Gone to Texas (11 page)

“Maybe so,” Ellis admitted, “but as long as he lives there's hope. I aim to find him.” He signalled to his men to ride on. They continued pushing hard for several days, until they rode into the village of Cuicatlán.

An old man with a white beard arose from a bench and shuffled into the dusty street toward Ellis, who stopped his horse and leaned toward him.

“Without asking,” the old man said quietly, “I know you are patriots.” Ellis nodded, while the other villagers stared at the soldiers and weary mules.

“Rayón is near,” the old man continued, his voice so low it was barely audible. “The enemy are also not far away, so take care,
señor.
They have spies even here. Be careful who you trust.”

“Thanks, my friend,” Ellis said softly. “I'm glad to know there's at least one patriot army left.” He straightened in his saddle and rode on, stopping after they had crossed a stream to let the mules rest and graze. He sent scouts to watch for the enemy and a man to find Rayón.

The man returned an hour later. “The enemy are on his trail, so he's got to keep moving,” he reported. “They're sure to see our tracks, too. Some of the villagers may have already gone to tell them about us. We had better get out of here
pronto.
”

Ellis glanced at the tired mules dejectedly nibbling grass, and wished he hadn't pushed them so hard. His mind raced. We've got two choices—run or fight. The only way we can escape is to head into the mountains, but the mules would never make it. That means we'd have to abandon all this powder. His face felt hot at the thought of the enemy gloating over his powder supply. No, by God! That won't do. We'll fight!

He sent the man back to Rayón with a terse message. “I intend to make a stand. If you can't come, send all the men you can spare.”

Ellis ordered the packers to take the mules a mile or two ahead and let them graze. Then he and Méndez looked for a defensive position. The creek the enemy cavalry would have to cross had high banks, which meant that crossing it would take several minutes. At one side was a low rise; facing the crossing was a small hill. Ellis placed Méndez and fifty men out of sight behind the rise. “Don't fire a shot until they're in the creek,” he ordered. With the rest of his men he waited halfway up the low hill, in easy musket shot of the crossing. Once in the creek, the enemy would face a crossfire.

The messenger to Rayón rode up. “How many men is he sending?” Ellis asked.

“None. He says to save what you can and leave immediately.” Ellis cursed. He saw one of his scouts dashing up. No time to worry about Rayón now, he thought.

“Enemy coming,” the scout shouted. “Be here in minutes.”

Ellis waited with his men on the hillside in full view of the crossing. His mouth was dry but he felt no fear when a hundred or more cavalrymen trotted up to the creek and checked their horses. When they saw Ellis had no artillery, they laughed scornfully and brandished their lances.

Come on! Come on! Ellis thought, fearing they might wait for infantry and artillery before attacking. But with a shout, they urged their horses down the steep bank and plunged into the stream.

“Fire!” Ellis shouted, and his and Méndez' men poured a deadly crossfire into the cavalry, emptying many saddles as the horses floundered in the water. Ellis pulled all of his men to the crest of the hill, where they knelt and aimed their muskets. The surviving cavalrymen spurred their mounts up the bank and came on. They met such a withering fire that halfway up the hill they broke and fled. Ellis gave a shout of triumph while his men cheered.

They caught the riderless cavalry horses and hurried after the pack train. A few hours later, a messenger from Rayón overtook them and handed Ellis a note.

“You must join forces with me,” Rayón had written.

He didn't come when I needed help, Ellis thought. He probably wouldn't another time. Not wanting a confrontation with Rayón, he stalled.

“Tell him I'll meet him at the Llanos de Apán in a week,” he told the messenger, who rode away. Then Ellis and his men continued on their way, traveling slowly to spare the mules.

Several days later, Ellis saw a rider approaching from the north, and wondered if he might be a courier. He wasn't in uniform, which could mean that he was a patriot. Ellis and the rider eyed each other cautiously.

“Are you an Americano?” the rider asked. Ellis nodded.

“At least I used to be,” he said. “I've been here so long I'm as much Mexican as American. You're looking for an Americano?” The man cautiously admitted that he was.

“Patriot or royalist?”

“Patriot,” the man said, barely above a whisper.

“That's what we are,” Ellis told him. The man exhaled deeply and looked relieved.

