by Drew McGunn
General Filisola had remained silent until that moment, but as his Excellency’s second-in-command, he broke silence, “Excellency! I think that Major Montoya and Colonel Romero reacted as best as they could. Who was to know that these pirates would be able to fortify the Camino Real with artillery along el Bravo del Norte?”
Santa Anna glowered at his second-in-command and snapped at him, “Our intelligence suggested no such thing, General.”
Filisola helplessly spread his hands and shrugged, “Then our intelligence was lacking, Excellency.”
Almonte watched as Santa Anna threw himself into his camp chair, which creaked alarmingly, and after a heavy sigh, asked, “General, where does today’s action leave our Vanguard brigade?”
Filisola took the chair to his Excellency’s right and pulled a sheet of paper out, and said, “It could be worse, Excellency. Major Montoya’s Lancers have one hundred ninety men effective. We have forty-eight wounded, another twenty-five killed and twenty-seven missing, but presumed dead.” He found a second sheet and read, “The Permanente Jimenez Battalion.” His lips pursed as he continued, “Of two hundred seventy-four men, one hundred thirty-two are effective. Seventy-one men are wounded, thirty-seven dead and thirty-four are missing, but presumed dead.”
The faces of the men sitting around the table were glum as Filisola picked up a third sheet of paper, “The Permanente Matamoros Battalion, “Of two hundred seventy-two men, one hundred eighteen are effective. Eighty-six men are wounded, twenty-eight dead, and another forty are missing and presumed dead.” He took the last sheet and read, “From the Activo San Luis Potosi Battalion, of four hundred fifty-two men, four hundred seventeen are effective. Twenty-five were wounded, eight dead, and two missing and presumed dead.”
Filisola’s face was ashen as he continued, “Excellency, while we have eight artillery pieces that will arrive at some point tonight, the balance of our brigade can currently field eight hundred sixty men or so.”
Almonte blanched. There were 230 men wounded in their camp this evening, and in their haste to come north, his Excellency had overlooked most of their medical supplies. He wondered how many would ever serve their country again. Of the two hundred or more who died today, none would be buried in their church’s cemetery. He closed his eyes and said a prayer to the Blessed Virgin to watch over all those who would never know a Christian burial.
Chapter 8
The fresh-turned dirt released an earthy scent as frost clung to withered weeds in the chill of the early morning. Will watched a lay chaplain holding a service for two of Juan Seguin’s Tejano cavalrymen who died the previous day. The two graves joined a half-dozen crosses which had been planted following the battle that claimed James Fannin’s life as well as Santa Anna’s hopes of a quick crossing on the 16th.
Thinking back, Will counted his blessings after he had been deployed with the 36th Infantry’s 56th Combat Brigade there had been no fatalities, at least until the freak accident which stranded him in the body of William B. Travis. Even when he was on active duty, his unit suffered no fatalities in the battle for Fallujah. But intellectually, he could wrap his mind around the fact that casualties were an integral part of nineteenth century warfare. “Even so” he mused, “I hate losing a single soldier. It is all well and good that men are willing to die for their country and their freedom, but far better that Santa Anna’s soldiers are the ones doing the dying.”
Although observing the service from a distance, Will removed his hat as the Catholic layman gave a benediction for the two Tejanos. They died while defending against an attempted crossing by the lancers of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment. Since the battle, two days before, Santa Anna had not sat idly by. While he made no further attempt to ford the river where the Camino Real crossed it, he used his remaining lancers to make forays across the river at several spots both up and downstream from the ford. In these cases, Seguin’s mounted Tejanos had spotted the attempts and used their own mobility and firepower to deny the lancers a foothold on the Texas shore. Seguin had reported they killed or wounded a dozen lancers, against the two he lost.
Will knew, sooner rather than later, Santa Anna would receive reinforcements, and when that happened, he mentally conceded that the dictator could force his way across the river, simply by flanking his static line.
That afternoon, this was the topic that brought Colonels Crockett, Bowie, and Grant, as well as Captains Dickinson and Seguin, to meet with Will under the open-air tarp, serving as their headquarters. “Gentlemen,” Will said, “Santa Anna’s made several attempts to get a foothold on our side of the Rio Grande.” He looked toward Seguin, “How long before your men are unable to keep Santa Anna’s cavalry on their side of the river?”
