Michener, James A. (70 page)

On his visit to Goliad, Lieutenant Bonham had pleaded with all the considerable moral force he could muster for Fannin to march to the relief of the Alamo. Fannin had given an equivocal answer: ihe would go, he would not go, he would consider it. Six days later, on the twenty-third, he was still weighing alternatives after Santa Anna had surrounded the Alamo, so that reinforcements would now encounter serious trouble if they tried to enter.

Macnab wondered if valiant troops, ready for battle, had ever been led by an officer so pusillanimous: I wish we could light a fire under him, to see if he'd jump. Otto, listening to the complaints

of the Georgia and Irish units, decided: If either Father or Uncle Zave was leading, we'd be on our way to San Antonio now. Then, eyes blazing, he thought: And if Lieutenant Bonham had anything to do with it, we'd already be there.

Fannin allowed the most contradictory rumors to agitate his men: 'We're marching to Gonzales!' 'No, it's to Victoria to unite with reinforcements coming by sea.' 'No, that would be a retreat, and I heard Colonel Fannin swear on a stack of Bibles "I will never retreat!" 'We march to San Antonio tomorrow to do what we can!'

The ridiculous truth was that Fannin had given each of these orders, within the space of days, and had then countermanded each one. However, on 25 February he finally made up his mind: 'Tomorrow at dawn we march to help defend the Alamo.'

On the morning of Friday the twenty-sixth, Finlay and Otto joined the three hundred and twenty soldiers from the Goliad presidio, and the hearts of all beat a little quicker at the realization that they were at last marching to the Alamo. Colonel Fannin, astride a chestnut stallion, rode to the head of his troops, raised his sword and cried: 'On to destiny!'

But his expedition had progressed only two hundred yards when one of the major supply wagons broke down, and by the time it was repaired, other wagons that had taken the lead failed to negotiate a river crossing, so that total confusion resulted. Noon found the column stalled, and the afternoon wasted away without any significant movement. As day faded into night Macnab realized that in these fourteen hours the expeditionary force had covered less than a quarter of a mile.

At dawn on the twenty-seventh Colonel Fannin awakened to the ugly fact that he faced a seventy-mile march to the next replenishment depot, without sufficient food to sustain his troops. Having relied upon a swift dash to the first depot, he had not bothered to bring along emergency supplies. When Macnab heard that Fannin was going to ask his men to vote as to whether they wanted to move ahead to the Alamo or return to the safety of the presidio and regroup, he was outraged. 'A commander doesn't ask for a vote,' he told the Georgians and Irishmen near him. 'He senses in his gut what must be done and he does it.' But then an Irishman with a wizened, knowing face said: 'He's taking the loss of that first wagon as an omen. "Don't go on!" a little voice is surely whispering to him.'

'My God!' a Georgia man asked in disgust. 'Are we bein' led by omens?'

in this army we are,' the Irishman said, but he was wrong, for

Fannin was collecting his commissioned officers to ascertain how they interpreted not the omens but the hard facts:

'Gentlemen, we face a most serious situation We have, as you well know, inadequate provisions for a long march and no reasonable means of increasing them. We have fault}' transport and no way of finding better Our artillery pieces seem too heavy to drag over riverbeds. And what seems most important to me . . . by leaving the presidio without proper garrison, we tempt the enemy to sneak in and take it. What do you recommend that we do 7 '

In the face of such a pessimistic review, the vote was unanimous: Return to Goliad, bolster the fortifications, and defy the enemy from inside the walls: 'The Alamo 7 Nothing can be done from this end to support it.'

So the expedition stumbled back to its launching spot, retreated within the safety of its walls, and began a crash program with two objectives: Build the walls so strong that they would be impregnable. Slaughter so many oxen and dry the meat so carefully that the men would never again be short of rations.

Finlay Macnab warned his son: 'When a commander loses his nerve, disasters can happen.'

'What shall we do 7 ' Otto asked.

'Nothing.' Then, afraid that his son might be as disoriented as Fannin, he asked: 'Why? Did you want to leave?'

