William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

Jamie, as ordered, let the settlers handle their own affairs, and handle it they did. One hundred fancy-dressed and helmet-plumed mounted Mexican dragoons came face to face with some one hundred and fifty Texans armed with long rifles on the Guadalupe River on October 2, 1835.

The commander of the dragoons laughed at the sight and made a very loud and very derogatory remark concerning the Texans. Bad mistake. One sharpshooter knocked the plumed helmet from his head and the commander fell off his horse as the Texans opened fire.

The Texas war for independence from Mexico had officially begun.

* * *

“Don’t get too cocky,” Bowie warned his men. “So far, we’ve not come up against professional and seasoned troops.”

“Bowie’s right,” Travis said, in one of their rare agreements. “Most of the soldiers we’ve faced had little or no training. Believe me, the worst is yet to come.”

Then they started arguing about who was really in command.

Jamie had waited in Gonzales for a message from a scout in Goliad, about seventy miles southeast of San Antonio. Jamie had already received word that General Cos was in San Antonio with a force of about fifteen hundred men and he was anxious to get that news to Travis. As soon as the scout from Goliad handed him the pouch, Jamie was in the saddle and riding.

The message read: General Cos left a small force in Goliad. Attacking .

Just before midnight on October the 9th, a force of Texas volunteers overpowered the Mexican garrison at Goliad and seized arms and powder and shot.

General Cos was furious and swore dire revenge on the heads of any Texan who dared oppose him.

Over in Gonzales, Austin now found himself commanding a force of over five hundred men. Further east, in Nacogdoches, Sam Houston was calling for volunteers, having accepted the call for him to be commander. Bowie was commander of about a hundred men, all tough and spirited and loyal to Jim. But Bowie elected to stay loyal to Travis, who was forced to stay in San Felipe awaiting the convention, and take his orders, at least for a time.

The whole situation was chaos and turmoil. Hundreds of Texas men had taken up arms, but nobody knew whose orders to obey. They were all volunteers and if they decided to go home for whatever reason, they went. They had no uniforms and looked terribly ragtag, albeit very spirited, as some three hundred to four hundred Texans — no accurate record was kept — marched toward San Antonio in the middle of October, hell-bent to attack General Cos. They dragged along the brass cannon from Gonzales, but unfortunately, the wheels fell off the cart, and the cannon — which was useless anyway — had to be discarded alongside the road.

Jim Bowie and his hundred or so men were scouting far ahead of the main column, Jim, as usual, wanting to be in the vanguard of any good scrap. Jamie had been assigned to Bowie’s company. And was scouting ahead when he saw a large force of Mexican cavalry approaching. He raced back to Bowie with the news and the company barely had time to take cover before the Mexicans attacked.

Outnumbered more than four to one, the Texans beat back charge after charge.

“Stay calm, boys,” Bowie called to his men. “And keep your heads down. We can’t afford to lose a man.”

Jamie was deadly accurate with his long rifle and that did not go unnoticed by Bowie and the other men.

“They’re bringing up artillery!” Bowie shouted, lowering a spy glass. “Give them everything we’ve got, boys!”

Within minutes, the Mexicans had retreated under the withering fire from the Texans, leaving their artillery behind.

“Charge!” Bowie yelled, and the Texans surged forward, capturing the artillery pieces of the Mexicans. “Load ’em up and turn ’em around!” Bowie shouted. “Give them a taste of their own cannon.”

The Texans began pounding the retreating Mexican army with their own cannon. The Mexicans lost some sixty men, with about that many wounded. The Texans had one man killed and only a few wounded.

Bowie and his men were jubilant, but cautious. Bowie was under no illusions. He argued against attacking San Antonio, which was defended by General Cos’s force of more than fifteen hundred troops.

“Surround the town as best we can and settle in,” one of the commanders of the Texans, Ben Milam, said. “We’ll wait them out.”

It was October 28th.

“If we wait long,” Jamie said, after walking through the camp and listening to the men talk, “the spirit will wane.”

“You’d attack a much larger force, lad?” he was asked.

“I would, Indian style.”

Edward Burleson, an old Indian fighter from way back, agreed with Jamie. He was overruled and the volunteers settled in to wait.

“We’re making a mistake,” Jamie warned.

Bowie nodded his head in agreement but did not argue the command. He had other things on his mind.

“A bad mistake,” Ben Milam said sourly.

Bowie left camp to attend the convention in San Felipe, where he promptly got drunk and insulted one of the attendees, Anson Jones, who would later be governor of the Republic of Texas. One thing about Bowie: he didn’t give a tinker’s damn who he insulted.

The convention ended with Austin ordered to go to the United States to ask for money to pay for the war and to round up volunteers. Houston was appointed supreme commander of all the troops except those now garrisoned around San Antonio, the command of those men now given to Edward Burleson.

Back at San Antonio, conditions among the volunteers were terrible and getting worse. The men were running out of food and most did not have adequate clothing for the winter, which was hard upon them. Many of the men were thinking about the upcoming spring and the planting of their crops. Some left to return to hearth and home.

Burleson wanted to attack General Cos but his field officers overruled him and voted to withdraw the men.

“Hell, no!” Ben Milam said hotly. “I’ll not back up a damn inch!”

Jamie had spoken with several Americans who had just broken out of jail in San Antonio and they had told him that the morale among the Mexican defenders in the town was not good. He went to Ben Milam with the news.

“You’ll follow me, lad?” Ben asked.

“I will,” Jamie told him. “And many of the men still here will, too.”

“You’re a game one, Jamie.” Ben Milam then drew his sword and cut a line in the Texas dust. “Who will follow Ben Milam into San Antonio?” he threw out the challenge. “Those who will, step across this line.”

Several hundred men shouted back that they would and surged over the line to stand by Ben and Jamie. Then Francis Johnson and his men agreed to go with Ben.

Ben now had about three hundred volunteers ready to follow him into San Antonio and, as Ben put it, “Kick the pants off of General Cos.”

It was December 5th, 1835. Jamie had climbed up on a rooftop for a better view before entering the town. The first thing to catch his eye was the Mission of San Antonio de Valero.

What was it that local fellow said it was called? Yes, he remembered.

The Alamo.

Twenty-seven

Jamie, Bonham, and three other men did not enter the town with the two regular columns of about a hundred and fifty men each, commanded by Tom Milam and Francis Johnson. They were not keen on fighting all bunched up with others. Instead, when they got into the town, they smiled at each other and with a nod, parted company to fight the way they liked best: alone.

Jamie crouched just off the mouth of an alley, his bow ready, an arrow notched. He saw a fancy-dressed Mexican officer, a plume on his helmet, come prancing his horse up the alley. Jamie made a silent kill, the arrow driving deep into the man’s chest.