by Drew McGunn
In the distance, to the east, a faint blast from a railroad engine confirmed they had even less time than McCulloch had foretold.
A bit later, two Rangers jogged into town, their mottled uniforms challenging to see against the brown of the dusty road. One, a Ranger named Saddler, said, “Chief, we saw a train disembarking soldiers. Must have been a whole battalion, maybe more. Not sure, but there may have been a second train behind the first. Their soldiers were spreading out, and we decided not to stay and ask how many were coming to supper.”
Jesse turned to McCulloch, “We’ve got a couple of rifle pits dug on the other side of the river. I suspect our neighbors from Beaumont will arrive shortly. Let’s get back across and prepare the table for company.”
Once on the western side of the Trinity River, McCulloch took Jesse aside, “Captain, there’s nothing but four miles between this bridge and West Liberty. I need you to hold the rebels back for as long as possible. When I get back into town, I’ll send the rest of your platoon forward.”
***
Jesse climbed up onto the rifle pit’s lip, scanning Liberty Township. On the other side of town, dust rose into the sky, no doubt kicked up by the boots of hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers. Until the rest of his platoon arrived, he had, including himself, a baker’s dozen to hold the bridge. He had supreme confidence in his men and their training, but the odds were too long. As he slid back into the narrow trench, he thought about how he found himself in his current predicament.
It had been his last furlough, shortly after President Travis had signed the Free Birth bill. He’d gone home. Jesse had been caught by surprise to find the town in which he’d grown to adulthood split down the middle between those who agreed with the president and those who favored slavery. His father, a merchant with trade ties stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, relied heavily on slaves for the labor in his warehouses. He had voted for Richard Ellis in the last election.
In a moment of Déjà vu, when Jesse had dismounted in the wagon yard in front of the warehouse, he’d heard his father’s voice shouting, “Co-lo-neh, don’t piss on my boot and tell me it’s raining. Travis’ plans will drive me to bankruptcy.”
When he walked through the warehouse’s wide doors, Jesse saw his father standing toe to toe with Sam Houston. They were an incongruent sight. Simon Running Creek wore brown woolen trousers, a white silk shirt, and a brown vest. While unadorned in design, the material was expensive. Houston wore buckskin trousers, a homespun gray shirt, and a jacket cut from a colorful woolen blanket.
Houston used his height to look down on Jesse’s father. “I’m shooting straight with you, Simon. Throwing in with men like Collinsworth is like climbing into a bag with a rattlesnake. Our people’s only hope is to support the legitimate government in Austin.”
“Our people? That’s rich, Co-lo-neh. You show up here with your tail between your legs every time you face a reversal among the whites.”
Houston seemed to flinch at the insult. The fact it held enough truth made it sting all the worse. He stepped back, “I’ve only always done my best for the People. We’ve been given a birthright here in Texas. Going against the government will only breed resentment and undo the gains we’ve made.”
Jesse’s father clenched his fist as he stared daggers at the man his people called the Raven. “Why the change, Sam? You’ve been beating the drum for annexation since we defeated the Mexicans back in thirty-six. Now you’re saying no to annexation. I wish you’d make up your mind.”
Houston’s brown locks shook about his head, “Means and methods matter, Simon. If we throw in with men calling for rebellion while calling it annexation, we’re no better than rebels. Rebels against a government we’ve supported and who’ve supported us. You know I disagree with Travis. Given we’re an agricultural people, slavery makes sense. But not when measured against rebelling against the government.”
The two men glowered at each other as Jesse cleared his throat. When they turned, the anger in their eyes burned away. The young Cherokee officer found himself enveloped in a bear hug from his father as Houston pounded him on the back.
Later, after Houston had left, Jesse told his father he didn’t want to fight against any Cherokee, but that he wouldn’t fight against his fellow soldiers, even if most of the tribe decided to back the rebels.
The memory fled as he saw something across the river move between two houses. “Chief, there’s men moving through town. They’re in range.”
