by John Jakes
“Forty—” Bowie yawned. “Forty’s plenty long enough for a man to live. But you’re young, Mandy.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but it’s not true. Thirty-three is getting on. Like Colonel Crockett, I really have only one regret. I wish one of my children had survived.”
“I forget how many there were—”
“Two.”
“Ah, that’s right. I don’t know why I can never remember.”
“Probably because they were both born before Jaimie and I ever met you.” She stared at the lantern’s flame, seeing the past. “The boy was stillborn. The girl lived six weeks. When she died, it broke Jaimie’s spirit. He didn’t want to work the farm anymore. It was almost as if our failure to have children put a curse on everything else he was doing. Blighted it—made it unbearable—” She smiled in a melancholy way. “I knew it was partly an excuse but I never said anything. It was time we tried something else. Jaimie and I weren’t good farmers—”
She realized Bowie had closed his eyes. Alarmed, Sam said, “Is he all right?”
“He’s just dozing, Sam. You rest too. I’ll watch him.”
In the ensuing silence, her mind began to drift. Away from the chapel. Away from the trap that had closed around them all. Even though much of the past had been sad, remembering it soothed her now, drained away some of her tension. She thought fondly of her husband, Jaimie de la Gura, and of her weary thankfulness when he had decided to abandon the thirty acres near the Brazos that the two of them had worked for several years, to provide a livelihood for the family that never became a reality—
They had worked that land to exhaustion. But Jaimie lacked the instinctive kinship with the earth that seemed to be a requirement for raising cash crops at a profit. Jaimie’s neighbors could produce forty to eighty bushels of corn for every acre they owned. He was fortunate if his fields yielded twenty.
In their last two years on the farm, the life had become hateful to both of them, the two-room, dog-run cabin more and more disagreeable. Even now Amanda grew queasy when she recalled the smell of the swine Jaimie tried to raise and fatten for market. Her idea of hell was a limbo without purposeful sight or sound—with nothing to torture the lost soul but the smell of pigs.
A year before the birth and death of their daughter, they had discussed trying to plant the prime cash crop, cotton. But working cotton fields required plenty of laborers. Jaimie might have been able to negotiate a loan to buy a few slaves. But he was against the system in principle. As a boy in New Orleans, he’d sided with his mother when conscience drove her to complain about the original source of the de la Gura money—West Indian blacks brought illegally through the bayous in defiance of the law of 1807 banning the importation of slaves from Africa.
Jaimie’s mother had been a devout Catholic. Slavery violated Christianity as she understood and practiced it. She had filled her son’s mind with her beliefs—and he carried some of that youthful indoctrination with him until he died.
Whenever he and his Brazos neighbors discussed the slavery question, Jaimie liked to remind them that President Jefferson, though a slaveholder himself, had prophesied a “revolution of the wheel of fortune” for blacks. He could quote a couple of lines from the president’s Notes on the State of Virginia—lines that reflected Jefferson’s mortal fear of a coming apocalypse—
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
So cotton was out of the question for the de la Guras.
The whole miserable enterprise came to an end when they buried their daughter. With the money they got from the sale of their land, they had negotiated for a house in the growing riverside settlement of Bexar.
Soon after, Jaimie had set out for New Orleans to buy some needed furnishings, to visit the cemetery where his parents were buried and to order merchandise for a store he intended to open. But in New Orleans, cholera had struck him down—and his diseased body had been hastily dumped into a grave there, so it wouldn’t infect anyone else. Amanda learned of the death by means of a letter from a public official.
What grieved her almost as much as the loss of her husband was the guilt she felt about that journey to New Orleans. Jaimie didn’t want to live in Bexar, let alone operate a mercantile establishment. He had been driven to it by his need to escape from all the bad memories the farm represented. He had chosen Bexar for her—knowing full well that the confinement of a town didn’t suit him and never would. He had lived outdoors—hunted and trapped in the north along the Missouri River—for much of his adult life, and he knew he’d be no better selling calico than he had been at raising corn.
