Paxton and the Lone Star (59 page)

An hour later, when she could no longer make him out among the crowd of men that marched down the road along the side of Buffalo Bayou, she turned to the fire and put on the coffee. It was Wednesday, the nineteenth day of April.

General Luther O'Shannon rode at a distance of half a horse's length to the rear and three aides away from Santa Anna, and mused on the quality of intelligence
el Presidente
was forced to rely on. Earlier that morning they had thought Houston's army was headed for the United States border. The plan of action had been to capture the provisional government of the so-called Republic of Texas, then move quickly to cut off what was left of the rebel army. And now they found out that that same army was behind them! It was unconscionable. If he had his way, heads would roll.

A sour thought. Flush from victories at the Alamo and Coleto, prideful of his roughshod advance over practically all of the rebellion-wracked territory, Santa Anna had become his own expert. He had never said as much in so many words, of course, but O'Shannon could tell when his services were no longer needed. The process had been painstakingly simple. As Santa Anna's generals brought him more and more good news, he had listened less and less to O'Shannon. The next step was obvious. The other Mexican generals had always been jealous of the Irishman. Now that they were in the ascendancy they would drape the first failure they could find or manufacture over O'Shannon's shoulders. There was only one solution to that problem: to slip quietly away with what gold he could carry before he lost his head.

They'd had a rough night, but not a man complained. Marching along Buffalo Bayou through the afternoon, they'd crossed two and a half miles below Harrisburg, then turned back in the face of a norther and slogged through the cold, wet night. Midnight saw them wading Sims's Bayou, two o'clock picking their way over the bridge that spanned Vince's Bayou. By daybreak, they were encamped almost directly across from where they had started. They had spent half an afternoon and a whole night to make little more than a hundred yards that, in dryer times, they could have waded in half an hour.

Still, no one complained. Instead they laughed, joked, and bragged. They checked their powder and flints, swabbed out their rifles. They slaughtered a half dozen beefs and prepared a hearty breakfast. They listened with pricked-up ears and wide grins when the word was passed through the ranks: Santa Anna was coming to them.

By the time they finished eating, a scout came riding hard into camp. One and all, they ran out of the trees to the edge of the meadow and saw the sight they had been waiting for for nearly two months. Barely three hundred yards across the meadow, the short, squat Santa Anna sat his horse and looked back at them. Behind him, in battle array, his army waited his command.

True returned from reconnoitering and strode toward his brother's campfire. He noticed Joseph, Scott, and Mackenzie digging an embankment for themselves. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked, astonished. “I thought we were going to fight.”

“Digging in,” Joseph explained.

Mackenzie wiped a dirty forearm across his face. “Houston's orders,” the youth said, almost in tears from frustration.

“What orders?”

“The word's been passed,” Joseph said, angrily throwing a spadeful of earth. “We wait.”

True rubbed the back of his neck and looked around in disbelief.

Wait … for what? No. Not now. Not so close.

The men continued to dig in the dark earth.

O'Shannon kept his face neutral, saluted smartly, wheeled about, and marched out of Santa Anna's tent. “We will wait for General Cos,” he snapped to an aide. “Tell the men to prepare a barricade along the edge of the meadow and then eat. You!” he barked at a diminutive figure who carried
el Presidente's
opium pouch. “He wants you. Now.”

The damned fool! O'Shannon withdrew to his own tent to fume. There was no better time. The rebels were a misbegotten outfit with no discipline. Ill-fed so-called soldiers with backbone but no training. The time to attack was that moment. The hell with Cos. They didn't need Cos. What they needed was a general willing to take a chance or two. The more O'Shannon thought about it, the more he was sure. The first opportunity he got, he was leaving. By sundown the next day, he'd be gone.

“Bloody sit around with our fingers up our asses. What the
hell!”

“Heard that question a lot of late, ‘what the hell.'”

“Couple of boys drew blood this afternoon.”

“Not enough, goddamn it. Hell, that was just a skirmish. I don't want no Mex scout. Santa Anna's the one I'll roast.”

“Stand in line, boyo.”

“Line, hell. We'll run again. You wait and see.”

“Bullshit.”

