by Shirl Henke
Just then their raft hit an uprooted tree. A small boy standing near the edge tumbled between Ira's legs as he poled with all his strength, attempting to free them. The child was caught half-on, half-off the raft. Instinctively, Deborah leapt toward him and shoved him into his mother's outreaching arms, but suddenly the tree broke free of the raft, entangling her skirts in its limbs. She was pulled into the water, away from the bobbing raft. The more she struggled, the more she was drawn beneath the water as her hair tangled in the branches along with her clothing. The weight bore her down as she coughed and screamed. “Help me! Oh, please, God!” Oh, Rafael, I don't want our child to die!
Out of nowhere an arm welded itself around her, hauling her free of certain death in the branches of the tree limb. “Easy, ma'am. Polvo's a strong swimmer. He'll have us on the bank quickly if you don't fight us.” The voice was gravelly and hoarse, young but authoritative. Despite the stinging pain as her hair ripped free of the branches, Deborah calmed and clung to her rescuer's saddle. He was right. The big buckskin stallion hit bottom near the east bank and sure-footedly scrambled out of the icy currents of the Colorado in a few minutes.
As the rider let her carefully slide from the side of his big horse to stand shakily on solid ground, Deborah took several deep breaths and then looked up at the youth who was dismounting. He was tall and slim with deep gold hair and finely chiseled features set in a darkly tanned face, handsome and hard looking for his years. Dressed in buckskins and heavily armed, he was one of Houston's volunteers.
“I want to thank you. You saved my life, Mr.—?” She looked into his amber cougar's eyes.
“Slade, James August Slade, ma'am.” As he tipped his hat, the hard, unshaven face split into a beautiful smile, and he looked more like his eighteen or so years.
“I'm Deborah Fla—Kensington.” She caught herself and coughed to hide the mistake. Hardly surprising what a brush with death could do to one's presence of mind!
The strained moment was interrupted by a bellowed “Jehoshaphat! Yew like ta near scared a score o' years off'n my life, Deborah! Yew near drowned!” Obedience leapt from the beached raft with startling agility for one so large and bounded up the muddy shore to embrace her drenched friend. Turning her attention to Jim Slade, she said, “Much obliged, son, for savin’ her life. Saved two. She's a widder woman in a family way. Don't know whut I'd a done if'n she up 'n died on me.”
“Then I'm doubly glad I could be of service, ma'am,” the youth replied to Obedience but smiled warmly once more at Deborah. “You're quite a brave woman. I saw how you risked your own life to save that boy.”
“Yep, Texas needs women like Deborah,” Obedience agreed. “We'll be campin' down stream apiece. Yore right welcome ta take dinner with us, son.”
“Yes, Mr. Slade, please do. We'd be honored,” Deborah seconded.
That evening Obedience muttered curses at the sputtering fire but served up surprisingly crisp cornbread from her blackened iron skillet, along with savory beans. She had gone all out to serve a passable meal to Deborah's handsome young rescuer.
As Deborah poured thick black coffee in his mug, Jim said, “This is the best food I've eaten since I left Bluebonnet, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Kensington.”
“Bluebonnet?” Deborah questioned.
“My ranch, mine and my pa's. When I got word of Santa Anna's invasion, I went to San Antonio to join the army there.”
Obedience looked up suddenly and set the skillet on the ground. “My brother, Seth Morton, was with Colonel Bowie at th' Alamo. You seen him, mebbe?”
“I knew Mr. Morton, yes, ma'am. I didn't see him while I was in the fort, but I remember him and his wife from town. I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Jones.”
“Ever’ one left there wuz kilt, they say.” Obedience left the question unasked. Surely a boy with courage enough to drag a flailing woman from the Colorado River was no coward.
Slade understood the direction of her thoughts. “I left the fort with Captain Seguin on February 25. We carried messages from Colonel Travis asking for reinforcements.”
“They never got there,” Obedience said quietly.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Jones,” Slade said, choosing his words carefully, “I know those men who perished were brave patriots, your brother among them, but if Travis and Bowie hadn't disobeyed orders, likely none of them would have died.”
Obedience's eyes narrowed. “Whut yew mean, son?”