Bowie stepped forward and placed his hand on Seguin’s shoulder, “Buck, Seguin’s men ain’t just brave, but they are our best mounted troops! I, for one, have confidence not just in their ability but also in their loyalty.”
Will stared nonplused at Bowie, surprised at the knife fighter’s passionate appeal. He admired Juan Seguin’s fierce determination. Will didn’t think that he suffered from the rampant racism that was prevalent in this day and age. He felt a flash of heat as his face turned red. He realized he was getting angry at Bowie, and he struggled to stuff the anger back down as he responded. “Jim, I have every confidence in Juan, Captain Seguin and all of his men. If I wasn’t clear about that, I’m sorry. But that’s not what I was talking about. None of us should have any illusions that over the next few days Santa Anna’s cavalry will receive enough reinforcements that will enable him to put three or four hundred cavalry across the Rio Grande at a place and timing of his choosing. What happens, then, Jim?”
When Bowie slumped back, Will could see the knife fighter’s eyes were dark circles. His normally ruddy complexion was pallid. He shrugged and drew a ragged breath, “We can meet them wherever they cross and do to them again what we did to them here.” With that, he sank down into a camp chair, exhausted.
Will watched as everyone else tried talking over each other, until Crockett slammed his palm down on the field table, shaking its fragile frame. The men stopped talking and looked at Crockett with shocked expressions. Will shared their surprise, as Crockett had been the model of a frontier gentleman since his arrival. “Now, fellas, I have no doubt that we could knock some more of Santa Anna’s teeth out of his head, but at what cost? We have been fortunate to have the wide Rio Grande between us and them. When we lose that, we lose our greatest advantage. Our artillery is entrenched, facing Mexico. If we need to turn and face Santa Anna’s army on this side, how many guns can we quickly maneuver around?”
Will was content to let Crockett talk. At nearly fifty years of age, he was nearly twice as old as Will’s twenty-seven years, and showed the seasoning of those years. Plus, Will thought, what Crockett had said mirrored his own thoughts. The Tennessean continued, “So happens, been thinking about this since we whipped Santa Anna two days ago. What we need is another ambush.”
Will saw the thoughtful expressions on the other men’s faces as Crockett explained, “It won’t work here on the Rio Grande again. You can look across the river and see Santa Anna’s brought his own cannons up here and I bet he’s got the solid shot that we ain’t got. Now, gentlemen, as I once said during our late troubles with the Indians, I ain’t one to retreat, but sometimes you gotta advance to the rear to go forward.” The men chuckled over Crockett’s well-regarded wit.
“But let’s say that we pull our artillery back, maybe as early as tonight, and in their place, we put some Quaker guns and perhaps trick ol’ Santa Anna into thinking we’re all still sitting pretty here on this side of the Rio Grande, while the balance of our army sets up another ambush on the Nueces.”
Will carefully considered Crockett’s words and thought he saw the full tactical picture of the proposal, but asked, “David, how do we keep Santa Anna from following hard on our army’s heels?”
Nodding thoughtfully, the old frontier fi
ghter replied, “We leave a holding force here. We keep enough men that when Santa Anna comes a’calling we greet him in the manner to which he’s become accustomed. We give him a bloody lip and a black eye then we retreat. Our rearguard will stay just far enough ahead of the dictator’s army so that he nips at our heels like a bloodhound trying to tree a porcupine. Until he runs right into our bear trap on the Nueces.”
Will weighed the proposal and noted that the other men around the camp table were visibly impressed with it. Between Walt Disney and John Wayne, Will knew Crockett had earned a reputation on the frontier with his hunting prowess and Indian fighting skills, but he hadn’t realized that Crockett’s flair for strategy met or exceeded his own. Bowie stood back up, looking much better to Will’s eyes and said, “That’s a damn promising idea Crockett. Sign me up to lead the delaying force!”
