The Yellow Rose (8 page)
She turned and began to load her rifle. She saw that several of the soldiers were on the ground and were returning the fire, although they could see nobody. They were shouting and screaming. Jerusalem finished loading, and lifting her rifle, she took dead aim and knocked one of the soldiers off. She turned to reload, but then something slapped her on the back. She thought,
Who could have hit me?
But then the slap drove her to the floor, and the searing pain came.
Clay had shot two of the soldiers, but he saw one of the Mexicans whose horse had been shot get up and run for the house. He burst out of the smokehouse at a dead run, ignoring the pain in his side. The soldier saw him, turned, and drew his saber. He started for Clay, but Clay pulled the heavy bowie knife from his belt and threw it with all of his strength. It caught the soldier in the stomach, and he stared at it. He lifted his eyes, and Clay saw that he was very young, not over sixteen, it seemed. He did not wait to see the man fall but glanced around and saw that seven of the soldiers were riding away furiously. Two of them fell as they reached the outer perimeters of the yard, and Clay was shocked to see arrows coming from their bodies. As the other five fled, the three Comanches appeared out of nowhere and rode after the soldiers at full speed, uttering wild screams.
Suddenly Clay turned, for Julie had come out of the house. “Jerusalem’s been shot!” she cried.
Instantly, Clay felt a chill. He ran inside past Julie and found Jerusalem lying facedown, and her back was bloody.
The wound was evidently high on her back. Without hesitation Clay reached up, grabbed the neckline of her dress at the back, and ripped it open. As he tore away the undergarment, he was aware that Julie was standing over him.
“Is she dead, Clay?”
“No. It ain’t bad, Julie. Thank God! It hit her a glancing blow, but she’s losing blood fast. Go keep the men out of here, and you and Moriah get some water and some strips of cloth to bandage this wound.”
Clay hardly heard the voices as Julie kept the men locked out. He was aware that Mary Aidan had come and was watching him, her face white. “She’ll be all right, honey. I just have to do a little bandaging.” When Moriah came back with water, he said, “You take Mary Aidan out. She don’t need to see this.”
Julie was there then with cloth that she was tearing up.
“Make a pad that I can put over this track.”
Julie instantly folded the cloth until it was long enough to cover the wound that had plowed a furrow into Jerusalem’s upper back. “It didn’t hit her straight on. It would have killed her if it had. Are you all right, Jerusalem?” Clay said.
“I’m . . . all right.”
“I know it hurts, but we’ve got to get it bandaged to stop the bleeding.”
Clay washed away the blood with the water Moriah had brought, took the bandage, and carefully put it over her back. He hesitated then and looked up. “Julie, maybe a woman ought to do this. It’s got to be tied around in front. You’d better do it.”
“Nope,” Julie said. “I’m no good at things like that. You go right ahead.”
Clay hesitated, but Jerusalem said, “Go on, Clay. Do it.” She sat up, gasping from pain, and pulled her dress down until it hung around her waist. Clay was behind her, and instantly he took some of the long strips and began to pass them around her body. He put one over her shoulder and several high over her chest. Even as he did, he could not help notice that her back was as smooth as a young girl’s. It was strong and well-formed, but he put that out of his mind.
When he tied the last bandage behind, he said, “You can pull your dress up now.”
Jerusalem pulled her dress up. It was torn in the back, but she held it up in front, then turned to face him. She saw that Clay’s face was flushed.
“Well, I guess you’ve seen a woman’s back a time or two.”
“Well, I reckon not under these circumstances. We got off lucky, but I wish it was me that got nicked instead of you.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t.”
Clay licked his lips and said nervously, “When I saw you lyin’ on the floor with blood all over your back, I like to have died, Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem stared at him curiously. “Did you, Clay? Why did you feel like that?” She saw him struggle for an answer, but he was unable to find one.
“I reckon they’ll be worried about you. I’ll go fetch ’em. That bandage will have to be changed pretty often.”
Jerusalem smiled then. “Well, I’ve got a good doctor. You can take care of that, I expect.” She saw Clay stare at her blankly, then he shook his head and turned and hurried from the room. She smiled as she watched him go. “It’s good to see you shook up even if it takes a bare back to do it, Clay Taliferro!”
