“He’s one of ours!” Son shouted.
The rider never slowed down. He bent low over the horse’s neck and galloped through the trees, exploding ashes out of dead camp fires and clattering metal pots across the ground.
“Come back, you crazy sonofabitch,” Son yelled after him.
“Let’s get him before we have to explain how we let him through,” Hugh said. They ran through the woods after the rider, and other men were crawling out of their tents and lean-tos.
“Shit, too late,” Hugh said.
The rider had already stopped in front of Houston’s tent, dropped the reins to the ground, and dismounted in one motion. Corporal Burnett was striding toward him angrily.
“General, I come from Bexar with a letter from Colonel Travis,” the rider said outside the closed flap. He was breathless, and the backs of his legs were shaking from the long ride.
“General Houston ain’t here,” the corporal said. “What do you mean going through our camp like that?”
“Where’s he at?”
“Washington-on-the-Brazos.”
“Damn!” the rider said, then wiped the sweat off his forehead with the flat of his hand. There was almost pain in his eyes.
“You can talk with Captain Sherman. He’s in the next tent.”
“This letter goes to Houston.”
“He’s too far away for you.”
“Colonel Travis said—”
“You done the best you could, soldier,” the corporal said.
The captain untied his tent flap and held it partly open with his arm.
“Bring the letter in,” he said.
The rider hesitated, then stooped under the canvas, and the captain tied the thong to the tent pole again.
“I got a notion Jim’s luck has done run out,” Hugh said.
“Look at that horse’s sides. He must have roweled him all the way from Bexar,” Son said.
The area around Captain Sherman’s tent was now crowded with soldiers. Some of them were still pulling on their gum coats and tucking their pants inside their boots.
“What the hell you all think you’re doing?” the corporal said. “The captain’s talking, and he don’t need nobody eavesdropping on him.”
But no one moved.
“Go on, the lot of you,” the corporal said.
“Are they caught over in Bexar?” one soldier said.
“How do I know?”
“You reckon we’re marching?” another soldier said.
“I don’t know nothing,” the corporal said. “You all just get your ass back where you belong.”
But they still didn’t move. The sun began to burn through the fog, and a pale light filled the woods. Back in the trees the cooks were frying fatback on the Dutch oven.
The captain and the rider came out of the tent together.
“Corporal, get this man some breakfast and call muster in a half hour,” the captain said, then went inside the tent again.
The soldiers followed Corporal Burnett and the rider in a large balloon to the cooking area. The rider sat on a log with a plate of fatback and cornbread in his hands and started to eat. They saw the exhaustion in his face and the way his thighs still quivered, and they waited for him to speak. But he simply continued to eat with his face turned into the plate.
“Don’t bust your teeth on that cornbread. We use it for grapeshot sometimes,” one soldier said in the silence.
“It’s all right,” the rider said. He wiped the grease off his mouth on his sleeve and started chewing on another piece of fatback. “Can one of you boys put my saddle on a fresh horse? I’m leaving out soon as I finished this.”
“What’s going on in Bexar?” Hugh said.
“We’re surrounded. There must be thousands of them out there, and more is coming in every day. Santa Anna run a red flag up on a church, and his buglers is blowing the Deguello. They ain’t giving no quarter.”
“How’d you get out?” Son said.
“I was talking a little bit to Jesus, mister. I was almost through their line when I run right over about five of them sleeping on the ground. I could hear them balls popping around my ears.”
“How’d you get surrounded?” another soldier said.
“Bowie probably didn’t have no patrols out, that’s how,” the corporal said.
“It wouldn’t make no difference. Bowie wouldn’t run nohow,” the rider said.
“Ain’t you got no help from Fannin?”
“Far as I know he’s still playing with himself down at Goliad. Davy Crockett come in, though, with twelve others from Tennessee. That sonofabitch don’t know what scared is. He stands out there on the wall and pops Mexicans like turkeys and don’t even duck down when he reloads.”
“How many you lost?” Hugh said.
“Nobody. But them eighteen-pounders is knocking the hell out of the walls. That’s the way the Mexicans fight. They get the edge on you and light a fire under your balls.”
“I reckon we’ll give them something else to think about when we come up their ass,” another soldier said.
“I hope you do it soon. When they punch a couple of holes in our wall, they’re going to come at us like flies swarming out of shit.”
A young soldier led a fresh horse with the rider’s saddle on it into the clearing. The rider set his plate on the edge of the Dutch oven and brushed his fingers on his coat.
“I’ll see you boys later,” he said. “You’re right about the cornbread. You could knock a man unconscious with it.”
“You going to find Houston?”
“One of you boys is going to do that. I’m headed back to the mission.”
“You won’t get through again,” the corporal said.
“If I don’t, them Mexicans is going to think they was attacked in the rear by the whole Texas army.”
They watched him mount his horse, and each of them looked intently at his face.
“Hold on and I’ll walk with you to the edge of the trees,” Hugh said. “You can’t never tell when you’re going to step into a latrine around here.”
He and Son walked along beside the rider to the edge of the field. The rider already had the reins wrapped around the back of his hand and was looking into the distance.
“How’s Jim Bowie?” Hugh said.
“Real bad. He was setting a cannon up on the wall, the carriage toppled, and he took a hell of a fall. I think it busted his ribs. Right now they got him on a cot in the barracks. He can’t hardly lift his head sometimes.”
“Tell him you seen Hugh Allison.”
“Sure.”
“Here’s a couple of twists of tobacco to chew on.”
The rider put the tightly twisted leaves in his coat pocket.
“I’ll see you all in Bexar,” he said, and cut his Mexican spurs into the horse’s ribs.
“What a time for Houston to be back on the Brazos,” Son said.
“It don’t make no difference.”
“You reckon it’s that bad?”
“We can’t help them. They’re on their own.”
Ten minutes later they assembled for muster in the field, and the expectation was like electricity in each row of soldiers. They pulled on the cords of their powder horns and shifted their rifles from one hand to the other while the corporal called off the endless roll of names. The captain wore a blue high-collar uniform with brass buttons and braid on the shoulders, and his lean aristocratic features and educated Kentucky accent made Son vaguely distrustful of him.
“He don’t look like he knows what he’s going to say,” he whispered.
“He’s going to say what General Sam told him to say if this happened,” Hugh said.
“That we’re going to flesh out some Mexicans,” a man behind them said.
“Shut up that talking in ranks,” the corporal said.