After Jaimie’s death, Amanda wanted nothing to do with storekeeping. But she had to find some way to earn a living. She knew she had some skill in the domestic areas that were the assigned provinces of women, and she decided that the natural place to apply that skill was in managing a decent hotel—which Bexar lacked.
So, late in 1832, she had sold her house, bought an available adobe building on Soledad Street, borrowed heavily from a wealthy Mexican friend of the Veramendis to buy some beds and chairs and washstands and have the place refurbished—and by early in 1833, the first, rather spartan version of Gura’s Hotel was open. She had barely been able to meet expenses during the early months.
The young sons of the town’s better Mexican families began frequenting her public bar in preference to the cantina. She poured an honest drink. But the young gentlemen complained about Bexar’s lack of feminine companionship. The two overweight prostitutes who occupied a filthy crib behind the cantina weren’t fit to touch, let alone kiss. The young gentlemen didn’t mind stains on their reputations from visiting such women, but they didn’t want pox sores in the bargain.
Listening to that sort of thing night after night, Amanda had an inspiration. She soon added the desired service—with appropriate decorum and discipline—to the back rooms of her second floor. After that, her ledger showed a substantial profit every thirty days. She paid off the loan by year’s end, and began purchasing some better items of furniture.
She saw nothing overwhelmingly immoral in converting part of Gura’s Hotel into a brothel. She had spent her adolescence and young womanhood among the Teton Sioux, and had come to regard sexual activity not as a great many white people did—unavoidable but somehow unclean—but as the Indians saw it: of almost inestimable importance because of its connection with the creation of life. Anything so important could only be engaged in one way—joyously.
The Sioux were not a promiscuous people. Quite the opposite. Adultery, though never formally punished, was frowned upon. The virtue of young women was protected with elaborate rituals of courtship—though Amanda had never been so protected. When she had been sold to a young man of the tribe, she had already lost her virginity. Because of that—and because of her white skin—the rules didn’t apply.
Gradually, she came to understand and share the happy duality of the Sioux attitude toward sex. The physical act of love was regarded with mystical reverence—and this produced an earthy appreciation of the act itself. Sex was not a sin but a celebration, a wondrous and necessary part of a fulfilled life.
What a far cry from the views of those white women who whispered about the subject with revulsion. Amanda felt sorry for such warped creatures. The Sioux, both male and female, had a much healthier attitude.
To the Indian philosophy of love she had added her own: a man and woman taking comfort from each other was not half so immoral as the casual taking of human life, a common occurrence on the frontier—and one with precious little moral stigma attached. Witness her friend Bowie’s respectability.
She did recognize that charging for the services of her girls injected a certain commercial taint. But which was more reprehensible? Selling a man a jug of popskull that dulled his senses and, over the long run, could ruin his health? Or selling him an hour’s pleasure and peace in the arms of a woman?
Perhaps
the pious would declare than an honest brothel was an impossible concept. But an honest brothel was what she had tried to run.
The puritanical segments’ of Bexar’s population couldn’t approve, let alone understand, such an attitude, of course. Although she prospered, she was only tolerated, never accepted, by the best families. Until his death, Veramendi remained one of her few influential friends. Another, surprisingly enough, was the parish priest, a thoughtful, tolerant man named Don Refugio, who had considerable respect for the religious convictions of most Indians—Comanches excepted—and found them in some ways more “Christian” than many of his flock.
But the ostracism she’d suffered seemed trivial in the light of what she was facing now. Her gaze was almost unconsciously drawn to the symbols of the coming struggle: the pistols in the drowsing Bowie’s lap. The pistols and the infamous knife—
Copies of Bowie’s knife were in demand all across Texas. Even in the States, people said. The inch-and-a-half-wide blade had a wickedly honed false edge that permitted a backstroke during a duel. There was also a concave scoop where the back curved to meet the edge at the point.
