The Lone Star Reloaded Series Box Set

by Drew McGunn

  A voice screamed from behind him, “Clear the way!” The 18-pounder was being rolled forward, into its firing position. Leal and Jackson scurried to the side, as the brass barrel eased forward. A ladder from the parapet led to the top of the gatehouse and the two darted up it, clearing the platform a scarce moment before the gun fired for a second time. The field before them lit up again, revealing the advancing enemy had more than cut the distance in half. Leal and Jackson added their rifle fire to those men already on the wall, firing into the darkness of the predawn.

  Men poured out of their barracks, as they raced to their assigned places on the walls of the beleaguered fort. More of the fort’s guns added their sound and fury to that of the 18-pounder.

  ***

  The rough-hewn planks of the floor rattled Charlie awake. A moment of confusion made him wonder where he was until he heard Becky’s voice, “Hush, Liza, Momma’s here.” His little sister, Elizabeth began caterwauling in earnest as the building shook with each successive blast from the fort’s heavy guns. Adding to the noise of the fort’s thundering artillery, was the rattling sound of gunfire.

  The door to the room was thrown open, Susanna Dickinson’s silhouette stood in the opening. Fear was engraved on her face as she cried, “They’re attacking, Becky! We gotta get to the chapel, like Almaron told us!” She cradled her young son in her arms while her daughter, Emily clung tightly to her skirt.

  Like the women, Charlie had slept in his clothes, and as Mrs. Dickinson fled down the stairs, he pulled off the blanket covering him and jumped up from the hard floor. Henrietta took Liza from Becky while his stepmother grabbed a few things she intended to use to distract the baby. She frantically looked around the room until her eyes fell on an engraved box they had brought from home, setting on a chest of drawers. “Charlie, please fetch me your pa’s pistols.”

  The youth grabbed the box, which held the gift from Samuel Colt and handed it to her. “Hurry, Charlie!” she said as she and Henrietta started after Mrs. Dickinson.

  The boy grabbed the brown leather belt that held his father’s cartridge and percussion cap boxes and fastened it around his waist, tightening the belt to its last notch, to keep it from sliding down his slender frame. He grabbed his father’s rifle in one hand and scooped down and grabbed his shoes with the other. He raced from the room and took the stairs two at a time hastening to catch up to the women.

  The guard, normally stationed at the foot of the stairs leading to the officers’ quarters, was gone from his customary post. Charlie scanned the old convent yard and saw a handful of gunners and riflemen heading over to a ramp which led to a platform with two guns facing eastward. A rifleman already stood there, peering into the predawn darkness. Through the small door, the boy heard his little sister crying from the transept and hurried toward the door, ignoring the defenders who ran past him to their stations.

  He slammed the door shut, and as he had been instructed, threw a heavy wooden bar across the narrow opening. He turned and saw Becky and Liza had joined Mrs. Dickinson and several other women and children in the sacristy. Light flickered on their faces from lanterns along the wall, and the boy saw Becky open the box containing the brace of revolvers, while Henrietta sat beside her, cooing at Charlie’s sister. Ignoring the gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach, Charlie gave a feral smile to his stepmother, as she started loading the revolvers.

  The chapel’s thick walls muffled the deep-throated booming of the fort’s artillery and the rattling of gunfire. Charlie heard the sound of quiet voices coming from the nave and he walked over to the men who stood behind a barricade, which ran the width of the chapel. A half-dozen men in civilian clothes stood on ammunition boxes, peering over the barricade. More lanterns ran the length of the chapel and he saw the fear on the black faces of several of the teamsters, who had been trapped in the fort with the soldiers for the past two weeks. Watching the freedmen awkwardly holding their rifles, drew Charlie’s thoughts to Joe, his pa’s former slave and currently a teamster. Seeing the fear in their faces, he was glad that Joe was out west delivering supplies to one of the depots. Thinking of the west, his pa came to mind. He was certain his father would be brave if he were trapped here. He remembered a conversation he’d had with his pa before he had left to conquer Santa Fe. “Son, true courage isn’t an absence of fear, but rather it is channeling that fear into action.”