Colonel Grant added, in his soft Scottish accent, “You’ll be taking upon yourself one of the hardest things to pull off in war, Jim. Any retreat can be hell, but a fighting retreat is, I think, the most difficult. Every engagement with the Mexican forces runs you the risk of being cut off and destroyed, but do too little and you may risk breaking contact with Santa Anna’s force and letting them choose an alternate route.”
Crockett and the other officers expressed their agreement at what Will thought was sage advice from the Scotsman. Will decided it was time for him to weigh in, “David, your idea is a capital one. Will you work with Jim to make it happen? I think the two of you can make a go of it. Take Seguin’s cavalry, you’ll need the best scouts and mounted fighters that we have. That will leave me, Colonel Grant, and our artillery captains to set a warm welcome for Santa Anna at the Nueces.”
***
Will stamped his feet and swung his arms, trying to keep warm. Dawn was more than an hour away and the temperature hovered near freezing, as he watched his breath in the frosty morning air. He blew a heavy sigh of relief when the last cannon rolled down the road, heading north. He had been awake for most of the night, as Carey and Dickinson had quietly replaced their field pieces in their emplaced batteries with black painted logs. In the predawn, Will couldn’t tell much of a difference when looking at the batteries, but wondered how the emplacements would look from less than two hundred away. He feared that anyone with a spyglass would see through the subterfuge. He shook his head and tried to push any doubt from his mind. He reminded himself, they had rolled the die and fretting over it wasn’t productive.
As Crockett had ineloquently said, there were more volunteers to stay and fight on the river than he could shake a stick at. In addition to Seguin’s cavalry, which now numbered forty men, Crockett and Bowie had selected another fifty men to stay. There were not enough mounts to allow for more. Will fervently prayed it was enough to bait the trap.
While the artillery and Ward’s Battalion were already marching northward to the Nueces, the remainder of the men stayed behind for the day. Will’s rationale was simple. If the trick with the Quaker guns failed, and Santa Anna attempted anything today, he was confident that with nearly five hundred men, he could stop the Mexicans or at least make the cost so high it would delay Santa Anna.
As evening came and the sun was setting low, Will knew it was time to pull back all his men but the volunteers selected to remain. As he prepared to give the order to march, Will saw Crockett approaching, concern carved into his face. “Buck, we have a problem,” he said quietly, as he gently took Will by the elbow and moved away to where they could speak privately. “While we were down at the river working on better blinds for our riflemen, Jim collapsed. I’ve seen a preacher caught in a whorehouse looking better than him.”
The two returned to the river where Will found Bowie lying on a blanket, behind one of the blinds. His face was pasty white. When he put his hand to Bowie’s forehead, Will found the knife fighter burning with fever. Bowie cracked his eyes open as Will knelt over him and struggled to sit up, “It ain’t nothing I can’t shake off, Buck. You go on and get out of here.”
Bowie’s voice lacked the strength his tone tried to convey. Crockett knelt across from Will and placed his hand on Bowie’s forehead. “Tarnation, Jim. I could cook me up a mess of grits and bacon on your head.”
Bowie growled at Will and Crockett and attempted to toss his head, trying to remove the hand, “Don’t be giving me any of your homespun wit, David. I need to be here with my boys. And you know it!”
Crockett removed his hand and in a voice that only the three of them could hear, “Are you willing to bet not just your life but the lives of all these men that you’ll be better tomorrow, Jim?”
Bowie collapsed back onto the blanket, his breathing ragged and his face gray from the exertion of talking, “Damn you to Hell, Crockett. Bet it makes you feel all good inside to be right so damned often.” Will watched the interplay between the frontiersman and the knife fighter. He was learning to appreciate Crockett was happy to give the rank and file soldiers the impression he was just a ‘high private’ as the Tennessean phrased it, but the truth was, he had no problem influencing the men around him, from the lowest private up to the highest-ranking officer. It was amazing to behold, and reminded Will it was that charisma and skill with people which previously earned Crockett three terms in the US Congress.
Will heard the ticking of his timepiece in his vest pocket as silence descended on the three men. Finally, Crockett turned to him and asked, “Well, Buck, what’s the plan, now?”