The prototype had been given to Jim Bowie by his brother Rezin in 1827. Bowie had often laughed about the various legends that had sprung up concerning the original knife and its successors—
That each had been forged with a piece of meteorite thrown into the cauldron of molten metal.
That he was in league with the Devil, who had provided the knife’s inspired, lethal design in return for a claim against Bowie’s soul. There was almost no limit to the wild stories that were circulated.
Bowie had once remarked to Amanda that it was the man more than the weapon that determined the outcome of a fight. But he also admitted he was flattered when others assigned supernatural properties to the knife—
Abruptly, Bowie’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked, brushed at the stubble sprouting on his chin. When he spoke, it was evident that he had no awareness of having slept for a short time.
“Still say, Mandy”—he coughed—“what Crockett said. You should have stayed outside. Maybe the Mexicans would have left you alone.”
“What do you think I am, Colonel?” she teased. “A turncoat? I may run a whorehouse, but that doesn’t mean I lack principles!”
Bowie laughed. Amanda smiled too, then continued more seriously. “I knew what I had to do when Buck Travis gave his little speech at the fandango on George Washington’s birthday. He said Americans down here had to stand up for liberty. My grandfather did just that back in Boston, sixty years ago.”
“Travis is wrong.”
“What do you mean, wrong?”
“Wrong about the issue. It’s dictatorship.”
“You’re not making sense. What’s the difference?”
“We’re fighting because Santa Anna centralized all the power of the government in Mexico City. Overturned the constitution of 1824. Dissolved the state legislatures—”
“That’s tyranny, Jim—and the other side of the coin is liberty.”
“Depends on what you mean by the word. I mean the rights we were guaranteed in twenty-four. I don’t mean independence from Mexico.”
Finally she understood. “Well, Sam Houston and the others at Washington”—she meant Washington-on-the-Brazos, the provincial capital that had been established after the outbreak of hostilities—“may have different ideas by the time they’ve finished their deliberations. Santa Anna will never give in to demands that the constitution of twenty-four be put back into effect. Coming here with his army is proof of that. So maybe it is time for another declaration of independence.”
“So we can join the United States?”
“Or become an independent republic.”
“Well”—Bowie sighed, closing his eyes a moment—“however it works out, we won’t know.”
Behind her, Amanda heard Sam’s sudden intake of breath. Occasionally during the thirteen days of the siege she had witnessed similar reactions from others at the Alamo, as the possible finality of their position struck home.
“We had to make the stand, Jim,” she said. “It was that or surrender. Or run.”
“I know. But sometimes it seems downright idiotic to die in a broken-down church. This place is of damn little military importance and everyone knows it.”
“Yes, but as Colonel Travis says, it’s how we fight, not where, that counts most. If General Santa Anna pays highly for a victory, he’ll think twice before he tries to win another.”
A moan from the chapel made her start. Only Angelina Dickinson, she realized. She knotted her hands in her lap. The lantern light glinted on her dark hair as she gazed at Bowie.
“I’m sounding a lot braver than I really am, Jim.”
“But you still came into the mission.”
“Because of you. Your illness. And—well, there’s no getting around it, and I don’t mean to sound overly sentimental. But I am an American, just like most of the settlers in this part of the country. I’ve kept track of what’s happened these past couple of years. I happen to think the settlers are right, asking for reinstatement of the constitution they lived under when they first came out here. If it comes to fighting and I have to choose sides, why would I choose any side but my own?”
A moment’s silence. Bowie closed his weak hand around hers. “You’re a strong woman, Mandy. Some would just give up and let it go at that.”
She smiled. “The people in my family may get scared to death, but one thing they don’t do is give up easily—”
She heard the slave Sam, mumbling fearfully to himself. She tried to offer some words for his benefit. “But I really think that red flag must be a bluff.”
“Wouldn’t count on it.”
“Aren’t there any rules in warfare? I mean about sparing noncombatants? The nigras? The children—?”
