Chapter 11

We’d got back to Gonzales in time for Christmas, but nobody felt like celebrating. We knowed that Santa Anna was in Texas, but had no idea where he intended to go. From time to time, I wondered how the folks I left back in the east were doing. Priscilla’s mother hadn’t fared well during the trip and her husband had been killed at Bexar, but had she found out yet? And what of Priscilla?

I’d thought at one point that I might court her after the trip was over, but she’d seemed more interested in Jean-Louis. Not surprising, because he was better looking and could talk a turkey off its roost. But it left me with an ache that only work helped me put aside. It was a good thing that I had more work than I’d ever had, I figured, enough to keep me and the two assistants I’d hired going from daybreak to dark. Jean-Louis was busy too; he’d hired several men as soon as we got back. One was a cook, another was charged with bringing in firewood for what looked to be a hard winter, and the rest were busy rounding up and breaking mustangs.

We were as short of cash money to pay them as anyone, but there were plenty of young men looking for work. He promised to feed them and provide each one with a mount after the breaking was done. That might not have seemed like much a year ago, but a year ago Santa Anna’s lancers were on the far side of the Rio Grande. Now? Having a horse might keep a man alive if the Mexicans came through Gonzales!

But both of us were out here and Priscilla was back there. A pretty young girl like her? She would likely have found herself a beau among the young men of Nacogdoches or Liberty by now. She might even be married! I tried not to think about it, and some of the time I didn’t.

Folks had been certain that we’d get all the help we needed from the United States, but so far all we’d seen was a handful of volunteers. There was a consultation going on back at San Felipe, but since the politicians lacked the nerve to declare independence most figured they were shirkers happy to leave the fighting to better men.

Ed Burleson was still in charge of the volunteers, and he was doing his best to hold things together, but a lot of Texas men had headed for home as soon as the fight was over. Some had stayed in San Antonio de Bexar to keep the Mexicans from re-occupying the place, but like the ones who’d already gone, most had farms and families to take care of. How long they would remain was anybody’s guess.

Folks had begun to mention Sam Houston recently. He had been off in the east, negotiating a peace treaty with the Cherokees, but he showed up at Washington-on-the-Brazos in time for the Assembly to finally declare that Texas was independent from Mexico, if we could make it stick. The other thing the Assembly had done was appoint Houston, who at one time had been a major general in command of Tennessee’s militia, to be major general of the Texian army.

So far, the army didn’t exist, but the ones I talked to figured that if anybody could raise one, Sam could. For one thing, he was a close friend of President Andy Jackson, but since Jackson was about to leave office it would be up to Martin Van Buren to decide whether he wanted to send American soldiers to help us.

He didn’t have many to start with and most were busy fighting Indians. The Seminoles in Florida were particularly troublesome. I soon found out that Houston hadn’t waited for Van Buren to make up his mind. He showed up in Gonzales with the men he’d talked into joining up and was doing his best to turn them from a mob into soldiers. Now and then, he send some to have me fix their rifles. But on March the thirteenth, he ran out of time.

That was when Susanna Dickinson brought word that the Alamo had fallen.

Most of the defenders had died fighting, and the ones who hadn’t had been immediately executed. We had been worried up to the time we heard about it, but now? We were mad clear through and I was as determined as any to make them pay. That evening, after the work in the smithy and the gun-shop was done, I started in to mold bullets. Those one-pound pigs of lead wouldn’t do me a bit of good, but the bullets I made from them might. Some others realized what I was doing and asked to join in, so I shared my lead with them. Having a man with bullets fighting on your side sure beat having one with no bullets. One of them brought me a nice Indian-tanned buffalo robe as payment. Turned out that I never made a better swap in my life!

Ed Burleson brought Houston around to the shop and I laid down the rifle I was converting and shook hands. Big, he was, but maybe that was what was needed, a big man who could get things done.

Houston didn’t waste any time. “Ed told me about you taking that train of women and children back to Nacogdoches.”

“I wish I could have done better,” I said. “We lost people on that trip, and some got sick.”

“I heard about your sick people in San Felipe, and I don’t know of anyone who could have done a better job! Matter of fact, the way I see it, anybody that could manage a job like that ought to be a captain. Ed? He’s rightly one of yours.”

“I agree, Sam. Jake, you’re now a captain of volunteers, not because of what you did but because we need a captain. The thing is, we want you to do it again.”

I balled up my fists for a moment. I swear, if there hadn’t of been two of them and Houston so damned big, I would have punched Ed in the face! But I kept my anger inside, mostly.

“I plan on being here and helping defend my town if the Mexicans come this way,” I said coldly. “Herding women and old men is a thankless job at best and I got a bellyful when I did it before! Get someone else to do it now!”

“Nope, can’t do it,” said Houston calmly, “Couple of reasons, starting with the fact that you won’t have a town to defend.”

“What do you mean, I won’t have a town to defend?” I didn’t like the sound of that; I’d put a lot of sweat and a fair amount of blood into building my house and my business.

“The army can’t stop them, Jake. That’s the plain truth; there are too many of them, too few of us, and our men figure that an order is a suggestion. Which, most of the time, they don’t figure to obey. So before Santa Anna gets here and starts handing your property over to his officers, I’ve made up my mind to burn Gonzales to the ground.