by Drew McGunn
The Tejano shrugged, “It’s a more likely spot than most, Colonel. I sure hope so, otherwise we’ve wasted our time running those ropes between the stakes.” Their hiding place behind a copse of mesquite trees and dense scrub brush afforded them a view of the river at the likely crossing.
As if on cue, through the thorny branches, Will saw a company of lancers riding alongside the opposite side of the river. With the river rippling over it, the sandbank was easy to see from the southern shore, and a couple of men, in their blue and red jackets guided their horses into the shallow and fast flowing water. When they reached the midpoint, the two men wheeled around and waved to their waiting compatriots. Will saw a resplendently dressed officer, wearing a deep-blue officer’s coat, leading the column into the river. In place of the steel helmets worn by the lancers, the officer wore a bicorn hat with a green, white, and red cockade fixed to the front. Will stifled a laugh when Seguin leaned over and whispered, “Santa Anna’s sending over his peacocks now.”
No sooner had the gaudily dressed officer’s horse came to the end of the sandbank, starting into deeper water than the animal became entangled in the rope ensnared stakes running parallel to the shoreline. Several lancers leapt forward on their mounts to help the officer when they found their own horses fouled in the ropes, snaking below the surface of the murky water. Will smiled grimly as a horse twisted and crashed into another entangled horse, spilling both riders into the chilly water.
He nodded to Seguin, “Your command, Captain.” Seguin flashed an elated grin and pulled a shotgun from a scabbard on his saddle and shouted in Spanish, “Up and at them, boys!” The Tejano captain dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and charged onto the bank of the river, followed by two dozen men. Seguin hammered back his shotgun and pointed it in the direction of the peacock, pulling the trigger. The gun kicked in his hand as the dandy jerked in the saddle. As the rest of Seguin’s mounted men rode along the shoreline they emptied shotguns and pistols into the milling and disorganized mass of lancers, churning the water, turning red where lancers fell.
Will remained back, observing the short firefight. His right hand ran along the woodgrain on the butt of his shotgun, which remained in its scabbard. Seguin and his men were holding the lancers at bay. Will guessed the lancers had attempted to cross in company strength, perhaps forty men. Several horses remained entangled in the ropes, as other riderless horses trotted along the shoreline. The remnants of the lancers fled back to their side of the wide river, leaving several bodies bobbing in the water, including the one Seguin referred to as a peacock. From Will’s vantage point, it appeared that half of the lancers returned to the southern shoreline as Seguin’s troopers wheeled around and rode north. Will galloped over beside Seguin, slapping him on the back, “Well done, Juan!” Yet again, Santa Anna had been denied the Texas bank of the Rio Grande.
***
Colonel Almonte stood outside his Excellency’s headquarters tent, watching the troop of lancers return from the latest attempt to cross el Rio Bravo del Norte. Forty men rode out, led by General Sesma. Only a score of men returned. Almonte craned his neck looking for Sesma, but no matter where he looked, he saw neither the general nor his fine stallion. A lancer, with sergeant chevrons, spotted Almonte and guided his horse to the Colonel. “Sir, it was a trap. We found a spot a couple of leagues down river and it looked promising for both our infantry and artillery, but when we tried crossing, the pirates had staked the river with crisscrossing strands of rope, tripping up our horses.” Almonte could see where this was headed, but he bade the sergeant to continue.
“When most of our men were entangled in the trap, the traitors attacked. General Sesma was the first to fall.”
When Almonte informed his Excellency of Sesma’s failure, Santa Anna turned to Almonte, “At least he had the decency to atone for his failure, Juan. That leaves me without a commander for the Vanguard Brigade.” Almonte watched his Excellency stride over to the table centered in the middle of the tent, where he snatched up a sheet of paper. Inking a quill, he scratched on the paper for a moment then held it up, and exclaimed, “Juan, you shall command the Vanguard Brigade now. General Almonte!”
