The captain glanced briefly over the heads of the men, then began speaking as though he were choosing each word from a private box in his mind.
“Bexar is under siege. Santa Anna has moved anywhere from fifteen hundred to six thousand troops around the Alamo Mission. Some of them are zapadores, the best in the Mexican army, and their artillery is well placed beyond the range of our sharpshooters. However, Colonel Travis has written that he has been joined by Davy Crockett and his Tennessee volunteers.”
“I can’t hear him,” the man behind Son said.
“Then be quiet,” Son said.
“Many of you have been to Bexar and have seen the mission. It has thick walls on four sides, a deep well, and Colonel Travis has mounted cannon on top of the church. Also, he was able to put away a large store of food, powder, and shot before he was encircled. There is no better place that he could defend against such superior numbers.
“Many of us have lifelong friends within those walls. Everything in us urges us to go immediately to the aid of our countrymen. But not only is the fate of Bexar at stake now. The fate of Texas itself rests in our hands and what we do now. If we move on the Mexicans with our present force, we may bring relief temporarily to the Alamo, but we stand no chance of turning about the eventual outcome of the battle. By advancing from the Guadalupe we will open the entirety of south Texas to invasion, pillage, and defeat. There will be nothing to stop the barbarism of the Mexicans from here to the Sabine River.
“General Houston has been at the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He is presently calling men to arms throughout the countryside. I expect him back in the next few days with a large and well-equipped force. By that time Colonel Fannin should be within striking distance of Bexar. In the meantime, we must all have faith in the stout hearts of our friends, who will hold the mission long beyond the limits of ordinary men. I know the pain that each of you feels at our situation, but we cannot allow a lack of forbearance to make worthless the courageous stand of those in the Alamo in our country’s gravest hour. I ask each of you, separately, to stay here with me on the Guadalupe until General Houston’s return.”
After they were dismissed they continued to stand in the field, at first silent and numb, and then with a swelling anger that had no place to vent itself. Some of them looked meanly at the captain’s back as he walked toward the trees, others stared toward the west as though they could catch sight of the cannon smoke drifting above the mission seventy miles away, and a few already had a bitter resolve in their faces that was impervious to an officer’s rhetoric.
“It’s our damn luck we got to stand picket again tonight,” Hugh said.
“Let’s see if we can go somewhere with Deaf and get out of it.”
“He left last night for Victoria.”
“Then let’s make sure we’re on the east side of the woods tonight.”
“You know Burnett ain’t going to let us off that easy.”
That evening, while they ate their dinner by the fire, Son and Hugh saw several men go into their tents and lean-tos and begin rolling their blankets and few belongings inside their gum coats.
“Burnett stuck us on the west side of the woods tonight,” Hugh said, loudly. “The wind off that river is colder than a well diggers ass.”
“Turn in the other direction and you won’t feel it,” a voice inside a tent said.
There was a full moon that night, and the waving grass in the field was lighted with silver and the river was bright in the distance. Son and Hugh stood just inside the edge of the trees, with their rifles leaned against a pine trunk and their hands in their pockets. There were dark clouds in the west and a rain ring had formed around the moon.
“Who’d they put on the horses?” Son said.
“A couple of them fellows from Alabama. But I seen one of them roll his blankets after supper.”
“Maybe they won’t try it till tomorrow night.”
“Shit, I hope so. Before this war’s over I’m going to get even with Burnett for all the things he done to us.”
“He’s standing picket, too.”
“Right. Down by the widest part of the river where nobody except a crazy man would try to cross.”
“I can’t hardly blame them fellows.”
“Maybe I can’t, either. But they’re dead men when they leave here. And every man we lose is one less rifle when we get into it ourself.”
“I heared the captain tell the lieutenant they was going to fire a cannon every morning in the mission to show they was still defending.”
“That sounds like Travis. Jim wouldn’t waste no powder setting off a gun that nobody except Mexicans will hear.”
A long strip of black cloud slipped across the moon, and the field and the river were suddenly dark. Son and Hugh could hear their own breathing.
“Listen. There’s somebody back there in the trees,” Son said.
They stared through the black trunks of the pines, and the limbs overhead clicked against one another in the wind.
“I hope somebody ain’t taking a piss back there, because I’d sure hate to shoot his pecker off,” Hugh called out.
It was quiet a moment, then they heard movement in the trees again, this time going away from them.
“How are those dumb bastards going to get through the Mexican lines when they can’t get past their own pickets?” Hugh said.
“I think they figured us for an easy mark. You know who’s on picket up the line? That wild sonofabitch that shot a cow the other day.”
“They figured wrong, then. I’ll be damned if I’m going to get my ass turned on a spit. I already dug enough latrines for the whole country to shit in. And this deal could mean a court martial.”
“You see him? Right the other side of that short pine.”
In the dark they saw a man come out from the trees, holding his horse by the bridle and covering the nose with his other hand. The man stood motionless in dark silhouette, then led his horse on into the field. A moment later fourteen other soldiers and horses followed him.
“Sonsofbitches,” Hugh said. “I’d like to kill them. I should have beat the piss out of a couple of them earlier to get the message across.”
“They’re going to go right north of Burnett, and he’s going to know where they come out.”
“Look at them, strung out all the way across the field like a parade.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Give them another minute. I reckon that ought to be enough even for these dumb assholes.”
They waited silently while the column of men and horses went deeper into the field.
“All right,” Hugh said. “Aim to the side. In case Burnett sees the flashes he can’t tell us we shot high.”
They let off their rifles, and the flames exploded out from the barrels into the darkness. A second later other pickets to the north and south of them fired their weapons, but the flashes were all at an upward angle. The column bolted for the river, each man bent low over his horse, his blanket roll bouncing behind the saddle.
“Good luck,” Hugh said.
“I’ll be damned. They went past Burnett and he didn’t shoot.”
“He’s probably setting in his own shit. But then maybe he ain’t all sonofabitch after all.”
On the same day that Houston arrived back in camp, two Mexicans rode in and said that the mission had fallen. Before Houston could take the two men into his tent and question them, the news had already spread throughout the camp that there was now nothing to stop Santa Anna’s advance across Texas. Houston placed the Mexicans under arrest and had his officers walk among the tents saying they were spies and their word was worthless, but that night twenty men who had families between Bexar and the Guadalupe swam their horses across the river.