Eyes of Eagles

Thirty-one

The Third Day

February 25th, 1836

A cannonball crashing against the wall jarred Jamie out of sleep. He opened his eyes to the steel gray of early dawn. Inside the walls, men and women were moving about, tending fires, cooking food, and boiling coffee. Jamie stood up and stretched, getting the kinks out of his joints and muscles. The nights were bitterly cold and few men had ample blankets to keep warm. Jamie walked over to one fire pit and was handed a bowl of chile and beans, some tortillas, and a cup of coffee.

Jamie squatted down and ate his breakfast. On the Mexican side, brass bands were playing loudly. “Quite a concert,” he remarked to a man who sat down on the ground beside him.

“Yeah. Travis says the cannons will start up soon as the bands quit playin’. Hope they wait ’til I’ve et. Lead’s hard to digest.”

Standing on a wooden parapet along the wall, Travis was not fooled by the concert. Santa Anna was not giving the defenders of the Alamo a band concert out of the goodness of his heart. He had a hunch that when the cannon began roaring, the smoke would be used to help hide a possible enemy advance across the San Antonio River. Travis also saw that if they succeeded, the wooden houses and huts that had been abandoned when Santa Anna’s forces arrived, would provide excellent cover for the Mexican soldiers. If the soldiers reached those huts, they would be less than four hundred yards from the Alamo.

Travis jumped down from the wall and strode quickly to the center of the plaza. “I need two volunteers!” he yelled. “Men who can run fast and can laugh at danger.”

A crowd surged forward instantly.

“You and you,” Travis said, choosing two young men scarcely out of their teens, if indeed they were. One was a Louisiana boy from Rapides Parish, the other young man’s name was Brown.

Travis set men working frantically making torches.

“You must fire the houses and huts,” Travis told the two young men. “And then get back here.”

“We’ll damn sure do it, Colonel,” the Louisiana boy said with a cocky grin.

“And we’ll lay down coverin’ fire for you,” Crockett said. “Rifle and cannon when you’re ready.”

The two young men exchanged glances. “We’re ready.”

Their hands filled with torches, they moved toward the south gate. Crockett and his men had loaded up every rifle of their own and dozens more that were willingly handed to the sharpshooters. Many of the men had brought a half a dozen rifles with them to the mission. Captain Dickerson made ready his cannon, some of them loaded with deadly grapeshot.

“What’s that Louisiana boy’s name?” Jamie asked a man.

“Despallier. And he’s a game one, he is.”

Santa Anna and his personal contingent of bodyguards had ridden over a wooden bridge and had taken cover in houses near the Alamo.

“Go!” Travis told Despallier and Brown. The two youths raced out of the gate on foot as Dickerson’s artillery roared and Crockett and his expert riflemen laid down a withering field of killing fire.

During the first fusillade a half dozen Mexican soldiers were killed by Crockett and his men, and Dickerson’s artillery crashed into lines of Mexican infantry attempting to push closer to the Alamo. Their officers tried to beat them forward with the flat side of their swords, but the troops were having no part of that. The first wave fell back in retreat.

By now, Despallier and Brown had reached the houses and were beginning to put them to the torch. Wild cheering broke out from the defenders as the first spirals of smoke rose into the cold air. Soon the shacks and huts were blazing and Santa Anna was furious. He screamed at his men to capture the two Anglos.

But Travis had anticipated that when he’d been informed that the general had crossed the bridge.

“Look sharp now, Davy!” he called. “The Mex’s will want those boys bad.”

Jamie had taken his rifles and moved to a position on top of the barracks along the south wall, just west of the main gate. Bowie’s room was at the other end of the barracks.

“Mr. Jamie?” a voice called from the ladder.

Jamie turned to look at Bowie’s slave, Sam.

“Mr. Jim, he sent me up here to load for you, sir.”

“Come on, Sam. Keep your head down. Can you shoot, Sam?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then shoot. We’ll both load.”

Sam grinned and took a rifle, lying down beside Jamie.

“Sam?” Jamie said, in a voice only the newly freed slave could hear. “If you take arms against them yonder, you’ll not stand a chance of leaving here alive.”

“I ain’t plannin’ on leavin’, Mr. Jamie. I plan on standin’ by Mister Jim ’til the end.”

“As you wish, Sam. There’s a target; just to your left. Think you can hit him?”

Sam leveled the rifle and squeezed the trigger. Fire and sparks flared in pan and muzzle and the Mexican soldier fell in a lifeless heap on the cold and muddy ground.

