Ever since the arrest, Edwards had been trying to arouse the people to muster in defense of the prisoners and force their release, but only five men responded, and even they refused actually to attack the guard to free Travis and Jack. Word of his efforts reached Bradburn, who in any case suspected Edwards of being the mysterious “O.P.Q.,” and two days after the prisoners entered their new cell, Edwards suddenly joined them.33
Colonel Bradburn felt in no mood to pamper his prisoners further now. On one occasion they went for more than a week eating nothing but boiled beans and stale bread, though Lt. Juan Cortina of the garrison and their friend James Morgan in Anahuac managed to see that some variety of diet found its way into the kiln, though some of it never reached them, being consumed by their guards instead.34
Most unsettling of all, however, was being completely cut off from outside news. Travis had no way of knowing that Bradburn's commander, General Mier y Terán, envisioned attacking him from another quarter, advising Gov. José Maria Letona that “men with the title of lawyers” were making trouble at Anahuac. He called them a “plague of locusts,” and suspected they might be practicing without licenses, and if that was the case, he could put them out of business. The men he had in mind were Travis and Jack, and he soon gave Bradburn orders that any attorney seeking to practice in the Liberty District must first present a license obtained at the state capital in Saltillo. Travis probably had no such license and probably never got one, but if he managed to win his freedom from this cell, the authorities could make it very difficult for him to practice law again.35
As the days went on, Bradburn arrested more local leaders, while word spread throughout the colony of the happenings at Anahuac. Jack's brother William Jack left his San Felipe law office and came to see Bradburn, and when he remonstrated that Mexican military law did not extend to civilians, the colonel gave him fifteen minutes to leave town or face arrest himself. When he got back to San Felipe, Jack spread the word of Bradburn's tyranny, and soon emissaries went out to all points in the colony to rouse the settlers. Meanwhile the pleas from the prisoners began to work. Travis's new friend Williamson, a jolly fellow called “Three-legged Willie” because a childhood illness had left one leg permanently bent and he attached a wooden limb to the knee for walking, issued a call on June 4 to men in Brazoria and elsewhere in Austin's colony to gather at Lynch's Ferry on the San Jacinto a few miles west of Anahuac. Frank Johnson was already there recruiting, and soon others arrived, including Robert Wilson, a would-be capitalist, and the man always present when there was tension in Texas, Bowie's old friend Warren D.C. Hall. Soon Williamson joined them with thirty men from Brazoria, led by their alcalde, John Austin.36 The volunteers elected Johnson their leader, with Hall second in charge, and in the next few days even more men assembled, until the force swelled to well over one hundred. Meanwhile Colonel Ugartechea in Velasco urged John Austin to be cautious, and, heeding the plea, he agreed to press Bradburn for a peaceful turnover of the prisoners, abetted by a petition from Ugartechea himself. Overreacting—understandably, given his isolated situation—Bradburn took the Lynch's Ferry gathering for an expedition intent not just on freeing his captives but on revolution, and that only spurred him to even greater conviction that Travis and Jack were behind it all. “We may anticipate serious evils from forbearance towards men who are insulting us even within the walls of our prisons,” he declared. They must not tolerate that kind of insolence. In his imagination he swelled Johnson and Hall's numbers to six hundred or more, with the Comanche now joining in the plot, and begged for relief for his pitiful eighty-man garrison.37
Travis may have been unaware of the approach of Johnson's volunteers into Anahuac's outskirts on the morning of June 10. Certainly he must have heard or sensed some commotion outside the brick kiln, but he would have known nothing of the parlay between John Austin and Bradburn until guards burst into the cell. They tied the prisoners down to the ground and then stood over them with muskets poised. Travis himself had his hands tied over his knees. Negotiations had broken down, even though Ugartechea had sent his own plea to Bradburn to turn Travis and Jack over to civil authorities, and when Austin threatened to reduce the fort to rubble, Bradburn replied by giving orders that the prisoners were to be bound and shot at the first sound of an attack.38 When he heard what had happened, and sensed that Austin and some of his men might be within hearing of his voice, Travis shouted to them to forget about him and “blaze away upon the fort.” He was willing to die if he must, and preferred it to seeing the tyrant Bradburn get away unchastened for his crimes. Outside the kiln the Texians found his words moving, impressed that Travis “never shrunk but called on his friends to witness that he would die like a man.”39