“A gold Eaglc against the pimple on your ass says we will. Any takers?”

“Wait, hell. Can't wait much longer.”

“Don't hear no one offering to take the pimple.”

“None of us. But I'll take half of that gold Eagle.”

True listened to the voices, the easy banter and never ending grumbling that always accompanied an army. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but the phrase echoed in his skull and kept him awake.

Can't wait much longer. Can't wait much longer.

Noon. Afternoon, by the sun. Better if the rain had kept up. They wouldn't be sleeping so soundly.

O'Shannon paced, kept a wary eye on the empty meadow. Jesus, was he the only one in the whole damned camp with sense enough to worry? It looked like it.
El Presidente
had kept his men up all night waiting for an attack that never came. O'Shannon had tried to tell him that all that riding around out in the meadow and on their flanks was a rebel ruse to keep them awake, but would he listen? Of course not. And now his men were exhausted and he'd given them leave to rest along with Cos's five hundred who had arrived an hour earlier. While Santa Anna himself dreamed after his daily pipe of opium, to boot. Well, the hell with it. Let them sleep. He was going to pack while nobody was looking. There were always wars. He'd have no trouble finding work. A shame to leave Mexico, though. He had hoped to put down roots there. Had tried, even with a son.

The bitterness welled in his throat. The son who had been taken from him by True Paxton. Voices returned to haunt him with faint echoes. His eyes played tricks with his mind. The vision pulsed and cleared. Suspended in the air, Ramez was staring at him. Glistening red and white entrails spilled from his poor, broken abdomen and his shattered arm hung straight down to point at his father. Horror-stricken, O'Shannon shrank from the sight. “Not me,” he breathed under the accusatory pointing fingers. “Not me. It wasn't my fault.”

Miraculously, the hand moved, swung like a slow pendulum, and stopped at the rebel camp across the meadow. O'Shannon turned and stared across the open ground. Was that it? Could he believe the sign he'd been given? Of course. Paxton was there! It was improbable to be sure, but he was there, waiting, and would come to him.

Come to him to be killed, this time. His face grim, O'Shannon returned to his tent and entered. He could wait one more day, he thought, buckling on his saber. Meticulous, now, he removed his pistol from its case and began to check it thoroughly.

One more day. Not too long to wait to see a man sent to Hell.

Nothing. A few shots the afternoon before, but then nothing. Thick stands of trees on either side of the bayou obscured the view. Firetail whinnied and pulled at his ground tether. He sensed it too, Elizabeth thought. The sun was warm and dulled her senses, but she had promised to have hot coffee and a meal when he returned. She added water to the beans and stirred them. She moved the coffee pot a little further from the fire. And then, since there was nothing else to do, she sat back and waited.

“Bullshit.”

“Too strong, my ass!”

The word had passed like wildfire. The men's faces turned red with anger. They cursed Santa Anna and the Mexicans, but mostly their own Runaway General. His orders stood. Santa Anna's army was too strong, especially with the arrival of its reinforcements. They were going to retreat. Again. True listened as the orders were explained, and then did a peculiar thing. He picked up his rifle and started to walk. “Now's as good a time as any,” he said aloud.

He walked along the line of men lying behind the low earthworks they'd thrown up the morning before. “Going for a little walk,” he told each of them. “You're welcome to come along if you want.”

That word passed, too, as fast or faster than Houston's. By the time True had gone fifty yards, he met Joseph coming his way. “You really going?” Joseph asked.

“I am.”

“Alone?”

“If need be.”

Joseph thought about that and nodded. “Maybe I'll walk with you.”

“Glad for the company.”

“Wish Andrew was along.”

“He is.”

Joseph shouldered his rifle and stepped onto the earthworks next to True.

“Paxton,” a man called from their rear. “Lieutenant Paxton. Gen'ral Sam wants to see you in his tent.
Pronto, amigo.”

“Tell him to come to me.”

“Huh? Where'll he find you?”

“Across the meadow. In Santa Anna's camp.”

True and Joseph started. Before they'd gone three steps, men began to join them at the edge of the line of trees that had sheltered them. Two men became four, and in like manner became ten, twenty, a hundred, eight hundred.