“ ’Course there are. Santa Anna knows the military customs. But he won’t offer terms. There’s been an open rebellion. His country stands to lose all of Texas. He means to prevent that—and punish us. Hard. If some innocent people are hurt, he’ll shrug and look the other way. That’s the kind of unprincipled son of a bitch he is—”
A series of loud sounds brought Bowie’s drowsy eyes fully open. Sam yelped in alarm. Amanda jumped up, ran to the door of the baptistry—
Out in the darkened chapel, a woman was wailing. Boots hammered on the ramp leading up to the cannon platform. She heard Almeron Dickinson shout, “They’re coming! From all quarters. The foot—the cavalry too. They’re coming!”
iv
At last Amanda heard it for herself: the low, tumultuous drumming of men—a great many men—running over hard ground beyond the walls. The noise flooded into the roofless chapel from all directions.
On the gun platform, Captain Dickinson was cursing someone, demanding that he wake up, pronto. Amanda realized her original guess had been correct—silence to allow the defenders to doze off must have been part of Santa Anna’s strategy. Dickinson’s oaths and yells proved the Texans were less than ready for the assault—
A squirrel gun banged from the other side of the closed chapel doors. Then, above the steadily increasing pound of running feet, a bugle pierced the night. It was joined by another, then by all the brass in the Mexican regimental bands.
The bugles and the fast-cadenced drums were playing an unfamiliar tune. Yet the wild, almost savage music started Amanda trembling as she stood in the baptistry door.
Abruptly, the sky over the chapel burst alight. By the reddish glow of the Mexican rockets, Amanda watched men scurrying into position along the cannon rampart. The wild, pealing music grew louder.
Behind her, Bowie said, “I know that call they’re playing. It’s the deguello.”
Struck by the rawness of his voice, Amanda spun. Bowie’s emaciated hands closed around the butts of his pistols.
“Comes from an old Spanish word, degollar—” He licked his lips. “It means to slit the throat. There’ll be no terms. No m
ercy—”
Grimacing, he wrenched his shoulders higher against the wall, then gestured with the pistol in his right hand. “Go back to the other women and the children, Mandy. Maybe you’ll have a chance that way.”
“Jim, I won’t leave—”
The cocks of his pistols rasped as he thumbed them back.
“Yes, you will. I’m one of those they want most.”
He waved a gun, a furious arc in the air. “You get out—you hear me?”
“Better do what he say, Miz Mandy,” Sam told her. “I look after the colonel from here on—”
Amanda whispered to Bowie, “God keep you, Jim.”
“And you. Now get!”
She whirled and rushed into the darkness of the chapel. The rockets sprayed fire across the heavens. Long matches were glowing on the gun rampart. The night resounded with the sudden blast of cannons, the howls of the Mexican foot soldiers rushing toward the walk—and the drums and bugles blaring that melody which meant no quarter.
Chapter II
The Massacre
i
AMANDA HAD SELDOM BEEN dissatisfied with the sex conferred on her by the accident of birth. Occasionally, she’d even found her femininity to be a decided advantage. But she didn’t feel that way as she huddled in the sacristy, surrounded by frightened women and children. This morning, she wished she were a man.
The dimness of the room seemed to heighten her sense of helplessness. She would have preferred to be in the main plaza, where the fighting was taking place. But a few moments after she’d left Bowie, Travis had sent a man to the chapel with explicit orders. The women and children were to stay hidden.
The noise of the battle had already become an uninterrupted, unnerving din. Beyond the door of the sacristy, men ran back and forth between the cannon ramp and the powder magazine, a room in the north wall. On the gun platform, Susannah Dickinson’s husband bawled, “Fire in the hole!” every minute or so, and one of the twelve-pounders roared, filling the chapel with a brief glare of ruddy light. From the main plaza, there was a continual crash of musketry, screams and curses in English and Spanish—and the boom of Mexican artillery bombarding the walls.