The heat of the moment cooled, fortunately. The Texians retreated to the outskirts of Anahuac, and that afternoon Travis heard some desultory firing that betokened a skirmish, but Bradburn made no sign of carrying out his threat. There was more firing the next day, and then silence, and the following day Travis may have learned that Bradburn and the colonists had come to an agreement. The Texians would withdraw to Turtle Bayou and give up some Mexican prisoners, and in return Bradburn would free his captives within twenty-four hours. Travis could not have known, however, that Bradburn had no intention of honoring the agreement. Instead the colonel used the time to continue fortifying his position and call in all of his several outposts, boosting his strength to about 160 men. He looted the houses of Anahuac for anything that could be of use to the garrison, including carrying away some of Travis's clothing from his room in town.40 The next morning he sent word to Austin and Johnson that if they wanted the prisoners, they were welcome to try to take them.41
Travis probably knew little of this, though again he would have heard the renewed sounds of firing when the Texians made a tentative advance on Anahuac, this time drawing blood. Only later would he learn that Austin and the others then withdrew and decided that they had better identify themselves with the santanista movement in Mexico in order to give some legitimate aim to their uprising. They adopted resolutions, listed grievances, and circulated them throughout the colony, a virtual declaration of war. And only later, too, would Travis learn that Father Michael Muldoon, friend of Mier y Terán and the only non-Mexican practicing priest in Texas, came forward on June 21 and unsuccessfully offered himself as a hostage for the freedom of the prisoners.42 Colonists fought a skirmish with Ugartechea at Velasco that resulted in his agreement to withdraw to Matamoros, Travis and Jack and the others all the while languishing in their cell. They probably did not even know that Austin's force grew steadily to up to three hundred men, now cutting off all supply and communications to the garrison in Anahuac.
Finally, on July 2, Travis saw the door of the kiln open at last.43 Col. José de la Piedras, commanding the garrison in Nacogdoches, marched to Bradburn's relief, but on encountering Austin's rump militia halted and decided to negotiate instead. After a few days of discussions, they came to an agreement on June 29 that Travis and the others would be released to civil authorities at Liberty to be tried by civilian law, if trial there should be, and that Bradburn should be relieved of his command, while the colonists would immediately return to their homes and private pursuits. Two days later Piedras and Hugh Johnson, alcalde of Liberty, presented themselves to Bradburn, who had no alternative but to yield to his superior's orders, though another day passed before the prisoners walked free.44
Buck Travis had been more than fifty days imprisoned, and for a few hours in danger of instant death, and all because of Bradburn. The novelty of being a martyr had long since worn away, and though he certainly relished his status as a cause célèbre, he bore an unrelenting grudge against Bradburn for his ordeal, not to mention the loss of his personal effects from his office and hotel room. There was never any question of Travis being tried in Liberty, for there were no concrete charges for him to face. Even the prank letter, if he wrote it, hardly constituted a crime, and there was no evidence at all that he
contemplated the overthrow of the existing government and a separation from Mexico, though his ordeal may well have started him thinking in that direction. Given the opportunity, even the normally noncombative Travis might have confronted Bradburn, but the colonel, after relinquishing his command to Lieutenant Cortina, kept a low profile in Anahuac.
