Ole Devil at San Jacinto (Old Devil Hardin Western Book 4) (29 page)

vi
What happened to James Bowie’s knife after his death during
the final onslaught upon the Alamo Mission is told in
THE QUEST FOR
BOWIE’S BLADE.
New readers can find information about the ‘bowie’ type of
knife in
APPENDIX ONE.

vii
Recent research suggests that one male defender, a
Chicano,
José Maria
‘
Brigido’
Guerrero, survived the massacre at the Alamo Mission by
persuading his captors that he was a loyal Mexican who had been
taken prisoner and held against his will by the garrison all
through the siege.

viii
Told in
GET URREA.

ix
Although insignia was not really necessary in such a small
regiment, the type of bandana worn indicated rank in the Texas
Light Cavalry. Enlisted men’s were black, non-commissioned
officers’ green. Officers selected their own colors.

x
Another reason was his reputation of being a ‘li’l ole
devil for a fight.’ Details of Ole Devil Hardin’s background and
weapons are given in
APPENDIX ONE.

xi
When the Hardin, Fog and Blaze clan reformed the Texas
Light Cavalry to fight in the War of Secession (1861-65) they
adopted a uniform which conformed with the
Manual of Dress Regulations
issued by the
Confederate States’ Army.

xii
Hessian boots; footwear originally designed for use by
light cavalry such as Hussars, having low heels, legs which extend
to just below the knee and a V’ shaped notch at the front.
notch at the front. J. T.E.

xiii
Wellington boots: in this context, not the modern,
waterproof variety. Instead they are the style, with high legs
covering the leg as far as the knee in front and cut away behind,
made popular during the Napoleonic Wars by the Duke of
Wellington.

xiv
Details of Tommy Okasi’s background and weapons are given
in
APPENDIX
ONE.

xv
Mason-Dixon line: sometimes erroneously called the
‘Mason-Dixie’ line. The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania,
as surveyed in 1763-67 by the Englishmen Charles Mason and Jeremiah
Dixon, which had already come to be regarded as the line dividing
Southern ‘Slave’ and Northern ‘Free’ States.
J.
T.E.

xvi
Clonmel Code: twenty-six ‘Commandments’ laying down the
rules and procedures to be followed when fighting a duel, primarily
with pistols, adopted by the Summer Assizes at Clonmel, County
Tipperary, Ireland, in 1777.

xvii
In a format duel, if a participant moved the pistol into
alignment before the word
‘feu’,
or fired after the word
‘trois’,
and, in either case, killed his man,
he could be tried for murder should his adversary’s seconds lodge a
complaint over the infringement.

xviii
Clonmel Code, Commandment XII. No dumb firing, or firing in
the air, is admissable in any case. The challenger ought not to
have challenged without receiving offence, and the challenged, if
he gave offence, ought to have made an apology before he came to
the ground; therefore, children’s play must be dishonorable on one
side or the other and is accordingly prohibited.

xix
The author realizes that the procedure for a duel with
pistols in this chapter differs from that described in the ‘The
Futility Of War’ episode of
THE FASTEST GUN IN TEXAS.
However, he wishes to point out that
duelists in the United States of America occasionally adopted
methods which did not conform to the European
conventions.

xx
New readers can find further details about Tommy
Okasi’s
daisho,
matched pair of swords in
APPENDIX TWO.

xxi
Information about the methods of the Old West’s gunfighters
is given in the author’s
FLOATING OUTFIT, WACO, CALAMITY JANE, BRADY ANCHOR
AND JEFFERSON TRADE, JOHN SLAUGHTER
and
WAXAHACHIE SMITH
series.

xxii
Details of various combat shooting techniques and equipment
can be found in the author’s
ROCKABYE COUNTY
‘Modern Western Law Enforcement’
series.

xxiii
Ole Devil Hardin had addressed Mangrove Hallistead as
‘captain’ to make it acceptable for the entertainer to act as one
of his seconds.

xxiv
How Alphonse Jules Dumoulin repaid the debt to Ole Devil
Hardin is told in
DOC LEROY, M.D.

xxv
Described in:
OLE DEVIL AND THE MULE TRAIN.

xxvi
Mangrove Hallistead’s summation proved correct. Telling
Lieutenants Jaloux and Pierre-Quint that he knew of their
intentions, Colonel Dumoulin gave them the choice of being sent
back to Louisiana in disgrace, or accompanying
Maitre D’Armes
de Lepage there on a
‘recruiting campaign’. Having grown disenchanted with Texas and
deciding it offered no profit for him, the fencing master accepted
the assignment when it was presented to him. So did the other four
who had been involved in the incident and they also took their
departure. Alphonse Dumoulin was dispatched, in a different party,
ostensibly to purchase and arrange the delivery of medical
supplies.

xxvii
Told in
YOUNG OLE DEVIL.

xxviii
One person who had cause to be grateful for the success of
Corrinne Hallistead’s scheme was
Maitre D’Armes
de Lepage. When he was informed of
Ole Devil Hardin’s warning, he had known he was expected to ignore
it. However, realizing that he would not have any of the advantages
an adherence to the
‘code duello’
might otherwise have offered, he used the threat
of a Mexican attack as an excuse to avoid visiting the Texian and
issuing a challenge.

