Eyes of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  He shifted in his saddle. He had been afflicted with disentería — in cruder terms, the shits — on the long march north, and he was not quite over it. That did nothing to improve his cruel temper.

  It was time to enter the town. He had dressed in his finest uniform, with his chest filled with all the medals he’d won over the years of battles. His horse had been washed and groomed, his saddle, studded with silver, had been rubbed and polished.

  Santa Anna had plans in mind for the residents of San Antonio, too. Dark savage plans. For he hated them. All of them. Years back he had been humiliated here, over a minor game of chance. And a not so minor incident of forgery — on his part. He had lied his way clear of any charges with his superiors, but he had never forgotten the laughter from the citizens of this wretched town. They would pay. Dearly.

  And to further show how lightly Santa Anna treated the defenders at the Alamo... he planned to be married during the siege. To a lovely girl he had met only a few hours ago!

  Santa Anna obviously did not believe in long courtships.

  * * *

  “Messenger comin’ under a white flag, Jim,” a lookout called from his post.

  “They’ll be wanting us to surrender,” Bowie said, climbing up and standing beside a charged cannon.

  The Mexican officer, all decked out in a fancy-colored uniform, called for the commanding officer. Bowie grinned and looked around for Travis. He was, as usual, in his office, writing reports.

  “That’s me, Amigo,” Bowie replied cheerfully, in perfect Spanish. “Jim Bowie at your service. Que haces?”

  “Your surrender, senor Bowie. General Santa Anna demands an unconditional surrender.”

  “I can but assume he’s watching all this?” Bowie asked.

  “Si, senor.”

  “Run up the flag!” Bowie ordered.

  Watching through a glass, Santa Anna’s face reddened in rage as the red, white, and green Mexican flag, with some additions added, was hoisted up the flagpole inside the mission. Santa Anna cursed. The numbers 1824 were clearly visible, serving to remind him of the Texas constitution drafted in 1824.

  Santa Anna told his aide, “The flag of no quarter. Now!”

  The red flag was hoisted on the Mexican side, and every defender watching from the walls in the Alamo knew what it meant: a fight to the death.

  Santa Anna issued another order and his cannon roared. They missed their target.

  “Fire!” Bowie ordered, and the eighteen-pounder thundered out the Alamo’s defiant reply.

  Travis rushed from his quarters, furious. Bowie had not told him of his plans to do this. From the parapets, Bowie smiled down at him.

  “Jim’s little surprise for Colonel Travis,” Jamie muttered to Davy Crockett.

  “I ’spect it did get ever’body’s attention,” Crockett drawled. “Damn shore got mine!”

  “I wish a word with you, Bowie!” Travis yelled.

  “Later,” Bowie said, half turning his back to the man. “They’ve shown a man with a white flag. They want to parlay, and I got a man all ready to do that.”

  “I forbid it!” Travis yelled, his voice nearly a scream.

  “Too late,” Bowie said, then completely turned his back to the man.

  Travis was outraged. He had suspected all along that Bowie had a plan to sell them all out. For to Travis, Bowie was a Mexican-lover.

  He was right on one point: Bowie did love the Mexican people, he had married a beautiful Mexican girl. Then, too, Bowie knew the Mexican mind; how they thought. Travis was quite vocal in saying, often, that he doubted any Mexican even had a mind.

  The Mexican artillery batteries continued to boom, but they were so far out of range, if they weren’t careful, Bowie noted, the rounds just might fall on their own troops.

  Jameson rode back. “Unconditional surrender,” he shouted to Bowie.

  Bowie gave his reply. He personally touched the flame to the hole of the cannon and let the freshly charged eighteen-pounder roar. Then he leaned over the wall and gave the clearly startled Mexican officer under a flag of truce a message for Santa Anna.

  The Mexican officer’s face paled and he shook his head. “No, señor Bowie. I cannot tell that to my general.”

  What Bowie had said was that, remembering that it loses something in the translation, Santa Anna’s mother was a burro and his father was a vulture, and also that Santa Anna had sex with whores because he was so ugly no decent woman would have anything to do with him.

