The Alamo

by Frank Thompson

  Almeron stroked her face. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s the only thing that matters.”

  Within moments, both Susanna and Angelina were asleep. Almeron looked down on his wife and baby and sighed. Then he lay down beside them, and held them close to him, all night long.

  A small army of workers swarmed about the Yturri house, clearing up the remains of Santa Anna’s wedding party. All the guests had gone home, declaring it the social event of the season. Santa Anna, Castrillón and Almonte stood at the window facing the Alamo, sipping small glasses of port. Santa Anna heard faint cheering drifting from the fort.

  “Reinforcements?” he asked.

  “No, Excellency,” Almonte said. “A few men on horseback, that is all.”

  Santa Anna shook his head in puzzlement. “I leave a corridor wide open for Houston. Here, come here, come to us, bring your army. This is your opportunity to be a great gringo hero. . . . Still, he doesn’t come. What can I do?”

  Neither Castrillón nor Almonte had an answer for him. Santa Anna walked toward his bedroom and his waiting bride, eager to get to the most pleasurable event of the evening. He had a thought, stopped and turned. “Send a message that we grant safe quarter to any Tejano choosing to leave the Alamo,” he said.

  Castrillón was surprised by Santa Anna’s merciful gesture. “You will pardon them, Excellency?” he said. “The men who have made war on you?”

  Santa Anna smiled. “They will take their freedom,” he said, “and the men left behind will think about escape . . . about life . . . and they will not fight like men resigned to death.”

  Castrillón nodded. Now he understood. It was not mercy at all—just strategy.

  “Good night, General,” Castrillón said. Santa Anna gave Castrillón and Almonte a small wave of the hand and the two officers stepped out into the night. The other workers had finished their tasks and were leaving out the back entrance.

  Santa Anna walked to his bedroom door and opened it. Inside, Juanita sat on the bed. Her mother had dressed her in an elaborate and expensive nightgown, and then had kissed her on the forehead and walked quickly out of the room. Now, Juanita waited, alone, terrified. When she saw Santa Anna standing in the doorway, smiling lasciviously, she gasped. He ran his eyes up and down her body. So fresh, so innocent—like a beautiful country ripe for invasion. No matter how many times he did this, Santa Anna thought, it never lost its thrill. The new husband stepped into his bridal chamber and closed the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Hermann Ehrenberg was cussing up a blue streak in German. His friend, Petrussewicz, agreed in Polish. They were standing in a long, stalled column of Texians that stretched all the way back toward the walls of Fort Defiance.

  “You do not vote in the army,” Ehrenberg said furiously. “There is a commander. He decides what you are supposed to do and you follow his orders, right or wrong!”

  Petrussewicz looked up the line toward Fannin. “In Poland,” he said, “this man would be dead. A mutiny . . .”

  His words were drowned out by the clattering hooves of James Butler Bonham’s horse as Bonham raced past them toward the head of the column. James Fannin was supervising a crew of Texians as they tried to jack up an overladen wagon with a broken axle. The unhitched team of oxen grazed placidly nearby as the Texians cursed and strained to lift the wagon, with no success.

  Fannin considered the situation from all angles. “We may have to unload it first,” he said, to general groans from the men. At their protest he quickly stammered, “Unless you think otherwise . . .”

  Bonham rode up and dismounted, barely able to disguise his fury. “You haven’t left yet?” he demanded of Fannin.

  Fannin gestured toward the problem. “We have had a misfortune with our supply wagon,” he said.

  “You had the message from Travis three days ago!” Bonham said. “The situation in the Alamo is desperate!”

  Fannin explained patiently, as if to a child with below-average intelligence, “Dr. Grant and Mr. Johnson took all the decent wagons and livestock. I cannot expose my men in the open without—”

  Bonham felt like screaming. “You are exposing them now!” he shouted.

  Fannin nodded reasonably, as if that point had only now dawned upon him. “You are quite right, Lieutenant,” he said. “Quite right.” Fannin looked up at the sky and called to his second in command. “Have the men pull those cannon back to the fort,” he instructed. “It has gotten too late to leave today.”

