Eyes of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Sam smiled. “Oh, they’ll probably have nine kids.”

  “You’re not much help,” Sarah said dryly.

  “What do you want me to do, sleep between them?”

  After the laughter had faded and the conversation shifted to other, less important matters, Sam looked at Roscoe and Anne, playing with the other children in the yard. Although their mother had been half white — he’d been told the whole sordid story — the twins were as lily white as the MacCallister kids.

  Heartbreak and grief plays yonder, Sam thought. In here, in this cocoon, they are isolated and protected from the cruel and cold outside world. But as they grow older, they are going to be slapped hard by reality. If they are truthful about their heritage, they will not be totally admitted into either world. I feel sorry for them.

  The twins, now either eight or nine, no one knew for sure, not even Wells, were lovely children. Roscoe would surely turn into a handsome man, and Anne into a beautiful woman. But both twins had developed a sneaky and sly streak. They weren’t always truthful and sometimes they “borrowed” things without telling the owner. When confronted about it, they both would become tearful and claim complete innocence.

  Sam felt eyes on him and he looked up into the eyes of Moses. Moses arched one eyebrow, as if knowing what Sam had been thinking. Then he slowly and minutely nodded his head, as if silently confirming Sam’s suspicions. Then Moses stood up and walked away.

  Sam watched as Anne looked quickly around her to see if any of the other children were watching, and then picked up a ribbon that had fallen from the hair of Ellen Kathleen and slipped it into the side pocket of her dress. She went right back to playing hopscotch as if nothing had happened.

  * * *

  After dozens of meetings, over the next eighteen months, with some of the men from the village of San Augustine, Jamie elected to ride south, down to Smith’s Trading Post. Both Smith and Fontaine had sent word that they wanted to see him. Almost two years before, Mexico’s Centralist government, under the cruel and dictatorial Anastacio Bustamante, had moved to crush any rebellion the free-spirited Texans might be dreaming up. Bustamante passed a law that ordered the military occupation of Texas with convict soldiers, who were to remain on the land when their ’enlistment’ was up, and the law also stopped any further immigration of Americans into Texas.

  It was June 25, 1832, when Jamie stepped down from his horse in front of Smith’s General Store, as it was now called. Jamie was twenty-two years old, and a man grown. He was almost six feet, four inches tall, and weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, with shoulders packed with muscle and arms so huge that it was a good thing Kate made his homespuns — when he elected to get out of buckskins — for no store-bought shirt would fit him. He walked through the store, and every eye turned to look at the tall young man with the long blond hair, tanned face, and cold blue eyes. He picked out a few things he would buy, for Kate and the children, and then adjourned to the bar for a drink. Jamie rarely tasted whiskey, but he did enjoy a drink now and then. He preferred wine — a glass or two before supper — and made gallons of it from wild berries every year, as did the others in the small community in the thicket.

  Smith and Fontaine joined Jamie at the bar. “Revolution is in the air, Jamie,” Fontaine said, speaking in low tones. “Both here and down in Mexico. Santa Anna is preparing to oust Bustamante, and some think the man is less a monster than Bustamante, and will listen to our grievances. I’m not so sure. But we have problems closer to home. Have you ever heard of John Bradburn?”

  Jamie shook his head and sipped his whiskey.

  “Well, he’s an American mercenary colonel in the Mexican Army. He took over the garrison in Anahuac, not far from here. Now he’s about to abolish the town of Liberty and seize the American settlers’ land. When he does, all hell is going to break loose.”

  “What is he, a fool?” Jamie asked.

  “Yes. And an arrogant one, at that. We are well known to him, but you are not. We would like for you to ride to Liberty and assess the situation. Will you do that?”

  Jamie nodded his head. His crops were all in and looking good. He had just worked his fields and could take time off. “Yes. Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “We’ll talk about it over supper this evening, and come the morning, you can ride out fresh. Don’t worry; I’m not being watched. I’m certain of that.”

