They fired their rifles almost simultaneously, and clouds of black smoke exploded from their barrels. Two of the Mexican horses went down, but the other riders kept coming.
“Hit it for the trees!” Deaf said.
They jerked the reins around and poured it on their horses. Son was leaned forward in the saddle, the reins in his teeth, his legs clenched tightly on the horse’s heaving sides, while he tried to pull the ramrod from his rifle. He heard three or four rifles go off behind him and then the popping sound of a ball cutting through the air by his ear. They thundered into the pine trees, swung down from their saddles, and crouched behind the trunks.
“Get that Colt working!” Deaf yelled. He and Son were pouring powder and ramming balls and greased patches down their rifle barrels.
Hugh knelt to the side of a pine tree and began firing and cocking the heavy Colt’s revolver with both hands. Each time the hammer came down the gun roared upward over his head. The explosions were deafening. A red hole the size of a dollar burst open in a Mexican horse’s forequarters, and the rider went down with him in a tangle of hooves and reins and stirrups.
“Ole spy glass there is going to think we got a regiment in here,” Hugh said.
By the time his hammer clicked on an empty chamber, Son and Deaf were reloaded and aiming their Kentucky rifles at the crossed bandoliers on the officer’s chest. Deaf fired first, and the ball caught the officer in the stomach and blew blood out his back on the horse’s rump. The reins collapsed, the horse slowed to a walk, and the officer sat still in the saddle with his hands pressed to the wound as though he could hold his life inside him. The other Mexicans turned and raced back toward the opposite woods. The man who had lost his horse was running among them.
“Let’s see what we got out here,” Deaf said.
They walked into the field, where the officer still sat in the saddle. His eyes were caught between fear of them and his death.
“Donde está Santa Anna?” Deaf said.
The Mexican’s head nodded forward, and the movement caused his horse to walk a few paces until Son took the reins.
“This fellow ain’t no good to us. Go through his saddle bags,” Hugh said.
Deaf untied his saddle bags and emptied them on the ground. They held a pair of socks and underwear, a shirt, a bar of soap and a razor, some women’s hose, and a heavy gold watch.
Deaf unsnapped the gold case on the watch and read the inscription inside: “To Our Beloved Son, David Cummings.”
“What’s the matter?” Hugh said.
“I knowed this man in Bexar.”
Hugh and Son were silent a moment.
“What d’ you want to do with spy glass here? He’s fading pretty fast,” Hugh said.
“Pull his wood tag and leave him. We need to find out what’s on the other side of that woods. A patrol this big means they ain’t far from home.”
Through the humid afternoon and evening they continued to scout the perimeter of Santa Anna’s army. Late that night when they reported back to Houston, Deaf said he was convinced that Santa Anna was turning his troops north at San Jacinto Bay, which would put him in a box with the water at his back.
Santa Anna camped on a stretch of dry elevated ground on the southeast side of the river, with a large marsh area on his right flank. His engineers built breastworks of logs and earth on his front and left flank, and the twelve-pounder cannon was placed in the center of the line so that it could command the open field.
Less than a mile to the north Houston had moved his troops into a thick woods and had placed his six-pounder cannon on the edge of the trees. On the afternoon of April 21 Houston assembled the soldiers and addressed them from horseback. The men were crowded together in the trees, their long rifles butt-down on the ground, pistols and knives stuck in their belts, flags furled on their staffs.
Son looked around him.
“Where’s Deaf at?” he said, because Deaf was never far from Houston unless he was scouting, and there was no need for a scout now.
“I seen him and Burnett ride out with a pair of axes this morning,” Hugh said.
“Up that rise waits the usurper and fifteen hundred of his troops,” Houston said. “They outnumber us two to one, but they have never been attacked before and they do not expect us to do it now. It is three-fifteen, they are in their siesta, and our attack will catch them in disarray. Each of us knows what will happen if we are not victorious today. The Mexicans will sweep through east Texas and devastate the colonies with torch and sword. They must not leave the field. Remember the Alamo, remember Goliad, and think of the fate of our loved ones if the usurper is not destroyed this afternoon. As civilized men we have followed the ways of mercy, even in war, but they must not be allowed to spend one more day at their evil design on our soil. If your heart is faint at what we must do, remember the Alamo. Let that be your cry when you meet those who ask for what they never gave themselves. Remember the Alamo. Remember the Alamo. Remember the Alamo.”
The lines of infantry formed on the edge of the woods, and the cavalry under Colonel Sherman and Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar moved out on the flanks. The sunlight was dazzling on the field, and a warm breeze was blowing off the river. Houston gave orders that no one was to fire until told to do so, and no one was to shout out until the enemy was actually engaged. The flags were unfurled, the rifles pulled back to half-cock, and a fifer and drummer stood immobile behind the switching tail of Houston’s horse. Then Houston waved his hat forward, and the line advanced while the drummer and fifer played “Will You Come to the Bower I Have Shaded for You?”
Son’s mouth was dry and his hands made wet stains on his rifle stock. He didn’t know if what he felt inside him was fear or expectation, but when he tried to focus his eyes through the haze on the Mexican camp and the field piece he knew was on the top of the rise, beads of sweat distorted his vision and made the whole field shimmer with refracted light. He ran his thumb over the flint screwed in his hammer and wondered if the edge was too thin and would break when it struck the steel by the flashpan. He had prayed seldom since he went to prison, but now the words to the “Our Father” came disjointedly to his mind. There was not a sound from the field except the song of the fifer and drummer. He looked at Hugh’s face, and it was gray and as tight as a drumhead.
“Why ain’t they shot yet?” he said. His words were full of phlegm.
“Don’t worry. It’s going to come at us like somebody opened the door to hell,” the rider next to him said.
Then the Mexican twelve-pounder roared on top of the rise, lurching upward on its carriage in a cloud of dust, and a cannon ball arched whooshing out of its trajectory overhead and crashed into the woods behind them. A gunner poured water from a wooden bucket down the barrel, and another man rammed the swabbing rod inside. Puffs of musket smoke exploded from the breastworks and drifted out into the field, and beyond Son’s line of vision he could hear the Mexicans yelling in camp. The gunners loaded another twelve-pound ball with a powder sack attached to it and were screwing down the elevation on the cannon.
Oh God, we’re going into it point-blank, Son thought.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Deaf galloping across the field with an axe held above his head.
“Vince’s Bridge is down. Vince’s Bridge is down,” he shouted.
“There ain’t no way out of here now,” Hugh said.
The cannon roared again, and this time Son could see the wave of heat flatten the grass in front of the barrel’s mouth. Behind him a geyser of dirt exploded into the air, and a rider and his horse were left twisted and quivering on the edge of the crater. The breastworks were no more than sixty yards away now, and the Mexicans were firing and reloading furiously in relays. Musket balls popped and crisscrossed through the air, and the gunners were ramming grape down the cannon barrel.