The Red Ripper (26 page)

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Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: The Red Ripper
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She eased into bed and slowly relaxed against the pillow. The bed shook as Dorotea did the same. Don Murillo's sister leaned up on her elbow and turned the lamp down low, then lay back in bed, adjusting her lace cap and tying it under her chin. The older woman tried to rest, but curiosity got the better of her.
“I overheard you,” she said. “What you said about forces of light and darkness and walking the path between and having the power to summon the ‘haunter of the dark.' Do you really believe that?”
“What's important is that Juan Diego believes,” Esperanza replied. She was about to elaborate when gunshots rattled in the distance on the edge of town. Both women sat upright, listening. Dorotea blessed herself. Both women began to pray.
 
Gunfire erupted along the picket lines to the south of the mission. From his vantage point on the redoubt Don Murillo clutched at the stone wall. Rifles, pistols, musket fire bloomed in deadly profusion along the perimeter of the besieging troops, one patrol exchanging shots with another, both parties spooked into this lethal exchange by the horseman charging through their midst and into the trees.
“Ride,
hombre, ride!
” shouted Chuy.
“Cut your way through!” Bowie added.
A whole chorus of cries rippled along the wall; the defenders cheered and chanted, “Wallace,” as the intensity of the gunfire increased. From a distance it appeared
he had alerted the entire camp to his presence. Sentries, made nervous by previous incursions from the fort, continued to take potshots into the night until their officers arrived on the scene. For several long minutes a full-scale battle raged. Then it stopped as quickly as it began. An ominous silence returned.
“He made it,” Bowie muttered. Not because he knew any more than anyone else, but because it had to be true.
It simply had to be …
 
John Bradburn stood away from the fire at the camp site. He did not wish to present too easy a target. However, a man of his size was hardly going to dodge out of harm's way. The other two sentries, a pair of unpleasant miscreants from Veracruz, had also recognized the sound of a horse approaching them from under the cover of the cotton woods. The gunfire that lit the night had died. Here on the banks of the Rio San Antonio, the pickets felt especially vulnerable. There was no one behind them. They were isolated. However, being an afterthought in Santa Anna's army did have its rewards. A man might sneak away and sit out a fight and have no one the wiser. But some days, despite a man's best efforts, trouble had a way of riding unbidden into camp.
“I hear something,” one of the sentries muttered. He had eyes like a cat but the heart of a coward for whom a life in the military had been a choice between eating and starving to death. His companion was equally skittish and a slave to pulque, which was about the only drink he could afford. Throughout the siege, Bradburn had rarely seen either of his companions sober. In turn, they were continually mocking the Englishman and making life miserable for him.
Juan Diego Guadiz had certainly not placed the Englishman with the cream of Santa Anna's troops. Bradburn had the distinct impression when it came to frontal
assault on the Alamo that men like these, including himself, would be leading the advance. In his own way he had begun to envy the men besieged within the Alamo's crumbling walls. At least they were standing for something. Their deaths would have meaning … and, in some small way, nobility.
“Look, there!” Cat-Eyes whispered. Bradburn felt as if chips of ice were melting the length of his backbone. His hands were trembling. It was becoming hard to breathe. Suddenly a man on horseback materialized out of the gloom. He was big, overgrown, his mustang ambling forward at a lazy pace. The big man's shoulders were slumped, his body leaned forward across his saddle pommel, long arms hanging loose at his side along the folds of his serape, head tilted down, his wide-brimmed sombrero concealing his features.
“Is he dead?” Bradburn hissed. He knew of only one man that big in all of Texas. Sweat beaded Bradburn's forehead and rolled down the folds of fat around his neck. He raised the shotgun and held it across his chest. The other two men cocked and primed their rifles and started forward.
“Looks like it!” Cat-Eyes exclaimed, suddenly finding his courage when confronted by a dead man.
“Dead as a slug on hot iron,” the drunkard said, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his soiled uniform. “He might have something of value.”
“I seen the boots,” Cat-Eyes said. “They're big ones.”
“If he has a watch it's mine.”
“Not if I find it first.”
“Keep your distance, English,” the drunkard warned.
The two men swooped down on their prize like vultures on a ripe feast. They ran up to either side of the slumped figure, each man anxious to be the one who dragged the rider out of the saddle. Suddenly the rider's arms rose to either side. He held a pistol in each hand.
He fired them both almost simultaneously, shooting Cat-Eyes through the chest and drilling his companion between the eyes. Cat-Eyes was blown backward into the river. The drunkard slammed into the embankments and slid down until his knees buckled and he rolled over on his side, already dead.
