Forget the Alamo!

by Drew McGunn

  He watched the two artillery officers walk away, in animated conversation, making plans for the pending move. When they turned a corner and disappeared around a building, Will gestured to Bowie and said, “Let’s take a walk. That was the easy part.” Bowie nodded and fell into step beside him. There had not been much time to think through the next part. As he spoke, he hoped Bowie was a good sounding board. “We need a lot more men with us when we head out to face Santa Anna, Jim.” He paused as a thought came to him, “Would you be willing to ask Juan Seguin if he would ride out and recruit as many men as he can between here and the Nueces? Do you think he could raise a company of men given enough time?”

  Bowie nodded enthusiastically and replied, “He could arrange to meet us down on the Rio Grande with whatever men he can recruit.” Will could see Bowie liked the idea as he continued, “I can ask. If anyone can motivate the Tejanos around here to rise up and join our revolution it’s Juan.”

  In his mind, he imagined a list on a whiteboard, and Will mentally checked the boxes for artillery and more cavalry. The imaginary list grew as he considered how few men defended the Alamo. There really were very few choices about how to grow things. He said, “It is absolutely essential we fold Fannin’s men into our own. I think we’d both feel a lot better about our odds against Santa Anna if we could add those three or four hundred men.”

  Bowie frowned, shaking his head, “That jumped up popinjay is not going to listen to anything I say, that’s a damn sight sure.”

  Will felt a sense of relief as Travis’ memories gave him more details about Fannin than what he recalled from his history books. Better understanding Bowie’s dislike for the feckless West Point dropout, Will chose his words with care, “Fannin just needs to be encouraged to listen to reason.”

  Bowie laughed and slapped his back, then said, “Well, Buck, up until yesterday, I woulda told you to send someone else. You and me usually see about the same, when it comes to reason … we don’t. But since you’ve arrived I’ve noticed command has changed you, and I gotta say, you’re showing yourself to be more …” Bowie paused, looking for the right word, “mature, I suppose.”

  Will resisted the little part of him who wanted to say, ‘What gave me away?’ but instead he smiled and replied. “You might say, this command has truly made me into a new man.”

  As the two turned back toward the plaza, Bowie asked, “So, when do you leave to fetch Fannin and his men?”

  Chapter 4

  Will and Bowie’s stroll carried them outside the walls of the Alamo, and he stopped on the footbridge spanning the acequia next to the lunette which protected the fort’s gate. He looked over at Bowie and chuckled. Bowie turned around and with a sly smile on his face asked, “What?”

  “I see what you just did, Jim.” Will replied, still laughing. “What makes you think I would have any more luck with Fannin than you or Colonel Neill?”

  Still smiling, Bowie replied, “You got any better ideas, Buck? Oh, no doubt Jim Neill could talk Fannin into meeting up with us, but it’s going to take everything he and I can do to get our men and cannons down to the Rio Grande. Hell, Buck, just admit it, you’re the most expendable, oh, I mean, you’re the youngest and can stay in the saddle longer than either me or Neill.”

  Will looked askance at Bowie, and wryly shaking his head, said, “I suspect you had it right the first time, Jim.” He was amused at the ease with which Bowie put him on the spot. As he considered the idea, he was likely the only man other than James Neill who could persuade James Fannin to abandon his quixotic quest to support Grant and Johnson on their ill-fated Matamoros expedition.

  He followed behind Bowie as they reentered the Alamo plaza. He entertained a couple of ideas about how to move Fannin to act. He knew he was looking at two very long, hard days in the saddle during which he could work out the details. As he recalled, it was roughly ninety miles from San Antonio to Goliad. The town of Goliad owed its existence to the Presidio La Bahia, an old fort established by the Spanish army in the 1740s.