Yet the upheaval was not over just yet. Piedras stayed to keep peace until July 8, but then he had to leave quickly for Nacogdoches, for he feared a similar santanista uprising there, and he was right. Within a few weeks he would be surrendering himself to another rabble of upstart militia, this one led by James Bowie. Meanwhile, in Anahuac, Bradburn feared for his life. Believing that Travis intended his assassination, Bradburn begged a guard from Cortina to stand outside his door, and Cortina afterward told Labadie that the colonel was so fearful of Travis that he “ran to him like a benau (a deer) to be protected.” Murder was a bit out of Travis's line, of course, but he may well have taken perverse delight in allowing Bradburn to fear such, perhaps even following up his letter prank by sending terrifying rumors in the colonel's direction. Certainly his friend Labadie saw that Travis “felt no great friendship toward Bradburn.” Much as he appreciated Cortina for his respectful treatment, Travis also bore a lasting grudge against Lt. Manuel Montero, who bound him and held him at the edge of death on that terrible day in June.45
Travis got his revenge on July 11, three days after Piedras left. He and Jack and others came back from Liberty, brought a barrel of whiskey to the plaza in Anahuac, and invited members of the Mexican garrison to drink with them, no doubt on the pretext of cementing the resumption of civil relations. The drinking lasted long into the evening, moving indoors, and as the convivial mood spread, the Texians played on incipient dissatisfaction that the soldados already felt with the centralist regime for abandoning them at this outpost. Eventually, at the urging of the Texians and feeling the freedom of the aguardiente, the soldiers declared themselves for Santa Anna and called for Col. Félix Subarán, a santanista who outranked Cortina but did not hold the command. Subarán himself appeared and got drunk, and the mutiny was complete. The soldiers refused to obey Cortina's orders and demanded that Subarán take charge, while the officers remaining loyal to the old regime asked Bradburn to resume command. Bradburn was at least wise enough to know that this situation was out of hand, better escaped than confronted. He could not even get himself and his loyal men and officers away by water, since Texian vessels loyal to Santa Anna blockaded Trinity Bay. In the end Bradburn and a few others slipped away through the bayous on July 13, closely pursued by angry colonists who may have included Travis himself.46
The Texians felt more than a little full of themselves. “The blow has already been struck,” one wrote while the prisoners still languished in the brick kiln. “Now or never is the time to sever all ties.”47 Travis himself was scarcely out of his cell before the editorialist in him began to write for public consumption. On July 8 he penned a stirring account of the whole episode, taking the high ground by asserting—and exaggerating—that he and Jack had been imprisoned not for pranks or for stirring civil unrest, but because of their political views. Bradburn was a tyrant and a coward, but the Texians had beaten him. “Mexicans have learned a lesson,” he crowed; “Americans know their rights and will assert and protect them” and would not see constitutional guarantees “trampled under foot.” That the guarantees of the American Constitution held no force in Mexican territory seems not to have bothered Travis or the others. In his view, when the colonists came to Texas, they brought their sacred rights as Americans with them. It was a short mental leap from that notion to the idea that if norteamericano civil rights rather than Mexican justice should rule in Texas, then maybe Texians ought simply to rule themselves. “The Americans have gained every thing which they claimed,” he boasted. “There is every prospect that this happy state of things will have a long and prosperous duration.”48 Certainly the Mexican authorities did not necessarily see it that way, and feared not an end but a beginning to their troubles. Even Tocqueville, now visiting the United States, saw the inevitable direction of events. “Daily, little by little, the inhabitants of the United States are filtering into Texas, acquiring land there, and, though submitting to the country's laws, establishing there the empire of their language and mores,” he observed. “The province of Texas is still under Mexican rule, but soon there will, so to say, be no more Mexicans there.”49 So it appeared to some Mexican authorities after Anahuac, and moreover they clearly believed that Travis was party to the scheme. Ugartechea, having met Travis cordially enough, concluded from the papers shown him by Bradburn that Travis, Jack, “and other accomplices” were a part of a plan “to separate the territory from the Govt of the state and the federation.”50
For the moment Travis only intended to separate himself from Anahuac. He had good friends there, his practice had prospered enough to support him, and certainly the events of the past two months had given him a celebrity that he could hardly have acquired otherwise. But the scope of Anahuac was simply too limited. Indeed, it may be that this very notoriety given him by Bradburn persuaded Travis that he could capitalize on his fame if he relocated to a more lucrative market. In August he added a small tract with a house and other improvements to his Buffalo Bayou property, but he never had any intention of living there. He would simply rent it or hold it for resale.51 A man with prospects and ambition—and a reputation to exploit—could only go one place: San Felipe.
Sometime in August he packed his baggage and set out for Liberty, thence to go west on the Atascosita Trace until a side road took him to the bank of the Brazos. There on the low bluff on the other side sat San Felipe. A flatboat ferry took him across the stream, and once up the sandy, steep forty-foot bank he saw anew this rude capital of Austin's colony, the acknowledged center of Texian political and business activity. It was a young town, started by Austin in 1824 at the head of navigation of the river, and from it keelboats and flats made the passage down to Brazoria and Velasco on the Gulf, the town's chief link with New Orleans and the rest of white America. There were perhaps fifty clapboard-roofed, unhewn-log houses and buildings by now, with only one more imposing frame dwelling. Yet the street seemed busy, wagons and carriages moving about on their owners' business, most of it concerned with the land and the law.
