by Jeff Long
It amounted to a death sentence, a mean act even for Burnet.
"New Orleans, Sam. Newspapers."
Houston nodded. History began with words, and he was about to have the first one. Newspapers meant votes, and the revolutionary convention had set September for the Republic's maiden election. In short the temporary president feared his temporary general. He was strangely cheered. Burnet's action was an overt form of assassination, and Houston doubted the citizenry would much approve of killing off a great war hero like himself. Whether he let Houston go or stay, it seemed Burnet was going to lose some votes today. "Too bad we have to wait until September," Houston said.
"You're not dead yet," Rusk observed. "Captain Ross is refusing to cast off until you're brought aboard."
"So we're in checkmate, Burnet and me."
"There's a way through this of course."
"Do tell."
"A swap. You for Santa Anna. We take him off and put you on. That way Burnet saves face. And you save your life."
Houston dropped his head back on his bundled-up coat and closed his eyes. The flies danced on his face. The stench of death closed over his mouth. The air was thick and oppressive. He felt staked to the dirt.
More than anything he wanted to be away from here. One word and he could be carried aboard the Yellowstone and borne away. The sea breeze would clean him. The waves would lift him toward his home, away from Texas so that he could be healed and return to Texas.
But the same word that would save him would betray him, too. He had promised the Mexican general his life in exchange for Texas. And Santa Anna had kept his end of the bargain.
"Make the swap, Sam. If it was his to do, Santa Anna would give you away in a heartbeat." There was anguish in Rusk's voice, rare for him. Houston hadn't realized how much the colonel needed a leader.
"I was just thinking of another piece of business," Houston said. "I was wondering, whatever happened with Colonel Forbes?"
The detour annoyed Rusk. "Pay attention, Sam. We're talking about your life here."
"Tell me," Houston said, "do the men still shout his name?"
"Every night, louder and louder."
"And what about his court of inquiry? Has he whitewashed his crime yet?"
"Not yet. There's been no court. He's still waiting your approval. He can freeze in hell for all I care."
Houston took a breath and released it slowly, making a decision. He hardened his heart. He went ahead.
"Tell him to go ahead and collect his friends," Houston said. "He can have his court. He may retrieve his reputation from the shit pile."
Rusk's brow wrinkled up.
"Is there a problem with that, Tom?"
"You acknowledge that what Forbes did was a crime."
"He's guilty as the devil," Houston affirmed. "In cold blood he sabered a defenseless woman."
Dr. Kenner had paused with his ministration. He was listening intently, as if he'd known the woman on a personal basis. Maybe in his terrible journey she had woven a kindness for him.
"And yet you'll authorize a whitewash?" Rusk said.
Houston nodded.
"You're contradicting yourself."
"I guess I am."
"Then tell me one thing. If you were to sit on Forbes's court, how would you judge him?"
Houston smiled. "Innocent," he said.
A stormy look invaded Dr. Kenner's face and Houston suddenly wished his foot was beyond the physician's reach.
"But you just said he's guilty," Dr. Labadie interrupted. "We all know he's guilty. What about the truth?"
"We left a lot of things at the border, gentlemen."
Dr. Labadie didn't like hearing that. "What about atonement?" Clearly he was one of those who'd been howling Forbes's name to the moon and also, clearly, one who'd done his share of the killing.
"I'm afraid atonement is a luxury."
"A luxury!"
"For civilized men," Houston said.
"But something terrible happened here," Dr. Labadie insisted.
"Listen to me," Houston said. Even speaking so softly was
wearing him out. "We are creating a nation out of air and dreams. For a while it will be as delicate as a butterfly. We must protect it from the memory of itself, from the mud and filth and night. We have been the barbarians at the wall of an empire called Spain. But from this day forward they must be the barbarians at the wall of an empire called Texas. So, the woman, the dead, the atrocities, all of it . . . forget, just forget."
Dr. Labadie was offended, that or bewildered. "And this is how you would baptize Texas? By telling the people just forget?"
"You gave us a battle cry, Sam," Rusk reminded him. "You told us to remember."
Houston labored to stay conscious. They needed him. It was time to quit burning down the night.
Houston raised his arm and jerked at the jacket under his head. But the blackness swirled up and he had to let his arm go limp.
