by Aaron Gwyn
“It’s a war,” Lunsford replied, shrugging.
Noah looked at me. “Don’t you do it, Duncan.”
“Someone’s going to have to,” I said.
“He’s right,” said Lunsford.
“Shut your mouth,” Noah told him.
And still no one raised his hand. They were stout lads, all of them, but they had no desire to throw their lives away.
Neither did I, for that matter, but as the oldest member of the group—I’d turn twenty-nine that year—I wouldn’t let the task fall on a younger man.
“I’ll go,” I told them. “Does anyone care to ride with me?”
“Craziness,” said Noah.
“It’s all right to be scared,” Lunsford said.
“Scared, hell!” said Noah. “We’re all of us scared. What we’re not is suicidal.”
It seemed like there’d be further bickering, but Sam spoke up.
“I ain’t scared,” he said, then turned his blue eyes on me. “I’ll ride with you.”
Well, he might as well have told me my sins were forgiven. We said our goodbyes, shook hands with Noah, and went trotting out to look for an enemy that’d just taken four hundred of our friends and fellow soldiers and put every man of them to the sword.
* * *
There was no wind and the morning was quiet, just the creak of our saddles and the chirp of blue jays as we passed.
We were supposed to be on the lookout for the Mexican army, but it soon struck us that Indians were a far greater threat, being only a party of two. Our horses were fresh, and I didn’t doubt we’d have much trouble outrunning Santa Anna’s cavalry if we happened upon them. Comanche ponies were another matter.
By evening, we’d passed Plum Creek and hadn’t seen sign of Indians or Mexicans either one. We made camp on a rise that looked out over the road, loosened our saddles and slipped the horses’ bits so we could feed them palmfuls of corn. I didn’t want to risk a fire up on that ridge and announce our presence for miles around, so we ate a supper of cold biscuits and sowbelly and then sat staring at the stars.
Directly, Sam took off his panther cap, laid it carefully on the blanket beside him, and commenced to rub his eyes.
“You sleepy?” I asked.
“I’m all right.”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll let you spell me in the morning.”
It seemed as though he might protest a bit more, but he laid down and pillowed his head in the crook of an arm. His breath went shallow and his face slackened.
Then he opened an eye and looked at me.
“Quit watching,” he said.
That embarrassed me some and I didn’t say anything.
“I cain’t sleep when it’s somebody watching.”
“Sorry,” I said. I glanced back up at the sky and right away he was snoring.
He slept all that night and all the next morning. I was anxious over the Mexicans said to be making for our position and couldn’t have gotten a minute’s rest even if I’d had a regiment with me.
It was afternoon when he woke. He sat up with the sun in his eyes and locks of blond hair matted to the side of his face.
“What o’clock is it?” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “You got some place to be?”
We mounted up and rode until we hit Cedar Creek. The colonists having fled, the entire country was empty and quiet, no smoke from the chimneys, no candlelight in the windows of the cabins. It put me in a skeersome sort of mood, and I was thankful for Sam’s company, though I might’ve wished him a bit more talkative. Chickens squawked around the yards, and having eaten nothing but a few hard biscuits, I was savage as a meat-axe.
I glanced over at Sam. “You hungry?”
“Always hungry,” he said.
“What’s say we get a fire going and help ourselves to some of this poultry?”
“You’re not worried about Mexicans seeing us?”
“I don’t think they’re coming this way. Our reconnoiter was likely for nothing.”
He shrugged. “I’ll see to a fire then.”
“I reckon that puts me on chicken duty.”
While Sam foraged for kindling, I gathered a mess of eggs, killed two pullets, then sat and started to pluck them.
Sam carried in an armload of firewood, feathered a few mesquite branches with his knife, stacked all the kindlers just the way he wanted them and then went over and started rummaging round in his traps.
“I’ve got my flint and striker right here,” I told him, but he shook his head.
When he came back, he had a buckskin bag over one shoulder, a long stalk of yucca and a hearth board with six or seven holes bored along its edge.
I wiped a feather from between my fingers and watched him.
He knelt on the ground, anchored the board under his moccasined foot and slid a wood chip under one of the holes. I realized what he was about to try, but I didn’t quite believe it.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
He looked up at me. “Building this fire,” he said.
“You’re welcome to my tinderbox.”
“I’m all right.”
“Are you?” I said. I’d heard of producing a coal with a spindle and fireboard, but I’d never seen it done. I’d never even known anyone who’d tried it. The Lord gave us flint and steel for a reason.
“Do you want a fire or not?”
“Surely,” I told him, “but I was kind of hoping for one tonight.”
“I’ll have it for you in about a minute if you quit hollering at me.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” I said.
He pulled a nest of dry grass from his bag and set it to one side of the hearth board. Then he took the yucca stalk and fit its tip into one of the blackened holes.
Well, I hadn’t been expecting any entertainment with my supper. I put down the chicken and leaned forward to watch.