The horseman drew closer until the big man's shadow fell across Bradburn, who stood with his shotgun cocked and ready and aimed at the center of the rider's serape. The man lifted his head. Eyes blazing like green fire seemed to look right through the former alcalde. The smell of blood was in the air. All Bradburn needed to do was squeeze the trigger and cut the rider in half and earn the respect of Guadiz once more.
He lowered the shotgun and stood aside. It had been a long time since he had done something he could actually feel good about. Maybe this was a start. He watched the horseman pass by, a hard rider on a long and desperate journey.
John Bradburn walked across the clearing, kicked dirt on his campfire until nothing remained but a faint wisp of smoke. He dragged the remaining body from the riverbank and rolled it into the Rio San Antonio de Padua. Then he caught up the reins of his own mount, saddled the animal, and led him across the river. Someone hailed his camp, uncertain where it was. Bradburn refrained from answering. He climbed the opposite bank and settled into the saddle.
Maybe it was time to leave Texas.
 
Wallace started to slip from the saddle. He willed himself upright. His skull throbbed. His face felt hard and sticky. Numbness was creeping along his shoulder and down his arm. Blood continued to ooze from a hole in his thigh. He fumbled for his powder horn, sprinkled the hard black granules into the wound. Where were his pistols?
He had dropped them. Damn. But there was still flint. Funny, the way the sentry had allowed him to ride past. The Mexican had looked a hell of a lot like John Bradburn. Wallace found his flint and a striker, held the stone over his wound, and struck it twice. The sparks settled on the gunpowder, igniting it in a flash that startled the mustang and started him trotting forward.
The pain nearly pushed the wounded man over the edge. It exploded inside his skull and coursed through his veins like brimstone. But the wound was cauterized. Wallace reined in his mount at the edge of a thicket of live oaks. He waited, listening for the sounds of pursuit, and heard the night wind moaning in the branches, the distant cry of a coyote, the beating of his own brave heart.
He was dying. But he had a choice. Face it here or ride.
Boldly ride.
I AM DETERMINED TO SUSTAIN MYSELF AS LONG AS POSSIBLE & DIE LIKE A SOLDIER WHO NEVER FORGETS WHAT IS DUE TO HIS OWN HONOR & THAT OF HIS COUNTRY—VICTORY OR DEATH.
—WILLIAM B. TRAVIS
“TELL THEM TO REMEMBER THE ALAMO.”
The bugles sounded a few hours after morning. From every camp the discordant notes blared the ominous strains of “De Guello.” Across the dry and dusty plain surrounding the beleaguered mission, the grim warning drifted on the wind. The thunderheads of the previous day had drifted off to the northeast, leaving the land here forsaken and the wildflowers to struggle on their own.
Don Murillo had not slept. If this was to be his last night and day on earth, he wanted to see it all, the beauty of the stars, the wonder of moonlight, the glorious promise of a sunrise that gave him hope that whatever happened today was not the end.
Chuy Montoya lit the last of the cigarillos he'd been saving. From the number of troops that Santa Anna was about to hurl against them, he decided this might be as good time as any. He inhaled deeply; his brown eyelids became slits as he allowed the silken strands of smoke to curl over his tongue before he slowly exhaled. The
segundo
took a final drag and then flicked the stub over the wall. He raised his rifle and sighted on the ranks of soldiers marching across the prairie.
“Well, old friend, I should like to be fishing down by the banks of the Brazos right now,” Don Murillo said at his side. The
haciendado
had armed himself with a pair
of dueling pistols. His rifle was a finely tooled weapon of English design.
“
Si, padrone,
as in the old days, with a bottle of tequila, plenty of food, and maybe a beautiful señorita or two for company.”
Don Murillo chuckled. The two men had sowed their share of wild oats in their youths. “Those were salty days,” the
haciendado
agreed, and didn't regret a one of them.
Travis walked up alongside Saldevar and his vaquero. “They're coming at us from all sides,” he said. “I guess we must have Santa Anna worried.”
Don Murillo glanced around. Travis was right. Column after column of soldiers, with flags flying and bayonets gleaming in the sunlight, converged upon every wall of the mission. The Mexican artillery opened up on the walls for the last time, firing over the heads of the assault troops. The earth itself seemed to tremble as the Alamo's cannons returned the fire, dueling at first with the Mexican guns, then turning their attention to the advancing lines.
