William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

“God help us all,” he muttered.

* * *

By late afternoon of the seventh day, the volunteers from Gonzales had come to within a few miles of San Antonio. They took to whatever cover they could find and stayed out of sight, shivering on the cold ground until full nightfall. Then they abandoned their horses and struggled out on foot, each man carrying a heavy load of supplies.

Their plan was to reach the Alamo a short time after midnight; when the Mexican camp would be sleeping and most of the fires low. Of course they also had another worry: not to get shot by the men along the walls of the Alamo.

The men from Gonzales carried with them a homemade flag of silk. It was to be the battle flag of the Alamo. It had a hand-sewn picture of a cannon in the center and above and below the cannon, the words: COME AND TAKE IT. They had no way of knowing how prophetic those words would turn out to be.

The men from Gonzales crept along slowly, by some miracle making their way through the Mexican lines. Then they reached the ditch that surrounded the compound and stayed in it until they were at the walls.

A nervous sentry heard a noise and fired. The men from Gonzales went belly down in the muddy ditch.

“Goddamnit!” one said.

“Hold your fire,” the captain of the guard yelled. “Them boys is ours! ”

Thirty-six

The Eighth Day

March 1st, 1836

The men from Gonzales had reached the Alamo at about four o’clock in the morning. There would be no more sleep that night for anyone, not even for Bowie, who had managed to overcome his often comalike malady and would remain lucid, if still very weak, for the next one hundred and twenty or so hours... and then the men of the Alamo would sleep forever.

Travis greeted Captains Kimbell and Martin and John Smith warmly. If the colonel had any disappointment about the small size of the group, and he certainly did, he did not show it. After the initial whooping and hollering from the defenders had died down, Travis took Captain Martin aside.

“You’re the first of the relief columns, right, Albert?” he asked.

Captain Martin threw formality to the cold March winds. He shook his head. “There will be no relief columns, Bill. We’ve been written off.”

Colonel William Barret Travis sagged against the thick wall; its coldness felt to him like the icy hand of death touching his shoulder. “My God, Albert,” he exclaimed softly. “You’ve come to die.”

“Yes,” was the reply.

“The men with you?”

“They know.”

“Then so, too, will the others before dawn breaks.”

“Probably. But I feel we shall not die for naught. We’ll be the spark that ignites the fuse for independence.”

“One hundred and eighty-nine men,” Travis whispered, his words barely audible. “Against thousands.”

Some accounts say one hundred and eighty-three men died at the Alamo, and estimates are that Santa Anna had under his command about five thousand crack, seasoned combat troops, with very few unwilling conscripts. That so few could hold out against so many for so long still, to this day, evokes wild stirrings of passion, and not just in Texas, for the men who fought and died at the Alamo came from all over the young nation and either nineteen or twenty-one were from foreign countries.

Martin gripped Travis’s arm. “Bill, we shall not die in vain. I promise you.”

“No,” Travis said, rising to his height and straightening his uniform. “We most certainly shall not.”

As the first rays of the sun touched the land, Travis assembled the men and raised the new battle flag of the Alamo. The wild cheering caused an aide to run to Santa Anna’s quarters, where he’d been engaged in a bit of early morning dallying with his new bride.

Santa Anna was not happy at being interrupted. He was even less happy to learn that the volunteers from Gonzales had managed to slip through his lines and were now in place inside the walls of the old mission. He was unhappier still when he took his glass and viewed the new flag that now flew over the bastion of freedom and liberty in open defiance toward the Mexican government. The words on the flag made his stomach churn.

COME AND TAKE IT.

Santa Anna went into a wild fit of rage. He hurled the spy glass against the wall of the room and stomped around in his bare feet while his nervous aides tried to steer him away from the broken glass and sharp metal that now littered the floor from the impact against the wall.

He finally calmed down enough to issue some rational orders. “Increase the cannonade. I want a steady bombardment and I want to see some damage done.”

“Yes, General.”

“I want to see some Anglo blood spilled.”

“Yes, General.”

“Then do it!” Santa Anna yelled. He took a step and his bare foot landed on a shard of broken glass. Santa Anna screamed like a panther.

When he stopped jumping around and hollering, Santa Anna found a chair and sat down. He was livid with rage. “I want all patrols increased in size and all roads and trails and paths leading to the Alamo found and guarded. No one leaves and no one enters that accursed place. Is that fully understood by all?”

His aides assured him it was.

“It better be,” the general said menacingly.

* * *

The news had spread like a raging fire among the defenders inside the old walls. There would be no more help from the outside. Fannin was not coming. Houston was not coming. They were alone. They had been abandoned. Written off. Only death awaited them. Earlier that week, they had watched as a courier, Jim Bonham, had ridden out in the darkness with a final plea from Travis to Fannin to change his mind: For God’s sake, man, help us!

All day long the Mexican bombardment slammed the Alamo, some of the batteries less than four hundred yards away; the heavier pieces set back nearly half a mile. If the powder Travis had at his disposal had been worth a damn, the defenders could have played havoc with the Mexican artillery. But as one artilleryman summed up the quality of gunpowder for the cannons, “We might as well be usin’ dust from the road.”

The powder the men from Gonzales brought with them was distributed equally and the defenders of the Alamo settled down to await the charge they knew was coming. What thoughts they must have had as they watched the thousands of Mexican troops that surrounded them. Surely all shared thoughts of home and family that they all knew they would never see again.

Men not on duty along the walls gathered in small groups and spoke, when the booming of cannons would allow it, of friends and family on the outside, of good dogs and fast horses. They spoke of last year’s crops and of the plans they had for this year...

... Before they answered the call to arms.

History does not record any elaborate religious ceremonies being conducted by and for the men inside the walls of the Alamo. What praying there was — and surely there was a considerable amount of that — was done privately.

For several hours on that afternoon of the eighth day, the men of the Alamo were quiet; when they did speak, it was in hushed tones. Then, on the evening of the eighth day, just as afternoon was giving way to dusk, the men seemed to rouse; flagging spirits caught fire.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll sit around here lookin’ like a lost calf,” a man with rags wrapped around his feet said, rising from a squat. “Davy,” he shouted to Crockett, standing on a parapet. “Get your fiddle and bow and do us up a tune. I feel like dancin’.”

It must have been a sight. Davy struck up a slow reel and the man, whose parents had come over from Scotland, did a fling, his rag-covered feet kicking up dust in the plaza of the old mission. John McGregor got his bagpipes and joined in, and soon half a hundred men were dancing. Sam opened the door to Bowie’s quarters so he could see the revelry and the famous knife fighter smiled at the antics of the men.