A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  Lieutenant

  SAM GRANT

  Point Isabel,

  Texas May 3, 1846

  Grant’s eyes blinked at the inside of the tent canvas, strangely aglow with the pale light of the coming dawn. It heaved above him in the sea breeze as if he were inside the lungs of some beast. Something had wakened him, but he could not be sure what. From his cot he looked past his feet, through the opening of the tent, and saw rows of more tents, sand dunes, and an American flag on a pole bent to the wind.

  He had ridden here with most of Taylor’s army to receive supplies and reinforcements at this little Gulf Coast port, twenty-three miles from Fort Texas. Only 550 men had been left behind to guard the star fort. No true harbor, by any stretch of the imagination, the roadstead at Point Isabel merely offered vessels a place to anchor in the open water offshore. From there, supplies and munitions had to be painstakingly lightered to rickety docks that were completely inadequate for the purposes of an occupying army.

  While men slowly brought supplies ashore, Grant’s company, and others, had been ordered to build earthworks and other defensive structures to protect the coastal supply depot. A small guard would be left behind to garrison Point Isabel. Accordingly, Grant had been working long hours overseeing the construction projects designed by engineers. As a result of the heavy toil, he had been sleeping very soundly in his tent on the shore near the docks.

  But something had jarred him awake. Had he heard something? Felt something?

  The coming day’s long list of duties began to weigh upon him, and he hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. Even so, he felt obliged to lie still in his blankets and try to determine why he had wakened with such a start from a sound sleep.

  Then it came again. A rumble, far away. Thunder? Again, like hooves drumming a distant bridge. The reality struck Grant all of a sudden. Cannon. The artillery battle had begun at Fort Texas, over twenty miles away. The war he dreaded had come.

  Outside his tent he heard the voices of excited men. Some even cheered. He threw his blankets aside, sat up, and ducked into the day. Officers and men strutted, smiling, spoiling for battle. Not Grant. He remembered the razed ruins of El Fronton, the burned-out village here at Point Isabel, or Santa Isabel, as the Mexicans called it. Some said Texas Rangers had torched the hamlet of El Fronton. Others claimed the citizens themselves had set fire to their town to deny its goods to the Americans.

  Either way, Grant knew that peaceful citizens, mothers and children, old folks and farmers, had been forced from their homes by this unnecessary war—a conflict that could have been avoided through diplomacy. With the hotheaded Polk in office, he feared there would be many more El Frontons in the coming days.

  Charles May, a captain in the Second Dragoons, ran up to Grant, his long hair blowing across his smiling face.

  “Do you hear the cannon, Grant?”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “Isn’t it glorious?” He ran off without waiting for an answer.

  Grant did not think it so glorious. In fact, at this moment, he deeply regretted his enlistment. He should have stood up to his father the day the old man informed him that he would soon report to West Point. And yet, if not for West Point, he would never have met Julia. The irony of love and war bewildered him. Was this simply his unavoidable destiny?

  He heard another distant peal of ordnance. Indeed, he thought he felt it through his stocking feet. He ducked back into the tent and sat down on his cot to pull on his boots.

  Julia … He so wanted to see her now, to hear her sweet southern voice. The only recourse left to him was to write. The bombardment inland would demand even longer days here at Point Isabel. Taylor’s army still had cargo to receive and fortifications to build around the harbor. These tasks would be rushed, now that shooting had started, for Taylor would soon need to hasten back to Fort Texas to rescue the 550 men left there to defend the star fort across from Matamoras.

  There was much to be done, and Grant would see to his duties. But first he would write a letter to Julia.

  SARAH BORGINNES

  Fort Texas

  May 4, 1846

  To the Great Western, the war had begun with a scream and a thud. The first Mexican cannonball to hit Fort Texas yesterday at dawn had howled over the river and slammed into the soft dirt of the sloped outer wall, causing little damage. Hundreds of solid balls, exploding shells, and mortars followed, falling like ungodly hailstones among the soldiers left there to defend the star fort.