He began rubbing the yucca stalk between his hands, working his palms down its length and then working them back up again, leaning into the spindle, giving it his weight. The stalk spun back and forth. After a minute, a thin trail of smoke started to rise. His hands went faster and faster. Fine black dust was filling the notch he’d cut in the side of board, piling up on the woodchip underneath it. Then he tossed the spindle, bent down and tilted the board very gently.
He lifted the chip of wood; you could see the little coal smoking atop it, glowing faintly in the dusk. He tipped this into the nest of grass, grabbed the nest in both hands and began to blow into it from underneath, closing the bundle into a smoldering ball.
Thick smoke poured out of it. Then it burst into yellow flame.
Sam glanced at me and smiled.
“I will be damned,” I said.
* * *
We skewered the chickens on mesquite branches and set them to roast, so giddy at the prospect of a hot meal we commenced to giggling. I went into one of the deserted cabins and emerged with a cast iron skillet. It was well-seasoned and I thought eggs would be very flavorful in it.
But when I got back to the fire, Sam stared at the skillet like it was a bugbear.
“Where’d you get that?” he said.
“Yonder cabin,” I told him.
“Put it back.”
I wondered for half a second if he mightn’t be jobbing me, but his cheeks had drained of their color and his ears were bright red.
“How are we going to fry up these eggs?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “but I ain’t cooking in a woman’s skillet without her leave.”
“I doubt the good matrons of Texas would begrudge a couple patriots using their cookery.”
“Maybe so,” he said. “But you ain’t asked them.”
I took the skillet and hung it back on the nail insi
de the cabin. When I returned to the fire, Sam looked as if all was right with the world.
“What do you propose we do about these eggs?” I asked. “Put them back too?”
“Pa used to eat them straight from the shell,” he told me.
“Well, that was him. And this ain’t Arkansas.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
Roasted chicken and hot coffee was our feast that night, and it proved an excellent combination. We lay beside the fire, eating and slurping from our mugs.
“I say we ride for Bastrop come morning,” I told him.
“I say we do too.”
The fire crackled and the stars were bright. I thought about the ruckus over the skillet and something occurred to me.
“Were you close with your mammy?” I said.
“Yessir,” he said. “She was the best woman I ever knew. And braver than any man by a furlong. I cared for her after she got the milk sick.”
“What about your pap?”
“He was stabbed by Simon Crabtree in ’24.”
“He was stabbed?” I said.
“Yessir. Crabtree was robbing our traps—or Pa thought he was; we could never catch him at it—and this one day we were at the trading post, and Crabtree come up the steps, and Pa told him to cut it out, stealing from us that way, and when he turned, Crabtree put a knife in his kidney and Pa bled on out.”
“Lord God,” I said. “You saw this?”
“I was standing right there.”
“What happened to the rascal?”
“Nothing,” he said, and his face seemed to tighten. “Nothing happened to him. He just walked off in the trees and I never heard tell of him again.”
“I’m very sorry,” I told him, but my condolences seemed awful thin.
I said, “And your mammy got the milk sickness?”
“It burned right through her,” he said.
“Was it just you?”
“Me and my brother. He’s younger than me. Pa’s sister came and got us—she and her husband—and they brung us down to Robertson’s Colony.”
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I got tired of Uncle Joel whipping on me and I run off.”
“What about your brother?”
“Uncle Joel never whipped him.”
I lay there. It was such a sad tale, unbearably so to my thinking.
I said, “What did you do between the time you left out and when you rode into Gonzales last fall?”
“Various things,” he said. “You always ask so many questions?”
“No,” I said. “Not generally. I had better manners fore I came to Texas.”
“From Kentucky,” he said. “On top of Tennessee.”
We lay there a few moments.
Then he said, “It’s all right, Mister Lammons. I’m just not used to talking about it, is all.”
“Well, anytime you feel like it, I’d be pleased to listen.”
“Yessir,” he said. “I thank you.”
But he never spoke another word on the subject, and I recovered enough of my manners not to bring it up.
* * *
We rode back into Bastrop the next evening. Since Sam and I had been out on reconnaissance, the town had emptied itself of all but twenty-two members of our ranger company. Tumlinson had gone to fetch his family out of harm’s way and several dozen of the boys left in search of General Houston’s army. The band of remaining riders now called Noah captain.
“Well, well,” I told him, “this war is turning out rather well for you.”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “it’s been a meteoric rise. A few months ago, I returned from the Redlands with gold in my pocket thinking I might court myself a helpmeet. Now, my money has gone for this swaybacked plug, and instead of a perfumed young maid for company, I’ve got you unwashed vagrants.”
“That is some way for a captain to talk about his troops.”
“What did you and Samuel find on your reconnoiter?”
“A skillet,” I said. “But I put it back.”
“You saw no Mexicans?”
“We saw nothing but grass and chickens,” I said. “They seemed very glad we paid them a visit. Even the two we ate.”