xxix
At the commencement of the War of Secession,1861-65,Tommy
Okasi gave the formula for the concoction to the Confederate
States’ Secret Service. Belle Boyd, the Rebel Spy—some details of
whom’s career are recorded in various of the author’s ‘Civil War’
and ‘Floating Outfit’ series—found it to be of the greatest
assistance during her assignment which is told in
THE
BLOODY
BORDER.

xxx
New readers can find a detailed description of the Browning
Slide Repeating rifle in
APPENDIX ONE.

xxxi
Creole;
in this connotation, a Mexican of pure Spanish
blood.

xxxii
Spear point: one where the double edges of the blade come
together in symmetrical convex arcs.

xxxiii
For a detailed description of how the ‘high cavalry twist’
draw was performed, read
SLIP GUN.

xxxiv
See
APPENDIX TWO.

xxxv
Reverse-Wharncliffe point: where the cutting edge joins the
back of the blade in an upwards convex arc. The normal
‘Wharncliffe’ also called a ‘beak’ point
—
said to have been developed by the Earl of
Wharncliffe during the Sixteenth Century, although variations of it
have been produced since at least Ancient Roman times — is now
mainly used on pocketknives and has the generally unsharpened back
of the blade making a convex arc to the cutting edge.

xxxvi
Messrs Rubio & Errazu, moneylenders, supplied four
hundred thousand dollars at an interest rate equivalent to
forty-eight
per
cent per annum. They also obtained as security the entire
proceeds of a forced loan on four Mexican Departments,
plus
all duties from
various customs houses and the right to import certain military
supplies duty free. With their connivance, General Manuel Fernandez
Castrillón secretly ‘donated’ a large portion of his personal
fortune at the more ‘generous* four percent interest a
month.

xxxvii
For example, General Antonio Gaona cornered the market on
various essential supplies along the line of march and sold them at
a one hundred per cent profit. Colonel Ricardo Dromundo, one
of
Presidente
Santa Anna’s brothers-in-law and appointed master purveyor
for the column, never even offered to account for the large sums of
missing money with which he had been entrusted to purchase
provisions.

xxxviii
The Arizona Hopi
Activos
Regiment which appeared in the early books
of the ‘Ole Devil Hardin’ series were, in fact, a privately
recruited volunteer cavalry unit and not ‘reservists’ in the
accepted sense.

xxxix
Jerky: beef, or various other kinds of meat, cured by
stripping the animal’s hams in a manner that left a thin membrane
covering each approximately one inch thick segment. The portions
were dipped for a moment in a strong boiling brine solution, then
smoked briefly before the curing process was completed by exposure
to the sun. The result, if done correctly, was a nourishing,
palatable, long lasting, easily transportable food and very
sustaining against fatigue.

xl
Kyudoka:
a practitioner
of
kyudo,
archery in the Japanese fashion.

xli
The technique employed by Tommy Okasi is described
in
YOUNG OLE
DEVIL
and a
comparison with two Occidental methods can be made by
reading
BUNDUKI.

xlii
Some of the archery competitions at Kyoto’s
Sanju-San-Gen
Do
temple
took place in special covered galleries one hundred and thirty-two
yards in length and only twenty-two
feet
high. The idea was to discharge as many arrows as
possible and have them reach the other end without hitting the
cross beams. It is recorded that in 1696, during a session lasting
for twenty-four hours, a
Samurai
called Wasa Daichera shot eight thousand, one
hundred and thirty-three arrows—at a rate of five to seven a
minute—of which
three thousand, two hundred and thirteen
flew the full
length.

xliii
Santa Anna did all his own staff work and had a penchant
for issuing extremely meticulous orders. As an example, when
producing the plan of campaign for the final
assault on the Alamo Mission, he
had gone into such details as instructing the infantry regiments
involved not only to have their bayonets fixed, but also that the
straps of their headgear must be ‘under the chin’.

xliv
There was nothing out of the ordinary in a full colonel
having command of a mere thirty men. While it is an exaggeration to
say that in the Mexican Army of the period there was an officer and
a sergeant to every two men, a disproportionate number of senior
ranks were available. Particularly in Santa Anna’s main invasion
force, a lack of commands commensurate with their rank had generals
leading single battalions and colonels having to be content with
the charge of even smaller units.

xlv
Another type of
kyudoka
arrowhead, but which Tommy Okasi was not carrying,
is described in
APPENDIX TWO.

xlvi
The explanation is given in
OLE DEVIL AND THE MULE TRAIN.

xlvii
One of the problems when charging a muzzle loading rifle
was to ensure a tight enough fit to make the barrel’s rifling
grooves take effect. Ramming home a bullet large enough to achieve
this was difficult and caused a decrease in accuracy due to the
distortion of its shape. So a ball slightly smaller than the size
of the bore and wrapped in a ‘patch’ made from a small, well
greased piece of soft cloth, or thin hide was used.

xlviii
The
yanagi-ha
corresponds with such utilitarian Occidental arrow points
as the Bear 4-Blade Razorheads described in the ‘Bunduki’
series.

xlix
Seppuku:
‘disembowelment’, a ritual suicide, also vulgarly
called
hari-kiri, ‘
belly-slitting’. If a
Samurai
transgressed in certain ways against the code
of
bushido,
he was under an obligation to take his own life and usually
did this by a ritualized form of disembowelment. The reason for
Tommy Okasi having to have Japan did not fall into such a category.
See
APPENDIX
TWO.