  But Fontaine and Smith had been a few days late in calling on Jamie to ride in and assess the situation. Before Jamie could even get started on his trip to Liberty, Fontaine received word that about a hundred and fifty Texas colonists were on the march toward Liberty to rescue the settlers that Colonel Bradburn had jailed. A battle ensued between Texas colonists and Mexican troops near the mouth of the Brazos River. Both sides took casualties but the colonists emerged the clear victors when the Mexicans threw away their weapons and ran for their lives.

  “It’s started,” Smith said. “There is no stopping us now, lad.”

  “That depends on whether Wharton or Austin prevails at the self-government convention we’ve called for in October.” Fontaine’s words dashed cold water on Smith’s hopes.

  Jamie fixed the man with a blank look.

  “Austin is the cooler head,” Fontaine explained. “He prefers to take it one step at a time. President Jackson agrees with that. Wharton is somewhat of a hothead, albeit a good and loyal man. Wharton is demanding total independence from Mexico. It’s too soon for that.” He patted Jamie on the shoulder. “Well, let us older heads continue to fight the war of words, lad. As for you, keep your powder dry.”

  Jamie rode back to his cabin in the thicket. He was not a politician; he had absolutely no interest in great flowery speeches — either in making them or listening to them. He was a farmer. Nothing more. So he thought. Jamie got along well with the Mexicans who lived close by — ten miles away meant a close neighbor — and he had learned Spanish and spoke it well. But as far as he was concerned, Texas belonged to America, not Mexico, and so did most of the Mexicans who lived nearby. And if ever Mexican soldiers tried to seize his land, or put Jamie Ian MacCallister in jail, they’d have a fight on their hands.

  Kate was delighted to see him return so quickly. “I thought you’d be gone for weeks,” she said.

  “So did I.” He explained to her, and to the rest of his immediate neighbors, what he had been told by Smith and Fontaine.

  “So this means war?” Sam asked, a worried look on his face.

  Jamie shrugged. “Maybe. Fontaine and Smith seem to think that this Santa Anna person will be easier to get along with than Bustamante. I guess only time will tell about that.”

  * * *

  Jamie and his neighbors worked their fields and lived in peace for two years, gathering their crops and enjoying life. Kate had a child early in ’34. A girl they named Joleen. Jamie and Sam and Swede occasionally rode into San Augustine for news — Moses and Wells never left the thicket — and sometimes Kate and Sarah and Hannah piled into wagons and accompanied the men into the village, just for a break in the routine and to talk to other people.

  Back in October of 1832, a group of Texans held a convention in San Felipe on the Brazos. It was to be the first of many on the march for independence. The firebrand, William Wharton, delivered a stormy speech, demanding absolute independence from Mexico. He tried to get elected president of the convention, but Austin, a cooler head, defeated him. The delegates wrote a petition and approved its delivery to Mexico. The petition’s main points demanded separation from the state of Coahuila and full Mexican statehood for Texas.

  But the petition, for whatever reasons, never reached Mexico City, probably due to the bitter civil war raging in that country.

  Those living in the thicket knew nothing of this, for the winters were bitter those years and most stayed close to hearth and home. They did not know until several months after it happened that in January of 1833, General Antoni
o Lopez de Santa Anna succeeded in driving Anastacio Bustamante from the office of president of Mexico. The Texans were excited at the news and immediately called for a new convention to be held in San Felipe in April of ’33.

  Neither did those in the Big Thicket country know that it was during this time of struggle that Sam Houston crossed the Red River and rode some one hundred and seventy-odd miles south to Nacogdoches, then the most populated and largest American town in Texas. Houston met with two old friends of earlier days, Adolphus Sterne and Henry Raguet, and they told him of the young warrior called Man Who Is Not Afraid, Jamie Ian MacCallister. Later, after Houston had left Nacogdoches and ridden down to San Felipe and rejoined an old drinking pal of his, Jim Bowie, Houston told Bowie of MacCallister.

  Bowie, who had settled in Texas a few years earlier, after marrying Maria Ursula de Veramendi, the daughter of the most prominent family in Coahuila y Texas, nodded his head.

