William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

Sam retreated to a chair in the room and waited, ready to serve his master to the end.

* * *

Jamie made it easily through the enemy lines, still very lightly manned, for the bulk of Santa Anna’s army had not yet been placed, and rode to the Ruiz ranch outside of town. The Ruiz family was one of the oldest and most powerful of Mexican families in the area and even Santa Anna knew to leave the family alone. He was greeted warmly, as was and is the Mexican custom, and fed a huge meal.

“I don’t understand this,” Ruiz said, as Jamie ate. “You and your friends will gain nothing by dying at the old mission. You will accomplish nothing. I, too, want independence for Texas, but this way is... folly! ”

“We’ll prove a point,” Jamie said.

“By dying? Santa Anna will not even bury your bodies. I know the man. He will order his soldiers to stack the bodies and put them to the torch and then scatter the ashes. What point will have been made?”

“That a free Texas is worth dying for,” Jamie replied.

Ruiz looked at the tall and powerfully built young Anglo with the long yellow hair. He slowly nodded his head. “You will stay the night and rest?”

“No. I’ll get back. Thanks for the meal, Senor Ruiz. You’ve been very gracious.” Jamie stood up and moved toward the door.

Ruiz shook hands with him. “Por nada. Vaya con Dios, Senor MacCallister.”

Just after midnight, Jamie slipped across the irrigation ditch and over the east wall. The sentry there noticed fresh scalps dangling from Jamie’s belt.

“Gonna give them to Travis, too?” he asked, a slight smile playing at his mouth.

Jamie smiled and shook his head. “Colonel Travis was forced into the humor of it the first time. I doubt he’d find a second time very amusing. How’s Jim?”

“Bad. Reinforcements comin’, Jamie?”

“No,” Jamie said softly. “I don’t think any help will arrive. Think we’re all alone, Micajah.”

Micajah cut his eyes to the hundreds of small fires burning all around them, in the enemy’s camp. “We won’t be for long,” he said dryly.

Cannon fire from the Mexican lines once more began booming, and conversation was impossible. Jamie walked to his station along the wall, where he would fight and, whenever possible, sleep, and took up position.

“Was I you, I believe I’d a kept goin,’ ” a man to his left said sourly.

“Nobody’s holding you here,” Jamie told the older man.

“For a fact,” Louis Moses Rose said. “For a fact.” He spat on the ground and moved off.

Thirty-one

The Third Day

February 25th, 1836

A cannonball crashing against the wall jarred Jamie out of sleep. He opened his eyes to the steel gray of early dawn. Inside the walls, men and women were moving about, tending fires, cooking food, and boiling coffee. Jamie stood up and stretched, getting the kinks out of his joints and muscles. The nights were bitterly cold and few men had ample blankets to keep warm. Jamie walked over to one fire pit and was handed a bowl of chile and beans, some tortillas, and a cup of coffee.

Jamie squatted down and ate his breakfast. On the Mexican side, brass bands were playing loudly. “Quite a concert,” he remarked to a man who sat down on the ground beside him.

“Yeah. Travis says the cannons will start up soon as the bands quit playin’. Hope they wait ’til I’ve et. Lead’s hard to digest.”

Standing on a wooden parapet along the wall, Travis was not fooled by the concert. Santa Anna was not giving the defenders of the Alamo a band concert out of the goodness of his heart. He had a hunch that when the cannon began roaring, the smoke would be used to help hide a possible enemy advance across the San Antonio River. Travis also saw that if they succeeded, the wooden houses and huts that had been abandoned when Santa Anna’s forces arrived, would provide excellent cover for the Mexican soldiers. If the soldiers reached those huts, they would be less than four hundred yards from the Alamo.

Travis jumped down from the wall and strode quickly to the center of the plaza. “I need two volunteers!” he yelled. “Men who can run fast and can laugh at danger.”

A crowd surged forward instantly.

“You and you,” Travis said, choosing two young men scarcely out of their teens, if indeed they were. One was a Louisiana boy from Rapides Parish, the other young man’s name was Brown.

Travis set men working frantically making torches.

“You must fire the houses and huts,” Travis told the two young men. “And then get back here.”

“We’ll damn sure do it, Colonel,” the Louisiana boy said with a cocky grin.

“And we’ll lay down coverin’ fire for you,” Crockett said. “Rifle and cannon when you’re ready.”

The two young men exchanged glances. “We’re ready.”

Their hands filled with torches, they moved toward the south gate. Crockett and his men had loaded up every rifle of their own and dozens more that were willingly handed to the sharpshooters. Many of the men had brought a half a dozen rifles with them to the mission. Captain Dickerson made ready his cannon, some of them loaded with deadly grapeshot.

“What’s that Louisiana boy’s name?” Jamie asked a man.

“Despallier. And he’s a game one, he is.”

Santa Anna and his personal contingent of bodyguards had ridden over a wooden bridge and had taken cover in houses near the Alamo.

“Go!” Travis told Despallier and Brown. The two youths raced out of the gate on foot as Dickerson’s artillery roared and Crockett and his expert riflemen laid down a withering field of killing fire.

During the first fusillade a half dozen Mexican soldiers were killed by Crockett and his men, and Dickerson’s artillery crashed into lines of Mexican infantry attempting to push closer to the Alamo. Their officers tried to beat them forward with the flat side of their swords, but the troops were having no part of that. The first wave fell back in retreat.

By now, Despallier and Brown had reached the houses and were beginning to put them to the torch. Wild cheering broke out from the defenders as the first spirals of smoke rose into the cold air. Soon the shacks and huts were blazing and Santa Anna was furious. He screamed at his men to capture the two Anglos.

But Travis had anticipated that when he’d been informed that the general had crossed the bridge.

“Look sharp now, Davy!” he called. “The Mex’s will want those boys bad.”

Jamie had taken his rifles and moved to a position on top of the barracks along the south wall, just west of the main gate. Bowie’s room was at the other end of the barracks.

“Mr. Jamie?” a voice called from the ladder.

Jamie turned to look at Bowie’s slave, Sam.

“Mr. Jim, he sent me up here to load for you, sir.”

“Come on, Sam. Keep your head down. Can you shoot, Sam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then shoot. We’ll both load.”

Sam grinned and took a rifle, lying down beside Jamie.

“Sam?” Jamie said, in a voice only the newly freed slave could hear. “If you take arms against them yonder, you’ll not stand a chance of leaving here alive.”

“I ain’t plannin’ on leavin’, Mr. Jamie. I plan on standin’ by Mister Jim ’til the end.”

“As you wish, Sam. There’s a target; just to your left. Think you can hit him?”

Sam leveled the rifle and squeezed the trigger. Fire and sparks flared in pan and muzzle and the Mexican soldier fell in a lifeless heap on the cold and muddy ground.

Sam rolled to one side and began working with powder, ball, and patch as Jamie’s eyes searched for a target. He found a flash of color and sighted in. He could not hear the man scream over the din of battle, but Jamie watched as the Mexican soldier crawled off to the safety of his lines, dragging a broken leg behind him.