  He took hold of his father’s rifle and stepped up onto an ammo box, next to one of the negro teamsters. Glancing up, he could read the man’s fear on his face. It was easy to recognize. He imagined he wore the same expression, too. He closed his eyes tight, willing the terror in his gut to not control him. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and forced a smile onto his face, as he reached over and patted the teamster on the arm. “My name’s Charlie, what’s yours?”

  ***

  Standing on the corner of the southwest bastion, Captain Anderson was able to see the thick, solid line of Mexican infantry surge from the cloudy night’s dark gloom. As the soldados reached the irrigation ditch encircling the fort, the first rank splashed into the knee-deep water. A mere fifty feet separated the advancing line from the fort’s walls. Every cannon that could, had its elevation depressed, putting the mass of infantry within the guns’ line of fire. Scores of riflemen were already on the wall, and more than a hundred raced across the plaza to join their compatriots.

  Anderson screamed at the men along the wall to pour their fire into the ranks of advancing infantry. A word of caution from the artillery sergeant holding the linstock for the 18-pounder, was the only warning before the huge gun fired double-loaded canister rounds into the ranks of soldados crowding across the acequia. Dozens of men were swept from their feet, as eighty heavy, round balls slammed into the men wading through the ditch. They fell into the dirty, shallow water, only to be stepped upon and pushed down into the muddy bottom, where those who had not been dead already, died a hideous death by suffocation or drowning.

  The devastating cannon blasts and accurate rifle fire wreaked an atrocious bill on the men of Urrea’s 3rd brigade. The pressure along the southern wall eased as Urrea’s men disengaged and retreated into the darkness of the predawn.

  Anderson moved over to the west side of the bastion and saw several ladders had been placed against the wall. The problem, as he saw it, was the western wall had not been rebuilt like the fort’s northern and southern walls. Although the clouds still obscured the moon and stars, the constant flashes of light and fires burning along the wall, illuminated the battle raging before his eyes. At least a hundred of his riflemen were on the wall, firing down into the milling mass of men at the foot of the fort. They fired as fast as their breechloaders would allow. The artillerists on the wall exposed themselves to the musket fire from below every time they rolled their cannon back into firing position and depressed their barrels so that the guns could fire into tightly packed soldados.

  As men grabbed hold of ladders’ rungs and tried to crawl over the wall, Anderson raced down the ramp, and shouted at every rifleman he could find and sent them rushing toward the western wall, where a fierce battle raged. He saw a group of men moving purposefully toward the wall, it was Major Dickinson leading several gun crews. Apparently, the dense forest of mesquite trees growing between the eastern wall and the acequia had deterred the Mexican army from attempting anything along that wall. He watched Dickinson and his men swarm up ramps and ladders, joining their fellow gunners as they rushed to fire and reload their guns.

  ***

  As the attack on the gatehouse faltered, Sergeant Leal looked over at Jackson, whose face was covered in sweat and grime. For a moment, he felt guilt at not having rounded up the men from the quartermaster’s corps and engineers assigned to his command. But as he looked at the dead and dying carpeting the ground before the gatehouse, he shrugged it off. Even so, duty called, and he grabbed Jackson by the collar and headed toward the chapel, where he figured most of his men would assemble.

  He fou
nd nearly all of them in the nave of the chapel in front of the makeshift barricade. He saw the teamster’s black faces on the other side of it, staring at him as he entered the chapel. He smiled at the image and thought they might be the only smart men among the whole lot of soldiers trapped in the fort.

  He left the freedmen where they were. As far as he was concerned, they barely knew which end of the gun to load. He left a few men from the quartermaster’s corps behind, responsible for doling out ammunition, and took the rest of the men back outside. There was a low wall between the chapel courtyard and the Alamo plaza which ran between the gatehouse and the hospital, about seventy feet, where he placed his men at evenly spaced intervals and waited. Across the plaza, along the western wall, the battle continued to rage. Most of the garrison was there, pushing over ladders nearly as often as they were raised.