  He and Bowie parted ways as Will headed back to his little room. He sat on the edge of the bed and considered what he thought likely to happen over the next couple of weeks. He knew, if unchecked, Santa Anna would arrive in San Antonio on the 23rd of February, in twenty days. Working backward, Will figured If Santa Anna was pushing his army, he would still need seven days after crossing the Rio Grande to reach San Antonio. That meant Will needed to be on the Rio Grande no later than the 15th. “If that failed,” Will said to himself, “would we have time to fall back to the Nueces River and fortify it?” The Nueces River was little more than a creek where the Camino Real crossed it. Will counted the cost of failure and silently shook his head. “Even if we just fortified the Nueces and didn’t try to defend the Rio Grande crossing, it shifts the advantage too much back to Santa Anna,” Will muttered to himself.

  “Did you say something, Marse William?” Joe stood in the small doorway. In his hands were Travis’ boots.

  “My boots.” Will silently corrected his thinking, “No point in thinking of any of this as William B. Travis’ stuff.” He pointed to a spot near the bed and said, “If you’ll put them there I would appreciate it.” As Joe set the boots down, Will glanced up and noticed the slave couldn’t completely hide his ongoing surprise at the change which had come over his master.

  Will made a snap decision as it sunk into his mind that in every way that it could possibly matter, he was now William B. Travis. The last remaining doubt that this was all a dream evaporated in his mind. If that meant that he now owned the slave, then that meant that he now had the power to do something about it. “Joe,” he said, “I’m going to have to go fetch Colonel Fannin shortly. I’ve seen the way you sit a horse, and sorry to say, you’d not be able to keep up.”

  The black man stared back at Will impassively, remaining quiet. Will’s head was spinning as the remaining words spilled across his lips, “Would you be willing to fight against Mexico, and when we win our war, I set you free?”

  Joe’s impassivity broke and he exclaimed, “Marse William, you mean to free me if I was to fight for you?”

  Will’s eyes were shining with his own enthusiasm when he replied, “Yes or no, Joe. I wouldn’t ask it if I wasn’t serious.”

  A smile slowly crept across Joe’s face and he responded, “Oh, yes sir! I would certainly fight the Mexicans for my freedom, Marse William.”

  Joe’s smile was infectious and Will couldn’t keep one from his face either. “I thought as much.” Will said, “It’s going to take some time to make it official, but I release you from your bonds now. Whether you fight or not, Joe, that’s up to you. If you choose to fight, then you will do it as a free man. If you choose to not fight, then that’s also your choice as a free man.”

  Joe looked a little faint as the news sank in and he sat on the end of the cot as he shook his head, “Lordy, Marse William. I’m free. Does that mean that I can go where I want? If I wanted to go back to Alabama, I could go?”

  “It wouldn’t be much in the way of freedom if you couldn’t. Yes, Joe. You can go wherever you want,” Will replied, watching the former slave begin to awaken to the realization of what it could mean to be free. As the smile faded from Joe’s face Will noticed a flash of fear replace the smile. Concerned, he said, “Joe, you don’t have to make any decisions today about what you want to do. If you want, you can continue to be my servant, but for pay. At least until you know what you want to do.”

  From the memories of William B. Travis, he had some idea of the next steps. He said, “Joe, I’ve got to leave now, but when I return, we’ll get your manumission forms filed in San Antonio and make it official. You have my word.” Will extended his hand, offering it to the former slave. Tentatively Joe reached out and shook his former master’s hand, as an equal.

  ***

  Joining Will on his ride to fetch Fannin was James Butler Bonham. He was a fellow South Carolinian, and if Travis’ memories were to be trusted, the
y were cousins. In addition to their own horses, they each had two more as remounts. Even though he was still sore from sitting in the saddle the previous day, Will set a pace that quickly ate away the miles. At first, Bonham was chatty, talking about various politicians that had assembled at Washington-on-the-Brazos, revealing discord between Houston and President Burnet over command of Texas military forces, but as the miles fell away, Will’s ability to listen to his traveling companion ebbed and when the South Carolinian ran out of steam, he changed the subject, “Jim, have you given much thought about how narrow we’re going to cut things?”

  Bonham shrugged, and replied, “I’m just a lowly Captain, Buck. I thought they paid you to do the thinking.”

