Michener, James A. (76 page)

Now came the first accident. One of the wheels of Otto's cannon fell deep into a muddy rut, and when Houston rode by and saw the delay he growled: 'Get some oxen and drag that thing free.'

'We have no oxen,' the captain in charge of the big guns reported, and Houston said: 'Get some.'

A detail consisting of the captain, Otto and another enlisted man went searching the countryside, and soon came upon a strong-minded, brassy-voiced farm wife named Mrs. Pamela Mann, who wore men's clothing and was armed with two large pistols.

'We must borrow four of your oxen,' the officer explained courteously.

'You cain't have 'em,' she snarled.

'We must have them.'

'You touch them oxen, I blow out the seat of your pants.'

'Mrs. Mann,' the officer said, 'the future of the Texas Republic depends upon moving our cannon to face Santa Anna, and to do that we must have your oxen.'

'To hell with the Texas Republic. What's it ever done for me?'

The officer dropped his voice and beseeched so earnestly that she had to listen, and after some moments she delivered a curious judgment: 'Tell you what, if'n your general is marchin' east with his cannon to fight Santy Anny, he cain't have my beasts. They'd get kilt. But if'n he's marchin' north to safety in Nacogdoches, he can borry 'em.'

'He's marching north!' the captain said quickly, whereupon the other enlisted man, who could be seen only by Macnab, drew his thumb across his throat, indicating that if Houston did march north, he would face rebellion.

So the four oxen were taken away and yoked to the mired cannon, but as the army resumed its forward march the vital question of where they were going was left unsettled. Desiring to be sure that the wheel on Otto's cannon had not been damaged by the hole into which it had fallen, Houston was to the rear when his lead troops approached a crossroads. If they marched to the left, they would retreat to Nacogdoches; straight ahead, they would have to encounter Santa Anna.

The men on the point, not knowing what to do, drifted into a grassy area between the two roads, intending to wait there until General Houston came up to give an order. And then the second accident took place, for at the head of the next group to arrive was a brassy young fellow from Alabama, and he cried to a farmer standing nearby: 'Which way to Harrisburg and Santy Anny?' and the farmer shouted back: That right-hand road will carry you to Harrisburg just as straight as a compass.'

This way!' the Alabaman cried, and by the time General Houston reached the crossroads the forefront of the Texican army was well on its way to battle. For just a moment Houston stopped, studied the terrain, and shrugged his shoulders. Then he also took the road to Harrisburg. A decision of major consequence to Texas, and perhaps to the United States, had been reached: the Texas patriots would seek out Santa Anna and give him battle.

As Otto struggled with the cannon which had kept Houston from his position of command, Yancey Quimper drifted back and whispered: 'If us fellows in front hadn't of made the choice for him, sure as hell Old Shiftless would of skedaddled off to Nacog-i doches.' But the officer who had commandeered the mules said: 'Houston always intended taking this road. We talked about it.'

Otto and his borrowed oxen had dragged the cannon less than a mile when Mrs. Mann rode furiously up to General Houston, her eyes blazing, her free hand close to the pistol on her left hip: 'General, yore men told me a damn lie. They said my oxen would be safe on the Nacogdoches road. Sir, I want 'em back.'

'You can't have them, ma'am,' Houston said. 'Our cannon need them.'

'I don't care a damn for your cannon. I want my oxen/ and she jumped down, whipped out a big knife, and began cut5 ; \;g loose her beasts. Houston was so astonished that he was ess, and

before he could issue any orders, she was riding off with her animals.

Otto's captain cried: 'Come with me! We'll get them back!' But when the captain and Otto overtook Mrs. Mann, she astonished them by leaping from her horse, landing on the captain's back, and thrashing him with her fists as he lay on the ground. When he called for Otto to assist, she poked a gun into the boy's face and : cried: 'Make one move, son, and you ain't got no head ' Standing in the mud, she held off the captain, mounted her horse, and resumed her homeward march with her beasts.

When Otto returned to his cannon with no animals to drag it into battle, the younger soldiers taunted him: 'Skeered of a woman!' and 'You stole her oxen brave enough, but you couldn't

keep 'em.' Otto said nothing, but his fists tightened and his bluer eyes grew hard. If I'm ever in command of anything, he swore tc himself, shameful things like this will not happen.