With a forced smile on his face, Almonte accepted the promotion from his Excellency. He gave a crisp salute and replied, “Thank you, Excellency. With your permission, I shall go and check on the men.” Waved away by Santa Anna, Almonte exited the tent with a sinking feeling and went to find the three regimental commanders, certain that this was not the way he wanted to rise to the rank of general. The cold breeze from the north, blowing an ill wind.
***
The northerly breeze lacked the chill from the morning, as Will stood behind the artillery entrenchment, next to one of the blackened tree trucks which had fooled the Mexican army for several days. He shook his head, wondering if the officers staring across the river saw only what they wanted to see. He couldn’t imagine how the masquerade had continued for four days. He hoped if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t be hoodwinked by something like the Quaker guns sticking out of the earthen embankments. The dust cloud to the south, made by the marching feet of another brigade, indicated even if the trickery was maintained, Santa Anna would force a crossing at some point along the river very shortly.
That night, Crockett’s riflemen sheltered behind the artillery embankments. The occasional cannon shot echoed across the river as the round thudded harmlessly into the earthen walls protecting the riflemen’s positions. A few hundred feet back, Will sat next to a small campfire with Crockett and Seguin, discussing their options. “Buck, I have to say that this has worked far better than I would have expected. I figured that old Santa Anna would come at us quick as lightning, but instead, he’s been at us like a herd of turtles.”
Will chortled at Crockett’s comment, “True, David, but I suspect he’s about to give it another go tomorrow. How much damage do you think we’re going to inflict when they come knocking?”
Crockett scratched at the graying stubble on his chin and replied, “Well, Buck, I’m not exactly inclined to stay here long enough to shake ol’ Santa Anna’s hand when he comes prancing across the Rio Grande, but yeah, I think we can make it look like he’s been wrastlin’ with a polecat. Biggest problem is that most of our rifles went north with Grant. If we have forty rifles betwixt all of us here I’d be surprised.”
Will grimaced. He had counted the number of rifles and his tally matched the Tennessean’s. In his downtime, he thought back over his own training as a rifleman in the 144th Infantry. The camaraderie of the fire team was the glue holding an infantry company together, as far as he was concerned. That same cohesion didn’t exist here, but he had a thought, “David, what would you think about trying the same tactic we used before. What if we created ten teams of four men each? The best, like before, is the shooter, while the other three men load like hell. When the Mexicans get within a hundred feet, we get out of here.”
Crockett nodded, “Might could work, Buck. But if they send cavalry across we need to skedaddle when they get halfway. If it’s infantry, then a hundred feet might work. But we’d be in the range of their muskets if they get off a volley.”
Juan Seguin listened to Will and Crockett up to that point. He interjected, “With your permission, Colonel Travis, I’d like to send half my men north along the Camino Real and find a spot a few miles ahead to set up our next ambush. I know of a lovely arroyo that would make for a delightful surprise for el Presidente’s men.”
***
The 23rd of February dawned cold, the sun retreating behind heavy cloud cover, as light rain mixed with snow flurries whisking across the surface of the Rio Grande. The top of the earthen embankment was slick with a thin glaze of ice. Will knelt by Crockett and two other men behind the earthen embankment and realized that in a world gone forever, today would be the start of Santa Anna’s siege of the Alamo. His lips curled into a tight smile as he wondered what changes would bloom from the flower planted by avoiding entrapment
at the Alamo.
Across the river, Santa Anna revealed his plan when Will saw the regimental standard of the Permanente Aldama Regiment come bobbing into view as the men under its banner filtered through the mesquite trees to either side of the Camino Real on the Mexican side of the river. Another banner flew behind the men assembling on the shoreline. The soldados of the Activo Toluca battalion were assembling behind the veterans from Aldama. A single clarion note pealed melodically across the Rio Grande as the four hundred men of the battalion stepped into the shallow, swift-flowing water. The officers and NCOs moved along the battalion front, trying to keep the men moving forward across the ford.
The soldados of the Aldama Regiment had taken barely a dozen steps before Will heard the flint on Crockett’s rifle strike the pan, igniting the charge at the base of the barrel, sending the lead ball flying at the Mexican line at nine hundred feet per second. A quick glance over the icy, earthen barrier saw an officer topple from his horse. Nine more shots exploded from the hidden Texian riflemen.
