Eyes of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  Sam sat with his face in his hands, unable to look at the bloody body of the man he’d been with for so long.

  Davy Crockett could no longer take the time needed to reload as Mexican soldiers swarmed him. He was swinging Ol’ Betsy like a club, smashing heads left and right. He was bleeding from half a dozen wounds and forced to lean up against the side of the hospital to stay on his feet as his massive strength was ebbing away. Around him lay the bodies of twenty Mexican soldiers. A squad of soldiers rushed him and pinned Crockett to the wall with bayonets, running him through. Davy’s last act was to close one big hand around the throat of a Mexican sergeant and squeeze with all his might. Davy Crockett, with blood leaking from his mouth, grinned in a ghastly manner and said, “Come along, son. We’ll continue this fracas on the other side.”

  He died still holding on to the terrified sergeant. Davy slumped over the bayonets that had pinned him to the wall. The sergeant died seconds later, his throat crushed.

  No one knows who the last Texan was to die in the Alamo. It might have been Crockett. It might have been a major named Robert Evans, or it could have been a volunteer named Walker. It does not matter. They were all dead.

  Santa Anna’s troops had taken the Alamo, but the price they paid was unbelievably high. When the last shot was fired — some fifteen minutes after the last defender was dead — some eight hundred Mexican bodies were sprawled in death in the plaza alone. It was six-thirty in the morning on March 6th, 1836.

  Approximately one hundred and eighty-two men had killed over two thousand Mexican troops, over five hundred of those killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Many of the dead Alamo defenders still had their hands on their knives, the knives buried to the hilt in soldiers’ bodies. Some still held on to the throats of Mexican soldiers, locked in a death grip.

  Many of the Mexican soldiers, much to the disgust of some of their officers and sergeants, threw down their rifles, sank to their knees, and wept openly and unashamedly. They were not weeping for their fallen comrades alone, but for all the brave dead.

  Still other Mexican soldiers, their blood hot with rage, went from body to body and fired countless rounds into the dead Texans, then took their knives and mutilated the bodies. It took the officers more than fifteen minutes to regain control of the enraged Mexican soldiers.

  Santa Anna still had not made his appearance inside the walls of the Alamo.

  Susanna Dickerson, the six or seven other women, the children, and Sam and Joe, remained where they were, under guard of more compassionate and older soldiers. They wished no harm to come to noncombatants.

  High overhead, the buzzards, who millenniums past had made a pact with death, were tiny black specks in the cloudless blue sky. They had patience; they could wait. The buzzards were born with the knowledge that sooner or later, death came to everything living.

  It was about eight-thirty that morning before Santa Anna rode his horse up to the battered walls of the Alamo, carefully picking his way through the hundreds of bodies of his soldiers. He dismounted and stood for a moment, his nose wrinkled at the smell of death.

  “Very distasteful business,” he said to a colonel.

  “Quite,” the colonel replied. “But this will surely teach the Anglo revolutionaries a lesson.”

  “I’m certain it will,” Santa Anna agreed, then stepped into the plaza through a hole in the wall.

  Forty-three

  Santa Anna turned to his left upon entering the Alamo. He walked across the wooden bridge over the irrigation ditch and then followed the wall to the officers’ quarters. He looked in, sniffed at the sight of the sprawled and mutilated bodies, and walked on. At the north wall, he stopped and stared up at Travis’s body.

  “Colonel Travis, sir,” he was informed. Travis’s body had not been hacked on. Neither had the body of Bowie or Crockett. Most of the other dead were unrecognizable.

  “One shot through the head,” Santa Anna said. “I wonder if he killed himself in despair?”

  Some historians have toyed with that theory, but reports from Mexican soldiers who were there, both officers and enlisted men, state unequivocally that William Travis fought bravely and was felled by a shot from a Mexican rifle. He did not commit suicide.

  Santa Anna shrugged his shoulders and walked on, after giving this command, “Separate the bodies of my brave fallen from this Texas rabble. I wish my men to be buried with dignity.”

  They were not. Reports state that many of them were tossed into the beds of wagons, taken some distance from town, and left to rot and be eaten by animals while others were simply rolled into ditches and others thrown into the river.

