Or words to that effect.
The bombardment from the Mexican cannon continued without letup. Miraculously, despite all the hundreds of shells that had dropped all around and inside the mission, none of the defenders had been killed and only a few had been wounded, none of them seriously.
Travis had given the order: “Save your powder, boys. Don’t bother returning the fire. We’ll need everything we’ve got when...” He stumbled over the last words. “... the time comes.”
Bowie called Jamie to his quarters. Jamie was shocked at the man’s appearance. Bowie had lost weight and his eyes were deep-set in his head. He looked much older than his years. He handed Jamie several sheets of paper.
“Commit it to memory, lad,” Bowie requested. “Just in case something happens to your pouch. Sit down over there by the light and read it over and over. I’ll rest while you’re doing that. I am so damned tired!”
Bowie was dying.
Jamie committed the pages to memory over the rasping breathing of Jim Bowie. Sam walked over to his master and covered him with a thin blanket.
“He’s asleep, now, Mr. Jamie. He might not wake up for hours. Them pages you read, was they most eloquent?”
“Yes, Sam. They were very eloquent.”
“I knowed they would be. He mutters in his sleep a lot after he writes. Words like liberty and freedom and abouts how the men of this garrison gonna shed they blood for all Texas to be free. He can speak right good when he puts his mind to it.”
“You like him, don’t you, Sam?”
“He don’t beat me none.”
Jamie arched an eyebrow at that simple statement of loyalty and devotion. “Stay out of the fight, Sam. Stay clear out of it and when it’s over, head for the high country and live out your life as a free man.”
“We’ll see,” the freed slave said.
Jamie stepped out of the sick room and walked across the plaza. His patience was now wearing thin. While he no longer felt like a traitor because of his orders to leave the fort when the battle was nigh, he felt helpless locked inside the walls. And he was outraged that these brave men had been abandoned to die. He paused at Travis’s hail from his quarters, changed direction, and walked over to the colonel.
“Yes, sir?”
“Bonham should be back tomorrow. I’m sending Smith out tomorrow night. You’d better go with him, Jamie.”
“Is that an order, sir?”
Travis hesitated. “Ah... no, Jamie. It isn’t. But I feel that Santa Anna will not wait much longer. For some reason, March sixth keeps creeping into my mind. I am not a man much given to premonition, Jamie, and have told no one else that.”
“I won’t repeat it, sir.”
“I want you out of here no later than midnight on the fifth, Jamie. And that is an order. Those dispatches in your pouch will be our last farewells to the outside world.”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“You saw Bowie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“His condition?”
“Worse. He’s very weak.”
Travis nodded, and then left when he was called by a work party along the log-reinforced south wall by the church.
“March the sixth,” Jamie muttered. “Well, maybe the colonel is wrong.”
He wasn’t.
Thirty-eight
The Tenth Day
March 3, 1836
The spirits of the men inside the walls of the Alamo were high, and for a time on this day, Travis still held out some hope that help was on the way He had once more composed a letter and would be sending it out under cover of darkness that evening. John Smith would be the courier.
At midmorning, Bonham rode back into the mission and told Travis, “There will be no help, Bill. We are considered a lost cause. No help is coming.”
“John is leaving this night,” Travis said. “I have to keep trying.”
“Don’t ask him to return,” Bonham pleaded. “We’re doomed.”
“Then why did you come back?” Travis snapped.
“To die shoulder to shoulder with my comrades,” was Bonham’s reply.
Travis’s spirits sagged. He knew Bonham was speaking the truth. The men of the Alamo had been abandoned. He walked dejectedly to his quarters.
“You’re all fools,” Louis Moses Rose told a gathering of stony-faced men. “Not cowards; just fools. Look, I’ve been a soldier all my life. Listen to me. This place has no strategic value. None. Let’s get out of this death trap and fight Santa Anna Injun style. We can do Texas a lot more good that way.”
“It ain’t that this old mission has any value, man,” Crockett said. “It’s provin’ a point to Mexico that we’re doin’.”
“What the hell is the point of dying?” Rose snapped back.
“How ’bout your friend, Jim Bowie?” Micajah Autry asked. “You just gonna leave him here?”
“Jim’s dying,” Rose said softly. “I went to see him just an hour ago. He didn’t even know me.”
“Go if you must,” Daniel Cloud said. “I won’t fault you. But as for me, I’m stayin’.”
Cloud turned and walked away, the others quickly following him. Louis Moses Rose was left alone in the plaza.
Jamie had listened to the debate, squatting by the well. He harbored no ill will toward Rose. If the man wished to flee, then let him go. To go or to stay was a decision that each man had to make for himself. Jamie had heard others speak of Rose — the man had proven himself in combat more times than any of them. He was no coward. Perhaps, Jamie thought, the man was simply weary of it all.
But then, he silently added, who among us isn’t?
The Mexican cannons began booming after a short respite. Jamie moved closer to the wall, next to the low barracks, and waited. Shot and shell dropped into the plaza, crashed against the walls, and the ground trembled beneath Jamie’s moccasins. How many hundreds of rounds had been fired at the Alamo to date? With, so far, little effect.
His eyes found Louis Moses Rose, squatting with his back to a wall. He was alone, with not a man near him. The word had gone out quickly and the other men had chosen not to have anything to do with him.
Staying close to the walls, Jamie made his way over to the ostracized man. Rose looked up at Jamie’s approach, surprise in his eyes.
“Ain’t you afraid you’ll catch something, moving so close to me?” Rose asked.
Jamie ignored that. “Look, Rose. Whether you stay or go is your choice and your choice alone.”
“I ain’t made it yet,” Rose said. “You seen them ladders the Mexicans is building?”
“Yes.”
“Won’t be long now. They’ll be crawling over the walls like ants to honey.”
“Probably,” Jamie replied, after the cannon barrage had momentarily ceased.
“They’re all going to die here.”
“They know that.”
“It just don’t make no sense to me.”
Jamie knew then the man had made up his mind. He was going over the walls. The cannons began roaring again, and any further conversation was impossible.
Rose stood up and looked down at Jamie. “You had your decision handed you, MacCallister.”
Anger filled Jamie and he stood up, towering over the man. “You think I asked for it?”
“No,” Rose said, his voice just audible over the booming of cannon. “That ain’t what I meant.”
Jamie’s anger faded and he put a hand on the much older man’s shoulder. “I know it isn’t. Sorry, Louis. Whatever decision you choose to make, Louis, I’m still your friend.”
The man smiled. “I can use one about now,” he admitted. And then further conversation was impossible as the cannons boomed. During an abatement, Louis said, “They have to be the worst goddamn gunners I have ever seen. They don’t appear to know anything about elevation. If they did, there wouldn’t be a platform or parapet left intact.” He shook his head and walked off.