Crockett snatched the rifle from Will’s hands, replacing it with an empty one. The older man threw the rifle to his shoulder, where he paused to line up the sights. A couple of seconds passed, and he fired again. Will tore his eyes away from the southern shore and hurried to reload the gun that Crockett had traded him.
Despite the frigid water, the Aldama and Toluca battalions moved as swiftly as the current allowed, covering half the distance in a little less than three minutes. In that time, Crockett’s riflemen fired more than three hundred rounds into the packed ranks of Mexican infantry. Will noticed that two hundred feet separated his small command from the advancing men. As he traded rifles with Crockett he shouted over the din, “A couple more rounds, David, and we need to get out of here.”
The men of the Aldama battalion sensing victory, rushed through the waist-high water, muskets raised high, keeping their powder dry. When they were still more than a hundred feet away, Will tapped Crockett on the shoulder and said, “Time’s about up, David. Let’s get back to Seguin and the horses!”
Crockett lowered his rifle, acrid smoke curling out of the dirty barrel, and turned and started jogging toward the line of horses. A shout to the other men and they were sprinting toward their horses, too. When the Mexican line saw the retreating Texians running away, an enraged shout echoed across the water. Their prey was escaping. Their discipline broke and enraged men brought their muskets down from over their heads and in ones and twos fired at the backs of the retreating Texians.
Will was one of the last men running toward their horses and felt a buzzing sound zip by his ear and heard a wet, smacking sound to his right. He saw a spray of red explode from the back of the rifleman running beside him, and saw the man crumple to the ground. Under his breath, Will swore as he saw the large hole the .69 caliber ball made in the back of his fellow soldier.
As he reached the horses most of the riflemen were already riding north. Juan Seguin sat astride his mount , holding Will’s reins. As he grabbed them from the Tejano, he chanced another glance toward the riverbank, more than a hundred yards away, and saw the bodies of four of his men splayed on the ground, dead. The flag of the Aldama battalion waved atop one of the gun emplacements. Hundreds of soldados swarmed over the emplacements, running in their direction. Will wheeled around and followed Seguin as they urged their horses to a gallop.
Chapter 10
Will clung to the galloping horse, keeping his eyes fixed to the small of Seguin’s back. He was grateful for Travis’ muscle memories. If he had to rely on his own twenty-first century ability to sit on a horse, he’d likely be a ventilated pin cushion for Santa Anna’s soldados. For what seemed like the hundredth time, Will wondered if he would wake up and find all this was but a dream. It was too fantastic to be real. Yet he found himself riding a horse, hell-bent for leather, behind Juan Seguin on the Camino Real. He chanced a look behind and saw the road meandering toward the distant river. There was no sign of pursuit, yet.
If this were nothing more than simple random chance, Will wondered, “What the hell am I doing here? I could take all the knowledge of the next fifty years and make a fortune that would make Rockefeller look like a pauper.”
Gripping the reins tighter and pulling his elbows in, he urged his horse to stay up with the accomplished Tejano horseman ahead of him. He continued reasoning, “This is too great a coincidence to simply be random fate.” Since joining the army after 9/11, life had pulled him away from the faith of his youth, but he’d never doubted there was something greater out there in the universe. He chuckled as he galloped along, and thought, “To be at this time and place in history makes a rather compelling argument for divine intervention.”
He followed the thought down the mental rabbit hole, “There’s no reason that God would dump me in Travis’ body if he intended me to die at the Alamo. Not likely to happen that way, now.”
He scanned the ground ahead of Seguin and wondered how much further they had to ride before reaching the arroyo. “We’ll get there soon enough.” Will thought, then followed his mind back to the Gordian knot on which he was mentally working. Thinking about the world he knew, he couldn’t help but dwell on how screwed up it had become. Dictators like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao had killed hundreds of millions of people over the last century. Will’s mind rebounded against the thought that perhaps he was supposed to stop all that.