  Santa Anna looked up at the flag that still fluttered proudly over the dead defenders of the Alamo. “Take down that goddamn flag!” he ordered.

  What happened to the flag the men from Gonzales brought with them to fly over the mission is unknown. The only flag to survive was the flag the volunteers from New Orleans brought with them. It read: THE FIRST COMPANY OF TEXAN VOLUNTEERS FROM NEW ORLEANS. It was sent to Mexico City.

  Santa Anna and escort left the site of Travis’s death and walked over to the east wall, to the artillerymen’s quarters. He looked in. Many of the bodies had been hacked with machetes so fiercely they resembled nothing more than heaps of bloody rags. From there he walked to the edge of the hospital building and his eyes narrowed and his lips turned to cruel slits when he saw Davy Crockett’s big hand still locked in place around the sergeant’s throat.

  “Get that hand away from the throat of that brave soldier,” he ordered.

  “We tried, sir,” a lieutenant said. “The fingers are in a death grip.”

  Santa Anna turned cruel eyes on the officer. “Then either break the fingers free or cut them free.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Santa Anna turned to go and stopped, looking back at the buckskin-clad frontiersman. “Who is that man?”

  “Davy Crockett, sir.”

  Santa Anna grunted. “He wasn’t as tough as he thought he was, was he?”

  All present wisely decided not to comment on that rather ridiculous question. Any fool could plainly see that Davy Crockett had personally killed twenty-five or thirty soldiers in this spot alone before he was bayoneted to death.

  Several senior sergeants cut their eyes to one another, then looked Heavenward. Remarks like that only made them believe more firmly that most officers were so stupid they needed help to piss.

  Santa Anna looked toward the church, toward a group of men guarding the entrance. “Prisoners? I said no prisoners.”

  “Women and children and two black slaves, sir.”

  “Ahh! Well, we’ll see about them in a bit.” He pointed to another building. “What’s over there that is so interesting men must gather around and gawk?”

  “The body of Jim Bowie, sir.”

  Santa Anna gave one more look at Crockett’s badly mutilated body and then walked over and looked in. Sam had been removed to the church. Bowie’s body still lay on the blood-soaked blankets.

  “Start the men gathering wood to burn the bodies,” Santa Anna ordered.

  “The commanders, sir?” he was asked.

  “The what?”

  “Travis, Crockett, and Bowie?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do we, ah... bury them or, ah... ?”

  “Burn them with the rest of this Texas rabble!”

  * * *

  It was slow going for Jamie. Several times he’d had to very quickly find hiding places from the roaming Mexican patrols. Finally he decided to ride parallel from the road, staying some five or six miles south of it and ride cross-country. By doing that, he cut down the chances of being spotted by any Mexican patrol. It slowed him considerably, for the country was rough, but Bowie’s horse was a stayer, and he loved the trail.

  Jamie had more than ample provisions, for Ruiz had insisted on outfitting him as if he were going on some far-flung expedition. It was almost seventy miles to Gonzales, and Jamie
was not going to kill a good horse in some wild ride. Jamie had no news to tell the citizens of Gonzales; he did not know if any final battle had taken place or not. So he took his time, the pouch containing the precious last words from the defenders of the Alamo under his buckskin shirt, next to his flesh.

  When the sun was directly overhead, the heavy thought came to Jamie that it was probably all over back at the mission. There was no way that one hundred and eighty-odd men could withstand for long a sustained charge from thousands of the enemy. He sagged in the saddle, saddened by that thought. Jamie had made many good friends with the men of the Alamo during the short time he’d been there. If indeed they were gone, their memory was not, and would never be as long as he was alive.

  Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Dickerson, Esparza, Walker, Evans, Bonham, Jameson, Fuqua, Pollard, Holland, Cloud, Autry, Martin, Kimball, McGregor, Baugh... and all the others.

  Jamie began angling more closely to the main east/ west road, for he knew that the farther he rode away from San Antonio, the less likely the chances of running into any Mexican patrols. The Mexican army had learned the hard way that small patrols did not last long roaming about alone in the Texas countryside. Those that were sent out had a habit of not returning. And never being seen again.

