by Drew McGunn
“At West Point, we studied plenty of tactics, from Napoleon’s command of the battlefield with his artillery, to Wellington’s counter tactics, and even the tactics used by the red Indians on our frontier, but the use of marksmen tied to several reloaders wasn’t something we considered,” Johnston said.
Will chuckled, “It was inspirational, I have to admit. Congressman Crockett came up with the idea, and as events have proven, it was very effective.”
They fell silent as they watched the infantry company. Some of the men wore gray militia jackets, while others wore blue US army jackets, while many more wore civilian clothing or buckskin hunting shirts. Despite the lack of uniformity, the men were deployed in a skirmish line, operating in teams of four. Will’s eyes landed on the nearest team. The four men were advancing on a straw dummy two hundred yards away. The soldier in the lead stopped and fired his rifle. While he stopped to reload, the fourth man on the team moved ahead of the other three and took up the forward position, and fired at the target. The team continued advancing, moving the man at the rear to the front, always with at least one man with a loaded rifle.
Will noticed a thin smile crease Johnston’s face while watching the drill. “It’s not exactly orthodox.”
Johnston shook his head in response, “No, but we’re more likely to be fighting the Comanche than the Mexicans next and I wouldn’t want to face them with an empty gun in my hand.”
About to respond, Will had opened his mouth when, in the distance, he noticed a swirling dust cloud moving southward. He closed his mouth and watched the cloud materialize into a man on horseback, riding at a horse-killing speed toward the fort. The man, with long, graying hair flowing behind him, dressed in a tattered hunting jacket, saw the two officers standing outside of the scaffolding along the north wall. He raced his horse toward them. As the rider jerked the reins, his mount, heavily lathered from the brutal ride, slid to a stop. The rider cried out, “The Comanches! They’ve killed all the men and kidnapped the women and children!”
Will and the Lt. Colonel ran over to the horseman as he slid from his mount, standing unsteadily. He gasped, and said, “Water, please.”
One of the soldiers who had been drilling handed over his canteen. The rider drank greedily as the water he didn’t swallow ran down his brown hunting jacket. When he had slaked his thirst, he turned toward Will and said, “Sir, the Comanches, they have attacked Fort Parker, up on the Navasota River. They done killed John Parker and the rest of the men. They kidnapped a couple of our womenfolk and three of our children. Y’all are the army, so you gotta do something!” With that, he collapsed.
With the present drill disrupted by the rider’s arrival, Will detailed several soldiers to carry the survivor to the hospital building within the fort. From there, he sent for several officers currently at the Alamo. Later, in his office, Juan Seguin, as senior captain of cavalry and Deaf Smith, as captain of the Texas Rangers within the San Antonio district, joined Will and Lt. Colonel Johnston.
Will knew the Comanche wars were among the most destabilizing events during the brief life of the Republic of Texas, as he recalled from a history he was working hard to change. As the other officers shifted quietly, waiting for Will to start the meeting, he thought about how the Comanche wars lasted into the 1870s before the US government finally forced the remnants of the tribe onto reservations in Oklahoma. That was thirty-five years into a future he was intent on changing.
His thoughts drifted back to the recent constitutional convention in San Antonio and recalled he owed his appointment partially to a commitment to protect the frontier settlements. With that thought in the forefront of his mind, Will said, “We’re going to mount an expedition and follow the Comanche back into the Comancheria. We’re going to free the women and children they have captured and punish the Comanche.” He took a deep breath and continued, “It falls to the four of us to figure out how to accomplish that. What are your thoughts?”
Seguin spoke up, “General Travis, we can ride out with both our cavalry companies, and head north as soon as tomorrow, with eighty troopers.”
Deaf Smith nodded to Seguin, “I’ve got twenty-five Rangers here in San Antonio, who can leave tonight, and another company north of here. I figure we can take a total of fifty Rangers into Comancheria.”