  “Madre Dios!” the officer gasped. “I cannot say that, either!”

  “Then tell him that Jim Bowie said a besar cabo grosso!”

  The Mexican officer threw down the white flag and galloped away. He’d think of something to say to the general. He knew he’d better; he certainly could not repeat any of what Bowie had just said. Santa Anna would have him flogged. Or shot.

  “What did you say to that officer?” Travis yelled, standing beside Bowie.

  But Bowie only shook his head. “Just that we would, under no conditions, surrender unconditionally.”

  Travis didn’t believe him, of course. But knowing that Bowie had his blood running hot for battle now, he had enough sense not to call him a liar. For had he done that, the Alamo would have lost one of its two commanders. And Travis knew it. Travis was no coward; far from it. He was a very brave man. He just had, on occasion, uncommon good sense.

  “We are not going to surrender under any circumstances!” Travis informed Bowie.

  Bowie shrugged his total indifference. But Jamie, watching from a reasonably safe distance, knew what the shrug meant: the idea of surrender had never entered Bowie’s mind. He was ready to fight to the death. That was why he had so insulted the courier from Santa Anna.

  Travis, still furious, climbed down from the parapet and lined up the men under his personal command. He gave them a rousing, if somewhat profane speech, and all agreed to never surrender. Then he stalked off to his quarters.

  “I never thought the tin soldier had it in him,” Bowie said to no one in particular, after listening to Travis’s speech. “Maybe I’ll change my opinion of him.”

  Jamie thought that highly unlikely.

  * * *

  After listening to his courier’s report, Santa Anna was so angry his dysentery returned and he had to rush to the outhouse for a time. When he returned, the courier had wisely disappeared, not wanting to repeat his lies for fear he could not remember all that he had said.

  But he had told a junior officer what Bowie had really said. The young officer, seeking to appear favorable in his general’s eyes, told Santa Anna all that Bowie had said.

  Back to the outhouse.

  * * *

  The ineffectual cannon fire from the Mexican artillerymen continued throughout the afternoon. They hit nothing. San Antonio was now, for all intents and purposes, deserted. Only a few citizens remained in the town. The people in the town knew that when those in the Alamo really began to fight, their bigger and longer-range cannon could well destroy the town.

  Travis’s anger had slowly subsided and his logical mind began to see that Bowie had been right in his response to Santa Anna’s demand for an unconditional surrender. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Bowie that.

  Travis stepped out of his quarters and walked the compound. There was no sign of Jim Bowie. He had retired to his quarters to rest. The day had taken a lot out of him. He was much sicker and weaker than he would admit even to himself.

  Crockett and several of his men had taken up positions along the walk with their long rifles, just waiting for one of Santa Anna’s men to present a target.

  So far, no one on either side had been killed, no one on either side had even gotten much upset — except for Travis’s wild explosion of temper and Santa Anna’s bowels — and no one had been seriously injured.

  All that was about to change.

  Davy Crockett had been watching as a lone Mexican soldier worked his way closer to the mission.

/>   “You gonna let me have ’im, Davy?” one of his men asked hopefully.

  “Nope,” Crockett replied. “He’s all mine. How far you reckon he is?”

  “Long ways off, Davy,” the Tennessee volunteer said. “You nail that one, it’ll be something to write home about.”

  “I didn’t know you could write,” another one kidded the man.

  “Hell, I cain’t!”

  Chuckling, Davy rested his rifle on a small bag of sand and sighted in. The long rifle cracked and the Mexican soldier went down bonelessly. Davy had drilled him through the heart from a nearly impossible distance and that was the first fatality of the battle. The Mexican soldiers knew then that the men along the walls of the Alamo were highly skilled riflemen.

  Travis stood in the plaza and watched as the coonskin-capped and buckskin-wearing Tennessee men danced and whooped and hollered.

  “You plugged ’im through the ticker, Davy!” one yelled.