Jesse shifted his eyes to the long, straight road running alongside the railroad bed, and to the east, outside of town, the dust cloud he’d seen earlier now materialized into a column of infantry. Looking at it through his binoculars, at the head of the column, he saw a flag with a single white star on a blue field. It was the men from Louisiana.
“Fire when you’ve got a target,” Jesse said. At least he wasn’t facing any Cherokee this day.
Jesse had lost track of time as he looked over the lip of rifle pit and tried to see through the thick haze hanging over the riverbank. As he slid another brass cartridge into the gun’s breech, he couldn’t help thinking of one downside of the M46 Sabine rifle; the rate of fire was so fast that smoke from the gunpowder built up more quickly than other rifles, obscuring the field of fire.
A gust of wind lifted the smoke, giving him a clear view of the railroad bridge. A few forms lay still where they’d fallen. But behind the nearest row of houses, Jesse could see a large force assembling. He snapped the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired, levering the breech open before chambering another round. Two of his men were already down, hit by lucky or well-aimed shots from the opposite bank. He gauged enough men were preparing to charge the bridge that his small squad would be swept aside. He was about to give the order to withdraw when he heard the pounding of running feet behind him.
Turning, he saw the rest of the platoon racing toward the rifle pits. The platoon’s commander, Lieutenant Tremaine, was in the lead with more than twenty men following close behind. Faster than Jesse could have imagined, they crowded into the pits.
It was none too soon. A standard bearer, waving a blue flag, sprinted around one of the buildings onto the railroad bed. Surging behind him was a wall of soldiers. Sunlight glinted off their bayonets as they dashed for the bridge.
Jesse chose the most practical way he could imagine to give the order to fire. He raised his rifle, sighted down the barrel and squeezed the trigger. Every man who could crowd along the front of the rifle pit opened fire on the advancing horde.
Jesse stepped away, letting one of his men slither by, replacing him on the firing line. To get a better view, he climbed up, knelt next to the pit, and watched the flag bearer reach the bridge before he tumbled, hitting a rail before falling onto the steep riverbank below. Men were toppling over. Some landed on the bridge, joining those who had died there earlier, more still spilled into the river.
Jesse slouched low when he felt the hot breath of a round zip past his ear. More soldiers had come forward than could readily funnel across the bridge, and they lined up on the top of the riverbank and returned fire at the Rangers. Bullets dug into the dirt embankments in front of the rifle pits. Overhead twigs and leaves that hadn’t already lost the battle to Autumn rained down on his men.
No binoculars were needed to tell Jesse that an entire battalion was lined up on the edge of Liberty Township in addition to several hundred more men funneling onto the bridge. Despite the reinforcements, holding the railroad bridge wasn’t possible.
McCulloch had been gone for less than two hours. The four miles back to West Liberty could be walked in as little as an hour. He wasn’t sure how he’d do it, but Jesse was determined to make the enemy bleed for every foot between the river and town.
Chapter 2
Rifle fire crackled in the distance. G.T. Beauregard ignored it as his eyes scanned the bodies laid out alongside the railroad bed. A score of men dead. Far closer than the rifle fire were the screams coming
from the Baptist church which now housed most of the wounded. While his army may have captured the railroad bridge over the Trinity, it had come at a high cost.
Behind him rode General Wyatt. Tamping down any uncertainty he felt, Beauregard said, “I thought you said there were only a few militia in West Liberty. Those were regulars, by God.”
Wyatt shook his head, “I said that McCulloch could draw on a couple of reserve companies. Our reserves are better equipped than your volunteers, G.T. But those weren’t reservist. I’ll stake my rank that those were Rangers.”
Nonplused, Beauregard said, “You mean those ranging companies Texas keeps on the border with the Comancheria?”
“I wish. No, Texas has a few companies of special riflemen whose training and skill go beyond regular infantry. They’re called special Rangers. It can get a bit confusing, but President Travis liked the name, so it stuck.”