In the distance, he saw several riders urging their horses over the shallow embankment of a dry creek bed. The arroyo was less than half mile away. As he attempted to turn his focus back to the present, another thought came unbidden to him. “Be the very best William Barret Travis that you can be. Don’t be so pretentious as to think that God put you here to change the whole world.”
As his horse navigated up a wagon trail that cut across the arroyo, he decided on two things. Do the right thing as Travis, and survive the next week.
Several men stood well back from the arroyo, collecting the reins from others, who handed their mounts to the handlers and headed back to the arroyo with their weapons. Will walked back to the arroyo and found Seguin making a few corrections to where some of his men were positioned. Will joined him as Crockett also walked up, rubbing his backside, saying, “Tarnation, I ain’t as young as I once was, and riding pell-mell don’t sit near as well as it used to.”
Seguin smiled slyly at the Tennessean and said, “Colonel Crockett, I was riding behind you, and I can assure you, you didn’t sit very well on that horse anyway.”
Crockett smiled ruefully, “I guess I had that coming. No one told me you could use that tongue of yours prettier than a five-dollar whore.”
As Seguin sputtered, Crockett turned away and directed his riflemen to places along the top of the arroyo, providing a good field of fire. The conversation forgotten, Will noticed that Crockett was setting up his riflemen to catch any advance from the south in a deadly crossfire.
He commented on it, “Good placement, David. Let’s hope they decide to stick their neck in this noose. How well do you think we did back on the river?”
Crockett said, “I think we likely took out the better part of a hundred men back on the Rio Grande. And we lost four in the retreat. I think it likely that Santa Anna’s boys ain’t going to be too far behind us. He led out with his Infantry, but give him a bit of time and he’ll have his cavalry out in front.”
Will walked behind their line, along the arroyo and saw that Seguin’s Tejanos, with their shotguns and pistols were closely spread on either side of the road, playing to the advantage of their short range. Crockett’s riflemen were spread out further along the exterior flanks. Given their limited numbers, it seemed a solid plan to Will. He found Crockett between one of his riflemen and one of the Tejanos, a short distance to the left of the road. Will’s boots crunched on the rocky ground as he knelt by Crockett, who squatted behind a stunted mesquite tree. His rifle lay balanced where a branch extended from the gnarled trunk.
After he found a
bit of scrub brush directly to Crockett’s left, Will checked the load in his shotgun, making sure the primer pan was closed. Satisfied his weapon was ready, he looked up and saw the gray, overcast day was giving way to an even darker twilight when in the distance he spied a detachment of Mexican cavalry. The lancers, in their blue and red jackets, looked cold and miserable as they wound their way down the narrow road, approaching the arroyo.
The Camino Real carved a long, steep path through the arroyo, where wagon tracks had long ago eaten away at the creek bed. Dense brush and mesquite trees choked the banks on both sides of the road. As the lancers neared, it was evident Santa Anna was taking no chances. The narrow wagon tracks were packed with a long column of cavalry. It appeared the remaining lancers of the Dolores Cavalry Regiment were approaching his line. He leaned over to Crockett, and quietly said, “Whenever you think best, David.”
He watched Crockett as the frontiersman allowed the leading horsemen to enter the dry bed of the arroyo. Crockett fired his rifle, tumbling the nearest lancer from the saddle. The Tejanos, closest to the lancers, fired their shotguns, muskets and pistols into the densely packed lancers. At ranges as low as twenty feet, the Tejano’s volley devastated the lancers in the lead. Will watched dozens of men toppled from their saddles, many of whom were crushed beneath their panicked horses. Crockett’s riflemen added their confusion as the Texians’ aimed fire focused on the splendidly attired officers.
More quickly than he liked, Will saw the lancers’ NCOs react to the ambush, restoring order and pushing their fellow men at the defenders. Most of the lancers were forced to dismount to move beyond the carnage centered where the road bisected the arroyo. As Will started to reload, Crockett reached over and grabbed his arm, “No time for that now, Buck. They’ll be on us in two shakes of a coon’s tail.” Crockett drew a hunting knife from his belt. Will stood and drew the cavalry sword, hanging from his belt, and joined the determined frontiersman.