Otto could not explain in words, but the more he witnessed the ineptitude inside the presidio, the more he longed to serve with someone of honorable purpose like James Bonham. He was sure that Bonham would have quickly handled the perplexities that immobilized Fannin, and in the meantime he, Otto, would keep his rifle clean and await the battle he knew to be inevitable.

just about this time an event occurred inside the Alamo which would have given Otto reassurance. James Bonham, surveying the situation with Colonel Travis and Davy Crockett, concluded that he must ride once again through the countryside in a last appeal to Fannin at Goliad and to the scattered farmers in the east for aid. Crockett, hearing his decision, said: 'You were lucky last time, threading your way out and back in. This time?'

As if he knew no care in the world, the Carolina gentleman half saluted Travis, smiled at Davy, and mounted the mare that had served him so well before. Darting suddenly from the north wall of the Alamo, he spurred his mount and galloped directly through the Mexican lines. Before the startled besiegers could prevent it, he had broken free and was on his way back to Goliad to make one final, desperate plea for help.

Like the demon rider in an ancient ballad, Bonham rode through the night, and on the twenty-eighth, reined in at the Goliad presidio, where the men cheered him lustily, for they knew what heroism his mere appearance at that spot so distant from the Alamo entailed.

Bonham's arrival did not impress Colonel Fannin, for it reopened questions long since resolved. There would be no rescue operation conducted from Goliad, and patiently he explained why: 'Distance too great, transport too chancy, cannon too heavy, food and water too uncertain.' On and on he went, reciting the best arguments in the world against any desperate lunge to the northwest, and as Bonham listened he had to concede that everything Fannin said was true, and relevant. Any cautious commander would hold back, as he was doing, but any brave commander would correct the disadvantages and forge ahead.

By the middle of the next afternoon Bonham had argued so persuasively that he was within minutes of persuading Fannin to act, when one of those freak accidents which so often determine history occurred. Bumptious Colonel Johnson, who had been trying to invade Mexico with a handful of heroes, stumbled into the presidio with a harrowing story: 'We were surrounded by Mexicans. Chopped to pieces. Only four others survived.'

'From your entire force?' Fannin asked, his hands shaking.

'And Dr. Grant, he seems to be lost.'

'My God!' Fannin cried, for this meant that the two inept leaders had lost a large part of his total force, and Bonham saw that it was futile to pressure this confused man any further. His will was gone and he had best be left alone, but when he looked at Johnson he had to think: His army lost. All but five killed. Yet he comes back alive to report. How?

Aware that he had wasted precious hours listening to such men demean themselves, Bonham saluted his unworthy superiors and told them that he must get on with his duty. 'And what is that?' Fannin asked.

'Return to the Alamo. Colonel Travis deserves a reply.'

'But the place is surrounded. You said so.'

'I got out. I'll get back in.'

'Stay here with us. Help us defend Goliad.'

Bonham looked at the two men with whom he would not care to defend anything, then at the walls they had been reinforcing. He said nothing, but thought: Fannin will pin himself into another Alamo, and three weeks from now he will be sending out cries for help.

Turning his back on the two futile commanders, confused incompetents lusting for power but incapable of the action by which it is earned, Bonham, the medieval knight resurrected for service in modern Texas, rode off toward duty. He carried with him no promises of aid, no hope for rescue, only the mournful confirmation that Texas was in mortal danger.

When Zave Campbell and the thirty-one Gonzales men broke through Mexican lines and entered the Alamo at three in the morning of Tuesday, 1 March, they found a legendary man who, even though confined to his cot, gave them hope.

He was Jim Bowie, forty-one years old and revered as the best knife-fighter on the entire frontier. He was a big red-headed man of enormous energy, and had the wishes of the men who were to do the fighting been consulted, he would have been their commander during the siege. Unluckily, on the day Santa Anna's men took their positions ringing the Alamo, Bowie, who had been ill for some time, was laid low by a raging fever somewhat like the one that had killed his wife, Ursula Veramendi, and when Zave went to report he found Bowie in bed.

'I've heard of you,' Bowie said. 'Glad to have you.'

'You look pale,' Zave said. 'Like maybe Santy Anny hit you with something.'

Bowie said wanly: 'And you look like your neck's on crooked. Like maybe somebody tried to hang you.'

'Necks don't straighten easy,' Zave confessed, and the two old frontiersmen discussed the places and people they had known, especially in and around Natchez.

is it true you used to rassle alligators?' Zave asked.

'Still do, if one comes after me,' Bowie said, laughing. 'Man never knows when a gator is gonna come after him.'