  Several of the men scowled at the turnaround, but grudgingly headed back toward the fort. Bonham was desperate. “Let me take a hundred of your men,” he said, “and whatever they can carry. We could reach the Alamo by . . .”

  Fannin pointed firmly to the fort.

  “Goliad is my key position,” he said. “I will abandon it empty of powder and provision or I will defend it to the last man. But I will not divide my command! Colonel Travis has his situation to deal with and I have mine. My troops will not move until they are properly rested and equipped for the campaign.”

  Bonham looked at Fannin with disgust. “And you will equivocate until it is too late to save either garrison.”

  The two men stared at each other for an uncomfortably long moment. In South Carolina and Georgia, where Bonham and Fannin had grown up, duels were fought for less than this. Fannin broke the staring contest first. He looked away, watching his men march back into Fort Defiance. “We can only guess which is the proper course of action,” he said softly. “That, sir, is the agony of command.”

  In San Felipe’s Public Building, everyone was working together for the first time. Women were sewing the Texas flag while, across the room, Rusk and others were immersed in drafting a declaration of independence.

  Houston walked to a map on a wall. He traced from Copano to Refugio, Goliad to Victoria, and, finally, Gonzales. He said, “I have ordered Colonel Fannin to retreat from Goliad to Gonzales. John Forbes is mustering more men throughout South Texas and bringing them to Gonzales. I expect fifteen hundred men to be there when I arrive. We will ford Olmos Creek upstream from Béxar, relieve the Alamo from the west then withdraw to Gonzales and fortify in a line southeast to Columbus and Brazoria.”

  The room buzzed in favor of Houston. Even the men who had been booing him and calling him a drunk and a coward only days earlier were now offering their full support.

  Rusk said, “You will have command of the regular army, Houston. The militias will have their own command.”

  Houston said firmly, “No.” He faced down Rusk and the men around him, challenging the room. He said, “I will have command of all or none.”

  Houston strode over to the table where the constitution was still being worked on. He glanced at it, picked up a quill and scribbled “Sam Houston” on the bottom. Then he looked up and faced the men again. “Finish this government,” he said. “Do your calling and I shall do mine. I will lead an army. You will birth a nation.” The room was silent. Houston raised his arm into the air and shouted, “Gentlemen, again, to Texas!”

  The room erupted into cheers. Thatcher-Rhyme seemed pleased. Everyone was. Except Burnet. As Houston headed for the door, Burnet caught his arm and said, “Houston, if I hear of you drunk, it is over. You will never have an official role in Texas again.”

  Outside, Houston finished packing his saddlebag. He held a bottle of whiskey in his hand, considering it carefully. He debated whether to pack it. There was a long trail ahead, many lonely nights, many times when this bottle would provide some very good company. Houston was just about to shove the bottle into his saddlebag when he realized that Mathew Ingram was watching him. The boy regarded him with the absurdly hopeful expression of a puppy dog.

  Houston ignored him for as long as he could, but when Mathew refused to break his stare, Houston turned to face him and said, “You have a horse?”

  Mathew nodded his head. “Yep.”

  “How about a gun?”

  “I can find one,” Ma
thew said.

  Houston looked the boy up and down. He gave a last longing glance at the bottle and, with a sigh, smashed it on a rock. Mathew watched with Houston as the precious liquid seeped gradually into the earth.

  “Well, boy,” Houston said, “go get ’em.”

  Mathew whirled around and ran toward his father’s store. He knew that his father was away making a delivery to a ranch outside of town. He would not be back in San Felipe for another two hours. By then, Mathew knew, he would be long gone. Off fighting a revolution with Sam Houston. As he rummaged through Ingram’s storeroom looking for ammunition for the rifle he was taking, he nearly whooped with giddy glee. Adventure, at last!

  Houston and Mathew left San Felipe a half hour later and rode at a moderate pace along the road to Gonzales. The boy was eager for conversation, for insight, for some kind of prediction about the adventures that lay ahead. Houston was thinking mostly about the bottle he had smashed. That was a bad idea, he thought. A really bad idea.