Exhaling sharply, Will replied, “Grant, Cary, and Dickinson can set the ambush without me. Let’s see if we can get you loaded into a wagon, Jim.” Bowie didn’t respond. He lay there with his eyes closed, each breath rattling in his throat.
Will looked up and saw the clouds obscuring the moon. The remainder of the army slipped away a company at a time until all that remained were the ninety volunteers. He stood within the entrenchment where the battery closest to the ford was placed, next to Crockett and Seguin. They peered across the Rio Grande, the other shore masked by the heavy cloud cover. Although they couldn’t see them, they could hear men digging entrenchment positions for Santa Anna’s artillery. His stomach cramped a bit as Will realized that the revolution was dependent on what he, Crockett, and Seguin could accomplish. There were more butterflies fluttering than the ones in his stomach, as the thought came to him that he had no idea what Santa Anna would do next.
Chapter 9
A small stove radiated enough heat in the corner of the large, spacious tent, that Colonel Juan Almonte moved his camp chair further away from it. As aide-de-camp to his Excellency, Almonte took notes of the meeting. Santa Anna paced back and forth in front of the table, around which several regimental and brigade commanders sat. Almonte inwardly cringed as his Excellency verbally eviscerated the Vanguard Brigade’s commander, Juaquin Sesma. “Juaquin, it has been three days since those pirates kept your men from the north bank of the Rio Bravo del Norte. Why the hell aren’t your men on the other side of the river?”
General Sesma wore a pained expression as he tried to explain the failing, “Excellency, we have made several forays across the Rio Bravo, but these pirates and their traitorous Mexican allies have contested every attempt, costing us lives each time.”
The longer they were on this, the wrong side of the river the more His Excellency’s temper was fraying, and General Sesma had taken the brunt of that temper over the past few days. Almonte heard this all before, from the reports he collected. It was nothing new. But Sesma’s mention of the Tejanos caused Santa Anna to explode anew. “I’ll personally cut off the cojones of Zavala when I capture him and shove them down his throat!” Almonte regretted Lorenzo de Zavala’s betrayal against Santa Anna, when his Excellency had been forced by the instability in Central Mexico to set aside the constitution and rule as dictator. He knew the betrayal galled Santa Anna ever since word reached Mexico City that Zavala was working with the norteamericano pirates, Stephen Austin and Sam Houston to rip Texas away from Mexico.
When h
is Excellency was this angry, Almonte loathed putting himself into the crosshairs, but he sighed, acknowledging his duty to Santa Anna. “Excellency, in the unlikely event that General Sesma’s lancers are unable to turn the rebel’s flank, the latest reports from General Gaona show he will arrive within the next couple of days. I’m certain he’s force-marching his men here, as you instructed. Time is on our side. Once Gaona’s brigade arrives, we’ll have two thousand five hundred men at your disposal to force a crossing.”
“Juan, time is not on our side!” His Excellency shot back, slamming his fist on the table, causing an unsecured map to slide off, landing face down on the ground. “God knows what those pirates are doing on the other side of the river as we sit and do nothing!” He glared at the brigade commander, “Either find a way across the river, or I’ll find someone who will!”
Almonte leaned over, rescuing the map from where it fell and as he set it back on the table, he noticed it was the region between the Rio Bravo and the Nueces. Despite himself, he could only wonder if their army would ever reach San Antonio de Bexar.
***
Two days had passed since Will saw the balance of his little army marching northward, toward the Nueces River. The day before, the eight artillery pieces on the Mexican side of the river fired a few rounds of solid shot into the earthen embankments behind which they sheltered. He knew it was a matter of time before Santa Anna sent his infantry storming across the river. He amended his thought, “Assuming, of course, that we can keep his lancers from flanking us.”
Will sat atop his horse, next to Captain Seguin and watched a few of the Captain’s men come splashing from the river where they had placed a trap. Since the previous morning the lancers had patrolled up and down the river, obviously looking for likely spots to exploit. That’s what brought Will and Seguin, along with a majority of the Tejano cavalry to this likely locale, where a wide sandbar was submerged across most of the width of the Rio Grande. Will turned, and asked, “Juan, do you think they’ll try crossing here?”
