The Furies (13 page)

Amanda herself had never seen a steamboat before. But she had read about them in Texas newspapers. She knew they were changing the nation in which she’d been born, speeding the pace of its river commerce and drawing the frontiers closer to the cities. Fascinated, she watched the steamboat churn by—

As its stern came into view, she noticed bright red lettering:

The Camp Follower

YELLOW STONE

Only the night before, Cordoba had told her Houston was using a small steam vessel of that name to ferry his fleeing army across the Brazos. Now, apparently, the retreat was complete—

A handful of the more courageous officers rallied some men and rushed to a point of land where the river narrowed. Using ropes, they tried to snare the steamboat’s smokestacks as she chugged by. Pistol shots from the pilot house scattered the would-be ropers.
Yellow Stone
was soon gone around a bend. Amanda stood staring after it, somehow saddened by the sight.

She turned away from the bank, still gripped by wonder and melancholy. That marvelous boat without oars or tow ropes represented the world in which she’d been born. Unbidden, dim pictures slipped through her mind—

The cozy glow of a fire in a grate.

Ice skaters gliding in a white landscape.

While church bells pealed, she rode in a carriage, finely dressed, recognized as Gilbert Kent’s daughter—

With a fierce shake of her head, she returned to reality. Nothing remained of the steamboat but traces of smoke in the sky. Her convictions about the power of her own will seemed pathetic all at once. Her dream of seeing Boston again was just as insubstantial as the vanishing smoke.

Late that same day, dispatch riders sped to Santa Anna’s marquee with news that the president of the Republic of Texas, Señor Burnet, could be caught at the settlement of Harrisburg, a scant thirty miles away. Before dark, His Excellency had a picked force moving forward: seven hundred infantry, fifty dragoons, a six-pound cannon, the necessary wagons and, of course, the
soldaderas.
Cordoba’s men—and Amanda—were with the special detachment.

The forced march was grueling. The advance party of dragoons reached Harrisburg the following midnight.

No Burnet. The Texas government, such as it was, had fled again.

And where was Houston? Somewhere up the Brazos? No one was sure.

The Mexican citizens of Harrisburg wanted to be helpful, but they lacked information. The Texans who foolishly stayed behind—including three Anglo printers still churning out English-language newspapers—suffered arrest and maintained stoic silence under interrogation. Santa Anna torched the town and sent his cavalry eastward on a probing expedition.

Again riders brought back news that whetted the general’s appetite for a final slaughter of the only “army” that stood between him and total conquest of the rebellious province. Houston and his men had been sighted. Moving east—to the sanctuary of the land beyond the Trinity River. To reach it, they would have to cross the San Jacinto, probably at Lynch’s Ferry.

Once more the army moved with all speed. For Amanda the march was a nightmare blur of walking, sweating, going without meals, fording flooded creeks, struggling to help free mired wagons—

On April the eighteenth, the Mexicans made rendezvous with their cavalry in the town of New Washington on Galveston Bay. His Excellency granted his men a night’s rest while dragoon scouts combed the countryside that was cut by river channels and bayous. On the morning of the twentieth, the scouts galloped back into camp at eight o’clock.

Within an hour, the drums were beating the signal to advance.

As the marquee came down, Amanda noticed how pale Cordoba looked. She asked him why.

“Because—” He swore. The belt that held his saber had to be loosened another notch before it would fit around him. “Because His Excellency is feeling so splendid. Houston has been sighted less than eight miles from here. But I spoke with the dragoons myself. Houston and his men are facing us, not Lynch’s Ferry.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with that.”

“Why, nothing—except that we have been operating from one assumption all along. The assumption that Houston is in wild retreat before us. I wonder. If he’s retreating, why has he stopped?”

Cordoba drew his saber, quickly sketched a crude map on the ground.

“Even His Excellency seems to have forgotten that we are now separated from the main body of the army. In our eagerness to pursue the Texans, we have left Sesma with a thousand of our best at Thompson’s Ferry”—he stabbed the sword at the ground—“Urrea at Matagorda”—another stab—“and God knows what’s become of Filisola and his two thousand!”

Stab.
Swift strokes obliterated the map and markings as the bugles and drums sounded. The first of the baggage wagons began to roll.