S
am Houston stood looking at the dispatches that Deaf Smith had just arrived with. He had taken them from a Mexican courier. When Houston looked up from them, there was a gleam in his eyes. “Well, Deaf, I reckon it’s time to find out who’s the big dog.”
“Reckon so, General.” Deaf gestured toward the messages. “According to these, you ain’t likely to catch Santa Anna with fewer men. I doubt he’s got more than seven, eight hundred in his column.”
“But he’ll have more if we don’t take him now.”
“What’s your plan, General?” Deaf asked.
“I’ll tell you, Deaf, but then you keep it to yourself. I don’t want the men to know what’s going on until it happens.” He pulled a rough map out of the desk drawer and laid it flat on the table. “Okay, here we are. Up here is the San Jacinto River, and over here is Buffalo Bayou. That’s where we are now.”
“You’re right about that. It looks to me like we’ve got ourselves caught in a trap.”
“If Santa Anna moves in, he’ll come in from here, you see, and he thinks he’ll have us trapped. And in a way he will.”
Suddenly, Deaf Smith laughed his high-pitched eerie laugh. “I think I got your meanin’, Sam. Our boys can’t run away this way because the river’s there. They can’t run this way because of Buffalo Bayou. They could take off toward Harrisburg, I reckon.”
“Not if you take some men and burn the bridge.” Houston smiled grimly.
Deaf Smith stared at the general. “We’d be trapped for sure, wouldn’t we?”
“That’s right, but that’s my plan. Keep it to yourself. We let Santa Anna’s column come in right here alongside Lake Peggy. I don’t think he’ll come chargin’ in. I think he’ll set up camp and wait for reinforcements. If he does that, then we’ve got him.”
“What if the reinforcements get here before we can attack?”
“They better not,” Houston said and smiled frostily. “That would ruin my plan, and I do hate to have my plans ruined. Go burn that bridge, Deaf, but don’t spill my plan to anybody.”
Santa Anna’s scouts had finally discovered the location of Sam Houston and his small force. They had brought the word back, and Santa Anna had made them repeat their report several times. “You say he is trapped in between this river and this swamp?”
“Yes, General. There is a bridge, but it’s very small. If you attack head on, they would have no place to run. They would be trapped.”
Santa Anna was an impetuous man, but something about this situation set off an alarm. He believed the scouts and moved his men into place and studied the map carefully. The area was barely three square miles and was roughly triangular, bounded on the northeast and the northwest by the San Jacinto River and the Buffalo Bayou. It was open on the southwest, but the ground was marshy along the margins of the waterways, where the land was cut with shallow ravines. On the night of the twentieth of April, Santa Anna encamped on the southeastern corner of the plain up against an arm of the San Jacinto River. He walked about and studied the terrain, wishing that the reinforcements would arrive soon. He walked along the line and inspected the placement of his soldiers. The Matamoros Battalion covered the front, which extended from the edge of Lake Peggy on the east for about twelve hundred yards, running into a little copse of woods and then curling toward the southwest. He had only one cannon, a six-pounder, but word had come that more were on the way. On his right flank, he placed five companies, and on the left five more. Somewhat back of these he made his personal camp with the lancers of his escort. His entire force amounted to no more than six hundred and fifty, perhaps, seven hundred men. He had no reserve, just himself and his staff, but he was expecting six hundred reinforcements under General Cos to arrive within a few hours and did not anticipate any serious enemy action before then. He studied the terrain and then went back to his tent, where a young señorita had been brought in to keep him company until the battle started.
On April the twenty-first, Houston held his war council. He had planned to attack on the morning of the twenty-second, but the army was rebellious. They voted company by company to fight immediately, and Houston was secretly pleased. He whispered, “Better they think the attack is their idea, Deaf.”
“I reckon you’re right, General. I don’t know how many men we’re facin’, but we got nearly a thousand here. They couldn’t have many more than that. The thing that bothers me is how we gonna march a thousand men on a bright, sunny day across a mile of open ground. Them Mexicans ain’t militia over there. They’ve been in battles before and know how to fight.”
Houston did not even answer. He had made up his mind, and his bridges were burned. “We’ll form ’em up right now,” he said decisively and began to place his men. He had sixty horsemen mounted under Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, a fierce fighter. Lamar’s orders were to keep the Mexicans from breaking across the prairie. Next, he installed two small companies of Texas regular army with one gun to support each wing. Then Burleson’s first regiment, the Texas backbone of the army, took its place in line. Then Moseley Baker’s riflemen and finally Sidney Sherman’s second with a corps of Kentucky men.