  He had lost track of time. It seemed as though the battle had been waging for hours. In the east, there was a hint of dawn on the horizon. Leal scanned the walls ringing the plaza and to his left, to the south, he saw dozens of riflemen atop the gatehouse and the 18-pounder’s bastion firing at targets he couldn’t see. To his front, the western wall was ablaze with cannon and rifle fire. To the northwest, at the corner of the fort, he saw the tops of several ladders poking above the wall, then soldados appearing at the top and clambering over the wall and landing in the corner of the plaza. A couple of rifle teams ran down from their firing platform on the northern wall and began slashing and stabbing at them, while the Mexicans reacted with their own bayoneted muskets and knives.

  The eastern sky continued to lighten. More Mexicans joined their compatriots in the corner, clearing the wall to either side, as they overwhelmed the Texians who had met them only moments before. More than a dozen stormed up one of the northern ramps, where they cut and bayoneted the gunners who only seconds before had sent canister shots crashing into the milling soldiers still attempting to scale the wall.

  Leal tapped Jackson on the shoulder and pointed toward the growing problem in the northwestern corner of the plaza. The two men raised their rifles and took a few seconds to aim and fire. Both men hit their targets; Leal’s lips peeled back in a vicious grin as he levered the breech open and slid in another cartridge.

  ***

  He no longer needed to rely on the fires burning along the western wall to see the deteriorating position of the defenders. He heard rifle fire from behind and Captain Anderson spun around and saw a few riflemen in butternut uniforms crouching behind the low wall in front of the chapel courtyard. They were firing at a growing number of Mexican soldados in the northwestern corner of the fort. A green, white, and red flag was being waved by a handful of soldados on one of the northern gun platforms.

  Anderson realized several guns along the western wall had fallen silent, their gunners shot down by Mexican infantry, who had seized several sections of the long wall. Closest to him, near the 18-pounder, most of his regulars were still manning their section of the wall, but near the northwest corner, Mexican soldados were rapidly overwhelming his men. Recalling Major Dickinson’s earlier arrival to shore up his batteries, Anderson scanned the wall, but the major was nowhere to be seen. With the crumbling defenses in front of him, he swore as he realized there was no option but to fall back. “Back, boys, Back! The wall’s breached! Fall back to the courtyard!” As his men raced back to the relative security of the chapel courtyard, he turned on his heels and strode toward the low wall.

  The captain came to the wall and saw a few butternut-clad riflemen standing atop the southern barracks. As dozens of his men knelt behind the wall, he called up to the men atop the barracks, “Hold your position there! Don’t let anyone get ladders up to you, and by God, kill any of the bastards that try to use our cannons against us!”

  He desperately hoped the reason the Mexicans hadn’t tried to raise any ladders along the walls where the new barracks had been built was because they had no ladders tall enough to reach the top of those buildings. Anderson ground his teeth in frustration. What did it matter? More ladders were thrown up against the western wall and more soldados poured over the top.

  The courtyard wall was only a couple of feet tall, split in the middle by a narrow walkway leading from the plaza to the chapel doors. Anderson passed through the narrow opening and directed the retreating men into spots along the wall, where they joined the men already kneeling. Once the places behind the wall were taken, the captain ordered the men to create a second line, standing behind those who were kneeling. As the last of the survivors from the western wall passed through to the chapel courtyard, he reckoned he had about a hundred men still with him. Additionally, there was a platoon’s worth of men stationed on the rooftops of the new barracks buildings on both ends of the fort. As long as they held out, he would control the high ground. But time was running out.

  With his sword in his hand he paced behind the line of riflemen. “That’s it, men, aimed fire. Make every shot count!”

  Chapter 16

  From where he paced behind the line, Captain Anderson saw soldados swarming over the southwest bastion where the 18-pounder was positioned. Some had grabbed the trail handles and were lugging the heavy ordinance around. Using the sword in his hand as a pointer, he yelled, “Kill those bastards at the gun.”

  From the roof of the southern barracks, a smattering of gunfire began to drop the soldados around the large cannon. The captain whooped and raised his hat, cheering as the soldados, who only a moment before had been turning the gun around, now scrambled for cover. Apart from blasting a hole in the thick adobe walls from outside the fort, the only entrance to the southern barracks was through a door in the chapel courtyard. As long as his line held the courtyard wall, the men atop the barracks would have a commanding view of the plaza and walls.

