Crockett of Tennessee Page 46

  As his pants dropped around his ankles he happened to glance at an open cabinet in the corner. Rosa had substantially emptied it, yanking down clothes that now made up that bundle she carried—all this while he slept drunkenly on her bed, ignorant of the danger descending on the town. Persius fumed. You couldn’t count on Mexican women for any kind of human kindness, at least not Mexican women of Rosa’s ilk! He was very glad he had at least awakened on his own before afternoon. It would have been a rude awakening indeed to have opened his eyes and found Mexican soldiers surrounding his bed.

  It was even more maddening that she had taken his coat. Likely he’d freeze to death now. His eye was drawn again to the open cabinet. He went to it and dug through the heaps of clothing at the bottom of it, and found some Mexican-style white cotton fatigues and a loose-fitting Mexican shirt. He pulled out the clothing and examined it. It appeared to be about his size. “Well, this will just have to do,” he mumbled, and coughed.

  He put on his long underwear, and the fatigues over it. The extra layer would serve to keep him warm in the wind, even without his coat. Glancing up, he saw himself in the mirror. Rosa was right in a comment she had made: with his swarthy skin, he could be taken for a Mexican as quickly as for an American.

  Atop the fatigues he managed to get on his own clothing. His rifle and gear stood in the corner; at least Rosa hadn’t stolen that. Taking it up, he headed downstairs, hoping fervently that no fleeing San Antonian had taken his horse from the livery.

  He was fortunate; his horse was still there. He paid the liveryman out of the fold of money he kept inside a special leather pocket inside his boot lining, a pocket whose existence he had prudently concealed from Rosa. He saddled the horse and swung into the saddle. The exertion brought on a new fit of coughing; he tasted blood on his tongue. This here sickness is going to kill me, he thought. It ain’t getting better at all.

  He didn’t like thinking that way, and pushed the matter from his mind. He rode out of the stable and along the central street to the far side of town, across the little wooden bridge spanning the San Antonio River, and onto the road that led to Gonzales.

  The Alamo loomed on his left. There was great activity at the gate, cattle being herded inside, men swearing, shouting, looking back over their shoulders as if expecting to see Santa Anna right upon them. He forced himself not to look toward the old mission. Then a short distance up the road, he reined his horse to a stop and turned. He stared at the crumbling old walls and felt the most unexpected impulse. An insane one, the kind that would surely get him killed if he gave into it.

  All he had to do was turn again and keep riding, but he didn’t do it. He just kept sitting there, gazing at the Alamo.

  David Crockett was fooling around with Persius’s handed-down fiddle when the news had come from the town. A lookout posted in a church tower had seen something glittering on the horizon, like sunlight reflecting off armor or weaponry. Since then, everything had been a mad scramble. Some men of the garrison had raced into town, looking for any kind of provisions and food they could round up to carry into the Alamo. To their dismay, they found the populace in flight and most of the provisions already taken. By the time Santa Anna’s advance force was nearing the town, only some thirty beeves and a bit of corn had been gathered in to supplement what was already on hand.

  David checked his Betsey once again to make sure she was in firing order. It was hard to believe that the Mexican army had actually come. Santa Anna must have driven them through hell itself to get here before spring! He could not know how very nearly on the mark that thought was. The advancing Mexicans had suffered drought, deserts, famine, and blizzards to reach this place. Only Santa Anna himself had traveled in relative comfort.

  David had been given command of one of the fort’s weakest points, a gap in the original enclosure that had been filled with palisades and earthen embankments. Here the best marksmen were stationed under his command, armed with long rifles. It would be up to their accurate, long-range weapons and marksmanship to make up for what protective qualities the palisades and earthworks lacked. They would be doing their fighting directly in front of the roofless chapel building that was the Alamo’s most distinctive feature.

  David was giving a final examination to the palisades when he heard his name called. Turning, he found himself looking into the face of Persius Tarr.

  “Persius? Is that really you I’m looking at?”

  “It’s a damn fool you’re looking at, Davy. It appears I’ve come back.”

  “You’re going to help us fight?”

  Persius had a very disgusted look on his face. “So it seems. Likely I’m just going to get myself good and dead.” He coughed, very hard. “Maybe it don’t matter. These lungs of mine are bound to kill me before long anyway.”

  “We’re not here to die, not unless it comes down to it,” David replied. “I don’t get into fights planning to lose them, but I’ll be shot if I run from one either, no matter how it goes.” He grinned and put his hand on Persius’s shoulder. “Glad to have you back, Persius. Or should I say, Ben?”

  “I don’t care what you call me. I don’t think it matters a bit anymore.” Persius looked around the compound. “Looks stronger than when I last seen it. Has anybody give thought to what we’ll drink if they block the stream?”

  “There’s a well been opened up over yonder,” David said. “See it?”

  “Yes. Good. If it gets too fearsome here before long, maybe I’ll just run and jump down it.” He coughed some more, and spat blood onto the ground.