“I saw the orders they received from General Houston. They were told to raze the walls and abandon the place. It was a deathtrap. Houston knew they'd be hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded.”
“Just as our army is now. That's why the general is marching east and calling for more volunteers, isn't he, Lieutenant Slade?” Deborah's eyes were filled with sudden understanding.
“Yes, ma'am. This isn't the place to make a stand. Houston'll know when the time is right. He'll choose.”
“When the time is right,” Obedience echoed. “Thet's whut he said when we left Gonzales. Some folks is gettin' real eager ta stand 'n fight right now.”
A long retreat into victory did seem an unlikely solution to many, but Houston issued orders. Once more, the army would pull back, covering the retreat of the civilians who were scattering for points east across the trackless prairie.
March 21 Deborah and Obedience headed northeast with a small party of others toward Groce's Plantation, a wayside inn where shelter and food could be secured for a price. Situated in the rich bottomlands of the Brazos basin, the plantation was famous for its wealth and for the exorbitant rates charged wayfarers.
Deborah wanted nothing so much as to sleep under a dry quilt in a real bed. Obedience itched to cook and bake some palatable food after their weeks on the wet, miserable march. Jared Groce welcomed the group and took immediate note of Deborah's willingness to pay for shelter with American banknotes. When her companion expressed a desire to take charge of the kitchen, he agreed at once.
The plantation was overcrowded with refugees and stranded wayfarers and the overburdened slaves were grateful for Obedience's help. They learned the first night that the provisional government had spent four days under Jared Grace's roof. They had narrowly missed meeting President Burnet and his cabinet, before they fled toward the Gulf.
“Jehoshaphat! Thet so-called government's got greased wheels, if n yew ask me. Plumb undermines a body's faith in Texas,” Obedience said the next morning as she beat biscuit batter with fierce, rapid thumps.
“Ole Sam'll hold onta things,” Zeb averred as he piled kindling beside the fireplace.
“Humph,” Obedience snorted, “if n he kin hold onta his army.”
During the next week, Deborah ate and slept, feeling at last a slight abatement in her bone-weary, nauseated condition. But if her body was restored, her spirits were flagging. Every day more settlers poured into the bottomland, some begging, a few able to buy supplies from Groce. Deborah, seeing the gaunt hunger in dirty faces of rag-clad children, could do nothing but buy corn and beans for the families, many of whom had fled with only the clothes on their backs.
“But when will the army stand and fight? Where the hell are they?” Ira demanded.
“Old Sam won't let a passel of Mex's run him out of Texas. We'll win,” Plunket avowed.
Zeb considered. “If yew feel so all fired sure o' winnin', Marsh, why don't yew go 'n find ole Sam's army 'n join in th' fight?”
Plunket reddened but was saved from replying by the clatter of hooves. Jim Slade had arrived and all gathered on the front porch to hear his news. Houston's army was encamped across the river from the plantation and the general had just received word that Colonel Fannin's command at Goliad had been massacred under direct orders from Santa Anna.
“That's why the general left off the fight with Sesma on the Colorado. He'd received word even then that Fannin was surrounded and would likely be cut to pieces. He knew his six hundred men were all that was left between three invading Mexican armies and the populati
on of Texas.” The young lieutenant finished his grim report, saying, “If Fannin had obeyed orders and retreated to Victoria like General Houston told him, he wouldn't have been trapped.”
“Jehoshaphat!” Obedience exploded. “Don't nobody have th' sense God gave geese! How many good men gotta die afore th' fools learn?”
When Mr. Groce extended hospitality to Jim Slade and offered him dinner, Slade gave a wide, white grin and thanked the planter but then said apologetically, “Mr. Groce, er, the general's going to need some supplies—beef and corn, to be exact, maybe some tobacco. I expect he'll be requisitioning them.”
“What choice do I have, Lieutenant Slade? If Santa Anna wins, I'll be executed. If the Texian army wins, I'll merely be destitute.” Shrugging, he added, “Take what you need.”
For the next two weeks Houston attempted to forge an unruly horde of volunteers into an army. The men were rugged frontier individualists who were used to electing their own officers and dismissing them at whim. Mutiny was constantly in the air and reports filtered across to the plantation house from the camp. Jim Slade was often sent as requisition officer from Houston to Groce. On one such supply mission, he dined with Obedience and Deborah while recounting the general's woes.
