Down Mexico Way

by Drew McGunn

  DOWN MEXICO

  WAY

  Book 4 of the Lone Star Reloaded Series

  A tale of alternative history

  By Drew McGunn

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s overactive imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or locales is coincidental. Fictional characters are entirely fictional and any resemblance among the fictional characters to any person living or dead is coincidental. Historical figures in the book are portrayed on a fictional basis and any actions or inactions on their part that diverge from actual history are for story purposes only.

  Copyright © 2018 by Drew McGunn

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recordings, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright holder. Permission may be sought by contacting the author at drewmcgunn@gmail.com

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  V1

  Table of Contents

  The Story So Far

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  The Texas Cession: A Short Story

  About the Author

  The Story So Far

  In 2008, SSGT Will Travers couldn’t have imagined how wrong a routine supply run could go, as he counted down the days until his National Guard unit would rotate back stateside. That is, until an explosion overturned his Humvee and propelled him through space and time.

  When he woke, he was trapped in the body of William Barret Travis, with only a few weeks to go before his fateful death at the Alamo in 1836. Trapped in the past, and with no desire to become a martyr for Texas liberty, Will could have fled. With nearly two centuries of history to exploit, the possibilities were endless. Instead of fleeing or dying at the Alamo, he chose the impossible. He rallied every Texian volunteer between the Rio Grande and San Antonio and met Santa Anna at the Rio Grande where he stopped the dictator with the help of David Crockett, Jim Bowie, James Fannin and seven hundred more patriots. After decisively beating Santa Anna twice, Will and David Crockett captured the wily dictator and much of his army, and won independence from Mexico.

  Having won the war, Will was determined he would win the peace. As a student of history, he knew without changing direction, Texas was headed towards a constitution trapping thousands of slaves and freedmen in one of the most oppressive slave codes in the American South. Indians, like the Cherokee, who were trying to put the pieces of their society back together after President Jackson’s genocidal Indian Removal Act, would be driven out of Texas. Thousands of Tejanos, who had lived in Texas for generations, would be forced from their homes, as men like Robert Potter and James Collinsworth strove to make Texas a welcome place for Anglos only.

  Will allied himself with David Crockett and Sam Houston to thwart the worst of the pro-slavery faction and passed a constitution that gave the Cherokee a path to citizenship, and allowed for freedmen to remain in the Republic and for slave owners to free their slaves. For a 21st century man, it seemed too little, but it was a start.

  In the closing days of the constitutional convention an assassin tried to kill Will. David Crockett used the shockwaves of the attempted assassination to propel Will to command of the Texian army.

  Will dives into transforming the army, but he has barely begun before the frontier erupts into violence as the Comanche ride out from the Comancheria, attacking Fort Parker on the edge of the Texian frontier. Will rushes north, pressed by the Republic’s congress, to stop the raids. He discovers the Comanches are lords of the Great Plains, and they stay one step ahead of him until he is forced to retreat.

  Will learns from the experience and draws upon his background to modernize his army’s tactics and develop new weapons. The following year he defeats the combined might of the Comanche war bands and forces the Comanche to seek peace.

  In the years that followed, Will works to develop new weapons, help Texas find its economic footing, and invest in free labor farming and banking, while building a life with the woman who captured his heart, Rebecca, the daughter of the President of Texas, David Crockett.

  Mexico looms large to the fragile Republic’s south, and as Crockett’s term as president draws to a close, he orders Will to take the army and secure the boundary agreed upon by Santa Anna six years before. While Crockett and Will are trying to solidify Texas’ borders, unbeknownst to them, Santa Anna has returned to power and is sending an army north.

  Total annihilation at the Alamo is only stopped by A. Sidney Johnston’s arrival with every army reservist he could scrape together, while Will was still hundreds of miles away with the regular army. After burying the dead, Texas girds itself for an existential war with Mexico.

  Chapter 1

  Late February, 1843

  The horse was high-spirited, striking the paving stone with an iron-shod hoof, impatiently waiting on his rider. Thirty-nine-year-old General Raphael Vasquez stepped through the door of the Palace of the Governor in Monterrey into the rising sun. When he saw his prized mount waiting, it brought a smile of pure pleasure to his face. If one must ride to war, he reasoned, there was no better way to do so than on the back of his best steed.

  He took the reins from an orderly and swung into the saddle as he scanned the hundreds of soldados deployed in long lines in the plaza of the capital city of Nuevo Leon. The men, mostly recruited from central Mexico, stood proudly in their new blue and red uniforms. They were destined to reinforce nine regiments of the 1st Division of the Army of the North, headquartered at Nuevo Laredo, along the Rio Grande. Before the general’s arrival, the 1st division constituted the entirety of the Army of the North. These men would go a long way to rebuilding the strength needed to carry the war north of the Rio Bravo del Norte.