  “You ain’t the only man sick at the lungs here,” David said. “Jim Bowie is getting worse by the day.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “He’s commanding the volunteers, with Colonel Travis commanding the regular soldiers. There’s been an argument between them, and no love lost on either side. But no time to chew that fat right now, Persius. We may be fighting here before long, and I’ve got a world of getting ready to do.”

  In mid-afternoon the defenders of the old mission saw an ominous sight across the river. A bloodred flag hung from the tower of the San Fernando Church, which stood hard by the Military Plaza in San Antonio de Bexar.

  “What’s it mean?” one of David’s men asked him.

  “It means that the Mexican army is in town now. But more than that. I’m told a red flag is Santy Anny’s sign that there’ll be no quarter given to prisoners,” David replied.

  “Damn,” Persius muttered. “I reckon I am a fool. I could have been a long way from here by now.”

  Chapter 58

  February 24, 1836

  The concussion hammered them so hard that their ears popped and their chests rattled, causing Persius Tarr to cough violently. Grit and shards of stone hit them like a rain of nails. When the dust had settled, the clump of men lifted their heads and began beating the dirt and grime off their hats and shoulders.

  “That was the closest one yet,” David Crockett commented. “I can see already I ain’t going to like this kind of fighting, all closed in like a hen in a coop.”

  “Fighting?” one of the others asked. “We ain’t done no real fighting yet, Colonel. You just wait till we do—there’ll be plenty of dead Mex flesh to feed the buzzards, yes sir.”

  “That’s right,” David said. “We’re going to drop them by the hundreds.”

  “’Pears to me we’d best figure a way to drop them by the thousands,” Persius commented. “Otherwise they’ll swarm right over the top of us.”

  “You always did look for the bright side, Persius,” David said. He had dropped Persius’s alias of Ben Breeding, and to those who sought an explanation for the change of names, both Persius and David frankly explained that Persius had run into trouble in Tennessee and had used a false name for safety. No one was shocked; many men changed their names throughout life. And now that the group of less than two hundred was locked together inside this old stone mission, past affairs from the outside world didn’t seem
to matter to anyone anyway.

  A cannonball sailed overhead and arced down into the livestock pens beyond the old chapel. Horses trumpeted and nickered.

  “Bet that killed at least one of them,” a man said.

  David peered across the smoke-filled enclosure and made out Colonel Travis darting for cover near the northern postern. Moments later an explosion not far away from that spot rained dirt and stone all over the man. David was concerned; was Travis all right? Moments later he saw Travis stand and brush himself off, talking to another fellow nearby.

  This enclosure was Travis’s to command now; Neill had been called away from his post. Bowie had grown even sicker and was now lodged in a bedroom over near the main Alamo entrance, close by the place David and his marksmen huddled. Word was that Bowie was so sick he was unlikely to live long, even if he did survive this siege.

  David rose and peered over the palisades. A blast of smoke and a boom that reached his ears a moment later revealed the release of yet another round of Mexican artillery. He ducked. The missile sailed far overhead and came down in the center of the plaza, leaving a big crater.

  “Trying to wear down our courage, not to mention the walls,” David said.

  “The walls are holding up better than my courage,” another said.

  “We’ll come through fine,” David replied in a tone of forced cheerfulness. “Come spring there’ll be flowers blooming on Mex graves from here to the Rio Grande.”

  But he wasn’t really that confident. The size of Santa Anna’s force was already staggering, and intelligence was that even more troops were on the way. And a messenger from Goliad had come in the evening before, saying that Colonel James Fannin, who had been expected to bring more than four hundred men to reinforce the Alamo, would not be able to come at all. It was grim, disheartening news.

  David hoped the bombardment would cease soon. It was beginning to wear down the nerves of the defenders, and worse, there was no way to fight back in kind. Only seldom did any of the Alamo’s cannon return fire. There was no powder to spare, and what there was would be needed far more badly when this prelude was over and the real battle began.

  That night, Travis sent out a courier bearing the following message:

  To the people of Texas and all Americans in the world, Fellow citizens and compatriots—I am besieged by a thousand or more Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man—The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls—I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.

  P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 heads of Beeves.

  A few minutes after ten o’clock on the following morning, David had the pleasure of taking his first real shot at a Mexican soldier, and the gratification of seeing him grasp his chest and fall. Santa Anna had launched an infantry assault against the southern wall, bugles blaring as some three hundred Mexican infantrymen charged the walls, inaccurate smoothbore muskets in their hands.

  David reloaded, grateful for his rifle. He could pick off a Mexican at two hundred yards, while the Mexicans, with their inferior weaponry, had to advance to within seventy yards for even half a chance of hitting anything.

  At Travis’s orders, the Alamo marksmen had allowed the Mexicans to come within easy range before opening fire. The effect was telling; some two hours later, at least eight Mexicans were dead and no one in the Alamo had been hurt, save those who were cut by flying stones during the earlier bombardment.

