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.
Clouds of smoke and dust blew across the hilltop. The dragoons were moving too. Not toward the barricade. Away.
Under the oak, Santa Anna clambered onto a black horse whose rein was held by the orderly she’d seen before. Sword still sheathed, His Excellency went galloping off toward the rear of the hill.
A Texan ball blasted the corner of the wagon. Amanda leaped back, her cheek stabbed by flying splinters. The fife and drum could no longer be heard at all. The Texans were howling too loudly.
They fanned out across the hilltop, almost crazed. They shot and cut and killed—
“Remember Goliad!”
“REMEMBER THE ALAMO!”
She saw Houston’s bay stumble and fall, blood spurting from its belly. Houston dragged himself from under the horse, then doubled as a ball tore into his boot. But he recovered quickly. He shot a Mexican cavalryman out of the saddle. When the Mexican hit the ground, Houston tore the man’s pennoned lance from his hands and stabbed it into his throat. In seconds, Houston was mounted on the cavalryman’s horse, shoulders hunched and blood welling from the top of his right boot—
The frightened screams of the Mexicans blended with the howling of the Texans. The last of the Mexican infantry broke from the barricade, flung down their weapons and ran toward the rear. Amanda saw a boy hardly out of adolescence twist and raise his hands defensively as two lanky Texans caught up with him.
The boy shrieked, “Me no Alamo! Me no Alam—” One of the Texans disemboweled him with two slashes of a bowie.
The Mexicans ran—but not fast enough. They died by the tens and twenties, shot down, clubbed down, kicked and stepped on. Everywhere, Amanda heard the same hysterical plea—
“Me no Alamo! Me no Alamo!”
There were a few who didn’t try to save themselves that way. One Amanda caught sight of suddenly was Luis Cordoba. With a small group of enlisted men, he was attempting a pathetic defense near the oak.
The major was surrounded by seven or eight men, most struggling to reload their muskets as a band of Texans charged them. Saber drawn, Cordoba shouted for the soldiers to load more quickly. Two pitched over, killed by pistol shots. Amanda started to run toward the tree, dodging between bearded Americans. One leveled his rifle at her, checking his fire only when he saw her white skin.
Amanda had already flung herself on the ground in anticipation of the shot. She buried her head on her arms as other Texans behind her volleyed at a troop of retreating cavalry. When she looked up again, she saw that Cordoba and three other survivors were fighting hand to hand with twice as many opponents.
A rifle butt felled one Mexican soldier. The other two threw down their pieces and dashed around the tree. With all the noise, Amanda couldn’t hear what they cried. But she knew—
“Me no Alamo!”
His uniform ripped and bloody, Luis Cordoba stood his ground. He raised his saber for a defensive stroke. Amanda lurched to her feet, nearly bowled over again as Houston rode past, shouting commands.
She raced through a litter of Mexican bodies, holding up her black silk skirt and crying Cordoba’s name. The Texans backed him toward the oak, crowded around, wrenched the saber from his hand. Blood smeared his forehead. His eyes were huge and fearful suddenly—
A Texan thrust a pistol to within six inches of Cordoba’s face and pulled the trigger. The major slammed back against the tree, his mouth gushing blood. Amanda screamed, “Luis!” as he sank from sight, the back of his head leaving blood and gray matter on the bark.
Someone grabbed her, flung her aside. “Get out of the way, you Spanish slut!” Two young Texans raced by as she struck the ground, the wind knocked out of her.
Her mind burned with an image of Cordoba dying, the victim of a code of honor that hadn’t permitted him to run or beg for mercy—even though he was more entitled to mercy than most of those shrilling, “Me no Alamo!”
With her cheek in the dirt, she wept for him in the brief seconds of incredible noise—hoofs, shrieks, shots—before she fainted.
ii
The battle of San Jacinto lasted no more than twenty minutes. The pursuit and capture of the demoralized Mexicans lasted well into the night. Though most of the senior officers were either caught or surrendered voluntarily, Santa Anna got away.
Amanda was carried to a large tent erected for the use of the Texas army’s surgeon, a mild, kindly man named Ewing. She was put on a cot among those occupied by wounded men, some of who complained about the presence of a woman until Ewing ordered them to be quiet.
Ewing gave her brandy and a chance to tell her story. When he heard it, he promised he’d arrange for her to repeat it to Houston himself after the general awoke from the heavy sleep into which Ewing had drugged him. Houston had lost a good deal of blood as a result of the wound in his right leg.
Next morning, while most of the Texans were sleeping off their raucous celebration of the victory, Sam Houston propped himself under the oak where Santa Anna had rested and Cordoba had died. He began penciling dispatches to President Burnet hiding somewhere on Galveston Island, and to President Jackson in the east. He was still working when a detachment returned with yet another captive—a rather tall Mexican wearing a dirty blue smock, leather cap and slippers of red felt.
The man claimed to be a private who had run away. He said he’d stolen the smock and cap from a slave cabin in the neighborhood. He had been discovered hiding in the sedge grass along Vince’s Bayou. He had wanted to swim across, but didn’t know how.
What made the prisoner of more than passing interest was his cultivated speech, unusual among ordinary line soldiers. The man was telling his story as the detachment rode into camp. Suddenly some soldiers imprisoned in a rope corral exclaimed, “El presidente!”
Very shortly, the prisoner stood in front of Houston. With a preening smile, the Napoleon of the West admitted his identity and shrugged off the failure of his ruse.
