“He was too scared,” Hugh said.
“These is probably their furtherest pickets,” Deaf said. “That means their camp is about four or five hundred yards away. If we run across any more pickets, we ain’t going to jump them. We’ll go around from the other side.”
They worked their way on through the woods, staying close to the pine trunks, their heads bent low, and stopping like pieces of stone whenever they heard a pine cone topple through the branches overhead to the ground. They saw the trees begin to thin ahead, and they circled away from the river until they reached an eroded gulley, with heavy timber on each side, that led back toward the river bank.
They walked along the edge of the gulley through the wild fern and deep shadows, and they could smell the dank, cool odor of the water coursing over the rocks below; then they saw the sunlight at the end of the trees where the stream bed sloped down to the Brazos. They crawled on their stomachs until they could look out over the wide stretch of sandy bank.
“Look at all them bastards,” Hugh said.
The bank was covered with Mexican troops, tents, horses, mules, oxen, and ammunition and supply wagons. A ferry boat loaded with infantry was crossing the river. In the center of the camp was a command tent with the Mexican tricolor flag flying over it.
Deaf took a spy glass from inside his shirt and moved it slowly back and forth over the beach as though he were dividing it into segments that he could reduce to numerical equations in his mind. Then he handed Son the glass, took a piece of slate from his shirt pocket, and began making columns of tally marks.
“You check me,” he said. “I count fifteen wagons. Most of them look like ammunition. Which means they’re living off the land. Which means they’re stealing and burning everything as they go. I don’t see but one field piece down there, and it looks like a twelve-pounder. Some of that infantry is zapadores, and that means this is probably the same bunch that killed everybody in the Alamo. I think Sam will be glad to hear that little piece of news. Now, I just need to find out if that little fart Santa Anna is in that tent yonder.
But as Son looked through the glass, he wasn’t thinking of the number of troops, cannon, or ammunition wagons in the camp. He had focused the lens on five men who were drinking from cups at a table under a canvas awning.
“Take a look, Hugh. Just to the right of the command tent.”
Hugh put his good eye to the glass.
“Sonofabitch. He’s still with it,” he said.
“I thought he’d throw it in by this time.”
“We should have doubled back on them bastards and cut their throats months ago.”
“What’s wrong with you two?” Deaf said.
“There’s a fellow down there named Emile Landry and four others that’s got a special interest in us,” Hugh said.
“You mean them Louisiana prison guards?”
“How’d you know?” Son said.
“Sam told me. I don’t take nobody out on scout with me unless I know what time of day he drops his britches.”
“At least we can kill the sonofabitch now and not get hung for murder,” Hugh said.
“You ain’t going to do it today. And before you go thinking them men down yonder don’t have nothing to do but chase you across Texas, remember you ain’t the only ones in this army that got warrants on them from Louisiana. I think half of them Frenchies Bowie brung with him to Bexar had manacle scars on their ankles.”
“That might be true, but that man’s got something extra in mind for us,” Son said.
Then he done joined up with the wrong bunch, because Sam was mad as hell when he heared about what happened at Goliad, and when the time comes these Mexicans ain’t going to get no more mercy than they give Jim Fannin.”
When they got back to camp and reported to Houston’s tent, they discovered that Santa Anna had sent a black man to the general with a message that he was going to burn the temporary capital at Harrisburg, execute anyone there bearing arms, then march on Houston’s army and destroy it.
“I don’t know whether to believe it or not. What do you think, Mr. E.?” Houston said to Deaf. He was pushed back in his chair with his boot on the table. Son and Hugh stood with their arms folded over their rifle barrels.
“He’s an arrogant enough sonofabitch to do it,” Deaf said.
“But you saw only one twelve-pounder. Would he attack with no more artillery than that to support him?”
“I ain’t one to say, but I think they’re getting careless, General,” Hugh said. “If we’d had a field piece, we could have blowed grape all over their camp.”
“Yes. Yes. But was that Santa Anna you saw on the river? We won’t bring peace to Texas until we put our hand on his throat.”
“I’da stayed there all day to find out, Sam, but we killed them two pickets and their relief was coming sometime.”
“I know, Mr. E. I never had a better scout. You two fellows have done well by me, too,” Houston said. He took a piece of shaved pine wood and a pocket knife from his coat and began to notch it between his thumb and the blade. “I’m just going to have to think on this one a bit.”
That night they began the march to Harrisburg. More volunteers from east Texas had joined Houston’s army, but many of the men had come down with measles and the worst thunderstorm of the spring drenched the prairie. The oxen and two six-pounder cannon, which Houston had named “the twin sisters of Texas,” mired in the mud, the horses reared in the flashes of lightning across the sky, and the rain drove so hard in the men’s eyes that they couldn’t see a line of trees fifty yards before them. They marched for two and one-half days, sleeping in wet blankets and eating their food cold, to arrive at Buffalo Bayou and find Harrisburg burned and the government fled.
“Damn, the Mexicans don’t leave much behind when they go through a place,” Hugh said.
The stores, saloons, and shotgun houses along the dirt streets were still smoking in the light rain, and the people who had been driven out of town when the Mexicans set it afire had now returned and were pulling blackened boards loose from the piles of debris that had been their homes and businesses. An odor of burned hair and horseflesh still came from the livery stable, and the cattle in the lot behind the stock barn had all been shot.
“What they got against these people?” Son said.
“Nothing.”
“Look at that old woman rooting in them busted preserve jars.”
“That’s the worst thing about a war. The civilians ain’t got no stake in it, and they always get it first.”
“Santa Anna better pray he ain’t ever captured. I was listening last night to some boys that was at Goliad. They got some real mean things in their mind.”
“Like Deaf says, he’s such an arrogant sonofabitch he thinks he can torch the whole country and then cut us up for breakfast. We’re going to find out pretty soon, though.”
“How you know? Houston don’t say shit half the time about what we’re doing.”
“The San Jacinto River is just east of us. I don’t think him or Santa Anna either one wants to cross it this time of year. Besides, there’s all kind of swamps on each side of it.”
The army marched eastward, and the next day Son, Hugh, and Deaf rode ten miles ahead of the advance and encountered a Mexican patrol of fifteen mounted soldiers that had just emerged from a woods into a long open field. The Mexicans were stopped about two hundred yards away, staring at the three of them. Son pulled back the hammer of his rifle to half-cock.
“Don’t shoot,” Deaf said. “Wait till we see what they’re going to do. They ain’t sure what we got behind us.”
An officer in the lead put a spy glass to his eye, then kicked his spurs into his horse’s sides.
“He wants prisoners. Give it to them and shoot low,” Deaf said.