“I wouldn’t presume to advise His Excellency, of course,” Cordoba said sourly. “I only pose the question—are we chasing frightened men? Or being lured by clever ones? Are we the pursuers or the pursued? I don’t like the smell one bit!”

He moved to Amanda, swept an arm around her and buried his mouth against the curve of her throat. “Whatever happens, you remain with the women and the wagons. I don’t want anything to harm you.”

Then he was gone through the dust behind a cantering squad of dragoons.

She should have drawn comfort from Cordoba’s concern. Instead, she felt afraid.

Not for herself.

For him.

A
MOSQUITO TICKLED AMANDA’S
neck. She reached up quickly and squashed it. One of the
soldaderas
sitting near her in the simmering shade of the baggage wagon opened her eyes.

The woman saw nothing of importance. She closed her eyes again. Perspiration trickled down Amanda’s nose. She wiped it away.

The whole camp was taking siesta; Santa Anna had insisted. Because of the heat, the general had left his carpeted marquee of striped silk. She could see him stretched out beneath the great oak tree that crowned the hilltop, his hands folded on his belly.

The oak stood approximately in the center of the campsite chosen last evening. Around the sleeping general, officers sat talking quietly or studying maps. Few were as relaxed as their leader.

Major Luis Cordoba was standing up, staring toward the forward section of the encampment. There, infantrymen in mud-stained white fatigue suits dozed against a semicircular barricade of packing boxes, pack saddles and other gear. The makeshift breastwork was located just where the hilltop began to slope down to a broad expanse of wild grass.

What time was it? Amanda guessed three o’clock.

Dawn on this twenty-first of April had been clear and beautiful. But the temperature had risen steadily. Now the air steamed.

At nine that morning, General Cos had appeared with an extra five hundred cavalrymen. They too were resting, at the extreme rear of the camp. The horses cropped grass while the men napped in whatever shade was available.

Restless, Amanda pushed up from where she’d been sitting. She walked to the end of the wagon. She saw Cordoba glance her way, but the distance was too great for her to read his expression. She assumed he was worried.

His Excellency didn’t seem worried. His relaxed slumber was a marked contrast to his fury at sunset yesterday—

Early on the twentieth, the Mexicans had located Houston’s force with very little trouble—almost confirming Cordoba’s fears. The Texans—reportedly numbering only about half of Santa Anna’s fifteen hundred—had gone to ground in a forest of oak trees festooned with Spanish moss. All during the afternoon, they had refused to come out and fight.

Instead, riflemen sniped at the Mexican lines from the gloom of the wood, and two six-pounders fired rounds of fragmented horseshoes. Santa Anna’s sole six-pounder replied occasionally, with little effect.

Late in the day, a Texas cavalry unit had probed the Mexican position, only to be driven back—without losses. Santa Anna’s curses roared through the encampment until night fell. When Amanda and the major went to bed in his marquee after dark, he told her that, tomorrow, His Excellency intended to take the initiative—

If so, when? The afternoon was already waning.

From the end of the wagon, she gazed at the barricade. Some of the infantrymen were asleep. Others were nervously checking the mechanisms of their antique muskets. Amanda fanned herself, dizzy all at once. She shut her eyes, drew deep breaths of the stale air—

The dizziness passed. She still felt uneasy. Her loyalty really belonged to those unseen men hiding in the wood along Buffalo Bayou. Yet she was deeply concerned for Cordoba, too.

The forest where the Texans hid rose at the far end of a great meadow. Santa Anna had chosen to camp on the hilltop because of its commanding view of the wood and the meadow. From the barricade, his marksmen could rake the meadow’s lush grass, which in many places grew taller than full-grown wheat.

Studying the meadow now, Amanda realized something was wrong. The air around her was still. But the grass stirred as if blown by a gentle wind—

She blinked. Were men moving out there?

With one hand on the wagon, she stood on tiptoe for a better view. Along the barricade a number of soldiers had risen and were watching the unusual motion of the grass.

She glanced to the oak. Santa Anna’s staff showed increased activity. Men were running back and forth between the tree and the barricade. One was Cordoba, racing toward the oak and brandishing a spyglass.