  Furthermore, several of the huts that had shielded the advancing Mexicans were now in flames, set ablaze by a group of brave Alamo defenders who raced out from the walls with torches, then back inside again.

  “That’ll teach ’em,” one of David’s marksmen said.

  “No, I’m fearful it won’t,” he replied. “We haven’t seen a real siege yet. Santy Anny will take his time before he really hits us. He wants us to be as weary and scared as we can be.”

  “I ain’t scared,” one of the younger riflemen blustered.

  “I am,” Persius Tarr mumbled as he reloaded his rifle.

  That night, Persius was among the soldiers who went to James Bowie’s room to see how the man was faring. Most of those who came in knew Bowie personally and came out of friendship. It hardly mattered; Bowie was so sick he didn’t seem to know them.

  Persius hadn’t come out of friendship, but because he was beginning to believe he shared the same disease as Bowie, and probably would share the same fate … assuming he survived this siege at all. When he saw the pallid, delirious man laid out on his cot, he was chilled. Soon, he thought, it will be me dying like that.

  He left Bowie’s room in a rush, and did not go back again.

  February 26

  Shoulders aching from the repeated slams of rifle recoil, David Crockett’s marksmen kept at it, aiming and firing, swearing when their shots missed and cheering whenever they saw a Mexican fall. Though they were growing wearier by the day—Santa Anna kept up enough cannon fire to make sure no one inside the mission could get much sleep—there was a general sense of encouragement. So far, not one defender had died, and even though the Mexicans had managed to move gun emplacements nearer and nearer the ancient Alamo walls, they were paying a dear price for it. David’s marksmen were excellent snipers, and the long range of their rifles kept the Mexicans hopping. No one had been able to keep an accurate count of Mexican casualties; David had long since quit trying.

  Further encouragement came as rumor spread through the ranks that Colonel Fannin was on his way after all. Troops questioned Travis about this, but he could not confirm it. “We may hope and pray it is true,” he said.

  The weather was worsening. On the first day of the siege, the day had warmed significantly, but now a cold wind had swept in. There was little firewood inside the Alamo with which to counter the cold.

  “Lost my coat to a harlot,” Persius said to David as the cold night fell. “I’d be freezing half to death if I hadn’t put on some Mex clothes she had.”

  “Mex clothes?”

  “Yes, under my own clothes.” He opened his outer shirt and showed the cotton shirt beneath it.

  David asked, “Are the britches like the shirt?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned close and spoke in a low voice. “Persius, in them clothes and with your dark looks you could be took for a Mexican. Some of the soldiers I’ve seen are dressed like that.”

  “Well, that’s true, now that you mention it.”

  “You might be able to slip out of here. You could live.”

  Persius smiled subtly. “You encouraging me to desert, Colonel Crockett?”

  Hearing it put out so plainly made David frown. “I’m just saying that … never mind it. It was just words.” David looked away. “We’re likely to die here, Persius. You know that. You’re my friend. I don’t want to see you die.”

  “What is it, David? You believe only a fine citizen like yourself deserves to have any glory?”

  “Never mind it, Persius. Like I said, it was just words.”

  “I’m going to die anyway, Davy. Just like old Bowie’s going to die. These lungs of mine are worse and worse. The way I see it, if I get killed here, at least for once in his life Persius Tarr can say he done a good and grand thing. I ain’t never lived right. Maybe I can die righ
t.”

  David studied the dark face of his companion. Maybe there was more to the man than he had ever shown before. His words had an iron in them David wasn’t accustomed to hearing from Persius.

  “Who knows, Persius? Maybe we’ll make it through. Maybe Fannin will come with his men and save our skins. Then we can take that money you got and buy us the land we were talking about.”

  “Partners again, eh?”

  “That’s right. If you’re still willing to have me.”

  “I am. But there’s something I need to tell you about that money. It wasn’t inherited. It was stole.”

  “Stole …”

  “That’s right. Robbed right out of a rich man’s safe, right in his house. I was working for him in Nashville, and he was fool enough to leave it open. Even that fiddle is stole. It belonged to the rich man’s house servant, an old darky. I took a shine to it and just carried it out with me.”

  David’s spirit drooped. Why was it always this way with Persius? Every time the man showed some spark of nobility, he would turn around and snuff it out.

  “I wish you hadn’t told me, Persius.”

  “It really don’t matter now, David. There’s not going to be any land, any partnership, any new life, at least not for me. Maybe you’ll come through alive and make that new start for yourself and your family, but me, I’m going to die. Either here, or later on in some bed, coughing my life away like poor old Bowie in yonder room. I believe I’d just as soon do my dying here. There’s nothing left for me, even if I do survive this.”

  “You sound like you’re set on death, Persius.”

  “No. But I do believe death is set on me. It comes to us all sooner or later. We just have to face it.”

  They held silent a few moments. Outside the walls they heard the noises of busy Mexicans, taking advantage of the cover of darkness to move their gun emplacements even closer to the walls. It was a grim thing to listen to, grimmer even than Persius’s soft-spoken talk of death.