A bit later, Wyatt’s estimation was proved correct when they saw two dead men in butternut uniforms. Irregular patches of browns, greens and grays were sewn on the jackets. In death, the men seemed small, but their jackets blended into the ground on which they lay far more than Beauregard liked. Only in his wildest dreams had he thought leading an army toward the Texas capital would be easy. He was too much of a pragmatist to let flights of fancy dictate his moves.
As if he needed more of a warning, near the abandoned rifle pits rested C company of the 2nd Louisiana Volunteer Infantry. They had crossed the bridge first. More than eighty men from the company had gone into battle. Now there were less than fifty resting under the live oak trees. Some of the men stared into space, as though their minds were a thousand miles away. Others wore haunted looks. Beauregard pursed his lips. If this is what victory looked like, he didn’t want to see defeat.
To the west, he heard the sharp crack of the Rangers’ rifles measured against the booming musketry from his command. He turned and waved an orderly over, “Tell Colonel De Russy to deploy half his regiment as skirmishers. The rest should form up well behind.”
He glanced at the sky. Even if they were not able to get through as fast as he’d like, the army would still reach West Liberty by mid-afternoon. Assuming there were no other surprises.
The road to West Liberty ran through a dense forest, broken here and there with farms carved from the Texas wilderness. The homes were abandoned. As Beauregard rode by them, he couldn’t tell if the owners had fled weeks ago, or whether they had retreated one step ahead of the Rangers. As the forest thinned, he could see a vast stretch of farmland separating the forest from the town. Scanning through his binoculars, the town looked like a disturbed anthill, with folks running back and forth.
Smoke curled from the locomotive that was pulling out of town, heading west, toward Houston. Beauregard swung the glasses toward the edge of town. Although their butternut uniforms made the Texian soldiers harder to see, it didn’t make them invisible. A thin line of riflemen was deployed along a split-rail fence east of town. There were more than two companies.
“Wyatt! You said there were only a couple of companies between these two towns. There’s got to be more than three hundred men deployed over there. And why in the hell are there US infantry in the town?”
Wyatt scanned the line, growing grim as he did so. “At eight hundred yards, I can see how those uniforms could be mistaken for American. But those are Marines, probably from one of the reserve companies around the bay. Maybe a platoon. It looks like McCulloch has scraped together three or four hundred men from the surrounding area.”
Beauregard handed his binoculars to an orderly before turning to Wyatt. “Peyton, I want you to send your Tenth Infantry around the flank. Your men will cut the line between Trinity Park and West Liberty. I’ll send Second and Third Louisiana forward. Fourteen hundred men should be able to push into town. I’ll hold the First Louisiana as a reserve force as well as your Seventh Infantry. Your fifteenth Infantry will hold the southern flank.”
Wyatt looked Southward. More cotton fields spread out in that direction. “We could send them around and cut off McCulloch’s men. Capture the entire command, that’d be quite a victory.”
“Tempting. But I want McCulloch and his men to not feel entrapped,” Beauregard said as he scribbled orders on a notepad. “If they feel they have a way out, maybe they’ll take it rather than putting up too hard a fight. As it is, I’m sending most of our cavalry wide around their southern flank to cut the railroad a few miles back. I don’t mind giving McCulloch a way out, but I don’t want reinforcements coming in by train.”
Later, a blue-jacketed officer from the New Orleans’ Washington Artillery waited for his gunnery sergeant to set the friction primer on the 6-pounder’s touch hole. Then he took the slack out of the lanyard. Beauregard nodded to him and said, “You may commence, Captain.”
The ground shook beneath their feet as the gun fired, recoiling back a half dozen feet. Its projectile screamed downrange, exploding behind the Texian line nearly a thousand yards away. The other four guns in the battery opened up, adding the weight of their iron to the barrage. Beauregard looked at the thin line on the opposite side of the cotton fields, as shells detonated around them. It was easy to see the open order tactics used by the rebel Texians made them harder to hit than the solid block of infantry, where the men stood shoulder to shoulder to fire their muskets or rifles in mass volleys.