  Bonham’s good humor was contagious, and Will retorted, “Who said anything about getting paid? Sam paying you sub-rosa, Jim?” Both men laughed, but as their horses’ hooves kicked up dust, Will mentioned what was on his mind, “Today’s Wednesday, the third. We’ve got what? Ninety miles between here and Goliad, right?”

  Bonham nodded, “Sure, how hard do you plan on pushing our horses? That’s going to be the difference between two or three days to get there.”

  Will nodded in response and said, “Right. I don’t think we’re going to get to Goliad until Friday. How fast we push will decide whether it’s in the morning or evening. Let’s assume we can get Fannin’s men on the march on the sixth. That only gives us nine days to march them over two hundred miles.”

  Bonham whistled appreciatively, “That means that we’re going to need to cover nearly twenty-five miles each day.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking, too,” Will replied. As the two continued in silence for a bit, Will thought about the challenge ahead of him. He knew that the typical infantry force of nineteenth century rarely marched even twenty miles a day. As he thought about it, it triggered something in Will’s mind about a story he read about Stonewall Jackson’s brigade during the Civil War. In it they covered fifty-seven miles in less than fifty-one hours. Will shook his head, and thought, “Even Stonewall Jackson’s famed foot cavalry didn’t manage much more than twenty-five miles a day. Were the men with Fannin even capable of that kind of a march, all day, every day for more than a week?” That meant pushing the men for ten hours each day, over nine days. As part of an infantry unit before, finding himself inside of Travis’ head, he knew it was physically possible to do it, but he worried that it may stretch Fannin’s little army beyond any usefulness. Will despaired at the thought, then despaired even more at the thought of letting Santa Anna march unmolested between the Rio Grande and the Alamo. Unbidden, a single thought lifted his spirits and a burst of laughter escaped his lips. “The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little bit longer,” he said as he edged his mount into a gallop. If this impossible takes a little longer, then he knew they had no time to waste. Bonham followed his cousin and spurred his horse down the road.

  Pushing through the early February twilight, they slowed down from their earlier steady pace. Will readjusted his backside in the saddle as he marveled at how people in the nineteenth century handled such rigors. The sky was clear and a large yellow moon shone in the night sky when Bonham finally said, “Buck, it’s getting late, the road is hard to see, and dammit, my ass is killing me. I don’t know how you manage to be stay in the saddle all day long.

  Happy to climb down from the horse, Will smirked, thinking that maybe they were so tough because nobody wanted to admit how badly certain body parts hurt. After rubbing down their horses and staking them nearby, Bonham asked, “Do you reckon we made it any further than thirty miles today?” He took a twig and used the small fire they shared to light it before transferring the flame to a cigar.

  Will thought about it and said, “Maybe. We left out in the early afternoon. We’ve been on the road for more than six hours. I guess it’s possible.” Will calculated the remaining distance and said, “We’ll be doing well if we can get there by midafternoon on the 5th. One thing that I am sure about, though, Jim, I’m exhausted.”

  Bonham agreed and said, “Best then that we get a good night’s rest.”

  ***

  Will was satisfied with the time that he and Bonham had made when the two men saw the presidio’s white adobe dome gleaming in the noonday sun on the 5th. They had done slightly better than he expected. As they had ridden along the road, Will realized that Bonham enjoyed talking. A lot. He learned that Travis’ cousin had come to Texas only a few months prior as part of a militia company from Alabama, called the Mobile Greys. He tuned the other officer out, nodding and grunting responses intermittently.

  As they approached the presidio’s gate, Will was surprised to see very little activity around its walls. Two men, dressed in the sturdy, gray jackets of the Mobile Greys, stood at what Will generously considered attention. One of the men waved as Will and Bonham arrived, “Howdy, Captain Bonham. I thought you was at the Alamo.”

  Bonham pulled up in front of the guard and returned the wave with his own casual salute, “Well, Private Cunningham, here I am, along with Colonel Travis. Where’s everyone else? We thought we’d find Colonel Fannin here at Goliad.”

