by Drew McGunn
It was time to run with an idea that he had been contemplating since he dismounted. Will drew upon the experience of his years in the army and national guard as he came to a ramrod straight attention and threw a parade ground salute to Fannin. He was out of time. In a split second’s decision Will knew what he must do. He exclaimed, “Damn it all to hell, Colonel Fannin! I’ve been looking for you since yesterday.”
James Fannin, a tall man with dark brown hair and side whiskers stood and returned the salute, with the precision of a West Point graduate, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Colonel Travis?”
Relaxing a bit, Will reached out and shook Fannin’s hand and with as sober an expression as he could manage said, “Last week several families arrived in San Antonio from Coahuila with reliable news. The tyrant himself, Santa Anna is putting down the rebellion in Coahuila and will be marching north within the week. We’re in possession of intelligence about his line of march.” Bonham cocked an eyebrow at Will but remained silent.
Fannin blanched at the news, his face sagging. “How much time do we have, Colonel Travis? We’ve got to let Colonel Grant know!”
Will continued wearing a solemn expression when he replied, “We have scant time to react, Colonel Fannin. Where is Grant?”
“When we last heard from him, his command was waiting at San Patricio,” Fannin said, “They were waiting for word from the Coahuilan Federalists that the Centralists have been defeated.”
Will looked intently at Fannin, “Jim, did you hear me? there’s no time. Colonel Neill and Jim Bowie are moving south to the Rio Grande with most of the artillery from the Alamo. We have just enough time to set up an ambush for Mr. Napoleon of the West!”
Fannin looked stunned, “But how can we abandon Grant, Colonel Travis, we just can’t!”
Between the disorganized camp, the lack of guards, and Fannin’s indecisiveness, Will was beginning to appreciate why many historians agreed that James Fannin wasn’t capable of general command. “Dammit Jim, we’re not going to abandon Colonel Grant. We’ll sweep by Grant’s men at San Patricio on our way to rendezvous with Neill and Bowie. I’m not going to let any of us be left to the tender mercies of Santa Anna’s lancers!”
To Will, Fannin looked like some deer caught by the headlights of a car. His mouth opened and closed but no words escaped. Will shook his head, “No wonder Fannin lost his entire command. The dithering idiot can’t make a decision.” It struck him how Fannin’s indecision would have cost so many lives, and Will could barely contain his anger, it simmered below the surface when he said, “Jim. I know you were appointed colonel of the army to invade Matamoros, but, good God man, will you consent to be my second-in-command for the good of the revolution?”
Will shocked himself by his own audacity. However, everyone else in the room stared slack-jawed at Will’s daring. Will knew as a student of history, in the Revolution, the Texians had allowed their shared goals to be undermined by clashes of egos. What Will didn’t know was how few men were willing to risk a breach of honor to cause a duel. Bonham stepped up behind his cousin and friend, a sign of support that wasn’t lost on the other men in the room. The weight of command that had been an incredible burden to James Fannin suddenly became light as a feather as he returned Will’s gaze with a look of gratefulness. He stood from the wooden chair and saluted, “Colonel Travis, we are at your command!”
Will grinned, ignorant of the deadly game of honor that he had won. “Let’s fill these glasses, gentlemen!” he said, gesturing to the empty shot glasses on the table. Colonel Fannin grabbed the jug of mescal. He poured generous amounts in each of the glasses and passed them around to everyone in the room. Feeling a deep sense of relief, they lifted their glasses in a toast. Bonham nodded to Will, and exclaimed, “To our friend and commander, Colonel Travis!” Will smiled at the toast, and took a long sip of the rough mescal, before responding, “No, my friends. Santa Anna considers himself the Napoleon of the West. I do not fancy myself to be his Wellington, but my friends, one thing is sure. We shall make him meet his Waterloo. To his Waterloo!”
Chapter 5
The first sign Will was awake was his throbbing mescal-induced hangover. He painfully opened one of his eyes and watched a narrow ray of light work its way across the floor as it filtered through a window into the cramped adobe house. Next, the odor of unwashed bodies wafted into his nose. Hangover or no, he had to get out of the cramped quarters. He stumbled to his feet and kicked at Bonham’s leg and in a scratchy voice said, “Jim. You alive?”