Don Murillo and Chuy fired as one, joining the rest of the men along the walls. Out on the plain, the soldiers died in droves. Men clutched at themselves or clawed the air, then fell writhing on the hard earth. More soldiers took their places, and then they, too, died. And still others filled their ranks. And if the Mexican infantry wavered, the cavalry was right behind them, sabers drawn, prepared to cut down any foot soldier who failed to do his duty.
Before long, the plains were littered with the dead and dying. And still the officers pressed the attack, willing to accept this wholesale slaughter because the Alamo must fall and its defenders must be put to the sword. To fail meant disgrace and execution.
Time lost its meaning for the men on the walls. Don
Murillo loaded and fired and loaded and fired, repeating the process until his rifle was almost too hot to touch. So much death. The whole affair sickened him. There had to be a better way for men to settle their differences. Ladders were set against the wall of the redoubt, and the men below hurriedly began to climb. The defenders used their rifle butts to shove the ladders free and send the soldiers tumbling back to the ground.
Don Murillo was practically deaf now, and he no longer reacted to the cannon firing next to him. The powder smoke was thick enough to cut with a knife. Somehow above the din he heard Travis yell out an order for everyone to help train the nine-pounder cannon on the main gate. Don Murillo and Chuy numbly joined the other men on the rampart in manhandling the nine-pounder into place just as the main gate exploded, flinging jagged chunks of timber and twisted iron into the air.
Troops surged through the opening. The cannon roared as it emptied a load of grapeshot into the solders massed at the entrance. The results were terrible to behold. Solid shot tore through flesh and bone, savaging the ranks of the soldiers and momentarily stalling the attack. But the press of soldiers was too great. The dead and wounded were trampled underfoot. The men on the redoubt opened up with their rifles and pistols.
While reloading, Don Murillo quickly appraised the rest of the mission. A section of one wall had collapsed. He thought he saw Crockett and his men being engulfed by wave after wave of soldiers. Mexican cavalry charged through the breach in the west wall and were carving their way into the plaza at a terrible cost to horse and rider.
“Padrone!”
Don Murillo rammed another load home, then looked around at the
segundo.
Chuy Montoya was staring down at the front of his shirt. A crimson stain spread across the chest. “I'm sorry,” Montoya said, as if apologizing for letting the
haciendado
down in some way. A trickle of blood formed at the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. He drew a pistol and his knife, turned and stepped over the edge of the redoubt, and was lost from sight.
“No!” Don Murillo shouted in vain.
Another explosion shook the redoubt and knocked him backward against the wall. The world spun crazily, colors mingled in a savage kaleidoscope of sound and fury. For a moment he lost consciousness; then Don Murillo rose from the dust, shoving himself free of the wall. The nine-pounder lay on its side, one wheel spinning, the other broken into fragments. Two men stood at the base of the ramp, Bill Travis and Ken Kania, a lawyer and a shopkeeper, fighting side by side. The gallant Travis battled against half a dozen men with his saber, mortally wounding two of them and forcing the remaining soldiers to retreat until a grenadier ran up from his blind side and fired a musket into his skull, spattering a nearby wall with a grisly mist. Travis died instantly, toppling forward like an overturned statue. But the humble little shopkeeper, like the other Texicans in the plaza, fought on with a ferocity and desperation that gave him almost superhuman strength. Kania emptied his guns into the soldiers surrounding him, then took up the nine-pounder's ramrod and used it to club any man who dared come within reach. And when the ramrod shattered, the shopkeeper leaped onto the nearest soldier, ignoring the musket balls plowing into his torso, and dragged him to the ground and choked him to death, when, bleeding from a dozen wounds, Kania himself slumped forward and died also.
Don Murillo glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned, bringing his dueling pistol to bear
on a soldier who had just scaled the wall behind him. The soldier, on seeing the white-haired
haciendado,
brought his musket up and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He stood there with the tip of his bayonet a good six feet from his intended victim and stared into the muzzle of Don Murillo's weapon and knew he was as good as dead.
Don Murillo could see his adversary looked no older than sixteen or seventeen. He wore his fear like a mask of inexperience. For a brief moment the old man and the brown-faced youth stared at each other. Then Don Murillo slowly turned the gun aside, sparing the life of his assailant. The soldier lunged forward and buried his bayonet in Saldevar's chest. Don Murillo gasped, his features contorted as he slid off the iron barb and sank against the wall.
There was a look of inexpressible sorrow in his eyes.
Then nothing at all.
 
A somber procession of women and old men made their way along the mission road in the waning daylight. The din of battle had long since faded. All that remained was the grieving, the moans of the dying, the crackle of flames, the stench of cauterized wounds, and women in black veils like ravens, hovering among the dead.