  The private pulled at the collar of a plain gray jacket, reacting to the chill in the north wind, and replied, “Nah, he and near about everyone else is down Refugio way. They was supposed to meet up with Colonel Grant. Last I heard they hadn’t.”

  Will’s stomach felt like it contracted as he felt a sinking feeling. He had been certain that Fannin’s force was in Goliad. After all, that’s what he remembered from his history books. How could he have been wrong? Doubt crept into his mind. Will swore under his breath and thought, “If I was wrong about this, what else am I going to be wrong about?”

  Bonham had dismounted and led the horses over to a wooden water trough. “Well, Buck, it doesn’t look like we’re done for the day. If we hurry along we might be able to get there before it gets dark.”

  Will woodenly nodded. As he walked around while the horses were drinking from the trough he felt his heart racing, as he worried and wondered about what he thought he knew. He couldn’t afford another mistake like this, he thought. “I can’t afford to seize up. Too much is riding on not screwing this up.” Will thought, “Okay, what do I know about Refugio?” Travis’ memories filled in the gaps. The village was less than thirty miles from Goliad.

  Bonham came back a few minutes later, pulling a string of four horses. Seeing Will, he cried out, “Good news, Buck. I was able to trade out our tired nags for some fresh mounts.”

  Hearing Bonham calling out with good news lifted Will’s spirits. “Jim, that’s well played. Can you find out how many men are still here?” Will asked.

  Bonham replied, “Fannin left sixty men to hold the presidio. He’s got around three hundred or so with him at the moment.”

  Feeling better about the news, Will went over to the fresh horses and said, “Jim, would you call all of the men together, we’re not going to wait until we meet up with Colonel Fannin to start collecting our army!”

  Bonham threw back his head and laughed, “Yes, sir!” Will smiled back and said, “And the impossible, it only takes a little longer.”

  ***

  The sixty men from the presidio followed at a slower pace, afoot, while Will and Bonham rode ahead. When the two rode into Refugio, night had fallen. The campfires dotting the landscape made it apparent to Will that tents, bivouacs, and lean-tos were scattered beyond the village’s boundaries. As they rode through the camp, he leaned across to Bonham and asked, “Did we miss the pickets, Jim?”

  Bonham shrugged and replied, “I hope so, Buck. What is Jim Fannin up to here?” On the edge of the village stood an adobe house around which several campfires burned. Men in frock coats, homespun, buckskins, and the gray jackets of the New Orleans Greys, lounged about fires. A long string of horses was stabled behind the house. Bonham pointed and said, “I bet we’ll find our answers over there.”

  Bonham previously ser
ved with the men from Mobile and several men looked up and waved in recognition when they saw him and Will. As they dismounted, Will quietly said to Bonham, “Jim, go with whatever I say. I have a plan.”

  Will strode into the small adobe house that Fannin earlier appropriated as his headquarters, with Bonham following on his heels. They found James Fannin sitting near the hearth in a rickety, wooden chair while several other officers lounged around the room. A clay jug of what Will guessed to be mescal was open on large sturdy wooden table. Empty shot glasses surrounded the jug.

  It was time to run with an idea that he had been contemplating since he dismounted. Will drew upon the experience of his years in the army and national guard as he came to a ramrod straight attention and threw a parade ground salute to Fannin. He was out of time. In a split second’s decision Will knew what he must do. He exclaimed, “Damn it all to hell, Colonel Fannin! I’ve been looking for you since yesterday.”

  James Fannin, a tall man with dark brown hair and side whiskers stood and returned the salute, with the precision of a West Point graduate, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Colonel Travis?”

  Relaxing a bit, Will reached out and shook Fannin’s hand and with as sober an expression as he could manage said, “Last week several families arrived in San Antonio from Coahuila with reliable news. The tyrant himself, Santa Anna is putting down the rebellion in Coahuila and will be marching north within the week. We’re in possession of intelligence about his line of march.” Bonham cocked an eyebrow at Will but remained silent.

  Fannin blanched at the news, his face sagging. “How much time do we have, Colonel Travis? We’ve got to let Colonel Grant know!”