“I guess there's not many of us left,” Ellis added. “What's his name?”

“Colonel Bean.”

“You've found him. Got a message for me?” The courier withdrew a letter that had been concealed under the skirt of his saddle.

“It's from Morelos,” he said. “I was afraid the enemy would find it and shoot me.”

Ellis read the letter with difficulty, for although he spoke Spanish fairly well, he'd had little practice reading it.

“My friend Elias,” it began, “we have suffered serious reverses, and many of our former friends have gone over to the enemy. One of them will probably kill me, but that's not why I write. We now have a constitution and a congress that has declared our independence. These actions make our cause respectable in the eyes of the world, even if we must hide in the mountains like wild beasts. But unless we receive help soon, I fear we cannot last much longer. I call on you for one last favor to save our cause. Go to your countrymen and persuade them, beg them if you must, to send us arms. Then get men and invade Texas, for that will draw the enemy away from us. I am counting on you not to fail. Go with God. Morelos.”

Ellis' hands trembled so the letter rattled. In a voice that sounded strange, he said to the courier, “Tell him I'll do my best and that I'm on my way. Take this pack train to him.” He kept two of the mules and their loads in case he met other patriots who needed powder. The two mules brayed mournfully as the others disappeared.

The two thousand pesos he'd brought from Oaxaca weren't enough to buy many guns. There were, he knew, many wealthy planters around Tehuacán who respected Morelos. Leaving his men with Captain Méndez, he hurried there. Mier y Terán, now a brigadier general, greeted him warmly, then together they raised ten thousand pesos in a few days. Ellis returned to his men, then headed for the Gulf coast, anxious to be on his way to New Orleans.

At Puente del Rey, he found the fearless Guadalupe Victoria with a few hundred men but little ammunition. Ellis gave him most of his powder. “I'd make more for you,” he told Guadalupe Victoria, “but Morelos sent me to get help in the States. I've got to find a ship.”

“Go to Nautla,” Guadalupe Victoria advised him. “Philipio still holds out there, so it's safe at least for the moment.”

Ellis hurried to the little fishing village north of Veracruz, where the black patriot leader, Philipio, welcomed him. “Lafitte's ships from around New Orleans put in here from time to time,” he said when Ellis told him about his mission. “I'm sure one of them will take you.”

After anxiously scanning the horizon for five days, Ellis and Philipio saw a schooner sailing south past Nautla. Philipio studied it through a small eyeglass.

“That's
El Tigre,
one of Lafitte's ships,” he said. “I'm sure of it.”

Ellis and his men signalled to the vessel, and Ellis was elated when the crew lowered the white sails. But no boat came ashore. Ellis watched and waved his arms, but the crew finally raised the sails, and the schooner glided on toward Veracruz. Ellis' arms sagged by his sides and he exhaled deeply, feeling limp, defeated.

“Don't give up,” Philipio consoled him. “She'll probably stop on her way north.”

The next morning, Philipio's shore guard reported seeing a small schooner that appeared to be adrift at the mouth of a river half a mile from Nautla. Ellis loaded his men in three
piraguas,
then rowed to the little vessel and boarded it. There was no crew on it. They sailed it to Nautla; below decks they found a welcome supply of flour and dried beef.

“I don't know anything about sailing,” Ellis remarked, “but maybe you can persuade some of these fisherman to get me to New Orleans in her.” He looked expectantly at Philipio.

The black leader shook his head. “No, Elias,” he replied, “she's only a coaster. She has neither compass nor sextant. She has to stay in sight of land.”

“Damn. I wouldn't know how to use them anyway.”

The following day, they saw two sails coming north, close to the shore. “The one in the lead is
El Tigre,"
Philipio said. “The other is a brig, and it looks like it's after her.”

They watched, spellbound, as the brig ran up English colors just before opening fire on the smaller vessel. The schooner sailed swiftly around the brig and shot away its mainmast, then lay to. The brig lowered two longboats and sent them toward
El Tigre
with a boarding party. Ellis held his breath as the schooner's guns sank one of the boats and badly damaged the other. The brig sent a launch to pick the men from the water, then limped south in defeat.
El Tigre
continued on to the north, still close to shore. Ellis and his men signalled frantically and waved their arms in vain.

