The Mexican bartender poured clear whiskey into three shot glasses, and they sipped it neat and chased it with salted chili peppers. The whiskey had been aged in a burned-out barrel, and the charcoal taste hung in the glass like smoke. Even the corporal was enjoying it and didn’t object when Son ordered another round.
“That’s the first time I ever heared anybody raise hell with Jim like that and get away with it,” Hugh said.
“Deaf ain’t one to worry about whether somebody likes what he says,” the corporal said
“I got to grant you that,” Hugh said. “He ain’t afraid of too much. But he sounds like he wants to tear Jim’s balls out. Maybe I ought to go in there and straighten it out.”
“Maybe you ought to finish your drink,” Son said.
Deaf came out of the room, his sun-tanned face bright with anger, and let the oak door swing back against its iron hinges. He went to the bar and held up two fingers at the bartender, who poured a double shot into the glass. Through the open door they could see a man in pantaloons and a short brown jacket with Mexican buttons seated behind a table. He coughed violently into a handkerchief, then wiped his mouth and grinned at Hugh.
“I knew they couldn’t keep Hugh Allison in any Frenchman’s jail,” he said.
“How you doing, Jim? Lord, it’s good to see you.”
“Come on in.” He held up a cup with his fingers. “And bring something for this.”
Hugh’s face was shining with pride as he picked up a bottle of whiskey from the bar and went inside the room.
“Close it so we can do ourselves some serious drinking,” the man said.
Son turned to Deaf, whose jawbone was working like a damaged nerve against his cheek.
“He don’t look too healthy. What was going on in there, anyway?” Son said.
“He’s going to fortify the mission.”
Son looked at him, not understanding.
“Sam thinks he ought to blow it up and move out of Bexar,” Deaf said.
“Move where?” the corporal said.
“East, with us. What do you think will happen if they get caught inside them walls?” Deaf said.
Neither the corporal nor Son knew how to answer.
“I ought not to get mad at him. Sam left the choice up to him,” Deaf said. “But a beaver don’t go into a hole unless he’s got a back door.”
“Why don’t he want to pull out?” Son said.
“He figures if they don’t stop Santa Anna here, the Mexicans will sweep through east Texas. I’m going out in the hills south of town. Make sure Allison is sober when I get back tonight.”
“That ain’t easy to do,” the corporal said.
“He damn well better be.” Deaf set his glass on the bar and walked out the door. In the square of yellow light, they saw him jerk back the reins on his horse, wheel it in a circle, and bring his moccasins hard into its ribs.
“I think Deaf just told us something,” the corporal said.
“Don’t worry about Hugh. He sobers up fast,” Son said.
“If you can get the bottle out of his hand first.”
“Get him out of there, then.”
“I ain’t going in there.”
“Then quit worrying. I ain’t seen the situation yet that Hugh don’t handle.”
But five hours later Son was not as confident. The corporal had ridden across the river to look at the mission and Son was eating a bowl of frijoles in the eating house when Hugh found him. Hugh was drunk in a way that Son hadn’t seen him before. He looked as though he had been drinking for two days rather than a few hours. His face was bloodless and the whites of his eyes had turned yellow.
“You and Bowie must have licked the cup dry,” Son said.
“No, he went to sleep about three hours ago.”
“Where you been?”
“I found a jenny-barn down by the river.”
“Eat some food.”
“I don’t want none. Them beans turns your skin brown, anyway.”
“You ought to eat something.”
“I’m going to have another drink.”
“Deaf rode out in the hills. He’s coming back tonight and we’re leaving.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“You’re really in your cup, Hugh.”
“Jim’s awful sick. I think it’s the pneumonie. He carries on like his old self, still full of laughs and fun, and these men would kiss the ground he walks on. But he don’t fool me. He’s got a worm buried down there in his chest.”
“Let it go, Hugh.”
“You know his wife and both his children died of cholera?”
“Let’s find that ammunition wagon and make sure everything’s ready for tonight. They didn’t have much power to spare, but they give us a lot of flints and a mess of nails.”
“I told you I ain’t done drinking yet.”
“Listen, damn you, we’re going to be moving at night, and for all we know there’s Mexican skirmishers already out in them hills. How’d you like to run into one of their patrols while your brains was still boiled?”
“How much money you got?”
“About a dollar and a half and some scrip.”
“Come on down to the river with me.”
Son began to eat again without answering.
“When we get back to camp Burnett is going to have us digging shit holes till this war is over,” Hugh said.
“I ain’t going to no jenny-barn.”
“You’re still stuck on Sana, ain’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“You still figuring on going back there?”
“I ain’t got no other place to go. You ain’t, either.”
“Listen, boy, it’s no good to go back where you already been. It ain’t the same. Other people own it, and it ain’t yours no more.”
“Come on,” Son said.
“Where?”
“I’ll ride down with you to that first cantina on the river and we’ll have a drink. Then I’ll buy you a meal and we’ll find the ammunition wagon.”
“I already know where it’s at, and I’ll put the cork in the jug when I feel like it. I done told you whiskey or wine don’t bother me. If I can do a job sober, I can do it drunk, too.”
“I understand that, Hugh, but how about taking your sleeve out of my plate?”
They went outside and rode through the cobbled streets toward a low adobe building on the river bank. Son looked across the river at the long gray walls of the Alamo Mission, the huge expanse of dirt plaza, the roofless crumbling church in the center, and wondered what it would be like to be trapped inside while thousands of Santa Anna’s troops walked through their own cannon smoke, across their own dead, wave after wave, until they finally breached the wall and poured inside in a murderous mob. But this afternoon the sun was high above the hills in a blue sky, the mission was empty and quiet in the clear air, and the wind blew through the cattails on the river’s edge and ruffled the green current and carried with it the laughter of girls in the cantina.
“Did you ask Bowie about Emile Landry?” Son said.
“What?”
“Get your mind off them tavern maids. What did Bowie say about Landry?”
“About two months ago he heared there was some slave hunters in town looking for two convicts. But he ain’t seen no Frenchmen except the ones he brung over from Louisiana.”
They left that night with the ammunition wagon for Gonzales. Going along the trace in the dark, Deaf said he had ridden fifteen miles into the hills south of town and had found a dead fire with a Mexican horseshoe in the ash.
Chapter six
They were standing picket on the edge of the woods in the early dawn, and the fog hung in a solid white cloud on the meadow. They heard the rider before they saw him. Son and Hugh lifted their rifles to port arms, then the rider burst through the fog, his horse and clothes soaked with dew, his flop hat blowing behind his neck on a leather cord. Son heard a picket down the line cock his rifle.