  “When do you think we will see action?” Mathew asked, his horse loping just behind Saracen.

  Houston continued to look straight ahead. “Don’t know,” he said.

  They rode for a few more minutes in silence. Mathew said, “Do you think we will fight Indians, too?”

  “Don’t know,” Houston repeated.

  This time, they rode for a solid hour, Houston looking at nothing but the road ahead, wishing there were someone he could kill for a single sip of whiskey.

  Mathew tried again. “What were you doing when you were my age?”

  Houston grimaced, thinking only of the bottle. “Can’t remember,” he said.

  Mathew nodded. “You were probably in school,” he said. “Probably doing what you were supposed to be doing.”

  Houston said, “Probably.”

  “Really?” Mathew said.

  Houston looked over at Mathew. “My two brothers were teachers, the apostles. I loved to learn but if anyone could remove the joy from something, it was the apostles. I ran away and lived with the Cherokee.”

  Mathew smiled. “I am running away right now, but maybe I will kill Santa Anna.”

  Houston looked at him as if he had gone crazy. Mathew said, “My pa says I am idle and lazy. Well, maybe I was, but I am not anymore. I am reformed.”

  This pious statement caused Houston to snort out a laugh. “You and me, boy,” he said. “You and me.”

  They rounded a bend and down below spotted the first signs of the Gonzales army—a handful of tents and a few men. Houston thought it was the most pitiful and unpromising display he had ever seen. Mathew was awestruck.

  “Did you ever see so many people in all your life?” the boy said.

  Houston just stared, wondering how he was supposed to win a war with no more of an army than this.

  As they rode into camp, Houston spotted Mosley Baker, J. C. Neill and a few others arguing outside a tent. Houston dismounted, handed Saracen’s reins to Mathew and walked toward them. “Where is everybody?” he demanded.

  Neill said, “Thirty men from here in Gonzales already left for the Alamo.” Off to the side, a young man with a fife in his shirt pocket said, “General, my brother and four real good men are on their way from Brazoria.”

  Houston looked around. Four real good men. It was, it seemed to him, a sorry state of affairs. And here he was without a bottle.

  “Assemble the men,” Houston said.

  Elbowing her way through the crowd was a woman of about thirty-five, tall and straight, her dark brown hair carefully arranged in ringlets which framed her handsome face. She was being led toward Houston but seemed to be looking at some distant point beyond him. “I need to talk to him,” she said. “I need to talk to General Sam Houston!”

  Houston walked over to her. “I am Houston,” he said. Taking a closer look, he could see the reason that she seemed to be gazing beyond him. She was blind. She reached out both hands as if feeling for something. Her hands brushed his face. Houston took them gently into his own hands. “How can I aid you, ma’am?” he said.

  “God bless you, sir,” she said. “You are already helping me. My husband’s there. At the Alamo. His name is Millsaps. Isaac Millsaps.”

  Houston looked around the crowd helplessly. Mrs. Millsaps grasped his hands tighter. “He said it was his duty,” she said. “To go, to try and save those poor men. And I understand that, I do. We have six children and they cry for their daddy. But today I told them that you had come and that you were going there. To bring him back. To bring them all back. And I just wanted to meet you, to thank you. God bless you, sir.”

  Houston was too dumbstruck to say a word. He watched silently as she was led away. At that moment, behind him, Houston heard a distinctive whistle. He turned to see Juan Seguin riding down the road. When he reached Houston, he pulled his horse to a halt and jumped down from the saddle. Houston shook Seguin’s hand warmly and they began to walk together through the camp. “How many?” Houston asked. “How many in the Alamo?”

  Seguin followed Houston for a few moments as he looked over the assembled troops, Mathew included. The general stared into the face of each man as they passed. The men were dusty, buck-skinned. Some wore sombreros, others wore top hats.

  “Well?” Houston said.

  Seguin looked away. “About a hundred and fifty,” he said. “Not counting women and children.”

  Houston stopped, taken aback. “Women and children?” he asked.