Johnston looked between the other men, searching for the right words, “Well, General Travis, we have hundreds of infantry around San Antonio. It would take a few days, but I believe I can take three or four hundred men, if allowed time to prepare.”
“I’m not sure we have time for that, Colonel Johnston,” Will said cautiously, “We’ll likely be going thirty or more miles each day, which makes bringing the infantry difficult”
When he saw Johnston’s shoulders slump at the news, Will added, “But, someone needs to stay here in command of the army while I’m gone with Seguin and Smith here.”
Johnston smiled feebly and replied, “You can depend on it. I’ll keep up with training the infantry, sir.”
Will shook his head, “Oh, you can do more than that, Colonel. I want you to furlough every man who won’t follow orders or submit to the new training regimen. We’ve added hundreds of men to the army since we won our independence. I’d rather have fewer well-trained soldiers than an ill-disciplined mob.”
After the meeting broke up, Will sat, reviewing a list of invoices he needed to send to the provisional government for payment when Captain Seguin returned. With no one else present, the Tejano used Travis’ nickname, “Buck, I wanted to run something by you.”
“My family has contacts among the Lipan Apaches, south of here. One of their chiefs is an old warrior by the name of Flacco. He’s got a son, by the same name, a few years younger than us and he’s a damned fine scout. We could use a good scout, and I believe he’d be reliable.”
Will set one of the invoices to the side and said, “That’s a good idea, Juan. Get him here tomorrow before we leave.”
***
The next day, Will watched the mixed force of Texian cavalry and Rangers ride out through the Alamo’s gate. Deaf Smith’s Rangers were festooned with pistols, secured on saddles or belt holsters or frequently stuck in belts. Most carried rifles and a few, muskets. Among the Rangers, no two men dressed the same. Mostly they came from the southern United States, although there were a few who came from Europe or were raised on the haciendas of south Texas.
Seguin’s cavalry favored swords and knives, to accompany their pistols and shotguns. Half of his men were native Tejanos, while the rest, like the Rangers, came from the American South and Europe. While most of the men managed to find some sort of uniform, those included old US army, gray militia, and surplus Mexican jackets.
As the last of the horsemen rode out the gate, Will nudged his horse and followed behind. Once on the trail, heading north, he spurred his horse to a gallop, riding to the head of the column where Seguin rode with the Apache scout, Flacco.
The second evening on the trail was warm, as May prepared to give way to June. The mounted column forded the slow-moving Colorado River before setting camp for the evening near a small stockade on the northern bank of the river. From the stockade, Will saw a large man walk out, approaching the camp. Will hurried over, intercepting him. The other man looked him up and down before asking, “You in charge of these men?”
Will dipped his head in acknowledgement and offered his hand, “William Travis, at your service, sir.”
There was a glimmer of recognition when the other man heard his name. “I’m Jacob Harrell, and yonder stockade is my family’s place. What’s the general of the army and all these men doing up here on the Colorado?”
Will’s shoulders slumped a bit as he replied, “The Comanche are raiding again. We received word a couple of days ago about a large war band that attacked Fort Parker, up on the Navasota.”
Harrell’s eyes grew wide and he swore as he looked to the west, to the land of the Comancheria. “I hadn’t heard about it.” He looke
d back to Will and asked, “Well, if you’re going after them, the least I can do is let my wife know we got company. Will you join me and my family for dinner?”
“I think I can manage that, would you have room at your table for my captains, too?”
Harrell’s eyes held a twinkle, “Sure, if they don’t mind sharing a plate.”
Less than an hour later, Will and Captain Seguin sat at a large table with Jacob Harrell and his family. Deaf Smith passed, muttering about eating beans with his Rangers.
As Harrell’s wife, Mary, brought plates loaded with venison and beans to the table, he said, “We’ve been worried about the Comanche as of late. There are four families here along the Colorado, no more than were at the Parker fort. Apart from the threat from the damned redskins, this land is some of the best we’ve ever seen. Given time, a real town could develop here.”