  With one threat neutralized for the time being, Anderson walked down the line, behind his men, “Keep it up, boys! They’ll not drive us any further!” Acrid smoke hugged the ground before the wall, as his riflemen poured a devastating fire on the Mexicans assembling on the walls and in the northwestern portion of the plaza. A bullet crashed into a rifleman, standing directly in front of Anderson, with a wet, meaty smacking noise and the young man sank to the ground, crying out as he clutched at his shoulder. A nearby Tejano sergeant, who Anderson recognized as bringing word to the Alamo of the Mexican invasion from Laredo, helped him drag the badly injured rifleman from the line.

  Although there was a doorway from the courtyard into the hospital, it was now guarded by a rifle team. The main hospital doors faced the open plaza, and Anderson worried the hospital would fall to the Mexicans as soon as they advanced from their positions. A couple of orderlies with green chevrons on their sleeves were evacuating the wounded, carrying them from the hospital’s side door into the chapel. They left the injured soldier with one of the orderlies and turned to look at the firing line.

  Anderson asked the Hispanic sergeant, “Leal, isn’t it?”

  The sergeant wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve, “Yes, sir.”

  Anderson nodded toward the men on the firing line. “We’re going to need more ammunition. Fetch a box from the chapel. We’ve got to be running low.”

  ***

  Sergeant Leal acknowledged the order with a single nod and turned, running toward the heavy, wooden doors of the chapel, where a couple of men from the quartermaster’s corps stood with rifles. They stepped aside as he entered the chapel’s dimly lit nave. The sound of wounded echoed from the thick walls, where they had been laid after the hospital’s evacuation. Standing near a tall barricade, made from bags of grains, corn, and flour, a soldier with a quartermaster sergeant chevrons stood guard over several long ammunition boxes. Leal ran up to him, “I don’t suppose you’re planning on using all that yourself?”

  Grimly chuckling, the other sergeant shook his head. “It’s all yours. How’s it going out there?

  Leal’s shoulders sagged. “We’re still alive, some of us. But there are so
many damned Mexicans coming over the walls.”

  The quartermaster sergeant helped him heft one of the boxes onto his shoulder and led him back to the doors, through which the medical orderlies were dragging more wounded. As Leal hurried back across the courtyard, musket balls kicked up dust near his feet. He swore as he reached the wall. The enemy’s musket fire was increasing as their own sergeants and officers were joining the soldados along the wall.

  After helping to pass the ammunition around to the riflemen kneeling and standing behind the low stone wall, he found Private Jackson kneeling against it. The private’s actions were economical and fluid. He fired his rifle at a target, then levered the breech open and shoved a paper cartridge into the breechblock before levering it closed, slicing off the cartridge’s excess paper. He fished a percussion cap from the box on his belt and slipped it onto the nipple and cocked the rifle’s hammer, aimed, and fired. Each shot followed the preceding one by less than ten seconds.

  To Jackson’s right another rifleman was aiming at a target across the plaza, when he tumbled back, almost knocking Leal down. The sergeant was about to swear at the soldier when he saw the top half of his head had been messily clipped off by a musket ball. He grabbed the body by the shoulders and dragged it away from the line and slipped into the space beside Jackson and loaded his rifle and aimed at an officer on the western wall. Before pulling the trigger, he wondered how much longer the line would hold.

  ***

  If there was a silver lining, Anderson thought, then it had to be that as the sun crested the eastern sky, it would be in the eyes of the rapidly increasing number of soldados opposite his line. A quick estimate put the number of Mexicans at several hundred, who were now blazing away, barely forty yards from his line. The training his men had gone through had turned them into fair marksmen, he thought, as a dandily uniformed officer near the abandoned 18-pounder tumbled off the bastion and disappeared. Officers and NCOs were always the preferred targets, but even so, the weight of musket fire was telling. Dozens of men were down behind the wall; some forever, and others crawled back toward the chapel doors.