  Santa Anna shrugged off the report that one of his men had been killed. He had lots of soldados. They were all expendable. Santa Anna was thinking of his wedding day, and even more so, of his wedding night. He became sexually aroused and had to leave the room and wash his face in cold water. That didn’t help a bit. He told one of his aides to bring a punta to his quarters. Two of them if possible. Three of them if the aide could find that many. And be sure they were young and pretty. And clean, for the general was a very fastidious man. Santa Anna fancied himself quite the lady’s man, and very virile. He was also very vain and arrogant. And those were his good points.

  Many of his officers held an intense dislike for General Santa Anna, but they kept that well hidden. Many of them did not like his streak of cruelty. Battles were one thing, but prisoners should be treated with at least some degree of compassion and dignity.

  Santa Anna had little compassion, and on more than one occasion he had ordered helpless prisoners shot. But the officers were all professional soldiers, and they would obey their general. But they didn’t have to like it.

  * * *

  Gradually, the gunfire subsided as evening fell and both sides settled down to supper. Travis watched from the open door of his darkened room as Jamie blackened his face and took up his bow and quiver of arrows. For a moment, he considered forbidding the young man to leave. But he stilled his tongue, not wanting another quarrel with Bowie.

  My army, he thought. What an odd assortment of men, good men all, and brave men, but still a strange collection. Men from New Orleans, from Tennessee, from half a dozen or more states over in America. There were even a couple of men from Scotland. Mexicans fighting alongside Anglos against their own people. What brought them here, to this place, at this time? Travis shook his head, unable to find the answer to his silent question.

  He looked toward Bowie’s quarters and sighed. Jim was a good man, a true man, and he wished they could get along. Travis admitted, to himself, that it was as much his own fault as it was Bowie’s. They were as different as night was from day.

  He watched as Jamie disappeared into the gloom near the west wall. The young man was going out to kill. Travis wished him luck. MacCallister was a mystery. Raised by Indians, Travis recalled someone telling him. Somewhat of a savage, he felt. But nonetheless, a very capable and likeable young man.

  Even though William Travis was only a few years older than Jamie MacCallister, on this early evening, he felt the weight of command heavy on his shoulders.

  “Colonel,” a man called. “Come get some beef and beans and coffee, sir. It’s gonna be a cold night.”

  It will heat up come the dawning, Travis thought, as he walked toward the cook fire and took the offered plate of food in one hand and the cup of coffee in his other hand. “Thank you,” he said politely.

  * * *

  “Please excuse me,” Jamie muttered, lowering the body of the sentry to the nearly frozen ground. The man had died without a sound as the big blade of Jamie’s Bowie knife nearly took his head off.

  “Carlos?” a voice called out. “Where are you?”

  “Por acá,” Jamie softly called.

  “Ah!” The man started walking toward Jamie and Jamie put an arrow directly into the soldier’s chest. He dropped with a thud against the nearly frozen earth.

  “Silencio!” a hard voice called, adding, “Idiota!”

  Jamie did the silencing with an arrow in the middle of the man’s back. The Mexican batteries began opening up, from about five hundreds yards away from the Alamo. Jamie’s knife flashed in the night and he silently slipped away, his bloody souvenirs dangling from his belt. He slipped into the town, knowing he was taking a terrible chance, but feeling the Mexican soldiers ought to know a taste of fear. He was going to give them a taste of it, that night.

  That Colonel Travis would not approve of this did not bother Jamie a twit. Bowie would be amused by it.

  A drunken sergeant lurched out of a cantina that the soldiers had forced open, mouthing terrible things about norteamericanos in general and Texans in particular. Jamie left him sitting on the dirt in the alley, his back to the outside wall of the cantina, his chin on his chest, and his head glistening dark and wetly in the night.

  Jamie flattened out against the wall of a building as a dozen or more cavalrymen walked their horses up the street, the hooves making a frightful echoing racket on the stones. Jamie used that noise to cover any slight sound he might make and slipped away. He made his way over to where a battery of artillerymen were swabbing out and reloading cannon. Then, Jamie supposed, they decided to take a break, for coffee or food or whatever, for they all walked away and vanished into the night. Jamie slipped over to the row of cannon and finding a bucket, began working quickly, scooping up mud and pouring it into the barrels of two of the eight-pounder cannon. Then he packed it in tight and rolled over into a ditch just as the men returned to their stations.