  “I keep hearing the name. I want to meet this man. He is my kind of man, and we’ll need men like him when we make our move for independence, and that is surely coming.”

  Houston explained to Bowie his real reason for coming to Texas: to meet, at President Jackson’s request, with the Comanches in an effort to bring peace between them and the white settlers.

  It would turn out to be only a token gesture that would accomplish nothing. And when Mexico learned of the meeting, they drafted a formal letter of protest to Washington, stating they resented the interference from the American president. The president never received it.

  After Houston met with several chiefs of the Comanches, he returned to San Felipe and spent a day, in private, with Stephen Austin. While the two men were not best of friends, neither were they enemies — they were just different. Austin was a quiet sort, much given to introspection, quite the diplomat, and very idealistic. Houston, on the other hand, was quite vocal, extremely aggressive, dashing and lively in dress, and somewhat of an adventurer.

  But they both put any differences aside and placed their minds together to map out the future of Texas.

  When Houston returned to Nacogdoches, he found that the citizens there had placed his name in nomination to be their delegate at the upcoming convention in April, in San Felipe. He accepted and helped draft the first constitution for the state, and the delegates asked Stephen Austin to take the petition and the new constitution to Mexico and meet with Santa Anna. Austin, although still a relatively young man of thirty-nine, was not in good health, but he agreed to go. That trip got him arrested in Mexico and cost him eight months in a Mexican calaboose. After three months in solitary confinement, he was moved to better quarters and could write letters, telling his friends and family where he was and pleading for the Texans to remain calm, and take no violent action. The Texans agreed to that. Austin would not return home for nearly two years; no longer under arrest after eight months, but not allowed to leave Mexico.

  Like Austin, Houston asked for calm and restraint. During this time, Sam Houston, a lifelong atheist, joined the Catholic church — as was required of all landowners — and took the name of Don Samuel Pablo Houston. Before doing all this, he divorced his wife, Eliza.

  Also during this period of time, Jim Bowie lost his wife and two children to cholera. For months, he all but slept in a barrel of whiskey and his health deteriorated badly.

  * * *

  Over in the swamps and cleared fields of the Big Thicket, life went on, with Jamie and Kate and family snug in their cabin — although it would be inaccurate to call the now six-room structure a cabin.

  In March of 1834, just as Jamie and the others were sharpening their axes and getting ready their plows and teams for the spring planting, Bonham sent him word: some rascally-looking men had been making inquiries about Jamie down at Beau Mont, in the saloons that catered to the less desirable clientele. One of them was named Saxon.

  Twenty-four

  “When will it end, Jamie?” Kate asked, as she watched him carefully clean his guns and stroke the blade of his big knife over the sharpening stone.

  “When they’re all dead, I reckon, Kate.” He smiled at her. “Texas is on the move and I need to be in the fields.”

  “The Nunez boys can plow and plant, Jamie. You know they idolize you.”

  The Juan Nunez family lived right on the edge of the thicket and Jamie and Kate had become friends with them. During the winter, Juan and his wife, Maria, became seriously ill and Jamie and Kate nursed them back to health and saw to the needs of their children during their illness. Jamie and Kate had made friends for life.

  “I thought those horrible Saxon brothers and their kin were working for my father.” Kate said.

  “I guess they branched out on their own.” He stood up, treetop tall and with shoulders so broad he had to turn sideways to go through many doorways, and leaned down and kissed his wife. “I’ve already arranged for the Nunez boys to get the land ready and to plant if I’m not back.”

  She handed him a packet of food and waited until he had looked in on all the children, standing for a time looking down at the sleeping Joleen, and then walked with him outside, where young Jamie, now eight years old, stood holding the reins to Jamie’s horse.

  “Boy,” Jamie told his son, whose head was so far back looking up at his father he was in danger of falling over, “you take care of your ma, now, you hear?”

  “Yes, Pa. I will.”

  “And you mind her, too, you hear?”

  “Yes, Pa.” Then he quite unintentionally toppled over backward, landing on his butt. He grinned up at his parents, and made a face at his twin sister, who was by the corner of the house, sticking her tongue out at him.