Sam rolled to one side and began working with powder, ball, and patch as Jamie’s eyes searched for a target. He found a flash of color and sighted in. He could not hear the man scream over the din of battle, but Jamie watched as the Mexican soldier crawled off to the safety of his lines, dragging a broken leg behind him.

The riflemen on the ramparts settled in to kill just as many of the enemy as they could that day, and kill them they did. Estimates ranged from three hundred and fifty dead to as many as eight hundred killed. No accurate count would ever be known. But one thing was for certain: the defenders of the Alamo took a terrible toll on the Mexican soldiers that day. The grounds all around the Alamo were littered with enemy dead.

Jamie and Sam lay on the roof of the barracks and killed or wounded their share that bloody day. On one occasion, the Mexican troops managed to get within a hundred yards of the Alamo’s wall, but Crockett and his men drove them back with withering and deadly accurate rifle fire. By eleven o’clock on the third day, the Mexican force retreated in bloody confusion. Santa Anna had already raced from his dubious protection in the houses close to the Alamo back to the safety of the town.

The huts and houses around the Alamo were now blazing as Brown and Despallier had done their work and were now running full tilt back to the walls of the mission as rifle balls hummed and whined all around them from the Mexican lines. Miraculously, neither of them received a scratch. They hurled themselves through the open gates to the wild cheering of the defenders.

It was not yet noon of the third day, and the Mexican Army had been soundly trounced, the infantrymen running back in disorder, out of range of the riflemen along the walls.

Gasping for breath, the two young men gulped first water and then coffee and withstood with grins the congratulatory backpounding they received from the men around them.

“By God, we done it!” Davy Crockett yelled from the parapets, holding Ol’ Betsy high over his head. “We put them greasers to the run, boys.”

In his bed, Bowie heard the legendary woodsman’s shout and smiled sadly. He had never liked the term “greaser,” and he wondered how the Mexicans fighting alongside the Anglos in the Alamo would take it. But Bowie could understand how Crockett felt. The enemy was the enemy, and for doomed men, any term was certainly applicable.

His worry was needless. For Fuqua, Esparza, and the other Mexicans inside the Alamo, they grinned and cheered right along with the others.

Santa Anna was livid with rage. He stormed up and down inside the house he was using as his headquarters and cursed his officers and men for cowardly jackals. He kicked out at anything that he found close to his polished boots. Finally, exhausted by his efforts, he sat down in a chair and glared at those around him.

Santa Anna pointed a trembling finger at his officers. “A repeat of today will not happen again,” he warned them. Taking a moment to further compose himself, he said, “I want the bridge work completed by tomorrow evening. No excuses; just get it done.”

The San Antonio river was over its banks due to an unusually wet winter. Santa Anna’s fighting engineers were working furiously to build several bridges across the river.

“It will be done,” Santa Anna was assured.

The weather had turned fickle and the wind had shifted and was now coming out of the north, dropping the temperature below freezing. Santa Anna’s engineers were not only fighting time, but now they had to contend with the bitter cold. Inside the walls of the Alamo, the defenders, few of whom were adequately dressed for the winter, had to struggle to keep from freezing to death.

Travis ordered the men to exercise to get the blood flowing more freely. Some did; most ignored his orders.

After taking a head count and determining that everyone was safely inside, Travis decided not to push the issue and soon retired to the warmth of his quarters to do what he loved to do: write letters and reports to Houston.

The Mexican artillery barrage kept up all night. The men inside the Alamo huddled together to keep warm and the fire watch was kept busy maintaining the fires.

So far, no defender of the Alamo had been killed and what wounds they’d suffered were very slight. All that was about to change.

* * *

At the convention, Houston had talked until he realized his words were falling on deaf ears. The men at the Alamo were doomed; sacrificed on a blood altar. On this cold and bitter night, Houston stood outside his quarters and brooded. Governor Smith had earlier placed Houston on leave until March 1st, so Houston had no army to command. Houston had gone at once to meet with the Cherokee chiefs to get their word that they would not attack the Texans and would remain neutral during the war. They gave their word.

Houston looked toward the west, toward the Alamo, a hundred miles away, and lifted a hand in salute. “Farewell,” he whispered to the cold wind and the darkness. “May God be with you in your final hours.” Bitterly, he added, “That’s about all you have going for you.”

* * *

Jamie huddled against the wall, listening to the crash of the Mexican artillery slamming against the walls. The ground trembled beneath the soles of his moccasins. Jamie was fortunate in one respect: he was dressed warmly enough and had the serape the Nunez family had given him. His hands were protected from the cold by the gloves Hannah had lovingly made for him. He dozed off, only to be brought back to consciousness by the never-ending artillery barrage.

Jamie wondered if he would ever see Kate and the children again.