When it was time to send the infantry forward, he ordered them to advance in a skirmish line.
***
A horse neighed as a whip cracked overhead. Andy Berry grimaced at the need. But the sound of battle washed over the artillery column, as the gunners urged their teams of horses to a gallop. He touched his spurs to his mount’s flanks and dashed ahead of his battery. Part of the 3rd Battalion of Artillery, one of two reservist artillery battalions, his battery was the most recently formed company-sized unit in the reserves. The day had started normally, but when a rider arrived a couple of hours earlier, raising a ruckus about the rebels on the march, he’d mobilized the men from the Gun Works and Trinity College who served in his battery, and they had raced toward West Liberty.
As far as Austin and the nation’s budget was concerned, his battery was without equipment. But as he glanced behind, he knew nothing could be further from the truth. Six teams of horses pulled their gun carriages and caissons. Three of the carriages held experimental rifled guns. Like their small arms counterparts, they were breechloaders. Unlike their small-arm counterparts, a screw on the breech created the seal, keeping gas from escaping. It was no less experimental than the propellent Berry had fashioned from the nitrogenated processed cotton.
As his battery rode to the sound of the fighting, Berry allowed the worry he felt show. NPC was still notoriously unstable. He’d managed to fire several dozen rounds successfully over the past few days. But that came after a series of failures, with blown breeches. Before, the tests had been in a controlled setting, the friction primer triggered by a lanyard hidden behind a thick blast barrier. If the barrel burst, no one was hurt. But now, if something went wrong, the lives of the men in his battery were at stake.
The other three carriages carried Dick Gatling’s contraption with its rotating rifled barrels. It had been several years since Gatling had invented his gun, but it had remained hidden at Trinity Park during President Richard Ellis’ pro-annexation administration. Even after William Travis won the Presidency, funding for the weapon had been anemic, given the poor state in which Ellis had left the military. Still, Berry felt better about the three Gatlings. He knew they worked.
Riding at the head of the column, he saw smoke drifting over West Liberty as he came to the first empty field. One of the town’s churches was ablaze, likely struck by a shell. Fire licked into the sky. But most of the smoke rolled into town from the attacking riflemen coming from the east. Men were crossing an open field, toward town. Steady rifle fire from the reserve companies defending West Liberty kept the advance against them at bay, for the moment.
He turned to order his men forward when something tugged at his sleeve and pinched at his arm. Glancing at it, he saw a rip in the fabric. He slid off his horse and gripped it. He pulled his hand away, and blood smeared his palm. Less than half a mile away coming from the east, a line of men poured through the trees in open order. At the center were two flags. The Texas flag flew beside a blue flag with a single white star.
“Enemy to our left!” Berry yelled. “Hurry up. Form a line along the road. The first crew to unlimber their piece and fire on those bastards gets ten dollars each.”
The untried breechloading cannons were in the lead. A gunnery sergeant slid off the seat atop the caisson and shouted orders to the other men serving the gun. Several of them dismounted from the six-horse team and unlimbered the caisson and gun carriage. Other men disconnected the caisson from the gun carriage and rolled the ammunition cart back well to the rear of the gun. Once they had done that, men grabbed their equipment and raced back to the gun while two of their number carried the shot and powder charge forward.
A gunner twisted the screw open, and another rammed the shell into the breech. Then a canvas bag full of black powder was shoved into the breech. One of the men grabbed at his leg as a bullet knocked him from his feet. A thin screen of rebels had advanced more than a hundred yards, and although they were still more than six hundred yards away, a marksman could get lucky and hit his target.
The breech was slammed shut, and the screw turned until it locked. Another gunner set the friction primer over the vent and attached a lanyard to it. The gunnery sergeant took a moment to sight down the barrel before running back. “Ready!”