The village offered some amenities for its size. San Felipe had a billiard room, of all things, its table heavily used, though Cooper and Chieves's comparatively elegant frame establishment saw as much use for gambling as more gentlemanly sport. There was one weekly newspaper, Three-Legged Willie Williamson's Mexican Citizen, formerly the Texas Gazette. Several merchants maintained establishments, notably Walter White, Thomas Gay, Silas Dinsmore, and Seth and Ira Ingram, and there were the inns and hotels of the Peytons and James Whitesides, not to mention a couple of taverns. To minister to other, more spiritual needs, a Baptist preacher with the wonderfully apt name of Thomas Pilgrim taught an informal Sunday school and gave sermons, careful not to violate the letter of the Catholic law.52
Few families lived in town, most of them dwelling out on their farms, but Stephen Austin could be an interesting host, though it was simple fare at his typical dogtrot home and office. It sat half a mile back from the river, and it offered nothing more imposing than the rest of the town. Visitors stood on dirt floors and breathed air redolent with the woodsmoke from fireplaces that sent as much smoke into the rooms as up the chimneys. He did his business in one cabin and slept in the other, tended by an old black cook named Mary, but took most of his meals at Samuel Williams's cabin another half mile back from the village. Travis found Austin slender and wiry, graceful, dark curly hair framing a fair face set alight by green eyes. Austin had the habit of pacing back and forth in his office, hands behind his back, when in deep thought or conversation. He could seem distant and preoccupied, but—to Travis's taste—he was neither profane nor intemperate, and he shared Bowie's taste for a neat appearance.53
; Of special interest to Travis, of course, was the bar in San Felipe. A contemporary visitor found in the town “several persons of some education who perform the part of advocates, much on the principles of the laws of the United States.”54 His friend David Burnet practiced there with his partner, Hosea League, as did Samuel Williams and his partner, Luke Lesassier, who had been one of those on Turtle Bayou who came to rescue Travis. Lesassier currently served as prosecuting attorney before the ayuntamiento, which met in a cheerless, floorless unfinished log cabin that began as a hotel but was never finished. Since no one ever got around to chinking the gaps between the logs with mud, the wind whistled through the building as it pleased, convincing the community fathers that it would be superfluous to cut windows for ventilation, and so there were none.55 Certainly San Felipe offered Travis something much closer to Claiborne than did Anahuac, and the decision to stay came easy, especially since everyone in town now knew who he was and regarded him as a patriot, if not a hero. He engaged a room at Peyton's inn for one dollar a night for bed and board for himself and his horse, rented quarters from one of the merchants, and on September 1 announced that “WILLIAM B. TRAVIS, Attorney & Counsellor at Law,” was available for business.56
At the same time Travis threw himself into such social life as there was in a community in which most of the men dressed in buckskins.57 Much of it centered at Peyton's, where the impish Williamson was always a source of fun when in town. Jonathan Peyton's wife set two tables for the main meal, one with rather rough fare for the men, and another with some dainties for the ladies who dined with her. One night Williamson, a natural wit, diverted the women with a fund of amusing stories in another room, while other men, perhaps including Travis, switched all the dishes at the tables and then sat down to a far-better-than-average repast.58 Of course there was a risk in aggravating Mrs. Peyton overmuch, for, being one of the matrons of San Felipe society, she could make trouble for the likes of Travis and Williamson with the local young ladies. There were few enough single women, and when one arrived she was likely not to remain unmarried for long. During the previous three years Bowie's acquaintance Noah Smithwick lamented that “there was not a ball or party of any kind in which ladies participated.” There were only the stag parties at Godwin Cotton's home.59 Now and then an open-air fandango offered dancing to some poor fiddle tunes, attended chiefly by the Mexican population, but the norteamericanos sometimes joined with reels and jigs.60 Certainly Travis reestablished his Masonic connections. Hosea League had convened the first Masonic meeting in Texas back in 1828, and they still met in San Felipe from time to time, though they had no lodge charter and were still officially members of the Grand Lodge of Louisiana. And of course in his free hours Travis read widely as he always had. He continued studying Spanish and the civil law of Mexico and Texas, devoured the newspapers, both local and imported, and took on a book when he could find one. By this time there were already a few copies of a new title floating about Texas, having been announced in the Brazoria press while Travis was in the brick kiln: The Life and Adventures of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee. As sample anecdotes in the newspaper suggested, it would make for spirited reading.61
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