Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

by Jason Vail

  Lone Star Rising:

  T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

  Jason Vail

  Lone Star Rising: T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

  Copyright 2013, by Jason Vail

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Hawk Publishing book.

  Cover design and map by Ashley Barber

  Cover illustration copyright Can Stock Photo Inc.

  ISBN-13: 978-1484171929

  ISBN-10: 1484171926

  Hawk Publishing

  Tallahassee, FL 32312

  Lone Star Rising:

  T.S. Wasp and the Heart of Texas

  North America 1820

  Prologue

  Lone Star Rising: A Short History of the Republic of Texas and the Free States of America

  by Victor D. Lautenberg

  It is odd how history can turn on little things that seem hardly more than coincidences, innocuous in themselves but which end up driving momentous events. So it was when Stephen Austin and David S. Crockett visited a London bookseller’s, and found their way to the heart of Texas.

  Richmond, Province of Virginia

  July 1777

  The spy arrived just before dawn.

  He tied his horse to the post outside the Raven Inn, pushed through the gate and banged the knocker.

  After a considerable time, an irritated female voice sounded through the door: “Who is it?”

  “Never mind who it is,” the spy snapped. “I got news for his lordship.”

  “What could be so urgent that you’ve got to bother people at this hour? Can’t it wait?

  “He’ll want to hear,” the spy said. “I’ve been on the road a day and a night to bring my news, and if you put me off even for a minute, he’ll be angry.”

  There was quiet while the woman who kept the inn weighed those words. But people banging on her doors after hours had become almost a routine event since a certain dragoon major, Banastre Tarelton, had taken up residence and command of the town on behalf of the Crown. “All right, all right,” she said at last. “Don’t pee your drawers.”

  “Sooner he’ll split your lip than I’ll pee in me drawers,” the spy muttered to himself.

  The door swung inward and the spy pushed his way into the house. A dumpy woman confronted him, wiry hair projecting from beneath her nightcap.

  “Well,” the spy said. “You best fetch him.”

  “He don’t like to be disturbed at this hour. He had a hard night, last,” the woman said, still reluctant to disturb the young major after his night of carousing.

  “He’ll want to be disturbed for this.”

  “What could be so important that I’ve got to risk his temper? I’ll tell you, it’s terrible.”

  “Jefferson!” the spy said with satisfaction, thinking of his reward, for a great price had been put on the man’s head. “The traitor Jefferson — he’s been found!”

  Tarleton adjusted his green dragoon’s coat so that it gave the appropriate impression of neatness, and strode into the dining hall. He always strove to appear and to act as an aristocrat, although his father was a wealthy merchant.

  As he had ordered, the principal officers of his command, the 16th and 17th Light Dragoons, were assembled about the table. The aroma of bacon, eggs and ham was in the air as servants hurried to set plates before the seated men, even though the sun was hardly up. On another day, Tarleton might have found the scent attractive, but this morning it made him faintly nauseous. He had drunk two bottles of claret last night in the company of three of Richmond’s prettiest women, and his stomach felt oily and on the brink of an eruption.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, spreading a map of the region on the table, holding down its edges with a fork and spoon, “the Seventeenth will ride this morning for a village in the northwest called Charlottesville. It is about seventy miles hence, and we will endeavor to cover the distance in under two days, a single day, if we can, the roads permitting.”

  “Sir,” asked Alan Bertie, the 17th’s adjutant, “what is the reason for this haste?” The men of the 17th relished a good ride in the country, but this would be a rush deep into hostile territory, where bands of militia still resisted the King’s authority. This enemy often did not stand and fight like good soldiers, but when caught, fired from behind trees and fled into the forests, having caused a few casualties and leaving none of the satisfaction among the dragoons that came from a good scrap. But this time, the 17th could easily ride into an ambush in the rough, wild country to the west from which their courage alone could not extricate them.

  “The house of one of the principal architects of the rebellion is near this village,” Tarleton answered. “I am reliably informed that he has returned. It is said that he plans to flee to the west, so we must act quickly if we are to bag him. So finish your breakfasts straightaway. I mean to be in the saddle in half an hour. The Sixteenth will remain to keep order and to take possession of that stock of rebel munitions at Petersburg as originally planned. Any questions? Good. Then let us not tarry.”

  Monticello Plantation, Province of Virginia

  July 1777

  Thomas Jefferson swirled the last of the Portuguese wine. He contemplated the contents of the cup with dismay, and downed it. The taste was sharp and chalky. It was a poor wine, but this was the last of his stocks. He had sold the rest, along with much of the furnishings of the house and the supplies. No one had come to buy the house, but it was too late now to be helped. In the morning, it would be time to go.

  He hated to leave the house. Every waking moment, it had been in his thoughts: What to do about the entrance, how big should the portico be, should he put a dumbwaiter in the dining room or provide for direct access to the kitchen, if he changed the dimensions of one room it would affect its neighbor, what to do? Problems, so many problems, least of which was how to pay for it. It was an enormous drain on his finances. But he loved it so. And now he had to give it up. He would never be back; he would never see it finished.

