Back to the outhouse.
* * *
The ineffectual cannon fire from the Mexican artillerymen continued throughout the afternoon. They hit nothing. San Antonio was now, for all intents and purposes, deserted. Only a few citizens remained in the town. The people in the town knew that when those in the Alamo really began to fight, their bigger and longer-range cannon could well destroy the town.
Travis’s anger had slowly subsided and his logical mind began to see that Bowie had been right in his response to Santa Anna’s demand for an unconditional surrender. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Bowie that.
Travis stepped out of his quarters and walked the compound. There was no sign of Jim Bowie. He had retired to his quarters to rest. The day had taken a lot out of him. He was much sicker and weaker than he would admit even to himself.
Crockett and several of his men had taken up positions along the walk with their long rifles, just waiting for one of Santa Anna’s men to present a target.
So far, no one on either side had been killed, no one on either side had even gotten much upset — except for Travis’s wild explosion of temper and Santa Anna’s bowels — and no one had been seriously injured.
All that was about to change.
Davy Crockett had been watching as a lone Mexican soldier worked his way closer to the mission.
“You gonna let me have ’im, Davy?” one of his men asked hopefully.
“Nope,” Crockett replied. “He’s all mine. How far you reckon he is?”
“Long ways off, Davy,” the Tennessee volunteer said. “You nail that one, it’ll be something to write home about.”
“I didn’t know you could write,” another one kidded the man.
“Hell, I cain’t!”
Chuckling, Davy rested his rifle on a small bag of sand and sighted in. The long rifle cracked and the Mexican soldier went down bonelessly. Davy had drilled him through the heart from a nearly impossible distance and that was the first fatality of the battle. The Mexican soldiers knew then that the men along the walls of the Alamo were highly skilled riflemen.
Travis stood in the plaza and watched as the coonskin-capped and buckskin-wearing Tennessee men danced and whooped and hollered.
“You plugged ’im through the ticker, Davy!” one yelled.
Santa Anna shrugged off the report that one of his men had been killed. He had lots of soldados. They were all expendable. Santa Anna was thinking of his wedding day, and even more so, of his wedding night. He became sexually aroused and had to leave the room and wash his face in cold water. That didn’t help a bit. He told one of his aides to bring a punta to his quarters. Two of them if possible. Three of them if the aide could find that many. And be sure they were young and pretty. And clean, for the general was a very fastidious man. Santa Anna fancied himself quite the lady’s man, and very virile. He was also very vain and arrogant. And those were his good points.
Many of his officers held an intense dislike for General Santa Anna, but they kept that well hidden. Many of them did not like his streak of cruelty. Battles were one thing, but prisoners should be treated with at least some degree of compassion and dignity.
Santa Anna had little compassion, and on more than one occasion he had ordered helpless prisoners shot. But the officers were all professional soldiers, and they would obey their general. But they didn’t have to like it.
* * *
Gradually, the gunfire subsided as evening fell and both sides settled down to supper. Travis watched from the open door of his darkened room as Jamie blackened his face and took up his bow and quiver of arrows. For a moment, he considered forbidding the young man to leave. But he stilled his tongue, not wanting another quarrel with Bowie.
My army, he thought. What an odd assortment of men, good men all, and brave men, but still a strange collection. Men from New Orleans, from Tennessee, from half a dozen or more states over in America. There were even a couple of men from Scotland. Mexicans fighting alongside Anglos against their own people. What brought them here, to this place, at this time? Travis shook his head, unable to find the answer to his silent question.
He looked toward Bowie’s quarters and sighed. Jim was a good man, a true man, and he wished they could get along. Travis admitted, to himself, that it was as much his own fault as it was Bowie’s. They were as different as night was from day.
He watched as Jamie disappeared into the gloom near the west wall. The young man was going out to kill. Travis wished him luck. MacCallister was a mystery. Raised by Indians, Travis recalled someone telling him. Somewhat of a savage, he felt. But nonetheless, a very capable and likeable young man.
Even though William Travis was only a few years older than Jamie MacCallister, on this early evening, he felt the weight of command heavy on his shoulders.
“Colonel,” a man called. “Come get some beef and beans and coffee, sir. It’s gonna be a cold night.”
It will heat up come the dawning, Travis thought, as he walked toward the cook fire and took the offered plate of food in one hand and the cup of coffee in his other hand. “Thank you,” he said politely.
* * *
“Please excuse me,” Jamie muttered, lowering the body of the sentry to the nearly frozen ground. The man had died without a sound as the big blade of Jamie’s Bowie knife nearly took his head off.
“Carlos?” a voice called out. “Where are you?”
“Por acá,” Jamie softly called.
“Ah!” The man started walking toward Jamie and Jamie put an arrow directly into the soldier’s chest. He dropped with a thud against the nearly frozen earth.
“Silencio!” a hard voice called, adding, “Idiota!”
Jamie did the silencing with an arrow in the middle of the man’s back. The Mexican batteries began opening up, from about five hundreds yards away from the Alamo. Jamie’s knife flashed in the night and he silently slipped away, his bloody souvenirs dangling from his belt. He slipped into the town, knowing he was taking a terrible chance, but feeling the Mexican soldiers ought to know a taste of fear. He was going to give them a taste of it, that night.
That Colonel Travis would not approve of this did not bother Jamie a twit. Bowie would be amused by it.
A drunken sergeant lurched out of a cantina that the soldiers had forced open, mouthing terrible things about norteamericanos in general and Texans in particular. Jamie left him sitting on the dirt in the alley, his back to the outside wall of the cantina, his chin on his chest, and his head glistening dark and wetly in the night.
Jamie flattened out against the wall of a building as a dozen or more cavalrymen walked their horses up the street, the hooves making a frightful echoing racket on the stones. Jamie used that noise to cover any slight sound he might make and slipped away. He made his way over to where a battery of artillerymen were swabbing out and reloading cannon. Then, Jamie supposed, they decided to take a break, for coffee or food or whatever, for they all walked away and vanished into the night. Jamie slipped over to the row of cannon and finding a bucket, began working quickly, scooping up mud and pouring it into the barrels of two of the eight-pounder cannon. Then he packed it in tight and rolled over into a ditch just as the men returned to their stations.
It was going to get real interesting when the order came for those men to fire their cannons.
Jamie collected three more scalps that night before he decided not to push his luck any further. He headed back for the Alamo, finding it almost ridiculously easy to wend his way unseen through the Mexican lines.
“Thanks, Tall Bull,” he said under his breath, for the brutal training the Shawnee had given him on how to survive.