  The other women in Fort Texas were huddled in the bombproofs, sewing sandbags and nursing the few wounded men. But Sarah continued to tend her coffeepots over a fire that hugged the inside of the western wall, where Mexican cannonballs and mortars were least likely to hit. She felt relatively safe here. Soon, however, another pot would boil and she would carry it up to the artillerymen who fed the powder and iron into the mouths of the hell-beasts on the fort walls.

  She thought back to the Arroyo Colorado, where she had hidden herself among the willows in hopes of witnessing the beginnings of a war—perhaps a right smart cavalry charge, some rifle fire, and a shot or two from the flying artillery. She had never dreamed up this scenario—stuck behind dirt walls, encircled by the deafening roar of artillery, trusting God and guardian angels to save her from shot and shell.

  Even her name had changed since the Arroyo Colorado. She had received word from Point Isabel that her husband, Sergeant John Bowman, had died in the infirmary. Though she grieved, she also knew that the military establishment would eventually realize that she was now an unattached woman working as a laundress. The army frowned on the presence of unmarried women in camp. So she had promptly proposed the idea of marriage to Sergeant Henry Borginnes of the Fourth Infantry.

  “I have a dowry of two thousand dollars and the firmest pair on the Rio Grande,” she had said.

  A chaplain had performed the ceremony, and she became Sarah Borginnes. Now her new husband had marched off to Point Isabel with the bulk of the U.S. Army and she was ducking cannonballs at Fort Texas.

  Between blasts, she heard boiling coffee rattle the iron lid of a pot suspended over the bed of coals. Covering her palm with a folded rag, she grabbed the hot vessel from its S-shaped iron hook. The boys on the north wall were next in line for a steaming cup of brew, but walking across the open interior of the fort was dangerous, so she angled toward the south end of the tunnel that traversed Fort Texas.

  Sarah herself had helped to build this protective tunnel, when not washing or cooking. Under direction of engineers, the soldiers had gathered hundreds of empty wooden barrels discarded around camp. These hardwood casks had begun to stack up everywhere, so it was logical to put them to use. The larger barrels were lined up on the ground, standing upright in two parallel lines across the middle of the fort. The two lines of containers were just far enough apart for two men to squeeze past each other. On top of these, the men had stood more barrels, creating the six-foot-high walls of the tunnel. Sarah had lifted many of these into place with the tunnel builders. She then helped the soldiers cover the top of the corridor with scraps of lumber, tree limbs, sticks, brush, and old canvas. Atop this, hundreds of men heaped tons of earth, one shovelful at a time, covering the thick walls and lighter roof. The resulting passageway was far from bombproof, but it provided some protection from shrapnel for troops angling across the interior grounds of the earthen fort.

  Stepping in between the pickle barrel walls, carrying her steaming coffeepot before her, she moved slowly as her eyes adjusted to the dark within. The tunnel smelled of brine and vinegar, damp earth, salt pork, and mold. Its dirt cover muffled the muzzle blasts of the ordnance outside, lending her some solace from the ear-pounding percussion. Occasional pinpricks of daylight, created by shrapnel, gave her enough light to see. Soon she caught sight of a soldier heading quickly her way.

  “Watch yourself, Private. Hot coffee comin’.”

  “After you, ma’am,” the farm-fresh boy said, stepping aside.
/>   “Any news?” she asked, switching places with him in the tunnel.

  “Captain Loud’s eighteen-pounders dismounted an enemy gun.”

  This explained the cheer she had heard on the west wall a few minutes ago. “Hell of a handle for an artillery officer, ain’t it?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Loud! Captain Loud!”

  The boy laughed. “Hadn’t thought about it! Good day, ma’am.” He disappeared into the darkness of the protected walkway.

  “Hot coffee comin’ through!” she said, encountering more runners. Stepping out of the passageway on the north end, Sarah took a deep breath and marched up the slanted dirt wall to the northwest bastion of the star fort. A projectile screamed into the redoubt from above, landed inside the walls, bounced, and embedded itself harmlessly in the dirt embankment.

