Ole Devil at San Jacinto (Old Devil Hardin Western Book 4) (28 page)

With a shattering roar, touched
off by the device that Ole Devil and Tommy had planted, the powder
in the wagon at the
center of the Mexicans’ camp exploded.

Instantly, Houston gave the order to
charge!

There were no massed bands to
urge the Texians on with the stirring notes of the
Deguello.
All they could
muster by way of music was a single fife and drum, whose players
knew but one tune. So the attack went under way to the strains
of
‘Will You
Come To The Bower Which I Have Shaded For You?’

Nor was any further inducement
necessary.

Taken by surprise, the Mexicans
were at a furth
er disadvantage. All but a favored few held antiquated
weapons, in the use of which they had received little training.
What was more, being flintlocks, the arms possessed a deadly
failing in such inclement weather. Striking wet frizzen pans, what
few sparks were produced by the flints fell on to damp and ruined
priming powder.

Such an affliction did not affect the
Texians. Their weapons were unimpaired by the elements. Just how
many of the foe they killed with the devastating volley which they
poured into the camp on Houston’s command will never be known, but
the figure must have been high. Following upon it, the Texians
dashed furiously into their enemies’ midst to continue the work
with bayonets, swords, pistols, knives or the butts of rifles.

Already exhausted and dispirited
by the hardships inflicted upon them du
ring the forced march, demoralized by
the discovery that their weapons refused to function when those of
their assailants dealt out death and destruction, the Mexicans
essayed only a minimal token resistance.

Many sought to save their lives
in flight.
^lvii
Ramon Caro was one of their number,
but he was captured by ‘Deaf’ Smith’s scouts on his way
south.

Others
—and they were plentiful—hoping to
gain mercy by disassociating themselves from certain events which
had been calculated to arouse the Texians’ ire, flung down their
weapons and yelled in broken English, ‘Me no Alamo, me no
Goliad!’

Not all the pleas were successful. It would
be futile to suggest that all who wished were allowed to surrender.
A few were cut down with their arms raised, but not as many as
might have been the case if the positions had been reversed.

There were those too who fought
as best they could. Among them was General Manuel Fernandez
Castrill
ón,
who fell after refusing a suggestion that he should flee on the
grounds that, ‘I’ve never shown my back to an enemy and I’m too old
to do it now.’

In not more than eighteen
minutes from the explosion, for which at least the young Mexican
officer who had been involved in the killing of James Bowie at the
Alamo Mission had caused to be grateful,
^lviii
the Battle of San Jacinto was
over.

Six hundred and thirty Mexicans lay dead and
a further seven hundred, a figure which increased as strays were
gathered in, were taken prisoner.

The
Cost to the Texians?

Nine
dead, only two of whom were killed by
bullets, and twenty-three wounded!

And what of the person who was responsible
for the terrible loss of life?

There was not a trace to be
found of
Presidente
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna on the field at San
Jacinto.

Perhaps it is only fitting,
considering the part Ole Devil Hardin had already played in
bringing about
el Presidente’s
downfall, that the following occurred.

While leading a patrol which was
helping to round up the scattered Mexican soldiers on the day after
the battle, the young Texian came upon a forlorn and ignoble figure
hiding among a clump of bushes. Although he was clad in the cheap
and tattered garments of an
Activos’
enlisted man, having discarded his fine raiment
before fleeing on seeing that the tide of battle was going against
him, Ole Devil recognized the self-styled ‘Napoleon of the West’.
If further proof had been needed, it was supplied by the Mexican
prisoners’ shouts of ‘
El Presidente! El Presidente!’
as the captive was being
escorted through their ranks on the way to General Houston’s
headquarters.

With the Battle of San Jacinto
fought and won, the way was open for Texas to become a part of the
United States. It did not come in a short while, nor easily,
but
—as he had
done all through the struggle to win independence—Jackson Baines
Hardin continued to play his part in the developments and to uphold
his reputation as being a ‘li’l ole devil for a fight’.