On the morning of Tuesday, 19 April, General Houston'sc Fabian tactics came to fruition, because Santa Anna, chasing hirr • wildly, had imprudently taken his entire available force onto r \ boggy peninsula formed by the San Jacinto River, where he couk neither retreat nor receive reinforcements except over a narrow r bridge. He assumed he was safe because he could not envision Houston seeking battle there, or winning if he did.

But Houston had a daring plan. Assembling as many of hi< nine-hundred-odd troops as he could at the bank of a bayou, he . told them in fighting sentences: The battle we have sought is upor us. The army will cross and we will meet the enemy. Some of ui may be killed, and must be killed. But, men, Remember the Alamo! The Alamo!'

Yancey, delighted with the prospect of battle at last, gripped Otto's arm and said prophetically: 'After a speech like that, Little i Porcupine, our boys will take damned few prisoners.'

All that day the volunteers worked to get across the bayou and onto that stretch of land from which Santa Anna could not escape. 'How brilliant,' exulted a man from Connecticut. 'We have only nine hundred, true, but Santa Anna hasn't his seven thousand. We've tricked him into facing us with less than a thousand. By God, we have a chance of winning.'

On the afternoon of the twentieth the two armies were still moving into position, but any actual engagement seemed unlikely. A detachment of mounted Texicans did make a gallant effort to capture a Mexican cannon that had been giving them trouble, but the Mexicans anticipated the move and gave a solid account of themselves. In fact, when the main body of the Texicans withdrew, three of their horsemen were left isolated—Secretary of War Thomas Rusk, an officer and a private—and a detachment of Mexican cavalry was about to capture all three when a most unlikely hero swung into action.

Infantry Private Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, riding a borrowed horse, was a minor poet-politician from Georgia who had arrived in Texas only a few weeks earlier, after both the Alamo and Goliad had fallen, but he was a man of such vision, such patriotism that he almost leaped into the fight for Texas freedom. Now, with the enemy all about him, he performed heroically, and by his, superb horsemanship and daring, saved both Rusk and another man. Texicans and Mexicans alike cheered as the Georgian, a

rather small man, outwitted the Mexicans and brought his two charges to safety. That night many asked: 'Who is this fellow with the French names?' but he did nothing to parade his valor.

On the morning of the twenty-first, General Houston slept late, for the hardships of the march and the exacerbations of command had exhausted him. His men, disgusted by his apparent indifference, renewed talk of deposing him, and they were further distressed to hear about midmorning that General Cos had joined Santa Anna with an additional four-hundred-odd fresh troops. By this lucky stroke the Mexicans restored their clear superiority, some fourteen hundred of them to about nine hundred Texicans.

Heroic veterans of the frontier appeared not to be daunted by the disproportionate numbers, but shortly after dawn a grizzled scout named Erastus Smith, deaf from birth and famed throughout Texas as Deaf Smith, a man of strong opinion who never apologized for his black brother-in-law, saw to it that no more reinforcements could reach Santa Anna. Summoning five of his fellow scouts and the boy Macnab, he crept back along the route the Texicans had taken to get onto the peninsula and chopped away the only bridge. When the timbers were down he directed Otto and one of the men to set them afire, and as the smoke rose high in the windless air he led his party safely back. Now Houston and Santa Anna were entrapped; they must fight, with the Mexicans superior in numbers, and each general knew that the resulting battle, which would start next day at dawn, would determine the future history of this part of the world.

Relishing their day of rest, the weary Texicans moved idly about their camp, testing their guns and tending their horses, but at noon General Houston surprised everyone by convening a council of war. Otto and Yancey were assigned guard duty outside the headquarters tent, and there they overheard much heated argument and the taking of votes whose purpose they could not determine, but they did hear General Houston say what others who were near the tent would testify later that he never said: 'Well, the vote is clear. No battle today.'

At this, Quimper uttered a barnyard obscenity such as the Macnabs had never used: 'Shit! When does he intend to fight?'

At that moment a captain rushed into the tent to report with such enthusiasm that Macnab and Quimper could clearly catch each word: 'General, we've consulted the companies, one by one, and they vote unanimously for battle today,' at which Houston snarled: 'All right, fight and be damned.' But again there would be witnesses who swore that it was Houston who made all the decisions, and courageously.

