William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

“They might overwhelm us, Sam,” Bowie said. “But it won’t be due to any lack of courage of the men out yonder.”

The Mexican officers, upon hearing the music and the shouting, signaled for their cannons to stand down.

General Juan Amador galloped up and jumped from his horse. “What is happening?” he shouted.

“They are having a fiesta,” a young lieutenant said.

“A ... fiesta? ” the general was astonished. “They are hours away from being dead men and they are having a dance?”

“ Sí .”

What must the Mexicans have thought? Surely many must have thought: what manner of men are we facing? They are looking at total annihilation and still have the courage to sing and dance.

“Should General Santa Anna be informed of this development?” the young lieutenant asked.

“Good God, no!” General Amador was quick to say. He knew Santa Anna would fly into a screaming rage if he should learn of this. “No. Absolutely not. The general is... occupied at the moment.”

“Should we resume the shelling, then?”

General Amador was silent for a moment, listening to the fiddle and the pipes. He shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “Not yet.”

“But General! There are quite a number in the plaza of the mission. They are exposed. We could kill many of them.”

“We will kill them all very soon,” the general said, weariness in his voice. “Are we such a barbaric gathering here that you would deny dying men a few moments of pleasure?”

“No, General.”

“Then allow them what simple pleasures they can afford, Lieutenant. Resume the shelling when their festivities are concluded.”

“Yes, sir.”

General Amador turned, then stopped and looked back toward the faint sounds of music. He listened for a moment, sighed, shook his head, then swung into the saddle and rode back to the town.

A sergeant in command of a battery walked over to the lieutenant. “ Loco, ” he said, jerking a thumb toward the walls of the mission.

The lieutenant shook his head. “No, Sergeant. Just very brave men. Very brave men.”

Thirty-seven

The Ninth Day

March 2, 1836

Although the men of the Alamo never knew it, those delegates meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos, on this date, officially rejected the Mexican constitution of 1824 and with a rousing cheer, adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring Texas to be a Republic.

Had they somehow by magic learned of that decision, Davy Crockett would have more than likely spat on the ground and said, “Why, hellfire! We done that a week and a half ago! You boys is suckin’ hind tit!”

Or words to that effect.

The bombardment from the Mexican cannon continued without letup. Miraculously, despite all the hundreds of shells that had dropped all around and inside the mission, none of the defenders had been killed and only a few had been wounded, none of them seriously.

Travis had given the order: “Save your powder, boys. Don’t bother returning the fire. We’ll need everything we’ve got when...” He stumbled over the last words. “... the time comes.”

Bowie called Jamie to his quarters. Jamie was shocked at the man’s appearance. Bowie had lost weight and his eyes were deep-set in his head. He looked much older than his years. He handed Jamie several sheets of paper.

“Commit it to memory, lad,” Bowie requested. “Just in case something happens to your pouch. Sit down over there by the light and read it over and over. I’ll rest while you’re doing that. I am so damned tired!”

Bowie was dying.

Jamie committed the pages to memory over the rasping breathing of Jim Bowie. Sam walked over to his master and covered him with a thin blanket.

“He’s asleep, now, Mr. Jamie. He might not wake up for hours. Them pages you read, was they most eloquent?”

“Yes, Sam. They were very eloquent.”

“I knowed they would be. He mutters in his sleep a lot after he writes. Words like liberty and freedom and abouts how the men of this garrison gonna shed they blood for all Texas to be free. He can speak right good when he puts his mind to it.”

“You like him, don’t you, Sam?”

“He don’t beat me none.”

Jamie arched an eyebrow at that simple statement of loyalty and devotion. “Stay out of the fight, Sam. Stay clear out of it and when it’s over, head for the high country and live out your life as a free man.”

“We’ll see,” the freed slave said.

Jamie stepped out of the sick room and walked across the plaza. His patience was now wearing thin. While he no longer felt like a traitor because of his orders to leave the fort when the battle was nigh, he felt helpless locked inside the walls. And he was outraged that these brave men had been abandoned to die. He paused at Travis’s hail from his quarters, changed direction, and walked over to the colonel.

“Yes, sir?”

“Bonham should be back tomorrow. I’m sending Smith out tomorrow night. You’d better go with him, Jamie.”

“Is that an order, sir?”

Travis hesitated. “Ah... no, Jamie. It isn’t. But I feel that Santa Anna will not wait much longer. For some reason, March sixth keeps creeping into my mind. I am not a man much given to premonition, Jamie, and have told no one else that.”

“I won’t repeat it, sir.”

“I want you out of here no later than midnight on the fifth, Jamie. And that is an order. Those dispatches in your pouch will be our last farewells to the outside world.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“You saw Bowie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“His condition?”

“Worse. He’s very weak.”

Travis nodded, and then left when he was called by a work party along the log-reinforced south wall by the church.

“March the sixth,” Jamie muttered. “Well, maybe the colonel is wrong.”

He wasn’t.

Thirty-eight

The Tenth Day

March 3, 1836

The spirits of the men inside the walls of the Alamo were high, and for a time on this day, Travis still held out some hope that help was on the way He had once more composed a letter and would be sending it out under cover of darkness that evening. John Smith would be the courier.

At midmorning, Bonham rode back into the mission and told Travis, “There will be no help, Bill. We are considered a lost cause. No help is coming.”

“John is leaving this night,” Travis said. “I have to keep trying.”

“Don’t ask him to return,” Bonham pleaded. “We’re doomed.”

“Then why did you come back?” Travis snapped.

“To die shoulder to shoulder with my comrades,” was Bonham’s reply.

Travis’s spirits sagged. He knew Bonham was speaking the truth. The men of the Alamo had been abandoned. He walked dejectedly to his quarters.

“You’re all fools,” Louis Moses Rose told a gathering of stony-faced men. “Not cowards; just fools. Look, I’ve been a soldier all my life. Listen to me. This place has no strategic value. None. Let’s get out of this death trap and fight Santa Anna Injun style. We can do Texas a lot more good that way.”

“It ain’t that this old mission has any value, man,” Crockett said. “It’s provin’ a point to Mexico that we’re doin’.”

“What the hell is the point of dying?” Rose snapped back.

“How ’bout your friend, Jim Bowie?” Micajah Autry asked. “You just gonna leave him here?”

“Jim’s dying,” Rose said softly. “I went to see him just an hour ago. He didn’t even know me.”

“Go if you must,” Daniel Cloud said. “I won’t fault you. But as for me, I’m stayin’.”