“That Georgia poet Lamar fancied himself able to lead the men in a headlong rush to whip Santa Anna. Had the support of Lieutenant Perry and some other officers. Lots of the men were yelling to go, too,” Slade said disgustedly.
“What happened?” Deborah asked.
Slade grinned like a shark and replied, “Houston had half a dozen graves dug and told Lamar he'd get to occupy the first one if he yammered anymore about ‘sounding the trumpet for glory’!”
Obedience snorted in laughter. “ 'N thet settled thet, I betcha.”
“The gentleman is now a colonel in Houston's cavalry, drilling his men and awaiting orders,” Slade added levelly.
The following evening, a weary General Houston, along with a number of his staff, took a rare dinner with the Groces and their guests. Deborah and Obedience were included in the motley assortment. Obedience did what she could with dwindling supplies to supervise a palatable feast. Houston gallantly complimented her.
Fixing her with his riveting blue eyes, he said, “After weeks of half-raw beef and corn mush cooked over smoldering campfires, I vow I've answered my summons and gone to heaven, dining on such a splendid repast, madam. Of course,” he added with a twinkle to Deborah, “there are those, including President Burnet, who are assured I'll be summoned the opposite direction!”
Everyone laughed as Deborah protested such an unlikely event.
When the conversation turned to the war, everyone became grave and none more so than Houston. Yet the brooding giant seemed to lend a calmness and strength to the gathering. He exchanged ideas on strategy with other men at the table, inclining his large, shaggy head to consider a point made by Jared Groce or Anson Jones, then gave a measured reply.
No wonder he's held that band of mutinous volunteers together, Deborah thought. His towering size and compelling voice were matched by a shrewd intelligence. He was a man who listened yet kept his own counsel. When the final decision is made, it will be his alone. Somehow, this thought reassured Deborah. When the time is right echoed through her mind.
While Houston enjoyed his first hot meal at a table in nearly a month, his men encamped three miles downriver on the farmlands of another wealthy planter named Thomas Donahoe. As the general was departing after supper, he related a story about Farmer Donahoe. “Donahoe came up to me most upset because Lieutenant Slade had a detail of men chopping his scrap pines for firewood. I cast my eyes about”—he gestured broadly to the company standing on the porch—“and what met my line of vision but a split rail fence. Must have been a mile long, all prime hardwood. I ventured the opinion to the lieutenant that the good farmer was quite correct. Why should soldiers marching in the cause of liberty labor to cut timber? Here was all that fine fence wood just ripe for the taking. The fires should be blazing bright to guide me into camp tonight! Ladies, gentlemen, I bid you adieu.” With a gallant bow to Mrs. Groce, Obedience, Deborah, and the other women, he vanished into the darkness.
The next morning word came from Houston that General Sesma's army had crossed the Brazos below them at Fort Bend. To protect their southern flank, Houston's army must move from the open bottomlands and march southeast, maneuvering for a favorable position from which to fight.
His retreat-and-skirmish policy had gained Houston many detractors, but Deborah agreed with Obedience's assessment of the general. Obedience Jones had known him when he was a backwoods schoolteacher and later a Tennessee congressman. “He'll do whut he has ta when th' time is right,” was her final word on the subject.
Late in the afternoon of April 21, the time was finally right. The place was a boggy open stretch of land beside Buffalo Bayou called the Plain of San Jacinto. The battle took eighteen minutes. It was a complete rout of Santa Anna's army, which was having an afternoon siesta. Not quite eight hundred enraged Texians and Tejanos stormed the fortifications and fell upon over twelve hundred fifty of Santa Anna's best troops, massacring six hundred of them and taking six hundred fifty prisoner.
The self-styled “Napoleon of the West” had fled the scene of the debacle, only to be ignominiously captured, camouflaged in a private's uniform. Santa Anna's diamond-studded silk undershirt gave him away. With the dictator in his hands, Houston was assured of the withdrawal of all the invading armies.