  He decided he would make his camp for that evening at about the midpoint between San Antonio and Gonzales. Along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

  Forty-four

  Susanna Dickerson, wife of Captain Dickerson, the other women and children, and the two slaves, Sam and Joe, were escorted out of the church and separated. Susanna Dickerson and her daughter, Angelina, were taken to a house in town, but not before the last shot to be fired in the Alamo boomed, an accidental discharge from a rifle. The stray bullet hit Susanna in the leg, felling her. Mexican soldiers rushed to her aid, picking her and the child up and carrying the mother and daughter into town. It is rumored, but never proven, that Santa Anna had the man who fired the shot, either flogged or hanged or shot. There is no proof that anything was done to the soldier who fired the last shot, or even that anybody knew who he was.

  It is also rumored that General Santa Anna was so taken with the lovely Mrs. Susanna Dickerson that he offered to marry her on the spot, and take her and the child to Mexico, where they would be well cared for.

  If that is true, once Mrs. Susanna Dickerson got over her fury and shock, her reply to this bizarre proposition was, more than likely, unprintable.

  Suffice it to say, Mrs. Dickerson declined the magnanimous offer.

  * * *

  Jamie awakened with a start and lay very still for a moment, trying to determine what had awakened him. He cut his eyes to his picketed horse. The animal was standing with ears pricked, eyes fixed on the blackness to Jamie’s immediate right. The fire had burned itself out. Not a live coal remained to glow in the cold night.

  Jamie tensed his muscles, then threw himself from his blankets, rolling with rifle in hand as dark shapes moved out of the night, rushing where he had been seconds before.

  Shawnee! Jamie recognized the distinctive hair even in the dark. He lifted a pistol and fired, the big ball stopping a Shawnee in his tracks. Jamie fired his second pistol at a shape and drilled the Shawnee through the brisket, doubling him over and dropping him to the near frozen ground.

  “Take him alive!” Jamie heard the voice of Tall Bull shout. “I want to see how well he dies.”

  After silently rolling a few yards from where he had fired his last pistol, Jamie lay still on the hard ground. He knew he was invisible in the cloudy, moonless night. He had slept hard, for he had still not recovered from those last days of going without sleep, and had no idea what time it might be. He guessed it was after midnight.

  He heard a rustling off to his right, and knew that had been a deliberate act, trying to draw his fire. The Shawnee were masters at this type of warfare and would make no noise in their stalking.

  Tall Bull! His hate must be strong to have carried him this far in his search for revenge. The wind shifted and Jamie could smell the familiar odor of grease and woodsmoke coming from the bodies and the buckskins of the Shawnee.

  A Shawnee threw himself out of the brush, a club in his hand, raised to strike at Jamie’s head, and Jamie rolled over on his back, pulling his knees to his chest and kicked hard with both feet. His feet caught the Shawnee in midair and the wind whooshed from the man as Jamie propelled the Indian through the air to land on his belly. The Shawnee must have landed on one arm, for Jamie heard the sharp crack of a major bone breaking.

  Jamie recovered and rolled away, his rifle still clutched in his left hand.

  “Good, Man Who Is Not Afraid,” Tall Bull’s voice reached him. “You are a mighty warrior, as I always predicted you would be.”

  “He is a great hulking ox,” the contemptuous voice of Little Wolf said. “He will scream like a woman when I cut the flesh from him.”

  Jamie smiled in the darkness and remained silent.

  Bad Leg put his mouth into action. “I have the ultimate disgrace for you, White Hair. I will use you like a woman.”

  Jamie couldn’t resist it. “Unless you’ve grown somewhat below the belt, Bad Leg, you couldn’t make a hummingbird flinch.”

  Jamie used the noise of Bad Leg’s angry screaming and snorting and threatening to back up a few yards, closer to a tiny offshoot of the river, and then move a few yards to his left.

  Tall Bull chuckled. “Very, very good, Man Who Is Not Afraid. You have sharpened your tongue in manhood. This will be a great game we play this night.”