  It was going to get real interesting when the order came for those men to fire their cannons.

  Jamie collected three more scalps that night before he decided not to push his luck any further. He headed back for the Alamo, finding it almost ridiculously easy to wend his way unseen through the Mexican lines.

  “Thanks, Tall Bull,” he said under his breath, for the brutal training the Shawnee had given him on how to survive.

  Reaching the rear of the Alamo, on the east side, near the cattle and horse pen, he called, “MacCallister. Coming over.”

  “Come on, Jamie,” the sentry said. “How was it over yonder?”

  “Busy,” Jamie said with a smile, towering over the man.

  “What that a-hangin’ from your belt, son?”

  “Scalps,” Jamie told him, and walked on.

  The man shuddered and muttered, “Travis ain’t gonna like that a-tall.”

  Jamie told Crockett and Bowie what he’d done with the cannon and both men guffawed and slapped their knees in high humor. “Land sakes, boy,” Crockett said. “You done fixed it so’s we’uns can have quite a show this night.”

  Jamie wondered about Crockett’s speech; wondered just how much of it was affectation and how much was real? No matter, though. Davy was a fearless fighting man and a dead shot.

  “My God, boy!” Bowie said, stepping back. “What have you got hanging from your belt?”

  “Half a dozen scalps. I thought I’d give them to Travis as souvenirs.” Actually, Jamie had no intention of doing that.

  Bowie grinned. “No, lad. Let me have the honors.” Before Jamie could stop him, he jerked the bloody scalps from Jamie’s belt.

  “What’s going on up there?” Travis suddenly appeared in the night and called from the plaza. “Oh. It’s you, MacCallister. What did you accomplish among the enemy this evening?”

  “Killed half a dozen and fixed two of their cannon so when they fire, it’ll surely backfire on them.”

  Travis climbed up onto the parapet and faced Jamie. “Report,” he said.

  Jamie told all that he’d seen and done — almost.
r />   “Yeah, you want these, Bill?” Bowie asked innocently, then held out the bloody scalps.

  Travis recoiled as if being handed a writhing poisonous snake. “What in God’s name are those?” he demanded.

  Crockett and his men — all skilled Indian fighters who had certainly taken more than their share of scalps over the years — could barely contain themselves. One swallowed his chewing tobacco trying to stifle his laughter.

  “Scalps, Colonel,” Bowie replied calmly. “Jamie took them. He thought you might want to keep them as souvenirs.”

  Travis drew himself up to his full height, which was eye to eye with Bowie, and smiled. “Why, yes,” he said. “I certainly would. Thank you, Scout MacCallister. I am sure I shall treasure them always.” He took the scalps and tucked them behind his own belt.

  Crockett leaned close and whispered hoarsely, “He beat you on that one, Jimmy my boy.” Then he burst out laughing.

  Soon all the men along the parapet were howling at Travis having put one over on Bowie. But Jim was good humored and he soon joined in the merriment.

  When the laughter had died down, Bowie stuck out his hand toward Travis. “Colonel, would you be so kind as to join me in my quarters and we’ll have coffee and discuss, together and mutually, the defending of this bastion of liberty?”

  Travis smiled and shook the hand of the older man. “It would be my pleasure, Colonel Bowie. My great pleasure indeed.” He chuckled, a rare thing for Travis. “Perhaps then, Jim, you can tell me what you really told that emissary from General Santa Anna this afternoon.”

  “Oh, that’s easy, William. I just told him to tell Santa Anna to kiss my ass!”

  Travis was startled silent for a moment. He blinked, then slowly started chuckling. Soon he was roaring with laughter and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. Once again, the men along the parapet were howling with laughter.

  From the Mexican battery of artillery, there suddenly came a mighty roar and a huge shower of flame and shredded metal and hardened mud. The flames touched off two more cannon and they blew apart. The blast from the first explosions knocked the two other cannons out of alignment and the cannonballs fell far short of their target and the scene was one of confusion and screaming and mortally wounded men.