The next morning, Susanna, holding Angelina in her arms, watched as Almeron and a few other Gonzales volunteers headed down the road to Béxar. He turned to give her a final wave and a reassuring smile. Susanna smiled in return, forcing herself to remain in a good mood about the temporary separation. Once the small group of riders disappeared over the last rise, she walked back home. She was already lonely, only moments after Almeron’s departure, and was too preoccupied with her own sense of loss to notice that three men sat on the porch of the hotel, watching her intently as she entered her house.
For the next weeks, Susanna’s life was too busy for her to dwell much on her unwelcome solitude. Angelina was getting livelier all the time, and it required an enormous amount of work just to keep up with her. As often as possible, Susanna helped out in the hat shop and kept an eye on Almeron’s blacksmith shop, being run in his absence by young Galba Fuqua. She had to step gingerly around the boy. It was quite obvious to her that he had developed a schoolboy crush on her. She thought it silly, and allowed herself to feel slightly flattered by his overt affection. But she made it a point never to give him any inkling that his emotions could be shared. That would just be cruel.
Susanna had only received one letter from Almeron. In it, he insisted that he was well and in no danger. Trouble was brewing in Béxar, but so far there had not been much action. He repeated more than once in the letter that he was safe and promised that soon they would be together again. She wrote to him almost every day, telling him about the cunning things that Angelina did, or about the good day of business George Kimball had just enjoyed, or about an unusual task of smithing that Galba had been asked to do. She did not tell him how lonely she was, or how afraid she was growing, day by day. More than ever, the streets of Gonzales seemed to be alive with danger and Susanna tried never to go anywhere without the company of Kimball or Smither.
One morning, after cleaning up after breakfast, bathing and dressing the baby and writing to Almeron, Susanna walked over to the hat shop to go through some of the recent receipts. She had never been to school but had been well taught by her educated grandmother. She could not read very well, but Susanna had learned her sums better than Kimball ever did, and he was always grateful for a helping hand.
When Susanna arrived at the shop, she saw three men pawing roughly through the hats on the shelves. Their clothes were filthy and mismatched, as though they had been gathered haphazardly, at different times. The men laughed uproariously as they tried on tall beaver hats and then flung them to the floor. When Susanna stepped into the shop, Kimball looked at her with alarm. “I am sorry, ma’am, you must be in the wrong establishment,” he said. “This is a men’s hat shop.”
Susanna saw at once that he wanted her to turn and leave. She nodded politely and said, “I must have been mistaken, sir. I thought this was a mercantile.”
As she reached for the door a calloused hand grabbed her by the wrist. The tallest of the men, a red-haired bully named Mahoney, held her firmly and leaned in close. His cronies, Edmondson and Bearden, looked on leeringly. Whenever they attacked women, Mahoney always went first because he was the boss. The other two did not mind very much. They were just delighted to be included in all the fun.
Mahoney’s breath was sour and his face was prickly with several days’ growth of beard. “I do not believe you were mistaken at all, madam,” he said in a low, insinuating tone. “I believe it was fate that brought you to me.”
Angelina began to cry, and Susanna, holding her with only one arm, drew the baby closer to her chest. Trying to remain calm, she said, “Sir, I am a married woman.”
Mahoney laughed. “Married? That may be so. But did not I see your husband go ridin’ out of town? Oh, must-a been about three weeks ago? A month, maybe?”
Susanna looked at him with shock. She glanced over at Kimball with a pleading look in her eyes.
“Now,” the red-haired man said, “if I was married to a lovely thing like you, I would not go ridin’ out of town, no sir. I would stick close to you, madam. Day and . . . night.”
Kimball stepped out from around the counter. “Take your hands off that woman, sir,” he said as brusquely as he could manage. Some merchants kept firearms handy, but Kimball believed that his shop would attract only the gentlemen of Gonzales, so what would be the need? Lacking a weapon, Kimball balled up his fists in what he hoped was a menacing manner.