  Seguin nodded. Houston sighed and started walking again, continuing to inspect his troops. He said, “If Bowie had just done what I asked . . .”

  “Santiago is not well, general,” Seguin said. Houston shot him a hard look. That was not news he wanted to hear. “But morale is good,” Seguin continued. “Travis has lost some of his rough edges and Crockett keeps the men amused. . . .”

  Houston stopped cold. He had been stunned more than once today, but this was too much. With a thick voice he said, “Crockett? Crockett’s there?”

  Seguin nodded. “With a group of your fellow Tennesseans,” he said.

  The news made Houston feel a bit lost, as though he had suddenly wandered into a fog or stepped into a weird dream. Without another word, he walked away from the troops, leaving Seguin staring after him. Mosley Baker and J. C. Neill also watched as Houston walked out into the field, alone. When he had gone about a hundred yards from the camp, Houston bent down to his knees and put his ear to the ground. He could feel a subtle vibration. Accompanying it, he thought he could hear the distant sounds of cannon fire.

  He was startled by Mosley Baker’s voice directly behind him. “When we moving out?”

  Houston stood up. Baker and Neill were standing behind him. He looked past them to the assembled men. “We need more men,” he said. “Stronger men, younger men. If they arrive every day, soon we will have enough, but for now, we wait.”

  Baker and Neill could not believe their ears. Baker said, “If we cannot run, we walk. If we cannot walk, we crawl, but we must go to the aid of those boys in the Alamo! It is only right!”

  “No,” Houston said in a low voice.

  “General,” Neill said pleadingly, “I am the man who left Travis there!”

  Houston snapped angrily, “And I am the man who sent him!” He slapped his thigh, trying to think of some way to let his anger manifest itself. God, how he wanted a drink. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I do not enjoy waiting any more than the next man, but I will not sacrifice Texas!” He closed his eyes and gave the anger—and the craving—a moment to pass. When he opened his eyes, he had softened a bit. He looked beyond Baker and Neill and eyed the troops. “What do you have here,” he said, “a hundred men?”

  Baker said, “A hundred and twenty-four.”

  Houston closed his eyes again and sighed deeply. He said, “These hundred and twenty-four men cannot pierce an army of thousands.”

  The officers looked at one another with the vague stirrings of despair. If this was the kind of math
ematics that Houston was calculating with, it meant that they were never going.

  Houston said, “Colonel Fannin is en route from Goliad with men. We will wait.” He turned and walked away. Seguin trotted up to him. “What should I tell Travis?” Seguin said.

  “Nothing,” Houston said. “You are staying here.”

  Seguin was flustered. “General . . . Sam . . . I gave my word,” he said.

  Houston stopped and looked at Seguin. He knew that for this man, his word was his bond. He knew that he was issuing an order that went against everything he believed. He put his hand on Seguin’s shoulder and said, “I am sorry, Juan.”

  Seguin said, “I have to go back . . . please . . .”

  Houston shook his head. “No,” he said. “You will stay with me. You will be of more service to Texas alive than dead.”

  Houston walked away. Seguin stared after him disbelievingly. Baker whipped off his hat and threw it to the ground in disgust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Gregorio Esparza stood at the bottom of the cannon ramp just inside the front door of the Alamo church. Out in the courtyard, a group of civilian Tejanos was packed to leave, saying good-bye to their friends and loved ones. Gregorio had decided to stay, even though he had pled with Ana to take the children and flee to safety. She had refused, as he knew she would. Little Enrique stood by Gregorio’s side and the father ruffled his boy’s hair absently as he watched the others—men he had grown up with, men he had loved and trusted—desert their posts. He knew that the matter was a complicated one, that blood and patriotism sometimes made for contradictory emotions and loyalties. But the other Tejanos were against Santa Anna and, as far as Gregorio was concerned, they should defend their beliefs. With their lives, if necessary.

  Up on the west wall, the rest of Seguin’s cavalry company also watched silently. If they were angry at the departing Tejanos, they did not allow it to show on their faces. They would not betray such emotions before the Anglos. They would always stick together—even if they were splitting apart.