There was ^ne conversation which the eavesdroppers did not: hear. Juan Seguin, the mexicano who had chosen to fight on the: side of the Texicans, was the only man who would experience both the Alamo and San Jacinto; he had escaped the former tragedy: because Colonel Travis sent him from the mission with a plea fori aid. Now, in midafternoon on the fields of San Jacinto, he was' consulted by General Houston, who asked: 'Seguin, what will* Santa Anna and his men be doing over there?' and Seguin replied.) 'Siesta, what else?' Then Houston asked: if we were to attack at four this afternoon, where would the sun be?' and Seguin replied:: 'Standing low in the heavens behind us and directly in their eyes.')

'Would they be confused?' Houston asked, and Seguin said: 'They'd be blinded.'

It was then that Sam Houston Cunctator ended what his suborn dinates had called 'his running away' and made one of the crucial: decisions of Texas history: 'Find the buglers. We attack.'

The battle of San Jacinto cannot be understood in ordin-i ary military terms; the statistics are too incredible. However, if the) fortunes of several typical participants, Mexican and Texican, are; followed, rational explanation may result.

Benito Garza had greeted General Cos enthusiastically that morning when the latter arrived in camp, not with four hundred; troops as expected, but with a full five hundred. Garza was some-( what disappointed to learn that they were not tested veterans from the Goliad victory but a mass of untried recruits, many of them) without shoes or regular equipment.

Seeing that they were exhausted from forced marches, he suggested to Santa Anna that they be granted an immediate siesta, even though it was still morning, and this was agreed to. Said Santa Anna: if they sleep well today, they'll fight well tomorrow,' and] Garza went off to arrange quarters for the men.

Santa Anna himself did not sleep. Taking a small dose of his favorite narcotic, opium, he called for Garza and told him: 'See if. she's out there,' and Benito went to a nearby farmhouse where ai beautiful young mulatto slave girl named Emily from the Morgan plantation was being kept, and she was delighted at the prospect of spending yet another siesta with the general.

Garza delivered her to Santa Anna's tent at three-fifteen, and by ten minutes of four the entertainment she had been hired to provide was well under way.

General Victor Ripperda, perhaps the ablest Mexican leader on. the field that day, was a stiff, rigorous disciplinarian who saw nos need to wear medals to display his courage. He had devoted his

spare time at posts like Nacogdoches and Yucatan to the study of military principles, and one thing he had learned was that generals must anticipate the unexpected. 'One of the best ways to do this,' he had told Garza at two that afternoon, 'is to be sure you have your picket lines in place.'

To check, Ripperda had forgone the siesta taken by others and was inspecting the entire front, gazing across the empty space toward where General Houston's troops were apparently taking their rest. He realized that when those battle-ready norteamericanos marched forth the next morning, they would be formidable: 'We'll win, of course, but it won't be easy '

But when he reached the positions farthest forward, he was appalled to find that Santa Anna had not posted advance scouts to give warning if, for some inexplicable reason, the Texicans should decide to attack that afternoon. Such a move was unlikely, but he knew that any army within sight of the enemy ought to have its picket lines at top readiness. Santa Anna had none.

In dismay, and with some apprehension, Ripperda moved back from where the lines should have been to consult with junior officers at the artillery batteries, and to his horror he found that none were present. Indeed, most batteries had only a scattering of untrained enlisted men who would be unable to operate the big guns if the enemy approached. When he asked where the officers were, the men said. 'Siesta.'

Now, in great agitation, he dashed toward headquarters, shouting: 'Garza! We've got to see Santa Anna! Now!'

Benito, emerging from his tent without a shirt, warned: 'You mustn't go in there, General. He's with the girl.'

'To hell with the girl!' Ripperda shouted. 'Come along!' But just as they reached the dictator's tent they were startled by a savage interruption: cannon fire from the west. Barelegged, Santa Anna rushed out, crying: 'What's happening?' and Ripperda told him: 'The enemy are attacking.'

Santa Anna, with Emily Morgan cowering naked behind him, looked westward, where he saw in astonishment that the Texicans, marching stolidly forward as if on parade, were within fifteen yards of his still-unformed lines. Not a shot had yet been fired except the cannonade from the two unexpected guns which the Texicans had somehow got hold of.