  “How is Deer Woman?” Jamie called, then again shifted position, putting himself very close to the tiny offshoot. He had loaded one pistol, and was now quickly loading the second.

  “She is well. Older, as we all are,” Tall Bull replied. “I forbid her to ever speak your name, but I can tell that she misses you.”

  “I did no harm to you or to anyone in your town,” Jamie called. “I just wanted to return to my own people, as did Hannah. You cannot fault me for that.”

  “Oh, I don’t fault you, White Hair. But you disgraced me in the eyes of my followers. I will be redeemed when I show them your scalp.”

  “That’ll never happen, Tall Bull. You’ve already lost two this evening, with a third one hurt. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  There was a long silence. That was followed by a sigh. “It tells me that you are a mighty warrior, Man Who Is Not Afraid. But we are many.”

  “I’ve fought three and four times your number, Tall Bull. I’m here and they’re dead.” He slipped down the bank and silently crept along in the sand, angling to get behind Tall Bull and however many men he had with him.

  “I do not doubt your words,” Tall Bull replied.

  Jamie paused, seeing a Shawnee standing beside a tree. That was a favorite Shawnee trick: making oneself part of the earth, and it worked, most of the time. The man was standing with his right side to Jamie. Jamie squatted down and felt around carefully in the shallow water until he found a rock about the size of a small apple. He dried his hands on his buckskins and then carefully gripped the rock. He took aim, judging the distance, and let the rock fly.

  Jamie missed the man’s head, the rock striking the Shawnee on the side of the neck, just below the jaw. But it had been thrown with considerable force and the Indian went down, choking and gasping, both hands to his surely badly injured throat. The Shawnee kicked and moaned for a half a minute or so, and then lay still.

  Four down, Jamie thought, as he silently worked his way around the twisting little offshoot.

  He almost walked right into two of Tall Bull’s band. They were wading in the stream, working toward the river. Jamie heard the rustle of water and stopped, pressing himself against the cold bank, both hands filled with pistols. He hated to give away his position, but felt he had no choice in the matter.

  From a distance of about five feet, Jamie fired both pistols. At almost point-blank range, the balls tore great holes
in the chests of the men and flung them into the water. Jamie immediately changed positions, coming out on the other side of the offshoot and taking cover in some low brush.

  Jamie remembered well how Tall Bull operated and knew that he seldom took more than ten or twelve warriors with him on a raid, unless it was to be an all-out battle with another tribe. Jamie felt he had cut Tall Bull’s band down by at least half this night. Tall Bull would not only be angry, but would be twice as dangerous and cunning.

  “Running Bear is dead,” Jamie heard Little Wolfs call. “White Hair clubbed him on the neck.”

  The thrown rock, Jamie thought. Must have crushed his throat so he couldn’t breathe.

  “Circle,” Tall Bull ordered.

  Circle where? Jamie thought. That was a ruse on the part of Tall Bull. Tall Bull really had no idea where Jamie was. So that order was merely an attempt to get Jamie to move, thereby possibly exposing his position, something Jamie had no intention of doing.

  The wind died down to nothing and the night was very still. Jamie could not take a chance on reloading his pistols, for the slightest noise would bring death. He waited.

  After a moment, he heard a gasp from the banks of the offshoot and knew that someone had found the two warriors Jamie had shot. There was a rustle of moccasins against sand and earth, and then silence. Whoever had found the bodies was reporting back to Tall Bull.

  Jamie had killed five and put another one out of action. That left three, possibly five warriors to face. But they would be the most dangerous, the most experienced, and in the case of Little Wolf and Bad Leg, the ones filled with the most hatred for him. Tall Bull was by far the most skilled manhunter.

  Jamie was not overconfident. He knew this night was fraught with danger. His life was much more threatened here than at any time in the past few weeks. The odds of a cannonball dropping on his head had been slight. As long as he stayed out of sight, behind the walls of the Alamo, no Mexican sharpshooter could hit him. But here, on this cold night, danger could be and probably was, all around him. The Shawnee would be moving in for the silent kill, coming slowly.