The line paused just in the shade of the trees. Before them lay three hundred yards of open ground, then a barricade of wagons and logs behind which rested the Mexican army enjoying its
siesta.

“How the hell do we cross it?” someone whispered.

“One step at a time,” came the answer. It was Sam Houston on his white charger. The General had a sly look on his face.

Still they waited. To True's left, the cannon crews were wheeling out their weapons. Past them, the line kept moving for a moment before it stopped. True stared at the Mexican camp, saw in his mind Luther O'Shannon's humiliating, sneering face just out of reach. He stared at the camp and saw Andrew and Buckland, saw Kevin and Nels and Dennis and all the others, all the others become a mound of charred bones.

“Go on, boy,” he heard a voice say, and swore it was Hogjaw. He glanced up, saw a hawk circling far overhead. He stared at the camp.

“Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”

Ten yards crossed, now twenty. A murmuring force, eight hundred strong. All the pent-up frustration and bitterness and anger and rage had been unleashed at last and now walked through the sun across the flower-flecked meadow.

“Remember the Alamo!” Louder now. No power on earth could stop them now.

Fifty yards, now a hundred. Still not seen! Almost to a man, they were suddenly running forward, a storm of vengeance and hatred breaking over the land. They were seen. The alarm was raised. Halfway there! The sentries began to panic and run!

“Remember …”

Almost, now. They could see the enemy's faces, drawn and haggard. See them stumble and run.

“… the …”

Almost, almost! Rifles were leveled. Knives unsheathed. Now! Now!

“… Alamo!!”

A roar erupted from eight hundred throats. A wild, hideous, bloodthirsty warcry and the rippling explosion of rifle fire rent the afternoon.

The horde poured over and through the barricade. Dazed sentries died rubbing sleep from their eyes. Men scrambled from under blankets and out of tents. Half-dressed, in stocking feet, weapons stacked out of reach, the foot soldiers watched in horror and then ran in terror from the flashing guns and knives and axes as the rebels charged into the slumbering, peaceful Mexican camp. Lancers died reaching for their lances. Cavalrymen raced for their horses, slashed the tethers, mounted bareback, and then fought their plunging beasts as they tried desperately to control the animals.

Filled with his own bloodlust, True leaped a barrel and a stack of saddles. A man loomed up in front of him and leveled his musket. True shot him, paused to reload. Texians swarmed him. The gunfire and shouting was deafening. A lancer ran at him. True sidestepped, parried the thrust with his rifle, twisted his hands, and drove the butt into the man's throat. A rifle ball plucked at his sleeve. He fired at a naked soldier standing awestruck in the door of a tent, then quit trying to reload and used his gun like a club.

All sense of order was lost. Pandemonium ruled. The Mexican officers barked commands to stand, to form lines, to fight, but the soldiers ran.

True's rifle broke. He threw it away and used his pistol, fired, loaded, fired again on the run.

“Me no Alamo! Me no Goliad!”
came the screams, the pleas for mercy.

A soldier charged True. Another rebel shoved True aside, caught the soldier's bayonet in the chest, and fired his own pistol. The two men collapsed in a embrace of death. On his knees, True caught a glimpse of Houston leaping from his dying horse and onto a loose pony. Barely pausing, the general wielded his bloody saber, hacking from side to side, felling soldiers whether they stood and fought or turned to run.

The battle passed him by. True ran to catch up, stopped to help a fellow Texian surrounded by three Mexicans and fighting for his life. A tremendous roar deafened him, almost knocked him off his feet again. He turned to see one of the Mexican cannons that had been swiveled about and fired into a compact group of Mexican regulars trying to form a skirmish line. Grapeshot ripped through the troops, shredding arms, legs, and torsos.

A musket ball carved a furrow in True's left forearm. He aimed and killed his attacker with a shot to the head. The dead man tumbled into a cook fire. A cauldron of chili tipped over and spread its greasy contents over ground already moist with blood.

The battle had disintegrated into small fights involving a half dozen men at most. True evaded one encounter, avoided a second by ducking through an open tent. No more than five minutes had passed, and already the Texians had won the day. It was time to search for the one man he knew had to be there. For Luther O'Shannon.