The effect was not quite as terrifying as he had hoped. All three of the men looked at him and howled with laughter. “Sir Galahad,” one said. While the tall man gripped Susanna’s wrist even tighter, bringing his face close to her neck, Bearden punched Kimball hard in the stomach. Breathless, eyes bulging, Kimball fell to his knees. Edmondson hit him in the jaw, knocking him to the floor. Both men began kicking him in the ribs, laughing all the while.
Now both Susanna and Angelina were screaming. The tall man started to pull Susanna toward the back room while the others went to empty out the cash drawer.
The sound of a shotgun blast brought everything in the room to a sudden halt. Launcelot Smither stood at the doorway. He had fired the first shell into the air but now he aimed the shotgun directly at Mahoney’s head. He stepped inside the shop. “Unless you want to begin your sojourn in hell in the next half a minute,” Smither said quietly, “you will remove your hands from the lady right now, and you will all three walk out that door.”
From behind the counter, Bearden and Edmondson pulled knives from their sheaths and looked to Mahoney, waiting for orders. Smither cocked his head in the direction of the two men and said calmly, “If either of them takes a single step toward me, I will kill you first. And then I will kill each of them with my bare hands.”
Mahoney glared at Smither for a long moment, sizing him up, calculating the odds. Smither was unkempt and slight of build. Even with the shotgun in his hands, he did not look all that threatening. A smile crept across Mahoney’s face.
“He doesn’t have the sand, boys,” he said. “Get him!”
Edmondson and Bearden had not taken a single step in Smither’s direction when another blast sounded. Where the tall man’s face had been was now a mass of crimson. A swirling red mist hovered in the air for a moment. Susanna screeched in horror. Angelina seemed to have lost her breath and gasped in her mother’s arms, her face turning a dark shade of purple.
Bearden and Edmondson charged Smither. He held the shotgun by the barrel and swung it, cracking open Edmondson’s skull. Bearden lunged at him with the knife, slicing through his shirt and drawing blood from his chest. Smither swung the shotgun again but missed. He lost his balance and fell to the floor and Bearden kicked him in the head. Smither nearly lost consciousness and was aware of little except Susanna’s screaming. He wondered almost whimsically why no one else had come to their aid, especially after the noise of two shotgun blasts.
Bearden bent over Smither and grabbed his hair. He pulled Smither’s head back and prepared to draw the blade across his throat. Suddenly he stopped. As through a bank of heavy fog, Smither saw a look of surprise come over the man’s face. He fell forward and Smither saw the hilt of a bowie knife protruding from his back. Behind him stood Kimball. His nose and temple were bleeding and he could barely stand up straight from what he believed was a broken rib. He had pulled the knife from the tall man’s belt and lunged at the last moment to save Smither’s life.
Smither pulled himself to a sitting position, waiting for the fog to clear. Susanna ran to the back room to put the now-squalling Angelina into her crib and then came back out with a small bolt of muslin to use as bandages. Kimball sat on the floor beside Smither and surveyed the carnage around the room. Outside, a small group of men had gathered, but still no one had the nerve to step inside.
Smither grimaced; it could be that he was attempting to smile. Since Susanna had never seen him smile, it was hard to tell. “Miss Susanna,” he said. “We’d better get you out of this town.” Smither nodded solemnly. “We’d better get you to Béxar, whe
re it is safe.”
CHAPTER FOUR
General Edward Burleson was in command of the Texian troops in Béxar. Under other circumstances, that might have been a position of power. To most of his men, however, it seemed that Burleson’s idea of commanding was to wallow in indecision, waiting for someone to make up his mind for him. While General Martín Perfecto de Cós occupied Béxar and the old Alamo mission with over a thousand troops, the Texians under Burleson sat on their hands on the outskirts of town. Meeting after frustrating meeting only seemed to polarize the issue. Burleson would not budge—and nobody else could make a move without his orders.
To gritty fighters like Sam Maverick and Ben Milam, Burleson’s unwillingness to attack the Mexicans and drive them out of Béxar was incomprehensible and infuriating.