With a yawn, Santa Anna roused. Beyond him, she saw movement where the cavalrymen had been dozing only a moment ago. Dragoons hurried to their horses, hazy figures against a distant growth of trees. The trees screened a swamp that drained into the little San Jacinto River, which ran down from the north to intersect Buffalo Bayou.

Just as she turned her attention back to the meadow, the notes of a Mexican bugle split the drowsy air. All the men behind the barricade scrambled up, readying their muskets. At a place where the meadow grass wasn’t so high, Amanda glimpsed other men advancing with rifles, and a rider jogging on a white horse.

The riflemen quickly left the highest grass behind. While the Mexicans took siesta, the Texans had begun their advance—perhaps counting on the inactivity in the enemy camp. They moved steadily toward the base of the hill, spreading out in a wide semicircle. The horseman in the center of the line grew more visible moment by moment. He towered in the saddle—

It was Sam Houston. The man the Cherokees of eastern Tennessee had christened Raven.

Amanda had met Houston before, in Bexar. On his last visit, he’d spent an hour in the public bar of Gura’s Hotel. He was a strapping Scotch-Irishman, with good manners and obvious education. Yet Amanda found there was something primitive about him, and he seemed to defy easy classification.

He indulged his temper as readily as he did his intellect. He spoke of reading Julius Caesar for relaxation, but he was so fond of a particular cussword that some Mexicans called him—and thus any Texan—
Señor Goddamn.
In the meadow, his height and the milky whiteness of his horse Saracen identified him beyond all doubt.

An officer at the barricade bawled a command. Muskets lifted, cracked and spurted smoke and orange fire. The volley sent the Texans diving for cover.

Houston wheeled his horse aside, bending low over its neck. The infantrymen reloaded, began firing again. Now the whole camp was in motion. Men raced to join those already in place behind the improvised rampart. The
soldaderas
screeched in alarm and rushed to protect their belongings—

Amanda remained at the end of the wagon, watching. Acrid smoke drifting along the barricade obscured her view for a few moments. Then she saw the meadow again. Houston’s men were still moving forward, that long, sweeping arc closing on the base of the hill. Incredibly, the Texans had yet to fire a single shot.

She heard music. The
tap-tap
of a drum, then a fife. The Texans were advancing to the melody of a popular romantic ballad,
Come to the Bower.

Noise in the Mexican camp soon overpowered the music. Men shouted orders. Hoofs thudded and gear creaked as the cavalry milled at the rear of the hill. In the confusion, Amanda lost sight of Cordoba.

Running, the first Texans reached the base of the hill. The infantrymen fired steadily. And still no shots from the attackers—

Even as Amanda realized this, a volley thundered from the bottom of the hill. On the barricade, a white-suited soldier spun around and fell. From somewhere behind the advancing line, the Texans’ two six-pounders boomed.

The fire was brutally accurate. Amanda ducked behind the corner of the wagon as geysers of earth erupted just in front of the breastwork. When she looked again, she saw that a gap had been blasted in the center of the barricade.

Behind her,
soldaderas
wailed and ran in every direction. Through the thickening smoke, she glimpsed Santa Anna berating an orderly. The man sprinted off—for what purpose, she couldn’t guess.

Then she heard another sound from the unseen slope of the hill. A raw, animal sound. For a moment, the sound made no sense—

When it did, she shuddered. The Texans were screaming as they climbed the hillside. Shooting and screaming—

“Remember Goliad!”

“—the Alamo—”

“Remember the Alamo!”

The first Texans reached the gap in the barricade and stormed through, firing rifles and pistols point-blank at the few defenders brave enough to remain near the opening. Bearded and dirty, the Texans spread out, clubbing men down with rifle butts and attacking them with knives and tomahawks.

A steady stream of Texans poured through the gap. Others came jumping over the barricade. Houston rode through the opening, mounted on a bay horse now. Evidently the white one had been shot from under him. He fired pistols from both hands.

Amanda spun around. All across the camp, an incredible scene of panic was unfolding. Mexicans streamed away from the barricade. Groups of terrified soldiers surged back and forth, leaderless—then began to run. Not toward the barricade. The other way.