“But the road is clear?”
“If Santa Anna is marching on us, he’s not coming that way.”
He paused to think about all of this. Then he said, “What do you think we ought to do?”
“If the Mexicans are truly coming, I’d hate for the fine residents of Bastrop to lose stock to them. Let Santa Anna furnish his own beef.”
He agreed. He ordered us to sink the boats on this side of the river, and we started down the Colorado.
A few mornings later, we were trying to herd our countrymen’s cattle, when Sam drew rein and sat his horse, squinting off into the distance. That caught my attention, and I rode up beside him and asked what he saw.
“I believe the Mexicans have joined us,” he said.
“What?” I said. “Where?”
He gestured with his chin, but all I could see across the river was the green haze of cedar.
Noah had noticed us conversing, and he came up and asked what we were looking at.
“Sam says he sees Mexicans over there.”
Noah shaded his eyes with a hand. “I don’t see any.”
“There are at least six hundred,” Sam said.
“Six hundred?” said Noah. He looked as if he thought Sam was only pulling his leg, but I knew Sam well enough to know he didn’t tease.
By now, several more men had ridden up beside us. Levi English was among them, and his young eyes saw what mine and Noah’s couldn’t.
“Jesus!” he said. “Is that the Mexican army?”
“Apparently,” said Noah, and he ordered us to forget the cattle and jump up some dust.
We rode all day long. If the Mexicans had seen us, they hadn’t sent cavalry in pursuit. But now we knew they were out there, marching us down.
We steered for Cole’s settlement at Brenham and about midday started passing deserted cabins. They were the very picture of panic. Doors stood open to whatever livestock decided to wander in. There was bedding and plates spread around the yards, cups and silverware and tools of various kinds. The settlers, in their terror, hadn’t known what to leave and what to take. We rode through abandoned hamlets followed by packs of starving dogs, and at one farm, chickens came clucking down the hill and formed up along the side of the road like generals attending a review of their troops.
That evening, we started passing the first of the refugees, old men driving wagons piled with belongings and their eyes full of fear. We told them to pull for Brenham, trying to speak an encouraging word where we could. Sam studied these evacuees out of his calm blue eyes—hard to say what he made of it all.
Just around sundown, we came down a rough wagon trace and saw a sturdy pioneer woman up ahead of us, pulling a handcart that likely held her every last possession. It was a pitiful sight, and one I didn’t care to linger on—it seemed very private to me, very personal. I turned to look away and noticed the other men doing the same, Noah and young Levi. But as soon as Sam set eyes on the woman, he snapped his reins, rode up alongside her and dismounted.
“What’s he doing?” asked Noah, and I shushed him, trying to figure that out myself.
A peculiar scene began to play out before us as Sam approached this woman like she was a long-lost relation. I can recall the exact look of her stern, determined face. She had hair the color of Sam’s big bay horse and her eyes were rather widely positioned. She set the yoke of her handcart on the ground, placed the heels of both hands in the small of her back and stretched. The hem of her homespun dress was in muddy tatters.
What must Sam have looked like to her in his greasy buckskin? An
d yet, his face was shot through with kindness. It stirred something in me.
“Madam,” he said, touching his panther cap with a knuckle as though he’d doff it to her.
She stood there eyeing him with suspicion, reluctant to return his greeting.
“State your business,” she finally said.
“Just wanted to ask if you needed help.”
“That depends,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Samuel,” he told her, then nodded over to us. “I’m with Smithwick’s Rangers.”
“Are you all Houston’s army?”
“Not just yet,” he told her. “We’re trying to find it.”
This seemed to reassure her somehow, and she told him that all day men had been riding up to panicked colonists, claiming to be from General Houston himself, informing the refugees that Santa Anna was less than a mile away and it was time to throw down their traps and run. She said this lie had worked rather remarkably: the self-proclaimed soldiers waited until the settlers had cleared the area, then gathered up whatever possessions they’d left behind.
The woman’s tale made Sam furious, and his face went a deep shade of red. He said, “General Houston’s army is many miles from here; the men you’ve seen claiming to be his soldiers are liars. If I come across these yacks, I’ll wear the ground out with them.”
“Oh,” said the woman, “I wasn’t born in the woods to be scared by an owl. Their story never worked on me.”
“Where are your menfolk?” Sam asked.
“My father is old and poorly. I sent him out in the bed of a wagon day before last. I believe those he left with are making for Matagorda Bay.”
“What will you do?”
“I reckon I’ll pull for Matagorda as well.”
Sam nodded. He asked her to bear with him a moment, then walked over to us and addressed Noah in a whisper.
“Captain,” he said, “this woman requires assistance.”
By that time, other evacuees had come up on our rear, passing us left and right with their broken-down oxen and mules—as sad a sample of humanity as I’d ever seen.
Noah said, “Gad, Samuel, look at them: they all require assistance. We’re not teamsters. We have an army to join.”