From beneath a multicolored Mexican horse blanket, he heard Bonham’s muffled voice, “No.”
Will kicked a little harder, and watched the other man jerk his leg away. Will sighed as a sharp pain behind his eye made him wince. He rubbed his forehead, and said, “Come on Jim, we’re burning daylight.”
As he cracked the door open and slid out, Will saw a few men fixing breakfast around a campfire and stumbled over and asked, “Any of you boys spare a cup of coffee?”
One of the men found a banged up tin cup amid a small pile of tinware, drying on a small, square tarpaulin. After accepting the hot tin cup from the soldier, Will edged up closer to the fire, lifted the cup to his face, and breathed in the brew’s strong aroma. He looked at the man that handed him coffee and asked, “Where abouts are y’all from?”
The man replied, “We’re from Georgia. Us boys are part of Ward’s battalion, sir.” Will recalled from history that Ward’s Georgians made up the largest part of Fannin’s small army in his own recollection of history. He thanked the soldier for the coffee and sauntered through the camp. Dozens of campfires were rekindled as the soldiers rose to face the chilly day. The entire camp seemed to know that Will and Bonham’s arrival signaled a new direction. He eventually found a spot near the adobe house where he sat on a mesquite stump, watching several men as they cleaned their rifles and muskets. Another was darning a hole in his sock, while several others folded up a tent. Will glanced into the rapidly brightening sky, and noticed that the effects of his hangover were fading as the caffeine kicked in. The morning was getting away from him, he realized. As he had told Bonham earlier, they were burning daylight.
When Fannin’s two small battalions were drawn up in long lines outside of the little village, the sun was well into the sky on the morning of the 6th of February. Will sat atop his horse and looked across the field where the little army assembled. It reminded him of the day the 144th Infantry was deployed from Fort Hood to Iraq over eight months previously. It was a study in contrasts. He remembered the six hundred national guardsmen and women standing at attention on the parade ground dressed sharply in their BDUs. They stood in stark contrast from the men assembled on the windswept prairie.
His National Guard unit was a melting pot of people from every culture in Texas, white, brown, and black faces. and every shade in between. These men were nearly uniformly white, with a few Tejano faces in the mix. They were garbed in every conceivable dress common to the American frontier. A few men wore old, blue army jackets, a few from Georgia wore the gray jackets that they had received from the militia armories. Those from the New Orleans Greys wore sturdy gray jackets that were uniform in their workmanlike design. Among the rest, there were men in frock coats, hunting shirts and buckskin jackets. In an age of muskets, many of the men carried their carefully tended hunting rifles, while others were armed with muskets and even shotguns. Despite the contrast between these men and those of the 144th Infantry, he saw in them the same dogged determination that he had seen on a dozen missions in Iraq. More than that, Will realized, these men were looking to him to lead them to victory.
He forced down the burden of weighty responsibility that he felt as he watched the 350 men standing along a front that stretched over a hundred yards. He found it breathtaking. Nodding to Fannin, Will said, “Give the command. Daylight’s burning.”
Will had sent the three field guns on ahead earlier that morning, moving south, toward Refugio, with an hour’s head
start. Most of the excess horses were detailed to accompany the artillery. He thought that if the horses could be rotated out, the artillery may stay up with the infantry and not slow them down. Will was acutely aware that Fannin’s trials with his artillery were some of the myriad of problems that overwhelmed the ineffectual colonel in the history he knew.
As the column started down the road to Refugio, Will sought the captain of their mounted rifles, a tall, black-haired man named Albert Horton. Captain Horton saluted when Will rode up. Will said, “Captain, I’d like for you to divide your company into two parts. I want you to set half your men here, covering our flanks, and take the other half and scout ahead of our artillery.”
Horton nodded thoughtfully at the command and said, “Yes, sir, Colonel Travis.” He wheeled about and raced to put the order into action. Throughout the day, Will worked with Fannin and Ward to halt the column every hour for ten minutes, allowing his force to rest while still making good time along the coastal road to Refugio. Also, he sent orders back to the sixty men who were marching behind them. Will thought it likely those men would remain a day’s march behind the column for a while.