Maverick and Milam sat in the shade of a cottonwood tree and sipped coffee from tin cups. Occasionally, Milam took a meditative draw from his long clay pipe. Maverick was thirty-two and a South Carolinian by birth. He came from a fighting family. His grandfather on his mother’s side was a general in the Revolutionary War. Another ancestor, also named Samuel Maverick, was killed during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Maverick had only recently moved to Béxar, but he liked it, and wanted to stay.
Milam was forty-seven years old, a veteran of the War of 1812. He was born in Wales but grew up in West Virginia. Milam had survived battle, yellow fever, shipwreck and Indian raids. Like Maverick, he was a born fighter. And like Maverick, Milam was not the kind of man who took things lying down.
“My friend,” Maverick said, “I believe it is time to fish or cut bait.”
Milam nodded, frowning. He cocked his head toward Burleson’s tent. “This feller must think if we sit here long enough, we will just bore the Mexicans to death.” His voice still bore a trace of his Welsh roots.
Maverick took another sip of coffee. He said, “Some of the fellers, they are talking about clearing out. Came here to fight, didn’t come here to sit by with their thumbs up their arses.”
Milam said, “What if Burleson never will make up his mind?”
Maverick smiled. “Then I reckon it would be time for us to make it up for him.”
“Officers’ call!” Milam and Maverick looked up at the call. A young adjutant named Winders stood outside Burleson’s tent. He yelled again, “Officers’ call!”
Milam and Maverick stood up. Maverick tossed the rest of his coffee onto the grass. He said, “Maybe Burleson has finally decided to take charge of this thing.”
“If he don’t,” Milam said, “I reckon somebody else will have to.”
They gathered outside his command tent. The December evening was brittle with frost. Dr. James Grant, a fiery, bad-tempered Scotsman, was there. So was the more reasonable J. C. Neill, whose understated leadership qualities made the others wonder why he was not in charge.
Then there was James Fannin, who seemed to emulate all the worst aspects of Burleson’s indecisive character. At thirty-two, Fannin seemed much younger than he was. He tried his best to carry himself with the dignified bearing of a soldier, but looked more like a puppy longing for approval.
Sam Maverick had decided to advocate an early attack, and Ben Milam was going to offer to lead it, if need be. Maverick had been captured by the Mexicans. They had nearly executed him, had, in fact, actually marched him to the firing squad. But they changed their mind and Maverick had later escaped. There was, some of the men thought, a sheen of personal vendetta that lent additional urgency to his furor for battle.
Major Robert Morris was the only one in the group who actually looked like a military man. He was dressed in the casual uniform of the New Orleans Greys.
The officers’ call almost immediately degenerated into something like a brawl, all of the officers’ voices competing for supremacy.
“We should attack now!” Maverick shouted. Several of the men cheered in agreement.
Burleson bellowed, “I believe we should put the issue to a vote.”
Milam was outraged. “No more votes, dammit!” he shouted.
Burleson, undaunted, continued. “All in favor . . .”
Sam Maverick’s voice overrode Burleson’s: “We need action right now, or this whole deal is going to . . .”
Burleson would not give up. He brought the volume of his voice up. “All in favor of mounting an attack on the Mexican positions . . .”
Fannin raised his hand like a conscientious schoolboy and said, “If we weren’t ready to attack two months ago, I do not see how . . .”
“When I escaped,” Maverick butted in, “the Mexicans were starving in there.”
Neill said, “But their artillery—”
“Their artillery,” Grant said, impatiently, “is the same as it was in October.”
“They’ve dug in,” Neill said, “drilled their crews . . .”
Burleson tried again—“My good fellows, we are voting . . .”
Morris shouted, “Near a third of your men have gone back home or God knows where, and that was the best of them!”
Grant agreed. “If we do not attack now,” he said, “the rest of the men will leave.”
Fannin shook his head. He hoped that Burleson would have his way and that they would continue to wait and think about it. “We sure as hell cannot keep this siege up,” he said. “The only thing we haven’t run out of is corn liquor.”