"Doctor Kenner," he whispered, "in the pocket, please."
Dr. Kenner lifted Houston's head and pulled the jacket free. He found Houston's whittling knife.
"No, the other pocket," Houston said.
The doctor dipped into the pocket and removed a half-eaten ear of corn. "This?"
Houston took the corn. "Give my men these seeds. Tell them go get some land. Tell them go plant some corn."
Dr. Kenner understood. He gripped the ear of corn.
Rusk leaned forward. "Is that all you've got to say, Sam?"
"No," Houston whispered. Save me so I can save you. "Get me on that boat."
They carried him aboard the Yellowstone as if it were a Viking funeral ship. Men and boys and what few women had traveled in lined the way. There was winter in their eyes. Soldiers who had swallowed their enemies' blood just days ago wept. Some cheered him, calling huzzahs for Old Sam, but even they looked dour and bleak. All in all it was better than an election because their grief and forlorn faces gave Houston his mandate. If he died, they would remember him. If he returned, they would follow him.
Burnet was nowhere to be seen, nor were most of Houston's
colonels, for they had closeted themselves in a tent for Forbes's court of inquiry. He looked for Mrs. Mann—her or Molly—in the line of faces, but that was a useless search. If they ever met again, she would be changed and so would he. Everything was going to be different from now on.
The procession came to a halt at the gangplank. "First we got to off-load Santy Any," one of the stretcher bearers said to Houston. After a few minutes the Mexican general was marched off. Terrified at being returned to captivity, he had eaten the remainder of Dr. Labadie's opium supply. He stumbled and would have fallen over the railing. But Tad was there. He caught the caudillo's arm and helped him navigate the walkway.
Scattered voices called death threats at the tyrant. Overall the crowd observed his pathetic descent in silence. Leaning heavily upon the boy's shoulder, Santa Anna passed Houston's makeshift stretcher. It would have been his right to shout at his betrayer, to condemn Houston with a pointed finger. Houston almost wanted him to. Instead Santa Anna delivered a presidential salute, a loose thing that transcended its military roots. Houston summoned his strength and returned it.
Then Santa Anna was gone, back to his chains and tree and drunken guards. Houston rose up above the earth. The stretcher tilted and he saw the river surging against the wooden hull, the ship rocking gently, tugged seaward. The twin smokestacks with their crenellated black borders towered overhead pouring white smoke into the sky.
"Welcome aboard," a Yankee scarecrow greeted him. "I'm Captain Ross. It would please me very much if you'd accept my cabin for your own."
"Much obliged," Houston rasped. "But the open deck will do." The air was fresher up here and he wanted to be outside where he could see the sky shift colors and the birds fly and the battlefield recede between banks of green. He wanted to know the moment this river opened onto the ocean.
Captain Ross led the w
ay, directing that the stretcher be laid on the forward deck. He opened a pocketwatch, scanned the bustling shoreline, and announced that they would be casting off in ten minutes. A whistle blew to call in the tourists for their return excursion.
This section of the Yellowstone s deck had been cleared of
the protecting cotton bales. Houston had a view of his distant battlefield. It was a flat place, empty to the eye. Except for the buzzards and ravens billowing over the savannah, nothing suggested that so much as a life had been lost here nor a nation gained.
The Yellowstone's crew busied itself taking on the last cords of wood cut for her by the army. No matter how much wood the soldiers were giving to the steamboat, Houston knew they would have saved plenty for themselves. He wondered how bright their campfires would blaze tonight. By dusk he would be far away from them. They would have to hold off their siege of ghosts without him.
Several of the tourists strolled onto the deck, casting reverent glances at their bedridden celebrity. One of the men carried a bright white skull, boiled clean. His friends took turns poking their fingertips into the bullethole through its forehead.
A cry filtered up from the bayou reaches. "Samuel? Where's he at? I want that Samuel Houston."
The voice was female and for a minute Houston hoped this woman might be the Hellenic bride of his imaginings, the call he had come to Texas for. He yearned for her to be beautiful and luminous and loving.
From his stretcher, Houston heard the sound of bare feet slapping on the deck, and then an old woman in muddy gingham planted herself in his sunshine. She had nose hair and dewlaps and red hair gone to white and could have been one of Macbeth's witches.