Dorotea gasped and shrank back against the woman at her side. Esperanza placed an arm around her sister-in-law's bony shoulders. “Courage,” she whispered. “Perhaps you should remain here.”
“No. I must—”
“Very well,” Esperanza replied. The two women continued across the river, wading through the shallows and glancing from right to left, unable to take their eyes off the wounded and dying that crowded the riverbank. Voices called out in the fading light; prayers and pleas for pity drifted up into the purpling sky. Esperanza could
not hate them, but she was moved to anger at the nature of men like Santa Anna and Juan Diego, who were willing to waste so many lives.
Many of the officers she passed looked stunned. No one had expected the defenders of the Alamo to put up such a vicious resistance. No one had been prepared for the losses. She heard two lieutenants arguing between themselves as the women marched past on their sad journey along the mission road.
“They fought like trapped animals.”
“More than a thousand are dead. May God have mercy on their souls.”
“And soon we will march north to destroy the rest of their army.”
“At what cost? I want no part of these Texicans. They are devils.”
The officers receded into the night. The procession continued up through the trees and out onto the plain. The people from town could see for themselves what had transpired earlier in the day. The column of women halted in their tracks, struck by the enormity of the scene.
Flames continued to burn within the battered walls and crumbled battlements. Before the shattered remains of the front gate, a troop of lancers led by Juan Diego awaited the arrival of the friends and loved ones of the “devils” that had defended the Alamo.
Esperanza quickened her pace, her heart pounding in her chest She had known it would end like this—second sight, a premonition of disaster, her mother's gift, had become a curse. She had glimpsed her husband's fate in the shadows and wanted to warn him, but Don Murillo would have taken his place with the rest of the Texicans despite her objections. Honor was stronger than death. And William, had he shared the same fate? Or were there prisoners, anyone to possibly ransom from a firing
squad? If her worst fears came to pass, at least she could give them a Christian burial.
Them?
Yes, may God forgive her. The man she loved, the man she was forbidden to love. She held both in her heart. So be it.
Esperanza passed the other women, drawn by the grim possibilities awaiting at the gate. She took the lead across the killing fields littered with the wrecked remains of the assault. Cannons blasted off their carriages, the dead who had yet to be gathered and taken to the rear, sections of ladders, dropped muskets, bloodstained hats, none held any meaning for her now. All that mattered was what awaited within the ruined battlements; all that mattered was what she dreaded more than anything else in the world to find.
Juan Diego waited astride his charger, blocking the entrance. Behind him, Paloma kept more to the shadows. Even her iron resolve seemed shaken by the slaughter she had witnessed this day. Not so her brother, Juan Diego likened the mayhem to a great victory.
“Welcome, señora,” he said. “Welcome,” he repeated to the straggling procession. “No doubt you have come to honor these traitors and insurrectionists. I will not stop you. My men are eager to help you bury your dead. Then our illustrious president, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, has given you permission to leave San Antonio. Go where you will.”
He waved a hand in the direction of his mounted command. The troops parted; his own charger sidestepped. Juan Diego removed his brass-and-leather helmet, sweeping its black plume across his chest in a mocking salute. He dismounted as Esperanza bolted past him and through the gate.
She was the first to enter the ruined mission. The first to be branded by sights and smells that left an indelible
imprint of revulsion and grief upon her mind and heart. Everything …
Everything within the walls and including the walls was either shattered, charred, or pockmarked with bullet holes. The ground was patched and horribly moist. Those battlements still standing were splashed with hues of red and crimson that darkened as the stains dried.
But the most terrible sight of all dominated the center of the plaza, where a long, wide hole had been dug in the dark and bloody ground. The bodies of the defenders had been unceremoniously tossed into the pit and set afire. All that remained were charred broken bones and bits of clothing that had survived the flames—brass buttons, the twisted frames of spectacles, a glass flask, a snuff case, the seared leather cover from a Bible.
Many of the women began to weep openly; many fell to the ground, Dorotea among them, and doubled over retching and sobbing. Esperanza stood and held back what was in her heart. She would not give her husband's killers the satisfaction of seeing her break. Then Juan Diego drew close to her.
“You may leave here, tomorrow, the next day; you are free to go.” The flames of destruction continued to gleam in his arrogant expression. “Find this General Houston and the rest of his little army and tell them we are coming. Tell them what you have seen here. Tell them to remember the Alamo.”
Esperanza met his gaze, her eyes deep beyond his understanding, strong beyond his suspicions. And in a calm, even voice, without a hint of the torment and sorrow raging in her soul, she replied, “I will.”

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