  Amazingly, only one man had been killed in Fort Texas after the first day of bombardment from Matamoros. A well-timed fuse on a Mexican howitzer shell had exploded it in the face of a Seventh Infantry private making repairs on the fort, killing him instantly. Several wounded men were laid up in the bombproofs, but all seemed likely to survive. The 550 soldiers holding the fort maintained a proper respect for Mexican artillery, but many truly feared an all-out infantry assault. Since General Taylor had taken the bulk of the army to the coast to receive and transport supplies, the Mexicans outnumbered the Americans six to one around Fort Texas. Sarah had heard the Alamo mentioned more than once.

  Reaching the top of the fort wall with her coffeepot, she glanced toward Matamoros. She saw no muzzle blasts and expected no enemy projectiles for the moment. Taking a few seconds to observe, she noticed some men muscling one of the eighteen-pounders toward some new target. Two infantrymen were busy repairing the redan with sandbags that gave the gunners some protection. Artillery soldiers swabbed the barrel of a siege gun with a wet sponge on a wooden pole as others pried open ammunition boxes and stacked cannonballs. A lieutenant sighted one of the guns with a tangent scale for a distant shot.

  She located Captain Loud and was surprised to find him conversing with the current commander of Fort Texas, Major Jacob Brown.

  “Major Brown, I have coffee for the boys!” she announced.

  “Ah, good morning, Mrs. Borginnes.” Brown picked up an iron cup from an ammunition box, knocked dirt from it, wiped it out with his finger, and held it under the spout of the coffeepot. Grime and soot covered his face, making the whites of his eyes look strangely alive.

  Sarah had long felt a deep admiration for Major Brown. No arrogant West Pointer, he had come up through the enlisted ranks, winning his promotions and his commission in Indian skirmishes and frontier campaigns. This was by far the largest engagement of the major’s career, but he seemed unfazed by the mantle of leadership entrusted to him.

  “Any new developments, sir?” she asked.

  Brown tested the steaming cup with his upper lip. “Yes, actually. The enemy came across the river in the dark and built a new battery emplacement overnight.”

  “On this side of the rio?” she said, feeling the shock on her own face.

  Brown pointed to the northwest. “Not half a mile from here. They’ve been firing away with a battery of six-pounders. Come take a look!” He picked up a telescope from a field desk that someone had improvised from empty crates.

  Sarah set her coffeepot on the desk and followed Brown to the sandbagged parapet. The major handed her the telescope and pointed upriver to the new earthen fieldworks hastily erected overnight by the Mexican gunners.

  “Tell me what you see,” he said.

  She adjusted the focus of the optics and steadied the glass on the battlement. The muzzles of the guns came into view. “My God, I can see their faces!” she said. “Hey, them ain’t no Mexicans!”

  “They are now.”

  The realization swept over her. “That looks like the big Irishman, John Riley, wearing an officer’s uniform!”

  “The whole battery is Irish,” Brown said. “Deserters.”

  “And now they fire on their own friends?”

  “A traitor knows no friends,” the major answered.

  “The scoundrels!” She felt her anger flare as she handed the telescope back to the major. “I hope you make them pay, sir!”

  Brown gestured toward the men wrestling with the eighteen-pounder. “We’ll range them with that siege gun soon enough and drive them back across the river, if we don’t blow them all to the devil himself.”

  Sarah saw a weary enlisted man empty the coffeepot she had brought with her. She retraced her steps to pick it up for refilling. Suddenly she heard the shriek of a shell. Major Brown grabbed her and pulled her downward to the dirt, throwing himself on top of her. A ball fired from John Riley’s battery of deserters clipped the top of the redan and hissed through the space where she had stood seconds earlier. It dropped into the fort, tearing a section of the tunnel away when it hit.

  The major sprang up and away from her, offering his hand. “My apologies for manhandling you so, Mrs. Borginnes.”

  But Sarah had found the encounter rather thrilling for more than one reason. She smiled at Brown. “I owe you for saving me, Major Brown.” She thought she might actually be blushing. She took the officer’s hand.

  He pulled her to her feet, saying, “Not at all, Mrs. Borginnes. Carry on.”

  “Sir, if I may ask…” she said, feeling emboldened by her new familiarity with the fort commander.

  “Yes? Go on.”

  “I’d like to be issued a musket. In case they attack the fort. I can shoot as straight as any man.”

