“They’re fools,” Bowie said. “They’re marching straight into hell. I admire their courage and love each and every one as I would my brother, but part of me hopes they don’t make it and turn around and go back home.”
Jamie told him about his conversation with Santa Anna.
“You hear that, Sam?” Bowie called weakly. “You don’t fight no more now, you hear me? You just stand back and when the smoke clears, you can walk out with your head held high.”
“Hush up,” Sam told him. “And take your medicine like the doctor told you to.”
“Not only has he turned uppity,” Bowie said with a grin. “He’s turned bossy, too.”
“You hold his head, Mr. Jamie,” Sam said. “And I’ll pour this medicine down his throat.”
“You won’t have to do that if you’ll just put a little whiskey in it,” Bowie said with a laugh.
“You’re a mean and ornery man, Mr. Jim,” Sam said. “I’d leave, ’ceptin’ I knows you can’t get along without me. Now take this here medicine.”
“Will you be quiet if I do?” Bowie asked.
“Yes.”
Bowie held out his hand.
Thirty-four
The Six Day
February 28th, 1836
Jamie stood on the parapet beside Travis and Crockett and watched the Mexican soldiers beef up their positions. Santa Anna had been true to his word: not one shot had come from the Mexican side that morning.
But his word was in no way etched in stone, for during the night, General Santa Anna had ordered his men to silently creep closer, trusting in the Alamo defenders to hold their fire. They did.
“The black-hearted son of a bitch!” Crockett cursed the trickery of Santa Anna.
“No honor,” Travis said scornfully
“I’d a-done the same thing he did,” Jamie said with a smile. “I don’t think there is any such thing as honor in a war.”
Jamie jumped down from the platform and walked over to Bowie’s quarters.
“Strange young man,” Travis remarked.
Crockett said nothing.
Bowie was sleeping. When Jamie had pushed open the door, Sam stepped outside the darkened room to talk with him. “He’s driftin’ in and out, Mr. Jamie. Sometimes he don’t even know who I is. He babbles some. He needs to be in a proper hospital. I tole him that and he tole me what difference does the place make when dyin’ is a certainty?”
“Has he finished his letter?”
“Not quite, sir. But I heard him mumble that he was purt near done with it.”
“Sam, you and Joe take up no more arms against Santa Anna,” Jamie cautioned the slave. “Stay out of the fight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jamie restlessly prowled the three-acre compound. He glanced up at the winter’s sun. Noontime was near and when it came, Santa Anna would once more start his bombardment. The ultimatums of Santa Anna had been passed to all the men. The word surrender was met with cold, stony looks from the defenders.
Jamie ate his meager rations and once more moved to his position along the wall. Like all the others inside the mission, there were few things he could do other than wait, and think of family and home. And wonder if, when the time came, he would die well?
Jamie was inwardly torn with conflicting emotions. He certainly did not want to die — who does? — but he felt guilt at Bowie and Travis, and to some degree, Crockett’s plans for him to slip out of the compound and flee. The men knew how he felt, and many had come to him, telling him his mission was an important one. Someone had to escape to tell the world the story. That made Jamie feel better. But not a lot.
The Mexican artillerymen began their bombardment, the first round landing inside the compound, smashing into the ground near the front of the old church. The truce was over. There was no turning back now. For those trapped inside the Alamo, only two ends existed: victory or death.
* * *
The cannonade that day had been the worst so far. A half a dozen defenders had been slightly wounded by shrapnel, although none seriously. But the psychological effects were beginning to show. The nerves of the men were ragged from lack of sleep, the bitter cold, the constant shelling, and lack of proper food. And the news that Bowie was drifting in and out of consciousness was very unsettling to the men.
Even Davy Crockett was affected by it, the frontiersman becoming almost morose for a time.
Outside the walls, the Mexican infantry had become very cautious, taking great pains not to expose themselves unnecessarily. They had learned a painfully hard lesson about the deadly accuracy of Davy Crockett’s sharpshooters along the walls of the Alamo.
Only the wounded Mexicans had been picked up during the surprise cease-fire called by Santa Anna, and the grounds all around the mission were littered with stiffening bodies of soldiers. Had it not been an unusually cold winter, the stench and following health problems would have been awful.
When darkness fell on the evening of the sixth day, Jamie went to Travis’s quarters and found the man writing yet another report. Jamie, along with many of the other men, wondered just what in the hell the colonel found to write about.
“Yes, Scout MacCallister?” Travis said, looking up from the reports.
“I would like your permission to go over the walls and gather up powder and shot from the dead Mexican soldiers, sir.”
“An admirable thought, MacCallister. But I believe the Mexican rifles are of a different caliber from ours.”
“We have all kinds of calibers here, sir. Besides, the lead can be melted down and remolded to our caliber, sir. And we desperately need the powder.”
Travis slowly nodded his head. He knew perfectly well that Jamie was going over the walls with or without his permission. This was the goddamnest bunch of independent-minded men he had ever commanded. The young man standing before him was just being respectful by asking his permission. “All right, Jamie. Go ahead.”
Jamie stopped by to see Bowie. The man was in one of his more lucid hours and actually looking well. He grinned when Jamie told him what he planned to do.
“And just how do you plan on accomplishing that feat, Jamie?”
“By becoming a snake, sir. Just like the Shawnee taught me.”
“Stop by and see me when you return. But change back into human form before you do,” Bowie added dryly.
“Yes, sir,” Jamie replied with a smile.
Jamie blackened his face with soot and tied a dark bandanna over his blond hair. He took only two pistols and a knife. Crockett stood leaning on his rifle, watching him.
“You larned well from them Shawnee, son,” the man said. “Can you make like a mockingbird?”
Jamie’s bird call was so much like the real thing Crockett was startled. “That way we’ll know where you are and you won’t get a ball in the brisket.”
“Or in the butt,” Jamie said, his eyes sparkling with good humor.
“That, too,” Crockett said with a laugh.
Jamie left the mission by way of the cattle pen. He slithered on his belly like a huge reptile, slowly working from stiffened body to stinking body, removing the powder flask and shot pouch from each dead soldier. When he had retrieved a dozen, he worked his way back to the cattle pen, whistled softly, and handed the badly needed shot and powder to Galba Fuqua, who was manning the watch when Jamie returned.
They spoke softly in Spanish to one another.
“It must be terrible out there,” Galba whispered.
“It isn’t a picnic,” Jamie admitted.
Galba handed the filled pouch to another man and gave Jamie an empty one. “Take care, amigo.”
“I shall.” And Jamie was gone again.
Jamie soon ran out of bodies closer in and had to work his way further out from the Alamo. He worked so close to the Mexican lines that he could smell the fragrant odor of coffee and hear the lilting Spanish words of men far from home and loved ones. Soldiers are soldiers, he concluded. The world over.