Dr. Labadie amplified the thought. "Without the most advanced medical care you'll be dead inside the week," he said. "I've informed Captain Ross you need immediate evacuation to New Orleans."
Houston dreaded facing the surgeons in New Orleans. But he didn't contradict Dr. Labadie's directive. After so much misery and darkness and violence, he'd never thought to see civilization again.
"The problem is," Rusk took over, dipping into his dry Georgia stoicism, "you can't stay, but you can't exactly go either." He spit. "Burnet caught wind of the plan to get you on to New Orleans and right away he declared the Yellowstone a government vessel for the conduct of state affairs only. Since your wound doesn't qualify as a state affair, he's not going to allow you passage."