“All right, damn it, but you tell him Hugh Allison’s in Bexar and he better have his dirty bum sober when I see him.”
Son, Hugh, and the corporal tied their horses to an iron tethering post in front of the eating house while Deaf rode down the cobbled street toward the other end of town.
“How’s he know where he’s going?” Son said.
“There’s probably a card parlor down yonder where Jim’s lightening everybody’s pockets.”
“Deaf better not find him there,” Corporal Burnett said.
“Your ass, Burnett. Jim Bowie don’t make changes in what he does for no man.”
“He sure as hell will when the general finds out what he’s let this army turn into,” the corporal said.
Inside the stucco building, most of the tables were filled with men in buckskin clothes, and Mexican women carried out trays of frijoles, huevos rancheros, tortillas, and steaks from a huge open kitchen in the back. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke, and some of the tables had bottles of rum and tequila on them.
“That food smells like it come out of a pepper patch,” Son said.
“That ain’t nothing to what it’ll feel like when it comes out later,” Hugh said. “But we’re going to have a little drink of that Mexican gargle water to smooth it out a bit.”
“I’ll be damned if you are,” the corporal said.
“Burnett, back at camp you can tell me to dig shit holes all you want,” Hugh said. “But we’re in Bexar now, and you ain’t nothing but a wagon escort under Deaf just like we are. Hey, you boys move over and let some of Sam Houston’s best set down.”
They rolled eggs with chili peppers and strips of steak inside tortillas and ate them in huge mouthfuls. The peppers made Son’s eyes water and his stomach burn, but the food was so good he hardly chewed before he swallowed again. Then they each ate a bowl of frijoles with more tortillas and divided a pot of coffee among the three of them. They listened to the conversation around them, and it was a strange one to hear after their experience in the camp on the Guadalupe. The soldiers at the tables talked of Ben Milam tearing General Cos’s army to pieces when he took the town in December, of James Fannin marching any day on Matamoros, of pursuing Santa Anna deep into Mexico and hanging him by his thumbs from a mesquite tree. Their breaths were sour with alcohol and refried beans, and Son noticed that half of them had left their weapons somewhere else.
Hugh reached across the table and picked up a bottle of rum that another man had been drinking from.
“You don’t mind if I buy a drink out of your bottle, do you?” he said.
“Go right ahead, Sam Houston’s best,” the man said. There were only three teeth in the front of his head, and they hung there like twisted pieces of bone.
“From the way you fellows talk, there ain’t much left to this war except getting paid for it,” Hugh said.
“That depends on how you figure it,” the man said. “There might be some more ass-kicking done down south of us.”
“I’d sure like to get in on that. Just where are you going to start kicking these asses?” Hugh said.
“Anywhere we catch them at,” the man said.
“I heared Santa Anna might have five or six thousand men down on the Rio Grande somewhere. Is that the people that gets their butts stuck in the fire?” Hugh said.
“What are you trying to say, mister?” another man said.
“Nothing. We been camped over by Gonzales so long we don’t know what’s going on with the rest of the army. Was you boys with Ben Milam when he took Bexar?”
“You damn right we were.”
“I bet it was a tough fight, wasn’t it?” Hugh said.
“You’re drinking my liquor and trying my patience at the same time, mister. You want to get to your point or just walk out of here?”
“Let’s find Deaf,” the corporal said.
“We got time for that,” Hugh said. “I just want to know if there’s any truth to the story that most of General Cos’s troops was a bunch of raggedy-ass convicts. I heared some of them shot theirself in the foot so they wouldn’t have to fight.”
“That’s a lie.”
“It’s just a story a fellow told us over in Gonzales.”
“It’s a damn lie, and you take it back.”
“Like hell I will,” Hugh said, his voice level and mean.
“We’re leaving, mister. You own the place,” Son said. “We don’t give a shit if you fought convicts or every Mexican from here to Mexico City. But you touch that dirk and I’ll put a hole in your face as big as your plate.”
Outside, the wind blowing off the San Antonio River was cold against their faces. Clouds were moving over the hills south of town, and large areas of sunlight and shadow swept across the waving grass.
“You done all right in there,” Hugh said.
“You two should be locked up in a crazy house,” Corporal Burnett said.
“We didn’t deal that play. Them fellows did with their big mouths,” Hugh said.
“Allison, you got something inside you that don’t let you leave trouble alone, and one of these days it’s going to put you in a box.” The corporal untethered his horse angrily and pushed hard in the stirrup when he swung up in the saddle.
“Lots have tried it, but the likes of them in there sure ain’t going to do it,” Hugh said.
“Forget it,” Son said.
“I tell you, this is a hell of an army to have to fight a war with,” the corporal said, looking straight ahead as they rode toward the other end of town.
“Ain’t that Deaf’s horse tied up the other side of that paint?” Son said.
“And I bet that big roan with the Mexican saddle is Jim’s. He always did ride fancy,” Hugh said.
Bowie’s headquarters were in a brown adobe building with evenly spaced cedar logs jutting out of the mud bricks along the roof. During the siege of the town in December the Mexicans had torn out one window to ground level and put a cannon in it to command the street, and the area around the sand-bagged hole was pocked from rifle fire. In the front room there was a plank bar with bottles of tequila and corn whiskey and bowls of chili peppers on it, and dirty hand towels hung from nails driven into the plank. Dark men who looked like Acadians out of the Louisiana marshes were drinking at the bar, and each of them wore a large knife in a scabbard and had his rifle leaned at his elbow.
“Mean-looking sonsofbitches, ain’t they?” Hugh said when they walked in.
To one side of the bar was a thick oak door that was partly opened, and behind it they could hear Deaf’s quacking voice.
“Is Jim Bowie in there?” Hugh said.
The dark men stared at him without replying.
“I said is Jim Bowie in there?”
They still didn’t answer, and Hugh started toward the door. One of the dark men stepped in front of him and wagged his finger in Hugh’s face and shook his head.
“What’s the matter, you dumb or something?” Hugh said.
The man said something in French.
“Talk United States,” Hugh said.
“Take it easy. We’ll just wait on Deaf,” Son said.
“I hoped I wouldn’t have to see another Frenchman after I left Louisiana, and I come all the way to Bexar to meet an asshole like this.”
Son and Corporal Burnett looked quickly at the man to see if he had understood. The man’s dark eyes continued to stare at Hugh with the same resolute expression.
“Hell, let’s get a drink. I’ll buy it,” Hugh said.
“Deaf don’t—” the corporal began.
“Deaf don’t care,” Hugh said. “He’s got other things on his mind. Listen to him carrying on in there.”
Son listened to Deaf’s strange voice and realized that this was the first time he had ever heard him speak angrily to anyone. The quacking sound rose and fell, and many of the words were unintelligible, but there was no doubt that Deaf was becoming furious about something.