  His thoughts turned briefly to Adrian Woll, who had been removed from command in the aftermath of his ignoble defeat at the hand of the illegitimate, piratical government of Texas. Vasquez was philosophical about Woll’s demise. One man’s fall often led to another’s rise and that is what opened the door to his own appointment to command the Army of the North.

  He nodded at the infantry colonel, who signaled toward a regimental band. A martial marching tune split the air, and the line wheeled into columns as the soldados marched out of the plaza. Vasquez’s heart soared, watching the men traipse by. His horse sensed his excitement and he pranced in place, waiting for the signal to gallop to the head of the column. When his iron-shod hoof struck a paving stone, the animal stumbled.

  His army momentarily forgotten, the general climbed down. He brushed aside the orderly and carefully examined his mount’s hoof. Nails were missing, and the shoe had come loose. Worse, the hoof was split. He lowered the leg and patted his mount’s neck. “Hermanito, it looks like I’ll have to ride to war without you.”

  He sent the orderly to fetch another mount from the
stables as he rubbed the horse’s nose. The animal stepped forward, nuzzling his neck as though realizing his rider would be leaving. When the orderly arrived with the new animal, Vasquez fumed at the loss of time, while the orderly switched the saddle. But in reality, it only took a couple of minutes before the general mounted the unfamiliar horse and cantered out of the plaza with his headquarters staff in tow, eager to catch up with the column.

  As the general and his staff caught up to the marching infantry, they paraded past the 2nd Division’s encampment. The regiments attached to it were still assembling, but the large central pavilion belonging to General Almonte was easy to see above the forest of small, canvas tents assigned to the soldados. He resisted the urge to swing by General Almonte’s tent. Even though it lightened his burden to have another high-ranking officer with experience in the army, he would see plenty of Almonte when the 2nd Division joined his army in the coming weeks.

  ***

  The young man pulled the new Italian-made binoculars from a leather case. He brought them to his eyes and watched the distant horsemen leap into view. He smirked, recalling the first time Major Hays had handed him the binoculars. The major had sought to trick the young Cherokee soldier, recently transferred from the 1st Cherokee Rifles to Hays’ special Ranger force. But Jessie Running Creek was no backwoods warrior. The reason Running Creek had been recruited into Hays’ special Ranger command had nothing to do with his accuracy with a rifle, or how fast he could ride a horse, or even how long he could march on the ridiculously long marches Hays preferred. No, the reason he had been recruited was he spoke fluent Spanish. He had learned the language as a child, traveling frequently with his father to trade at Fort Augustine in Florida in the years after the United States had annexed it from Spain.

  He grinned slyly as he recalled taking the binoculars from Hays and putting them to his eyes. It was true, the magnification was stronger than anything he’d ever seen, but he played it nonchalantly when he pulled them away from his eyes and gave them back to Hays and said, “I’ve seen better, sir.”

  The truth was, he hadn’t. But he wasn’t going to give the young officer the satisfaction of knowing that.

  How he had come to be perched on a rock, overlooking the Mexican column which was marching through the center of the valley below was something he still had trouble wrapping his mind around. The past year had been a whirlwind for the young Cherokee Ranger. He recalled the meeting between his father and Sam Houston, in which the Raven had urged the Cherokee to turn out their own militia when word of the Mexican invasion had arrived. His father was not normally a cautious man. A man who had built his wealth on trade took every calculated risk, but as a father with a son of military age, Simon Running Creek had urged caution.

  Jesse had been standing atop a heavy freight wagon, verifying the manifest as slaves hauled the supplies from the wagon into the Running Creeks’ warehouse. The Raven was standing outside his father’s warehouse, gesticulating and pointing south, “Simon, I tell you, my fellow Southerners don’t have the good sense that God gave to men when it comes to realizing the value of working with the Cherokee instead of working against them.”

  Simon wagged his finger under Houston’s nose, “I’ve heard it before. It wasn’t that long ago that American soldiers showed up on my doorstep and seized my land. I was there at Horseshoe Bend, Sam, same as you. And what did I get for my service to your country? A damned eviction notice.”

  The slaves and the work forgotten, Jesse listened to the older men. Houston smiled effusively. “Things are different here, Simon. You own your land. You’ve got a deed to your land that any court in the Republic would honor. But don’t think for a second that if Mexico were able to kick the Americans out of Texas that they wouldn’t turn their attention to the Cherokee next.”

  While Jesse’s father remained opposed, other tribal leaders, including Stand Watie, rallied the Cherokee militia. Against his father’s wishes, Jesse had joined the militia as they marched south, heading toward the Alamo.

  All that was now water under the bridge as Major Hays liked to say. He’d been in one of the major’s special Ranger companies almost since Johnston’s command had lifted the siege of the Alamo last year. That’s how he found himself perched on a rock, overlooking the Mexican column.