The chill February sun had been gone from the western sky for more than an hour when Will’s column of infantry trudged into Refugio. Earlier in the evening, as the sun was going down, Horton’s advanced scouts had entered Refugio and notified Colonel Grant that Colonels Travis and Fannin would arrive that evening.
Will’s men entered Refugio and saw that Grant had turned out his entire command, lining the road with his men, as they cheered the arrival of the small army. Will was taken a little by surprise at the impromptu welcome. As he, Bonham, Fannin, and Ward rode into the little hamlet, they were escorted to an adobe hut even smaller than the one Fannin had used in Goliad. Colonel James Grant greeted them at the door.
He waved Will and the others to enter, and in a thick Scottish brogue, Grant addressed Fannin, “I would ne’er have expected to see you here again Jim, after ye let Houston talk ye into giving up on Matamoros. What changed your mind?”
Will turned to Ward and asked, “Colonel Ward, kindly see to the men’s wellbeing this evening.”
Ward looked relieved as he glanced in the tiny hut that was crowded before Will entered. With a hint of a smile he replied, “Yes, sir.”
Will entered the one-room cabin and immediately felt claustrophobic. Fannin and Bonham were crowded around a table with Grant and another man, whom Will presumed was Frank Johnson. As Will joined them at the table, Fannin responded to Grant’s earlier jibe. “Well, things change, James. Colonel Travis here has received word that Santa Anna is already marching through Coahuila with a large force.”
Grant started to reply to Fannin when Will took that moment to interject, “Colonel Grant, I want you to be aware that Colonels Neill and Bowie are staging a force of artillery and riflemen at the Rio Grande, where the Camino Real intersects it. Every man who owes allegiance to Texas is needed to reinforce them. We have a unique opportunity to stop Santa Anna and his army dead in their tracks before they can even cross into Texas!”
Grant’s words died on his lips as he heard Will’s impassioned plea. Will could see that Grant was torn between what he wanted to do, which likely included rushing pell-mell to Matamoros, and where momentum was building. Grant grew thoughtful for a moment. “Do ye think that after we repulse Santa Anna’s Centralist forces there that you’d join us in liberating the remainder of Tejas y Coahuila?” Will was momentarily puzzled about Grant’s request, but Travis’ memories came to the rescue, once again. He recalled the Texas Revolution was one of several revolts against Santa Anna’s Centralist government about the same time. Ultimately, it was the most successful. With an inkling that Grant’s concern was more about his large landholding south of the Rio Grande, Will decided a neutral response was safest. “Let’s fight one battle at a time Colonel Grant. If God sees fit to grant us success, well then, we’ll gather round the victory fires and see if what you propose is feasible.”
It was clear to Will and the other officers in the room that Grant was disappointed, but even so, he smiled feebly and replied, “Fair enough.”
The next morning, the 7th of February, dawned as clear and cold as the day before. The artillery with their mounted escort leading the way had rolled out, heading west as the eastern sky grew light in early morning. With Grant’s force rolled into his own, Will now commanded more than 450 men. There was no comparing his life within the 144th Infantry against what he encountered now. It was simply too alien to reconcile the two experiences. Keeping that in his mind, he felt a thrill of adventure as he galloped to the head of the column of marching men.
***
Four years active duty and three more in the guard, left Will thinking that he was in excellent shape, but after nine days of endless marching he and every one of his men were bone-tired and dirty. They marched along the Camino Real and watched as the wide muddy expanse, known by the Texians as the Rio Grande, and by the Mexicans as El Rio Bravo del Norte came into view. Above the smell of stale sweat, the light breeze carried a whiff of decaying vegetation along the bank of the river. He turned around in the saddle, noticing that after so many days in it, either his butt muscles had strengthened or he was too numb to care. He saw his column of infantry strung out, doggedly marching along the Camino Real toward the river. Despite the unforgiving terrain and cold weather, almost the entire command was behind him. Less than a score of men had fallen out or quit the forced march. Also, to his complete surprise, the previous evening, the sixty men from Goliad had caught up with his main force.