While Seguin dug in and wolfed his food, Will set his spoon down on the wooden table with the realization that Harrell’s homestead was located in the bend of the Colorado River where the town of Austin would eventually grow. “I agree with you Mr. Harrell, and that’s why we’re headed north to put paid to the Comanche.”
When they finished eating, while Mary and several of the Harrell children cleaned the table, Will and Seguin joined Jacob in center of the small stockade, where their host lit a pipe and smoked, “I moved out here to Texas a few years ago, because as a poor dirt farmer in Tennessee, land enough to farm just wasn’t available, not at the prices I could afford. Texas has given me the opportunity to have something far beyond what I could have ever scrambled to have in Tennessee, and the opportunity to pass something significant on to my children. Push the Comanche back, General Travis, and give us settlers the breathing room we need, and we’ll build something here that’ll last.”
While listening, Will imagined the stately capitol building standing in the distance, and wide avenues filled with the commerce of the republic flowing through them, instead of the rolling plains and copses of live oak trees which filled his vision. As he recalled from his history, Austin was the project of Mirabeau Lamar, the second president in a republic which wouldn’t exist. It seemed Austin would need a new patron and he swore as he looked through the gate of the stockade toward the Colorado river, he would show Crockett the advantages of moving the government out here, away from the populated areas of East Texas.
He refocused on Harrell as the other man finished and said, “Whatever the cost, Mr. Harrell, the army will end the Comanche raids, so that others can find here in this part of the Republic the same opportunity you have.”
Six days after leaving the bend of the Colorado River, Will led his mixed command of Rangers and cavalry troopers into a broad meadow containing the burned remnants of Fort Parker, a few miles south of the headwaters of the Navasota River. The fort’s smoldering embers no longer sent tendrils of smoke into the sky. Apart from the skeleton of the fort, the only other sign of the massacre was a handful of burial mounds and their wooden markers.
More than a dozen men who were either related to the Parkers or came from nearby farms met Will and his force when they arrived. The leader of the band was an older man, in his mid-fifties. As he approached Will, his face was hard edged and belied his soft-spoken voice, “Thank God you all have finally arrived. We prayed daily for Elisha to get through.”
After stretching from the long ride, Will went over to the group of survivors, “He arrived in San Antonio eight days ago. We got here as soon as we could.”
“My apologies, sir. I’m Daniel Parker, and these men are my family and neighbors. I implore you, please fetch back our womenfolk and children.”
Will took off his hat, knocking the trail dust from it, and ran his fingers through his damp, red hair, “I’m General Travis, sir. I wish we had been able to get here earlier. But now we’re here, we’ll be heading into the Comancheria to find your women and children.”
Parker’s shoulders sagged, and a couple of his relatives guided him over to a stump, where he sat down. Will thought the older man was out of breath, but when he lifted up his head, his eyes were swimming in tears as he said, “General, had you arrived when we did, you could have helped us bury our relatives. Oh, dear God in Heaven, what those savages did to John, Silas and the others, it’s enough to make the hardest heart weep.”
Without any prompting, Parker continued, “We found my brother, Benjamin’s, body where they killed him, in front of the fort. They had pierced him with dozens of spears. I pray he was dead before hitting the ground. They scalped, defiled, and disfigured his body, General. My family, we’re men of peace, we came here from Illinois for the opportunity to spread the gospel. But as God is my witness, sir, as wrong as I know it is, I want vengeance, General Travis. Find our women and children, and avenge our father, brothers and sons.”
Parker lowered his head into his hands, where Will heard him sobbing. Taking leave from the settlers, he returned to where Juan Seguin and Deaf Smith waited, out of earshot. Smith said, “I’ve got a few of my boys riding patrol around the fort. Like as not, the Comanche are long gone back into the Comancheria, but we’ll make sure.”