"You're Samuel Houston?" She sounded disappointed.
"I am," Houston confessed.
"I'm Peggy McCormick," she said. When that didn't provoke the right response, she added, "Peggy's Lake. That's mine." When that, too, failed to register, she said, "The lake you filled with Mexicans."
"Ah yes, Mrs. McCormick."
"Don't you Missus me," she snapped. "I come to say take them dead Mexicans off my league."
"I cannot," Houston replied.
"You can, goddamn you. They haunt me all the day and all the night I live. My cows will chew the bones and spoil their milk. Now take them Mexicans off."
Behind the white-haired fury the tourists were grinning broadly.
"But, Madam." Houston rummaged through his bag of oratory. "Your land will be famed in history. Here was born, in the throes of revolution and amid the strife of contending legions, the infant of Texas independence. Here the scourge of mankind, Santa Anna, met his fate."
Peggy was unpersuaded. "To the devil with your glorious history," she barked. "Take off your stinking Mexicans."
"Madam," Houston consoled her. "I can't take them back."
On shore excited men were loading and firing off their newly acquired muskets. Chains rattled. The vessel was preparing to debark. A crew mate came up to lead Peggy McCormick down the gangplank. "We're casting off," he said.
"I ain't leaving," Peggy declared.
"Come on, old woman."
"Not until I get my satisfaction."
"Try to understand," Houston reasoned with her. "You have all the time in the world now." Her eyes hooded over. She suspected a trick. But it was the truth, all Houston had left to offer. He turned his face away and when he looked again, Peggy was gone.
The ship cast loose. The sun rotated in a sweeping arc through the sky. They were leaving Texas. The cheering on shore grew fainter. Captain Ross gave the soldiers a blast of his whistle. The gentlemen with the skull were animated. They leaned against the rail, pointing at whatever there was to see out there.
Houston lay his head back, suddenly exhausted. His great quest was coming to an end. At last he could sleep.
But then a shadow swept across and lit on him. Like a huge raven pouncing on carrion it stayed fixed on his body and it was cold. Houston bent his head back and saw one of the smokestacks blocking the sun. It was chilly in the shadow, too much like night.
"Boys," he called. The gentlemen at the rail heard him and came over.
"Would you move me out of this shade," he said.
They lifted his stretcher carefully, straining as if he'd taken
on the weight of granite. Stepping over a pile of rope, they placed him more strategically. "General?"
The sun was warm against his face. He shut out the earth and the sky and took a deep breath of the light. "Thank you," he murmured. "Here will do."
The footsteps moved off. "The general is sleeping," one gentleman whispered. Finally Houston knew he was by himself. That was when he opened his eyes and it was there, that single bead in the sky, his lone star waiting.
Boston Public Library
COPLEY S GENERAL LI
The Date Due Card in the pocket indicates the date on or before which this book should be returned to the Library.
Please do not remove cards from this pocket.
SAN JACINTO
BATTLEGROUND
TEXAN
NFANTRY
ii i in CAVALRY □ ARTILLERY
MEXICAN
■ INFANTRY
■ CAVALRY I ARTILLERY
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73 Mto to Harrisburg
8 Miles to Winces Bridge
G D S / Jeffrey L. Ward
(continuedfrom front flap) painstaking research to find the truth behind the Houston myth. Empire of Horn's is based on actual depositions for a slander suit from some of the survivors of the Battle of San Jacinto, recorded twenty-five years later on the eve of the Civil War.
Impassioned and colorful, yet historically grounded, Empire of Bones is a vivid evocation of the early days of Texas and of the shifting balance of barbarism and civilization in a young nation. It is also a compelling, controversial portrait of the visionary eccentric who became an unlikely Napoleon and was forced to weigh the price of empire.
Jeff Long is the author of the celebrated Duel of Eagles: The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo and Outlaw: The Story of Claude Dallas as well as two previous novels, Angels of Light and The Ascent. Born in Texas, he now lives in Boulder, Colorado.
Jacket design lr Robert Au/icino
Jacket photograph. Battle of San Jacinto, by H. A. McCardle, Archives Division, Texas State Library
William Morrow & (Company, In<
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