  Laughing at young Jamie’s antics, Jamie and Kate walked out to where Sam and Sarah, Swede and Hannah, Moses and Liza, and Wells and Sally had gathered. All the men were a little miffed at Jamie’s refusal to let them accompany him.

  “I’ll be back,” Jamie told them. “Two weeks, a month, two months. I don’t know. But I am going to resolve this matter. One way or the other.”

  Sam looked at the horse’s mane, now holding more than two dozen dried scalps. He just never would understand the lad, he thought. And Lord knows he had tried.

  Swede tried not to look at the scalps. One side of him thought they were disgusting and certainly not something any civilized man would so proudly place on exhibit. However, the other side of him was proud of Jamie for doing what most people did not have the courage to do: defending his family and himself and openly defying tradition by silently telling others: this is what happens when you commit lawless acts against me or mine. So beware. Same principle as a Keep Off sign, albeit just a tad more graphic. Hannah had quietly changed Swede since their marriage. And Swede was not nearly as reluctant to fight as Jamie thought he was.

  At the same moment Jamie was speaking to his friends, Jim Bowie was leaving San Felipe for a visit with a friend, Fontaine, who would meet with him and a few others caught up in the Texas independence movement, in the back of Smith’s store.

  Bowie rode with only a few friends accompanying him, not at all concerned about Indian attack... he rather looked forward to any fracas that might occur. Bowie had since stopped his wild drinking as the grief over the death of his wife and children abated. But he was still a good hand with the jug from time to time.

  * * *

  During one of their meetings, Louis Fontaine had admitted to Jamie that he was a government agent, acting on orders from President Jackson. Only Smith, Austin, and Adolphus Sterne knew that, and now Jamie knew it.

  On his ride south, Jamie was amazed at the number of new cabins up and going up. Americans were ignoring Mexico’s ban on immigration and coming across the borders and settling. Jamie reckoned there must now be hundreds of American families living in Texas. He was right. By 1837, there would be fourteen thousand American families living in Texas.

  Jamie encountered no trouble on his ride south. He did receive some rather curious looks from the new people se
ttling in; and the scalps tied to his horse’s mane did, too. But nobody had any comments to make about them. When the man sitting the saddle looked as though he had been hewn out of oak, only the most unwise or foolhardy would be prompted to have anything derogatory to say.

  Jamie took his time getting to his destination, stopping often to talk with people, so Bowie and friends were there before he arrived. Jim Bowie, a big strapping man of over six feet and weighing nearly a hundred and ninety pounds, was standing on the porch of Smith’s General Store when Jamie rode in. Bowie took one look and made up his mind. Jamie Ian MacCallister was a man to ride the river with. That they were opposites held no doubt in Jim’s mind, for Jamie’s manner suggested that he was a quiet man, while Jim could be and usually was, loud and boisterous. Bowie was also a drinking and hard partying man. Looking at Jamie, Bowie had the thought that the young mountain of a man had never been drunk in his life and probably never would be. He was correct. Bowie had been told by Fontaine that Jamie was antislavery. Bowie smiled at that. In one year’s time, the Kentucky born Jim and his brothers, John and Rezin, had made thousands of dollars working with the pirate, Jean Lafitte, smuggling slaves. Jim had done it all and was ashamed of none of it. But he also held that each man had the right to his personal opinion on issues and was not to be faulted if that opinion ran across the grain of his own.

  And Bowie was amused when he saw the scalps tied to the mane of Jamie’s horse. Here, he thought, was a man clearly warning all he met that he would tolerate no excess liberties to be taken upon him. Bowie had heard of the men camped outside of the town, and Fontaine and Smith had brought him up to date on the bounty hunters and their relentless pursuit of Jamie MacCallister. This was shaping up to be a very interesting day, Jim thought, for two of the men who were hunting Jamie were in the grog shop just across the rutted street. Yes, Jim thought, lighting a cheroot, it was shaping up to be a very interesting day.