  He thought about that speech his political enemy Patrick Henry had delivered to the Virginia assembly: the one about giving one’s life, one’s fortune, and one’s sacred honor to their project. Many had already given their lives or were about to, as the rebellion had all but collapsed in the north and British armies had seized first Philadelphia, then Baltimore, and finally penetrated Virginia. The Congress had disbanded as the members fled to avoid capture. The rumor was that John Adams had already been hanged. And here he was about to give up his fortune, for it was all wrapped up in the plantation. The prospect, noble when it had been a mere possibility, now left a bitter taste, but there was nothing to do but go on.

  As for honor, he wondered about that. Doubts about the wisdom of flight nagged him. He was not a fighting man, not like poor Washington or Lee. He was not, he reflected, particularly brave in the face of danger. The possibility of pain and death filled him with dread. The realization of his weakness made him feel small, inadequate.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door and Octavius, the butler, stepped into the room. He was the last of the staff to remain.

  “Sir,” he said, “it’s after two. You should try to get some sleep. Dawn comes early. It will be a hard ride for you without rest.”

  “I am saying my farewell, Octavius. It takes a while.”

  Octavius crossed the room and lay two pistols on Jefferson’s bed. “I brought you these, sir. You’ll need them where you’re bound. It’s not safe in the west.”

  “It’s not safe anywhere,” Jefferson murmured. Since the collapse of the colonial governme
nt, highway robberies and the invasions of people’s homes had increased, if the gossip of travelers was to be believed. He had never had to go armed before and did not look forward to having to carry pistols now.

  “No, it isn’t,” Octavius said. He lingered in the room as if there was something more he wanted to say.

  “I should like to be alone,” Jefferson said.

  “Very good, sir. But don’t stay up too long.”

  “I won’t,” Jefferson lied.

  Octavius went out.

  Jefferson upended the wine bottle over his cup even though he already knew it was empty. A few drops dribbled out.

  He put the bottle down beside the leather case on the portable writing table. His fingers tapped the case for a few moments, then he drew out the contents, a large folio. The hand in which the words upon it were written belonged to a professional copyist, but the words were his, most of them anyway. Adams and Franklin had meddled with his draft quite a bit. He thought fondly of their arguments over it a year ago. Now Adams was gone and God knew what had happened to Franklin. Jefferson was proud of what he had written, although as with anything he had produced, he could not look at it without an impulse to improve this expression or that.

  His eyes lingered on the phrase “all men are created equal.” He was especially pleased with that one and of the fact that, after much dispute, it had remained. Many delegates either had not grasped its implications or had overlooked them in order to further the common cause. But the cause was lost now, so it did not matter. Very likely what they had done in Philadelphia last summer would be forgotten if not deliberately buried. The British would tell the story of the war, just as Caesar’s account of the conquest of Gaul was the only history of that conflict. He wondered for the first time what the Gauls would have had to say about it.

  He thought at last of falling into bed when there was a commotion in the yard, the sound of men and horses, quite a lot of them. He glanced through the curtain but, since there was no moon this time in early July, it was too dark to make out more than vague moving shapes.

  Octavius rushed into the room as pounding on the front door echoed down the long hallway.

  “Sir!” he stammered. “It’s the British!”

  “I see that,” Jefferson said, his voice surprisingly calm, more so than he felt.

  “They have the house surrounded.”

  “That was thoughtful of them.”

  It was a big house, though, shaped like a three-sided box. It was doubtful the British could watch every window. He might still slip out of one. But then what would he do? Run through the forest to be hunted down like a rabbit? That was too undignified a fate.

  The pounding had stopped and there were the sounds of many feet coming down the hallway.

  “This is goodbye, Octavius, I suppose.”

  “Oh, sir!”

  “You best make yourself scarce.” Jefferson gestured toward the door that led to his wife’s bedroom. At least she was not here to see his disgrace. Martha and his little daughter Patsy had already left for the west, and should be safe twenty miles away, waiting for him. Waiting now in vain.

  As Octavius ducked through the bedroom door, Jefferson turned toward the bed and the pistols that lay upon it.

  He grasped one and cocked it, the mechanism unfamiliar in his hand, and turned toward the door as it swung inward and admitted a British officer. The officer wore a green dragoon’s coat. He was quite short but fit and muscular, with a narrow, handsome face.

  Jefferson raised the pistol. The officer’s determined expression changed to shock and surprise.

  Jefferson pulled the trigger. The pan flashed. The recoiled jolted his hand, throwing the barrel toward the ceiling. The amount of smoke produced astonished him: it filled the room with a choking cloud.

  He could see well enough that the officer had dropped to the floor, avoiding the shot, which had passed between two soldiers behind him and struck the wall beyond with a thump.