Deeply discouraged, Ellis slept poorly that night, imagining Morelos surrounded by enemies and desperately looking for help from America. In the morning, a woman who had come down the coast with eggs and poultry to sell told him she'd seen a vessel near the shore a few miles away. It wasn't moving, she said, and its deck was covered with men.

“It's probably royalists from Tampico after us,” Ellis said. “We'd better keep them from landing.” Philipio agreed. Ellis and his men hurried up the coast until they saw the motionless vessel, its sails furled. Ellis hid his troops and sent five unarmed men to the beach to hail those on board.

He heard them shouting and the men on the ship replying, then one of the five returned. “It's
El Tigre,"
he told Ellis. “They're sending a boat ashore now that they know we're not royalists.” Ellis hastened to the beach as the boat approached, and was delighted to see that one of the men who stepped ashore was an American.

“What are you doing here?” Ellis asked him.

The American smiled ruefully. “I could ask you the same question,” he replied. “You saw us whip the English brig yesterday?” Ellis nodded. “The Spaniards at Veracruz offered the captain two thousand pesos to capture or sink us. Well, after we ran him off, we had to celebrate.” He pursed his lips. “We overdid it,” he sheepishly admitted. “No one was paying attention to where we were headed, and we ran aground on that damned reef.”

Ellis sent some of his men for the little schooner, and they took
El Tigre's
crew to Nautla. From the American, Ellis learned that the U.S. and Britain had been at war for two years.

“I'm on my way to get help for the patriots,” Ellis said. “With a war going on, it's not a good time for that, but I've got to try.” He waited impatiently for ten days while
El Tigre's
crew prepared the little schooner for the long voyage. Then, taking as many of
El Tigre's
crew as the schooner could carry, they sailed from Nautla.

Several weeks later, they landed at the Lafittes' headquarters on Grand Terre, a long, low island that lay across Barataria Bay. Jean and Pierre Lafitte, who had come from Haiti, were smugglers and privateers—some called them pirates. They had a large house, a fleet of ships, and a number of warehouses. Ellis left his schooner with them and set out from the bay with an old Frenchman as guide. He led the way through alligator-infested marshes and bayous, under huge trees that were festooned with Spanish moss. Ellis was greatly relieved when they emerged into the sunlight at the Mississippi, nine miles above New Orleans. The old Frenchman left him and returned to Barataria.

After walking along the bank for half an hour, Ellis came to a plantation where an overseer and a gang of slaves were clearing land. When he explained his need to get to New Orleans, the overseer had a slave row him there. Walking past shops owned by Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Americans, Ellis found the government house and called on Governor Claiborne, whose fine clothes and neatly trimmed hair and beard contrasted sharply with Ellis' shaggy appearance.

“I may not look like a Mexican agent,” Ellis admitted, “but Morelos sent me here to get arms for the patriots. After that, he wants me to organize an invasion of Texas to give him some breathing room.”

Claiborne held his quill pen in his right hand and stroked the end of the feather with his left while he looked Ellis over. “There's no law against giving or selling arms to the insurgents, ” he said evenly, “ but organizing an expedition against another country on American soil is a crime.” Ellis frowned.

“I hear there's already been an expedition to Texas,” he said.

“That was organized in the Neutral Ground, where we have no jurisdiction, and I'm partly to blame for not trying to stop it,” Claiborne replied. “The federal government doesn't intend for it to happen again. It caused a lot of unpleasant diplomatic exchanges and ugly charges of government complicity.” He leaned back in his chair, still toying with his quill pen.

“As you'll soon know if you don't already,” he continued, “there are a lot of men—Frenchmen, Mexicans, Americans—in New Orleans who are plotting to send expeditions against Texas and Tampico to help the patriots. General Humbert is one—he was an officer in the Napoleonic wars; now he claims to be a government agent, but everyone considers him a bit daft. Gutiérrez and Alvarez de Toledo invaded Texas in 1812; they had a falling out and lost most of their men as a result. I really don't expect any of them to do much, but I'm sure that if an expedition of Americans prepares to leave from New Orleans to invade Mexico, federal officials will intervene. Now if Mexican refugees in the Neutral Ground want to fight their way back into Texas, that's their business. The government will probably look the other way.”