Although Jackson Baines ‘Ole
Devil’ Hardin had been proven innocent of the murder which had
caused him to flee from Louisiana, the reasons outlined in OLE
DEVIL AND THE CAPLOCKS prevented him from returning. So, having
accepted Texas as his permanent home, he had thrown himself
whole-heartedly into the struggle for independence. Given the rank
of captain and placed in command of Company
^C
C, Texas Light Cavalry—a regiment raised and
equipped by the Hardin, Fog and Blaze clan—he had shown himself to
be a very capable fighting officer. Not only had he an inborn flair
for leadership, he was capable of enforcing his wishes by physical
means when necessary. He was helped in this by having a thorough
knowledge of
savate,
French foot and fist boxing, augmented with several
ju-jitsu
and
karate
tricks learned from
Tommy Okasi,
^lix
q.v.
In addition, he was superbly armed and
expert in the use of weapons.

Made by the Arkansas master
blacksmith and cutler, James Black, who produced the original for
James Bowie,
^lx
Ole Devil’s knife was a copy of that
famous weapon. Sixteen inches in overall length, weighing
forty-three ounces, it had a lugged brass hilt, a concave ivory
handle and a scalloped brass butt cap. Its eleven inches long blade
was two and a quarter inches wide and three-eighths of an inch
thick at the stock. Only the last five and a quarter inches of the
back of the blade was sharpened. This made a concave arc to join
the main cutting surface and form a ‘clip’ point.
^lxi

Although the knife, Ole Devil’s
matched brace of percussion-fired, British-made Manton .54 caliber
single shot pistols and Haiman Bros saber were conventional arms,
the same could not be said of his rifle. It was, in fact, a
successful attempt by the Mormon gunsmith, Jonathan
Browning,
^lxii
to produce a weapon capable of firing
several shots in succession without the need to reload in the usual
manner after each one.

Fifty-eight and seven-eighths
inches in length, the octagonal barrel accounting for forty and
five sixteenths of an inch of this, the Browning Slide Repeating
rifle weighed nine pounds fourteen ounces. The ‘Slide’, a
rectangular iron bar with holes to accommodate the powder, shot and
percussion caps
—generally five in number, as this was the size which could
be carried most conveniently, but longer slides could be had as a
special order—was placed through an aperture in the rifle’s breech.
A thumb-operated lever on the right side of the frame caused the
slide to advance until each chamber moved into line with the
barrel’s bore, then cammed it forward to obtain a gas tight seal.
The hammer was underneath the frame, in front of the trigger-guard,
within easy reach of the forefinger, so the piece could be cocked
without removing it from
¹
the shoulder.

In spite of the difficulty in
transporting the rifle with the slide in position, it was simple in
design and operation, as well as being capable of continuous fire
far in excess of any contemporary weapon. However, during the
period when he was manufacturing it, between 1834 and
’42, he lacked the
facilities to go into large scale production. He would have been
able to do so in later years, but the development of self-contained
metallic cartridges and more compact, if less simple, repeating
arms made it obsolete.
^lxiii

The Author regrets that he is
unable to say why Tommy Okasi, a trained
Samurai,
^lxiv
should have been compelled to leave
Japan with no possibility of ever returning.
^lxv
Even his true name cannot be
divulged. The one he used was an Americanized corruption of that
which he had given when
taken, as the sole survivor, from a derelict
vessel in the China
Sea by a ship under the command of Ole Devil Hardin’s
father. His only possessions were a
daisho
of matched
swords
^lxvi
—comprising of a
tachi
with a thirty inches long blade and
a
wakizashi
about half of the former’s length—made of an exceptionally
high quality steel,
^lxvii
a six foot long bow of a style
peculiar to his nation
^lxviii
and a selection of different
kinds of arrows.
^lxix

In addition to being an expert
with the weapons and a reasonable shot with a pistol or rifle, the
latter skill having been acquired after his arrival in the United
States
^lxx
he was also a master of
ju-jitsu
and
karate.
As these forms of
unarmed combat were practically unheard of in the Western
Hemisphere at that time,
^lxxi
they were useful in helping to offset
any disadvantages in height and weight when he found himself in
conflict with larger or heavier men.

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