Zave would never see this once-powerful man standing upright, but he was impressed by the sheer sense of force that Bowie exuded, even from his cot. When the sick man learned that Campbell had also married a mexicana, he said: 'There's another fellow in here like us,' and when he sent for Mordecai Marr, these three Texicans shared memories of the joys they had known with their Mexican wives. 'The others think we married peasants,' Bowie said. 'You should've heard my wife order me about. She was twice as smart as me.'

The three men fell silent, for at the far end of the barracks in which Bowie's cot stood they saw Amalia Marr moving about, assisting the women and children who had chosen to stay in the Alamo with their men, and the graceful way she held her head, the

poetry of her motion as she worked delighted them, for Bowie and Campbell could see in her a portrait of their own wives. It was then that Bowie exclaimed with deep emotion: 'Damnit, Campbell! It would have been a lot better for Texas if every unmarried man who wandered down here from Kentucky and Tennessee, or from Georgia and Alabama, for that matter ... if he had been forced to take himself a Mexican wife. Maybe we could have bridged the

gap-'

'What gap?' Zave asked.

'Americanos, mexicanos. We're bound to share this land for the next two hundred years. If we'd got started right . . .'

'They tell me that this guide Deaf Smith, best of the lot, they say he has a Mexican wife.'

'I think he does,' Bowie said. 'I wish he was in here to help us.'

'The men all feel they'd have a better chance of holdin' this place if you was leadin'.'

'Now stop that. Stop it right now. Travis will prove a damned good fighting man.'

'But the men tell me,' Marr said, 'that you were supposed to be in command.'

Jim Bowie, the most belligerent man in the Alamo, sighed: it hasn't been a neat affair. Seems like nothin' in Texas is ever neat. We were supposed to share a joint command, Travis in charge of the army men, me in charge of the volunteers.'

'That's what I'm sayin'. Us volunteers want to fight under your orders.'

Bowie's voice hardened with exasperation: 'How in hell can I command if I can't stand? You tell me that.' With the generosity of spirit which marked him he growled: 'I'm perfectly willing to give the leadership to Travis,' and while neither Zave nor Marr believed him, they had to respect him for his soldierly deportment.

The man all the newcomers wanted to meet was Davy Crockett, the former congressman from Tennessee. Tall, clean-shaven, and with a head somewhat larger than normal, he was a famous raconteur whose disreputable stories narrated in dialect often made him look ridiculous: 'They was me and this bear and a Injun. Now, that bear was grindin' his teeth, just waitin' to git at me. And the Injun was reachin' for his arrers to shoot one through me.'

'And what were you doin'?' someone was supposed to ask, at which Davy would reply: 'I be 'shamed to tell you, 'cept that later I had to do some washin'.'

He was irrepressible, and after conducting a survey of the situation within the Alamo, he had insisted upon defending the palisaded weak spot, where the danger would be greatest: i want

sixteen good men here with all the rifles we can muster, and them Mexicans better beware.' When Zave saw the frailness of the palisade and the grim look of the men from Kentucky and Tennessee who would have to defend it, he whispered to Galba Fuqua: There's bound to be one hell of a fight here.'

Whenever Zave could not locate Galba, for whom he felt great responsibility, he would look to see where Davy Crockett was holding forth, and there the boy would be, listening intently as the wild frontiersman spun his yarns but fully aware that Crockett's mocking manner masked a character of profound determination. The boy had no way of assessing how strong a man Jim Bowie might have been if healthy, but he knew that Davy was one of the most powerful men he had ever seen: 'You killed more'n a hundred bears?'

'Most dangerous animal I ever met was that Tennessee Democrat Andrew Jackson. He'd cut a man's throat for sixpence.'

'But did you kill forty-seven bears in one month?' Galba asked.

'1 sure did. Forty-seven bears, forty-six bullets.'

'How was that?'

'Two of the bears was misbehavin',' and he winked at the boy.

One morning Galba was standing guard with him atop the fort at the southwestern end of the mission. Crockett was dressed as usual—coonskin cap, deerskin jacket with Indian beads, buckskin trousers—and beside him he had two long rifles. 'You see that Mexican over there across the river?' he said to Galba. 'Tracin' marks in the dust? You see that other man behind him? As soon as I fire, slap the other gun into my hand.'