  The major smiled as he looked about the parapets. “You, Private! Come here!”

  “Sir!” the private said, leaping up from the place where he had been filling a sandbag with his bare hands.

  “Go with Mrs. Borginnes to the armory. See that she is issued a musket and ammunition by my order.”

  “Yes, sir!” the private yelled, apparently anxious to leave the bulwarks.

  “Thank you, Major,” Sarah said. “I will make good use of it, if it comes to that.”

  Major Brown smiled, nodded, and turned back to his duties.

  “Fire!” Captain Loud ordered.

  Sarah had no time to cover her ears as an eighteen-pounder roared, its projectile arching across the river and exploding in a direct hit on a Mexican gun. Sarah actually saw the enemy cannon tube flip through the air, along with one of the enemy gunners. The men around her cheered the bull’s-eye marksmanship.

  In the midst of the celebration, she saw fear in the eyes of some of these soldiers. Then there were others who embraced the action and the danger with something akin to joy. The thought struck her that those whose eyes showed fear possessed a stripe of greater courage than the men who seemed oblivious to the danger, for they remained on their posts in spite of their terror. She realized that she belonged to the class of lesser bravery, for none of the danger concerned her very much.

  She tossed her head at the private and slipped back down the sloped wall, flashing a reassuring smile at a soldier carrying a shovel and a bundle of empty sandbags up to the embattled parapet.

  Lieutenant

  SAM GRANT

  Point Isabel, Texas

  May 6, 1846

  Grant mopped his brow with a handkerchief as he strolled along the breastworks. He stopped to watch a soldier stacking sandbags around an artillery placement.

  “Overlap the sandbags, Private. Stagger each course.” He moved the bag the man had just put in place, to show how the wall should take shape.

  “Yes, sir,” the man replied.

  As the parapet took shape, Grant turned an ear to the west. The distant din from the artillery battle at Fort Texas had a lighter ring to it so far this morning. The punctuating roars of the big eighteen-pounders were absent from the menacing drum roll of battle. He was pretty sure he knew why.

  Captain Samuel Walker—a Texas Ranger acting as General Taylor’s scout—had managed to sneak pa
st all the enemy patrols between Point Isabel and Fort Texas. Incredibly, Walker had gotten into Fort Texas to talk to Major Brown. He had left the star fort immediately thereafter, snuck through the Mexican lines yet again, and dodged enemy patrols all night to bring intelligence from Major Brown to General Taylor. At a council of war called before dawn this morning, Walker had told what he knew.

  In attendance at the meeting, Grant had studied the Ranger captain as he reported in a rather quiet voice. He had gathered that Captain Walker was a famous Indian and Mexican fighter in Texas. Grant found him rather haggard. Perhaps he had been ill or was simply exhausted.

  “Major Brown told me with utmost confidence,” Walker had reported, “that Fort Texas will withstand the artillery bombardment from Matamoras. The Mexican batteries are no match for the U.S. guns.”

  “What about an infantry assault?” Taylor had asked.

  “That concerns Major Brown more than the artillery, though he has made preparations. Hundreds of rounds of canister and grapeshot have been carried to the gun placements. If the Mexicans charge, the Rio Grande will run red with their blood. Buzzards will come from as far away as Chihuahua. Brown will not surrender. He will fight to the death. He told me this himself.”

  General Taylor picked his teeth with a mesquite thorn. “Yes, but we know from the Alamo just how many casualties the Mexicans are willing to take to breach the walls of a fort. Brown has 550 men inside Fort Texas. General Arista has six times that number.”

  “Sir, there’s a way we will know if Major Brown observes Arista forming up his men for an infantry assault.”

  “How’s that, Captain?”

  “I told Major Brown that the bombardment can be heard quite clearly here at Point Isabel. Especially the eighteen-pounders. So, come dawn, if he sees Arista massed for an infantry assault on the fort, he will wait until precisely six-thirty in the morning to fire the siege guns, which he will unleash with a sudden fury. If Captain Loud’s eighteen-pounders are silent until six-thirty, we will know that the Mexican infantry are prepared to attack the walls.”