The ass-shot soldier quickly crawled into a ditch and disappeared.
“I’m a man who can take insults with the best of them,” Crockett said, reloading. “But I’ll be damned if that’s one of them.”
As day four of the siege of the Alamo gave way to night, Santa Anna ordered his bands to play yet another concert. He ordered them to play gentle love songs. Santa Anna was a cruel man, and really, not a very intelligent person, but sometimes he felt he showed a streak of brilliance. The love songs, he reasoned, would make the men in the Alamo homesick and might cause some of them to desert.
He was wrong again.
Davy Crockett got his fiddle, and a Scotsman named MacGreagor, or MacGregor, got his bagpipes and together they managed to produce such an awful din that Santa Anna ordered his bands to play something, anything, just drown out the sounds of the fiddle and pipes.
So day four ended, with no Texas volunteer hurt or killed, more than fifty dead or wounded Mexican soldiers, and one shot in the ass.
Thirty-three
The Fifty Day
February 27th, 1836
Crockett had reversed his earlier thoughts of the Alamo being an exercise in foolishness and now confided in a few of his friends that he understood why it had to be.
“We got to hold up ol’ Santy Anner for as long as we can, boys,” he said to a small audience, of which Jamie and Bill Travis were a part. “We got to give them politicians time to palaver ’mongst theyselves and huff and puff and blow off steam.” Which meant, in Davy’s quaint way of speaking, give the Texans time to form a government and raise an army.
“So we die givin’ them time to do all that?” one of his men finally brought the feelings of all out into the open.
Travis held his breath.
“Yep,” Davy Crockett said. “That do just about sum it all up, boys.”
“Wal, hell,” one of the Tennessee volunteers said. “If we’uns is to die for freedom, let’s do it up right. We got to have us a flag to wave.”
“Yeah,” a New Orleans volunteer said. “And not that damn Mex flag, neither.”
All were adamant on that.
“You men think on it,” Travis said. “Then we’ll have the ladies here see what they can do.”
“Mighty fine,” Crockett said. “Back to the walls, boys. We got us a war to fight.”
So now they had resigned themselves to their fate, or at least many of them had. One man hung back and viewed his surroundings with a sour expression. His name was Louis Rose; his nickname was Moses.
Travis continued to send out couriers, pleading for help and for supplies. He received neither. The bombardment from the Mexican cannon continued all day, and the old walls were beginning to suffer from the impacting balls. Travis pulled men from their posts to help shore up the crumbling walls with dirt and timbers. Santa Anna’s army crept closer in a prelude to a charge. But the Mexican infantry was cautious, careful not to get closer than a couple of hundred yards. To crawl any closer meant certain death. Even now, days before the final charge, the area all around the Alamo was stained with Mexican blood and bodies littered the cold ground.
Santa Anna had ordered his men not to attempt to retrieve the bodies during the day, for Crockett and his riflemen just loved that. Not one successful daylight attempt had been accomplished. Even while the Mexican cannons roared, Crockett and his men exposed themselves to blast away at Santa Anna’s soldiers.
Even though the defenders of the Alamo were low on supplies and pitifully, hopelessly outnumbered, on the fifth day of the assault, the men of the Alamo held on. They had no way of knowing, but the small band of volunteers from Gonzales (either twenty-five or thirty-two; it is unclear as to the exact number) were making ready to leave. They were bringing with them much needed powder and shot. But they would not arrive for two more desperate days.
At the convention, meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos, which officially was not due to convene until the first of March, the still-confused and disorganized government of Texas had not declared independence from nor war against Mexico.
Had they known it, that would have come as a real surprise to the besieged men of the Alamo.
* * *
“Know this well, men,” Captain Albert Martin said to the band of volunteers preparing to ride from Gonzales to the Alamo. “We are marching to die. Any of you who are not prepared for that, step back now.”
Not a man moved. In a few days, Colonel William Travis would draw a line in the dirt with his sword and throw down the same challenge to the men in the Alamo. Only one would refuse to take up the dare.
“We march in thirty-six hours. We know that we must carry as many provisions as we can. So get ready. We’ll meet back here at dawn of the 29th.”
Every man would return with as many provisions for the besieged mission as he and his horse could carry. Every man would return, knowing they were riding to their deaths. For freedom. For Texas.
* * *
Jamie and the other men of the Alamo worked frantically all the rest of that day, shoring up the crumbling old walls, which continued to take a terrible pounding from the cannon fire. Just as dusk began to lay her cloak of darkness over the land, a sentry yelled out, “Good God Amighty, boys! To your posts, to your posts. Here they come!”
Travis leaped to the parapet and stared out in horror at what appeared to be thousands of Mexican troops, all rushing toward the walls of the Alamo.
“Lower the cannons!” Dickerson yelled. “Quickly now, lads. They’re almost on us.”
The muzzles of the cannon were quickly lowered for minimum elevation and loaded with grapeshot. Davy Crockett and his sharpshooter, dozens of loaded rifles at hand, were sighting in, Jamie stood beside Crockett, half a dozen loaded rifles nearby.
At about two hundred yards, Dickerson let the four-and eight-pounders howl. When the smoke had cleared, the area was littered with the mangled bodies of dead and dying.
“Fire!” Crockett hollered, and a dozen rifles roared as Dickerson’s crews worked quickly to reload.
The cannon screamed and the sharpshooters along the walls would fire. After one more unsuccessful charge, the Mexican officers ordered the buglers to sound recall. They had had quite enough of the guns of the Alamo for this day.
“My God!” Travis breathed, when all the smoke had drifted away and the grounds around the old mission were visible in the last rays of the setting sun. The sun glinted off of the bayonets of rifles lying beside the mangled bodies of at least several hundred Mexican soldiers.
“Hold your fire!” Travis yelled, as one defender started to shoot a crawling wounded man. He turned to Jamie. “Jamie, ride out under a white flag and tell the Mexican officer who meets you that we will hold our fire while they collect their wounded.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jamie rode straight up to the enemy lines, only a few hundred yards away from the walls. The lines were now heavily reinforced with earthworks, done at night to escape the bullets from the sharpshooters on the walls.
“My respects to you, sir,” Jamie said to a man wearing a colonel’s epaulets. “My colonel, William Travis, says to tell you that we will hold our fire so you may collect your wounded and see to their needs.”
“Young man,” the voice came from behind the officer.
Jamie noticed the colonel sprang to attention.