Jamie held her, letting her weep and get it out of her system. Kate was a strong woman, but she had kept her emotions all bottled up for too long, so the children would not see her shed tears and get them upset.
After a time, she pulled away from him and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of cloth. “There now!” she said, patting her hair. “That’s over and done with. It will not happen again.”
Jamie smiled in the darkness. “Cry if you want to, Kate. When I saw what we’re going to be up against, I felt like shedding a few tears myself.”
She waited.
“So far, we’ve fought soldiers that were pressed into serving. Prisoners, for the most part, who agreed to serve in the army in return for their sentences being lifted. Those troops I saw down along the border were professionals. And there are thousands more just like them not far behind.”
“Juan says he will take up arms and fight alongside you, Jamie.”
“Yes. There are a lot of Mexicans who will be doing that. I just hope in the years to come, after Texas gets her freedom, and she will, that those people are not forgotten. I’ve met once with a fine gentlemen named Juan Sequin. He’s political chief of the San Antonio district. He’s solidly on our side and has pledged to fight with us.”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “Enough talk of war and politics, Kate. Can’t we think of anything better to do?”
She smiled and they rose from the bench together and walked into the cabin. Moments later, the candle in their bedroom was snuffed out.
* * *
“Jamie Ian MacCallister,” Travis said proudly. “I want you to meet Mr. Stephen Austin.”
The Mexicans had finally released Austin under a grant of general amnesty. But the time in prison had nearly done him in. He was only forty-two years old, but looked twenty years older when Jamie met him in September of 1835. His health was broken and he coughed persistently. He was Secretary of the State of Texas when he would die two days after Christmas 1836.
“I’ve heard much good about you, Jamie,” Austin said. “I want to thank you for volunteering to serve with us.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
“I’ve been told by Bowie that you are a natural leader of men. Would you take a commission and lead a company of Texas volunteers?”
“Sir, I know nothing of leading great groups of men in battle. As you no doubt have been told, I was taught warfare by the Shawnees. That is the way I prefer to wage war.”
Austin smiled, as did Travis and Bowie, who had managed to be together in the same room for twenty minutes without one giving the other an acid piece of his mind.
“Very well, Jamie,” Austin said. “At any rate, I’m glad to have you with us.”
Jamie knew a dismissal when he heard one, and he was glad to leave that stuffy room. Austin had the smell of death about him and he said as much to Bonham, just as the voices of Travis and Bowie in loud argument drifted out of the closed door.
“Prison broke him, Jamie. He isn’t a well man. But he’s a good man.”
“That I could see plainly.”
“He needs rest and lots of it, but I fear he’ll not get it.”
That would prove to be true. In just over a month, Austin would be chosen as a field commander, even though he was not a soldier and did not want the job. Being the man he was, Austin did not turn away from the job.
Travis’s spies reported to him that the Mexican commander at San Antonio, Colonel Domingo de Ugar-techa, was about to mount an expedition against the people of Gonzales, a small community to the east of San Antonio.
“Why?” Travis asked. “They’ve done nothing.”
“To take back a cannon given to them some years ago,” the spy replied.
The small brass cannon had been given the people of Gonzales some years back to help protect them against Indian attack. The cannon itself was very nearly useless. But the very idea of a large Mexican force of soldiers attacking civilians over a cannon that was practically worthless rankled the Texans. Jamie was ordered to ride to Gonzales, to warn the settlers there. When he arrived, he found the citizens already knew of the impending attack and had strung up two huge banners. One said, GO TO HELL, SANTA ANNA. The other banner was hung over the tiny cannon, now mounted on a cart. It read, COME AND TAKE IT.
Jamie, as ordered, let the settlers handle their own affairs, and handle it they did. One hundred fancy-dressed and helmet-plumed mounted Mexican dragoons came face to face with some one hundred and fifty Texans armed with long rifles on the Guadalupe River on October 2, 1835.
The commander of the dragoons laughed at the sight and made a very loud and very derogatory remark concerning the Texans. Bad mistake. One sharpshooter knocked the plumed helmet from his head and the commander fell off his horse as the Texans opened fire.
The Texas war for independence from Mexico had officially begun.
* * *
“Don’t get too cocky,” Bowie warned his men. “So far, we’ve not come up against professional and seasoned troops.”
“Bowie’s right,” Travis said, in one of their rare agreements. “Most of the soldiers we’ve faced had little or no training. Believe me, the worst is yet to come.”
Then they started arguing about who was really in command.
Jamie had waited in Gonzales for a message from a scout in Goliad, about seventy miles southeast of San Antonio. Jamie had already received word that General Cos was in San Antonio with a force of about fifteen hundred men and he was anxious to get that news to Travis. As soon as the scout from Goliad handed him the pouch, Jamie was in the saddle and riding.
The message read: General Cos left a small force in Goliad. Attacking.
Just before midnight on October the 9th, a force of Texas volunteers overpowered the Mexican garrison at Goliad and seized arms and powder and shot.
General Cos was furious and swore dire revenge on the heads of any Texan who dared oppose him.
Over in Gonzales, Austin now found himself commanding a force of over five hundred men. Further east, in Nacogdoches, Sam Houston was calling for volunteers, having accepted the call for him to be commander. Bowie was commander of about a hundred men, all tough and spirited and loyal to Jim. But Bowie elected to stay loyal to Travis, who was forced to stay in San Felipe awaiting the convention, and take his orders, at least for a time.
The whole situation was chaos and turmoil. Hundreds of Texas men had taken up arms, but nobody knew whose orders to obey. They were all volunteers and if they decided to go home for whatever reason, they went. They had no uniforms and looked terribly ragtag, albeit very spirited, as some three hundred to four hundred Texans — no accurate record was kept — marched toward San Antonio in the middle of October, hell-bent to attack General Cos. They dragged along the brass cannon from Gonzales, but unfortunately, the wheels fell off the cart, and the cannon — which was useless anyway — had to be discarded alongside the road.
Jim Bowie and his hundred or so men were scouting far ahead of the main column, Jim, as usual, wanting to be in the vanguard of any good scrap. Jamie had been assigned to Bowie’s company. And was scouting ahead when he saw a large force of Mexican cavalry approaching. He raced back to Bowie with the news and the company barely had time to take cover before the Mexicans attacked.
Outnumbered more than four to one, the Texans beat back charge after charge.
“Stay calm, boys,” Bowie called to his men. “And keep your heads down. We can’t afford to lose a man.”
Jamie was deadly accurate with his long rifle and that did not go unnoticed by Bowie and the other men.
“They’re bringing up artillery!” Bowie shouted, lowering a spy glass. “Give them everything we’ve got, boys!”
Within minutes, the Mexicans had retreated under the withering fire from the Texans, leaving their artillery behind.