Houston had thought his plan out carefully and stationed the men in a line only one man deep. In the center floated the republic flag: a five-point blue star with the motto
Ubi Libertas Habitat Ibi Nostra Patria Est
—“Where Liberty Lives There Is Our Homeland.” Houston then mounted his huge, white stallion Saracen and looked down the line. They had readied their equipment and formed their companies. Now astride Saracen, Houston took up his position in the center of the line. At three-thirty he drew his sword and waved the army forward. There was no band, but two men, a black drummer and a German fifer, began to play, and the men began to sing along with it. The only tune they knew was a bawdy tune played and sung in brothels:
Will you come to the bow’r I have shaded for you?
Our bed shall be roses all spangled with dew.
There under the bow’r on roses you’ll lie
With a blush on your cheek but a smile in your eye.
To the tune of a song usually sung in the houses of ill-repute, the Texans, tired, dirty, bearded, and terribly angry, leveled their long rifles and marched forward across the open plain. Brodie looked to his left and saw Sam Houston astride his white horse. His knees felt weak, and he gripped his musket so hard that his knuckles were white. He moved forward with the battle line and said to Zane, who was on his left, “Zane, I guess you’d better know now I’m scared plumb to death.”
“So are the rest of us.” Zane turned and grinned. “The older you get, the better you get at coverin’ that up.”
“You’ll be all right,” Rice said, who was on Brodie’s right. “Listen to that song. Not a very good fighting song.”
Neither of them said anything else, and there was a strange silence as the line advanced across the plain. Brodie could not believe that the Mexican army was not there to meet them. A slight hill stood between the two armies with some scattered oak trees, but even so, it was amazing that there was not line after line of armed, uniformed soldiers waiting there to attack them.
It soon became apparent that Santa Anna’s overconfidence had led him to post no scouts and no sentries. Most of his troops were fast asleep. None of the senior officers were aware of the advance of the Texans.
Brodie found himself in a strange mood. He knew he could not run. He could not bear the thought of his friends seeing him fleeing like a coward. He seemed to be caught and marched on with the rest of the advancing men in his company. They emerged from a ravine in the center of the plain, and there, not five hundred yards away, lay the Mexican lines. He saw the tents and men moving about and the horses picketed far to his right. His mouth was dry, and his throat seemed to close up, but Zane laughed.
“Will you look at ’em? They act like they’re out on a blasted picnic! They don’t even know we’re coming.”
“Well, devil throw smoke!” Rice said and actually laughed. “Look at them! They act like men in a play.”
Suddenly, a bugler somewhere to the right sounded the alarm, and men began scurrying around. A cannon cut loose with grape shot, but the fire was too high and went over the heads of the advancing troops. The Texas artillery opened up then. The two guns called the Twin Sisters unlimbered and let fly at two hundred yards in the Mexican lines. Lamar’s cavalry began swinging around to the right as a feint, and the infantry rushed forward. As the Texas line moved forward, the gunners manhandled the Twin Sisters to within seventy yards and then brought them into action. As they opened fire, Brodie heard a cry go up and down the line, and he heard himself shouting. He moved forward at a trot and heard Zane say, “Look, Houston’s gone down.” He turned to see Sam Houston’s horse down, but Houston mounted another horse and pressed on, shouting and waving his sword as his men advanced.
All up and down the line, the Texans were shouting, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember the Alamo!” Suddenly, the line dissolved, and every man ran screaming toward the enemy. When they were no more than twenty yards away, the Texas rifles began to explode in a tremendous roar. Brodie drew his rifle, pulled the trigger, and saw one of the fleeing Mexicans fall down. The eight hundred rifles had left gray uniforms of the dead and dying scrambled all across the trampled ground.
Time seemed to cease for Brodie, and he screamed and charged forward in a battle madness. He stumbled over a body once, and his face was no more than a foot away from the dead man’s. He saw an ant on the face of the dead man, crawling along the lower lip, and the sight sickened Brodie. He got to his feet dazed, reloaded his musket, and pushed forward. Somehow, he had gotten separated from Zane and Rice. He moved forward, and what he saw was not like the battle he had envisioned.