As the orange sun sank below the western horizon on that Monday evening the 15th of February, Will led five hundred men into an encampment on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. Dozens of men stopped their work, entrenching the Alamo’s field guns into protected earthen embankments, and ran out to cheer as the men in Will’s command straightened their jackets and coats, stood a little taller, and marched a little straighter. Within the ranks of the tired, marching men, someone started singing, ‘The Girl I Left Behind’, and the entire column joined in, swelling in volume fueled by the cheering men from the Alamo.
Turning to Fannin, Will said, “Jim, please dismiss the men. Tell them that they have just done the impossible.” From there, Will threaded his horse through the throng of cheering men. He saw Jim Bowie standing next to a once-white dingy tent, several hundred feet from the river. Next to Bowie, he saw Juan Seguin and another tall man with dark-brown hair, wearing a buckskin jacket and brown vest.
As Will climbed down from the saddle, Bowie stepped up and slapped him on the shoulders, exclaiming, “Damned if I know how you did it, but you must have found every Texian west of the Brazos, Buck!” Will grinned as he continued, “Y’all are a beautiful sight to behold.”
He noticed that Bowie looked exhausted. Dark circles under his eyes belied his cheerful tone. Will smiled and responded, “You did well yourself, Jim.”
He reached out and shook Juan Seguin’s hand, and said, “I’m glad to see that you were able to make it, Juan. How many men came with you?”
The swarthy, rail-thin Tejano clasped hands with Will and beamed at him, saying, “I visited many of the haciendas to the south of Bexar and found fifty men who agreed to fight against the tyrant.”
The last man looked at Will with piercing brown eyes. Will noticed the straight black hair that flowed over the collar, which belonged to an elaborately beaded buckskin coat. Under the coat was an orange lined doe-skin vest, embroidered with stars. This last man was of a similar height to Will’s own frame of six feet. While his face carried a stern countenance, his dark eyes held a twinkle of mischief. From many pictures, Will recognized that he was standing in front of a veritable living legend, the nineteenth century cross between Elvis Presley and California Governor Ronald Reagan, Colonel David Crockett. Will couldn’t say if it was from far too many hours in the saddle but he felt more than just a little giddy as Crockett reached out and
shook his hand.
In a soft voice, Crockett said, “I finally have the honor of meeting the one and only, ‘Buck’ Travis. Colonel Bowie speaks highly of you, as did Colonel Neill. And as I live and breathe,” he paused as he indicated to the newly arrived soldiers, “you have earned the reputation.”
Later that night, Will tried to sleep, but the immensity of becoming Travis settled on him as he thought about Bowie and Crockett. Each was larger than life to a boy who loved Texas history. As a child, when he had visited the Alamo, he had been awed by the bravery and courage that William B. Travis had shown throughout the siege. Bowie’s larger than life legend revolved as much around the knife as much as it had the man, but the man had inspired a hundred volunteers to follow him to the Alamo. His place in the pantheon of Texas legends had been earned. But something separated Crockett from the other two. Objectively, Will knew that Travis had owed his fame to commanding the doomed defense, while Bowie was a regional celebrity. Crockett, on the other hand, had cast a shadow of celebrity over the entire nation in the years before the Alamo.
No, Will realized, it wasn’t Crockett’s national fame which set him apart from Travis or Bowie. Will had been shamed by many of the memories he had inherited from Travis. Even by the standards of the day in which he found himself, by any reasonable standard, Travis had been a deadbeat father and an adulterer. Even now, the ink was barely dry on Travis’ divorce papers. His thoughts turned to Bowie, who had made his fortune the previous decade buying and selling slaves. Then there was Crockett. David Crockett was unsullied by the violence that was Bowie’s stock-in-trade, and was a faithful family man. His singular sin in the eyes of his contemporaries was picking a fight with President Jackson over the Indian Removal Policy. In Will’s eyes, Crockett was very much a hero. As Will drifted off to sleep his mind was filled with images of Crockett swinging his rifle around his head in front of the Alamo Chapel as Santa Anna’s soldados overwhelmed him.