  Jefferson reached for the other pistol. He heard the rattling of a sword blade in its metal scabbard. He was turning to level the pistol, when the officer rushed forward, his cavalry saber raised to strike.

  He had time to think, as he struggled to bring up the pistol, which seemed inordinately heavy and slow, that the blade was astonishingly large and curved, just as he imagined a Saracen’s scimitar.

  Then the blade came down.

  Tarleton struck the traitor a terrific blow with all his strength. The saber entered the crown of the man’s head, cut straight through his skull and chin, continued down the throat and lodged in the breast bone. The head parted like a melon and a fountain of blood sprayed over Tarleton and everything nearby. The traitor’s body collapsed to its knees and flopped onto its right side, still spraying blood from a heart that now pumped to no purpose. Tarleton’s saber blade slid from the terrible wound and remained in his hand as he stood over the body.

  “Here, sir,” said one of the soldiers who had followed him into the room. The man offered Tarleton a handkerchief with shaking hands.

  Tarleton breathed deeply to calm himself. Neither of them had ever seen a man killed like that. It was a disturbing thing. But he did not want to show unease or the panic he had experienced at the sight of the pistol aimed at him. He had not even intended to kill the traitor, but his fear had taken over. Lord Cornwallis would be angry that he had not taken Jefferson alive, but that could not be helped now. He accepted the handkerchief, and wiped first his face, daubed what he could from his coat, and then cleaned his sword, which he returned to its scabbard. Absently, he stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket.

  “Get this thing out of here,” he said, waving at the body. “We’ll have to take it back. No one will believe he’s dead unless we do so.”

  The two soldiers bent to take the body. One of them bound the dead man’s head together with the sash of a dressing gown that lay on the bed. The parts did not fit precisely together, like a broken toy that was slightly off. Then, with one at the shoulders and the other at the feet, they manhandled the corpse into the hall, where other troopers gaped.

  “Good Lord!” he heard one of the officers in the hallway exclaim.

  Tarleton felt the sudden need of a drink. He lifted the wine bottle on the writing table with its curious green felt top, but found it empty. He tossed it on the bed and was about to turn away, when the document beside it caught his eye. He examined it more closely. It was the rebels’ manifesto, if he was not mistaken, an original copy too, with signatures, marred only by a spray of blood. He stuffed it into the leather case, which he clamped under an arm.

  Tarleton went out to the hall. It was crowded with cavalrymen.

  “Don’t stand around gawking,” Tarleton snapped. “You’ve horses to care for. Someone find a wagon. We’ll need one. And rouse the staff of this miserable place. Get them started on breakfast.”

  Lone Star Rising: A Short History of the Republic of Texas and the Free States of America

  by Victor D. Lautenberg

  By 1777, British forces had spread across the rebellious colonies, crushing all resistance once George Washington was dead and the American army dispersed.

  But the defeat was merely a reckoning postponed. A few die-hards fled west into the Tennessee and the unsettled wilderness beyond the borders of British control.

  Yet Britain could not ignore these upstarts forever, and in 1809 Banastre Tarleton arrived to crush them as well.

  After the British victory at the Battle of Pea Creek in June 1809, the fall of the Tennessee Free State, the upstart country established on the banks of the Mississippi, was assured. Tarleton, serving his second term as viceroy of Carolina, pursued the remnants of the defeated army as far as the Wolf River. There, he halted for the night, even though the river presented no great obstacle. He believed that he had shattered all resistance, and that he had only to sweep into Oak Ridge and bag what remained of the rebels, who had dared to establish their own state in western Tennessee i
n defiance of British dominion of eastern North America.

  However, he had not counted on the stubbornness of Andrew Jackson.

  Oak Ridge, The Tennessee

  British America

  June 1809

  The army’s rear guard reached the banks of the Wolf River in late afternoon. Although Jackson had given the men the option of splitting up and making their way individually through the woods, they had stayed together. This turned out to be a good thing, for it discouraged the British dragoons from doing more than dogging their trail. Whenever the dragoons got too close, the riflemen picked off a few riders so that the British stayed at long range. Jackson reflected on this lesson as they approached the river. He was a self-taught general and his main teacher was experience. The trick to making that work was avoiding mistakes which were not so catastrophic that you lived to fight again while taking the lesson that they had to impart.

  Jackson had Crockett’s company deploy across the road to cover withdrawal of Amos Burleson’s company over the bridge. Then Burleson’s men lined up on the banks on either side of the bridge to cover Crockett’s men.

  A troop of dragoons in the green coats of the British Legion watched them from a hundred yards up the road. As the last of Crockett’s force ran across, they charged in an obvious effort to seize the bridge. Burleson’s men leveled their muskets and up and down the little line a series of clicks sounded as gunlocks were pulled back.

  “Hold!” Jackson called. “Let them get close!”

  He was about to order a squad to stand at the mouth of the bridge, but Crockett, the last man across, shouted for the men about him to plug the hole with musket and bayonet.