Word of the glorious deliverance spread like prairie grassfire across Texas. While the refugees at Groce's Plantation rejoiced and prepared to return to their homes, Obedience and Deborah were thoughtful. Obedience remembered her brother, fallen at the Alamo.
“Shore hope thet nice young Lieutenant Slade warn't one o' them kilt at San Jacinto,” she ventured aloud, echoing Deborah's thoughts. The two women packed their belongings and once more headed west toward San Antonio. Now they would make their home in the Republic of Texas.
Chapter Seventeen
The trip to San Antonio was made under far more pleasant conditions than the runaway flight east had been. The weather turned warm and sunny; the raw, miserable drizzle ended; and a late, lush spring finally arrived. Deborah welcomed their steady progress along the San Antonio Road.
The scenery was as glorious as the dry, clean air. At night, the sky was filled with brilliant stars, each blazing forth as if claiming the right to be the one on the Texas flag. During the day, they rode over gently swelling hills, past burbling, clear springs that magically appeared from underground sources, leaving the land filled with riotous carpets of wildflowers: bluebonnets, buttercups, and Indian paintbrush. Their brilliant colors and pungent perfume were balm to Deborah's weary soul and body.
She stretched and rubbed her aching back. Her stomach was noticeably protuberant now and she had taken to wearing high waisted skirts with pleats in front to allow her freedom of movement.
“Yew feelin' poorly?” Obedience asked solicitously, noting her young friend's stiff movements as she climbed off the wagon seat.
Deborah smiled. “No, just a little tired and sore from all this kicking.” She grinned as she rubbed her belly. “She's going to be a regular Texas hellion.”
Obedience harrumphed. “Or he's gonna be. Yew settle on names yet?”
“I'm still tending toward Katherine, but perhaps Lenore. She is a very dear friend I shall never see again. How does Lenore Obedience sound to you?” She cocked her head, a gamin grin on her lips.
Obedience threw up her hands, soup ladle and all, and rocked back on her heels. “Jehoshaphat! What a mouthful! I'd bet me half this wagonload 'o goods that it'll be yer pa's namesake 'n save th' pore critter from bein' cursed with my ugly handle.”
Suppressing a chuckle, Deborah replied, “Why only half the wagonload, Obedience?”
The older woman looked disgustedly at her greenhorn charge. “I got ta teach yew how ta play poker. Odds is only half thet
yew’ll git yore girl, so I'll only bet half I git my boy.”
‘‘Well, if he turns out like your sons, I'll not be sorry,” Deborah equivocated, refusing to think about the child turning out like Rafael.
Sensing the direction of Deborah's thoughts, Obedience changed the subject. “We should git inta Santone tomorrow. Cain't rightly wait ta see it, after hearin' all Seth's stories.”
“Is it really very Spanish-looking? I hope the Mexican townspeople won't resent us.”
Obedience gestured dismissively and said, “Yew mean the Tejano townsfolk? Why, Jehoshaphat! Ain't yew niver heerd o' Texas's Vice President Lorenzo Zavala er Colonel Juan Seguin in General Sam's army? The Tejanos wuz as afeard o' Santy Anny as anyone. Lots o' them folks sent food 'n supplies ta th' men inside th' Alamo, some even fought 'n died with ‘em. Nah, we ain't got nothin' ta fear from Tejanos—thet's whut the Mexican Texians is called.”
“Tejanos,” Deborah rolled the unfamiliar word around on her tongue. “Jim Slade, the young lieutenant who saved my life, is a Tejano or sort of. His mother was a Sandoval who married a Virginian. I do hope he's all right.”
“So do I. Nice lookin young gent. Say, don't he have a spread hereabouts—outside Santone?” Obedience remembered the blond youth's striking looks and educated manner. A likely suitor for Deborah!
Reading her friend's mind, Deborah said, “Yes, his father owns a ranch ‘hereabouts’ and no, I am not interested in him that way. I've already told you my husband is alive back in New Orleans. Anyway, Jim Slade is two years younger than I am—a boy!”
Obedience threw back her head and roared. “Jehoshaphat! That don't count fer nothin' in Texas! 'N thet boy as yew call 'em has seen more fightin' 'n done more work 'n most grandpas back east! Yew could do a lot worse.”