  Like an undulating snake, the column of infantry wound its way through the arid valley below. Jesse remained in place, counting each row of four until the entire army had moved past. He multiplied the number of rows by four and thought his math might be wrong. It was more than he thought he saw. He owed it to the other Rangers to do this right. He swore under his breath as he retraced his steps, returning to his horse. He followed the mountain trail until he judged he was again ahead of the column.

  Again, on foot, he moved along a trail overlooking the meandering road through the valley below. He saw the Mexican flag first, then the finely dressed officer, riding at the head of the column, with a few other officers trailing. Jesse didn’t like his view of the little army in the valley and shifted himself onto a wide rock just below the trail. A rattling sound startled him as his feet touched the rock.

  Lying in the warm sun, curled in the center of the wide boulder, Jesse heard the unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake’s warning. Then he saw the brown diamonds on the coiled snake. In his mind, Jesse was hundreds of miles away, eight years earlier, right after his father had brought his family to Texas as part of the Cherokee diaspora of the mid-1830s. He and a couple of other boys had taken off from where their parents were building homes in the new township they were constructing. He and his friends were swimming in the Trinity River, enjoying a break from the construction in the summer heat.

  His best friend, Joe, was swimming in the center of the river, when Jesse spotted something that looked like a stick floating in the water. As it approached Joe, Jesse saw it was a snake. He screamed at his friend, pointing at the reptile. Joe turned in time to see the snake, with a large triangular head, open its mouth wide, showing its white mouth and long fangs. Before the twelve-year-old boy could react, the snake struck him on the shoulder.

  Jesse raced to his friend and helped him to the shore. He pulled him onto the river bank and turned him over and saw the snake had bitten him multiple times. Jesse and another boy rushed to get Joe back to where the adults were building, but it was too little, too late, and his best friend died while the Medicine Woman attempted to save him.

  Since then, Jesse had suffered from herpetophobia. And when he saw the rattlesnake coiled on the rock, every skill he had acquired, every consideration for his mission fled into the recesses of his mind, replaced by pure terror. He clambered back onto the trail as the snake uncoiled and stretched itself out to more than six feet in length.

  As Jesse struggled to his feet, his hand bumped against his holster and in the terror that gripped him, he yanked the gun out and pulled the hammer back and fired. Six rounds in the cylinder, and six rounds he fired at the snake, hitting it multiple times. Whether it was simply muscle memory or if the snake was still alive, Jesse didn’t know. But when a blast from a bugle down in the valley penetrated his mind, he realized what he had done, and he bolted back down the trail to his horse, cursing himself for losing his presence of mind. He dug his heels into the sides of his mount, racing north toward the Rio Grande. He grabbed his hat to keep it from blowing off, while cussing at himself, and let the horse have his way as he thundered down the mountain trail.

  ***

  Were it summer, the sun would mercilessly beat down on his army, General Vasquez thought as the cool breeze of late February was channeled through the valley. He swept his hat from his head as the cool wind tousled his still jet-black hair.

  Mountains rose on both sides of the valley, and as Vasquez returned his hat to its proper place, a gunshot echoed across the valley. Five more shots followed in quick succession. The general’s first inclination was to search the mountainside, looking for gun smoke. But his mount had other ideas as it buck
ed following the first shot. Part of Vasquez’ mind focused on the quick, rapid fire. It could only be the work of one of the Texians’ repeating pistols. But the greater portion of his mind was drawn to trying to control the spooked animal, eyes wide in fear, rearing onto its back legs.

  Despite his skill with horses, when his mount reared back, Vasquez’ boots slipped from the stirrups. The horse slammed its forefeet down on the trail and bucked again. The general cursed his unfamiliar mount as the terrified animal ejected him from the saddle.

  Landing at a different angle would have made all the difference to General Vasquez. A foot to one side or the other and he would have broken bones from the fall. The staff, mounted behind him, instead heard a loud cracking sound as his head slammed into a rock. For want of a nail, Mexico’s invasion plans died in a valley between Monterrey and Nuevo Laredo.

  ***

  Nine months earlier

  Brigadier General Juan Nepomuceno Almonte chose to stand in the great hallway in front of his Excellency’s office within the castle of Chapultepec. He stood next to a window, staring down into the city where he could see most of the basin in which the capital was situated. In the distance, he watched a group of boys playing tag on one of the city streets. As usually was the case, one of the boys was a bit quicker than his friends as he stayed several steps ahead of the youth who was “it.”

  The sound of the door at the end of the hall opening broke his attention as the faster boy was being corralled by the growing cadre of boys who were “it.” Almonte tore his gaze away from the window as the boy dodged several of his pursuers. General Adrian Woll shuffled toward him as though in a stupor.

  “General Woll, are you alright?”

  The other officer drew up next to Almonte and deliberately turned, “Ah, Juan. My failure to take San Antonio has been my ruin.”

  Almonte was dismayed at Woll’s admission. “Surely his Excellency wouldn’t cashier you from the service, Adrian.” The younger officer shifted to a more intimate address upon hearing of Woll’s bad luck.