If obstinacy were a good leadership quality, Burleson would have been commander of all the armies. He wanted a vote and, by God, he would have a vote. “All in favor of the attack raise your hands.”
Only five of the officers raised their hands. Burleson shook his head.
Burleson looked relieved. “That is it, then. I recommend we fall back to Goliad until the Consultation can sort this regular army deal out. . . .”
Ben Milam had been scowling through the entire proceedings. He stepped away from the group and faced them. “You can all just go do that, then,” he said. “I come here to fight!” He turned on his heel and stormed away, toward where the volunteers were assembled. Maverick went with him. Burleson called after him, “Well, Ben, if you choose to call for volunteers on your own, there’s nothing I can do to—”
Milam called, without turning, “You are goddamned right there’s nothing you can do about it!”
As Milam and Maverick approached, the volunteers eyed them with keen interest. Some stood up, sensing that something was about to happen. They had not been able to hear the officers’ meeting—even though it had been conducted at the tops of the officers’ voices—but they, like Milam, were ready to make a move.
Milam stood before them. “Men, you know what the situation is,” he said, “and I wager that you are as tired of it as I am.”
The men murmured in agreement.
“The officers seem unwilling to attack,” Milam said. “But I have the distinct feeling that you do not share their point of view.”
The men were shouting now—“No!” “Let’s get ’em!”
Milam turned to Maverick. “Can I borrow your sword, Sam?” he said. Maverick unsheathed his saber and handed it to Milam. Milam stepped to one edge of the crowd of men and placed the sword point in the dirt. He walked to the other edge, dragging the sword after him, drawing a long, ragged line.
“If you are with me, cross over the line to me,” he said. He stepped back and held his arms out, Maverick’s sword pointing to the sky. “Who will go with me?” he demanded. “Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?”
The men surged forward, shouting and cheering. “We are with you, Ben!” one called out. “You just say when!”
More volunteers rushed forward to hear the news—“We are going to fight!” Burleson rushed over. “Men, men, please do not do anything rash,” he cried. “I fear that it is highly imprudent to attack the Mexicans with so small and so unprepared a force.”
Milam handed the sword back to Maverick. “Unprepared they may be, sir,” he said to Burleson. “But they are fighting
men. They came here to fight, and neither you nor all the demons in hell can stay them from their course!”
The men cheered. Burleson walked back to his command tent, staring dolefully at the officers who stood there, wondering what had happened to their democratic vote.
That night, Neill supervised the hurried construction of an earthworks emplacement behind which to place the Texians’ twelve-pound cannon. The men, who usually complained loudly when ordered to do physical labor, pitched into the project happily. They shoveled trenches, cut down trees and built a rough but serviceable barricade.
Behind the emplacement lay the river. Beyond that stood San Antonio de Béxar, where most of the volunteers waited impatiently for the signal to attack. Before it, in a direct line of the cannon barrels lay the old mission, the Alamo. General Cós and his men had been fortifying it for weeks, but the Texians knew that it was in poor repair, with crumbling walls and major defensive deficiencies. Under the right circumstances, the Alamo could easily be taken, even by so “small and unprepared a force” as the Texian army.
As the sun rose, Neill’s crew prepared the cannon for its first shot. He turned to them and said, “If they come out after us, get ready to swim.” Neill checked his watch, and then nodded to the gunnery sergeant.
The sergeant touched the fuse with his torch. A cannonball arched through the air toward the Alamo. It landed with a thud, taking a large chunk off the top of the fort’s north wall.
Immediately, a hundred Mexican soldiers double-timed across the narrow wooden bridge that crossed the San Antonio River heading east out of Béxar. They wheeled left to run toward the south wall gate of the Alamo.
From Béxar, Milam watched the retreat through a spyglass. “They bought it,” he said with a satisfied smile. He was standing at the edge of the woods on the Béxar side of the river, just north of town. Red-haired Colorado Smith, one of the Texians’ best riders and scouts, waited with him, along with several other volunteers.
The Alamo Page 4