Chapter 2
The morning following their arrival at the remnants of Fort Parker, Will ordered his command to follow the trail to the west left by the large war party. Joining Will’s little army were a half dozen of the Parkers’ family and neighbors. Flacco, Seguin’s Apache scout, and a couple of Smith’s Rangers, skilled at tracking, led the way. Will held no illusions about his own tracking skills, they were nonexistent. Even so, he had no problem seeing the westward trail left by the Comanche war band.
There were no settlements west of the Parkers’ fort, but several homesteads were burned husks. The second day out from the fort, as they watered their horses in the Brazos river, one of the scouts rode back along the trail and found Will discussing where to ford the river with Seguin and Smith. “Sir, we found a place a couple of miles north, where we can ford the river. Water’s only a few feet deep there.” He stopped, opening and closing his mouth a couple of times before he managed, “We found the body of a woman on the other side of the Brazos, sir. She’d been there for a while.”
Will dreaded what they would see when they crossed the river. As they spurred their horses toward the ford, Will muttered to Seguin, “Bad news doesn’t get any better by waiting for it to come.”
On the west bank of the Brazos, a couple of Rangers and Flacco, the Apache scout, stood over the body of the woman. A blanket covered the corpse when Will and the other officers rode up. When he motioned for the blanket to be removed, one of the Rangers standing beside the blanket said, “General, you don’t want to see this. What they done to her ain’t fit for Christian eyes.”
Flacco glanced at the Ranger disapprovingly and knelt by the body. He said something rapidly in Spanish. When he finished, Seguin shook his head and said, “Buck, it’s up to you, but Flacco says it isn’t pretty, what the Comanche did to her.”
Will paused as his thoughts were drawn back to what seemed a lifetime ago, before his mind had been cast through time, to several years before the transference, when his unit participated in the battle for Fallujah in 2004. The terror of hearing a bullet careen off the concrete inches from where he was sitting was bad enough. Even so, he thought the daily firefights with snipers inured him to death. After finding himself cast back in time, he had taken the battles at the Rio Grande and the Nueces in stride. As a soldier, death was something he had learned to steel his heart against. Now he needed to know into what he was leading the men who followed him, he needed to know what they faced.
When Flacco pulled back the blanket, Will retreated a step. He was no expert, but even to his untrained eyes, the body had been exposed to the elements for a while. While animals had found and mangled the body, what skin remained left little doubt the Comanche warriors had tortured the woman before she died. Before ordering her buried, Will sent for one of the Parker men to examine the body. When he arr
ived, he threw up his most recent meal upon seeing the body, but after recovering, confirmed she didn’t appear to resemble either of the women captured from the fort.
After the woman was hastily buried, and the command was again following the trail westward, the image of her brutalized body kept returning to Will. The number of bodies he saw killed when his unit took part in the 2004 battle of Fallujah was low, and while some of them were badly mangled, they paled in comparison to hers. Despite hearing stories of the Comanche warrior culture, the frequency of which bordered on commonplace, and now seeing first-hand the terror they struck among the settlers along the frontier, Will was still shocked to see the casual brutality inflicted on the woman’s body. Somewhere along the way, he decided the author who wrote “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” obviously wasn’t thinking of the Comanche when she penned her book.
The mixed command was a few days further west of the Brazos, and the war party’s trail had become harder to track. Flacco told Will it was because various groups had peeled away, going back to their own bands. The Texas plains were hot in June. The command had left the Alamo more than two weeks earlier and the strain of being under a constant state of alertness was beginning to show on the men under Will’s command. The day was at its hottest as the sun was tracking across the western sky. The men, in columns of two, wound their way across the prairie. The only tracks in sight were those made by the buffalo. In the back of his mind, Will knew the heat sapped his attention and made all of the men more lethargic.
To the west, in the distance he heard a gunshot shatter the monotonous sound of squeaking saddles. The lethargy fell from Will, as adrenaline coursed through his system. The flurry of shots came from the direction where their scouts were riding forward of the main column. He spurred his horse into a gallop, waving the column of men toward the sound of the gunfire.