The Texans shouted for a lynch rope. Houston ordered them silent. When Santa Anna requested opium to calm his nerves, Houston had it brought from the fallen marquee. By noon, the marquee was set up again. Inside, the dictator got to work writing orders that called for the total evacuation of all Mexican troops north of the Rio Grande.
Amanda heard the story from Dr. Ewing late in the day. He’d come into the tent where she was resting. After describing Santa Anna’s capture, he said Houston might have a few minutes to receive her before supper. The general was anxious to see his old acquaintance who had been at the Alamo, then been held captive by the Mexicans, Ewing told her.
Amanda nodded in acknowledgment, wishing she didn’t feel so dispirited. She should have been happy. Her good friend Bowie and all the
others butchered at Bexar had been avenged. The Texans had won a splendid victory against a force twice as large as theirs. And done it with incredibly small losses—six killed, two dozen wounded.
The enemy toll was more than six hundred dead and something like twelve hundred captured. Cordoba’s prophecy had been right. Houston was a better strategist than Santa Anna had ever suspected—
Cordoba. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. That was the problem.
She forced herself to pay attention to Ewing, agreed with his comment that it seemed a little unfair for Santa Anna to be paroled and allowed to return to Mexico City. But Houston was adamant, Ewing said. Though the new Republic of Texas had won its independence with savage fighting, it would now conduct its affairs honorably.
Honor. Amanda’s mouth pursed in a bitter way. Honor had earned Luis Cordoba his grave.
Puzzled by her dour mood, Ewing said, “I would think you’d show a little more pleasure, Señora de la Gura. You were rescued. Your own side carried the day—”
“Don’t misunderstand, Doctor. I’m glad Santa Anna was beaten. He deserves much worse than he’s getting. But you see”—she gazed at his silhouette against the red sun visible outside the tent—“nothing is ever clear cut. The Mexican officer who kept me was a fine man. A brave one. He didn’t run away yesterday. He didn’t cower and pretend he had no part in the Alamo killings—though the truth is, he didn’t. But he was still shot down. And Santa Anna’s alive. I’m sorry it wasn’t the other way around.”
Dr. Ewing didn’t know what to say. Looking uncomfortable, he tugged out a fobbed watch. “We’d better go. The general said five sharp.”
As she started out, a young man with a bandaged leg glared at her from an adjoining cot. “You a Texican, woman?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I heard what you said. I’ll be blasted if I can see how you’d grieve for one of those fucking greasers. I just can’t understand that at all.”
“No,” Amanda said, “I suppose you can’t. I don’t suppose anyone can.”
Her face stark, she followed Ewing into the late afternoon heat.
iii
Amanda expected the interview with General Sam Houston to be difficult. As she walked with Dr. Ewing toward the oak, she saw groups of Texans at cook fires glance her way. Some pointed, scowled, made derogatory comments. She tried to ignore them. Tried to walk with her head up and her expression composed. But it took great effort.
Sam Houston saw her coming. He sat up a little straighter on the blankets spread at the base of the tree. His bootless right leg was swathed in bandages from foot to midcalf. On either side of him, several packing boxes formed an improvised office. She saw an inkstand, pencils, books, foolscap writing paper—
And a number of Texans loitering on the tree’s far side. The side on which Cordoba had fallen. Thank God she wouldn’t have to stare at the bloodstained bark—
But the faces of the Texans bothered her. The men seemed just as hostile as those at the campfires.
Houston smiled and waved as she and Ewing approached. The general was more than six feet tall, with a long, blunt jaw, wavy, gray-streaked chestnut hair and bright blue eyes. His skin was pale. His fine shirt was torn and powder-blackened. So was his claw-hammer coat. A distinctly rumpled and weary-looking Raven—
Houston had been given the name in his youth, when he’d run away from his widowed mother to live with the Indians. He had served in the army, studied law, been elected to Congress as a Jacksonian Democrat, and then won the governorship of Tennessee. In 1829, he’d abruptly resigned in the middle of a campaign for a second term, fleeing the state and an eighteen-year-old bride who had left him after three months of marriage.
Amanda had heard both sides of the story. Houston’s partisans insisted the girl had been cold, and Houston had every right to leave her. His enemies claimed the girl feared him, said he was insane—jealous beyond reason—and that his sexual appetites were a disgrace even in the marriage bed.
Whatever the truth, Houston had disappeared for a time along the Arkansas River, where the government had resettled his old friends, the Cherokees. He used liquor to blot out the past. So much liquor that the Cherokees gave him a second, less flattering name—Big Drunk.
In the early 1830s he had emerged from his alcoholic wanderings and reestablished his old ties with the president under whom he’d soldiered in the Creek War. Some in Bexar hinted that Houston had come to Texas for a purpose other than the one publicly announced: to help American traders negotiate treaties of peace with the marauding Indian tribes. The rumormongers said Houston’s real mission was to foment a movement for Texas independence, thus paving the way for the territory’s eventual union with the United States.
It might have been true. Certainly since the beginning of the Mexican trouble, Houston had been in the forefront of the Texan cause—
“Amanda!” Houston exclaimed in his deep voice as she entered the dappled shade of the oak. “I can hardly believe it’s you! When I heard you were a prisoner of the Mexicans, I was almost as surprised as I was when Santa Anna showed up wearing bedroom slippers.”
“My compliments on the victory, General,” Amanda said. The remark brought snorts and some ugly glances from the men in buckskin and homespun on the other side of the tree.
“You’re mighty formal all at once. What’s wrong with the names we used in Bexar?”
“A lot’s happened since then, General.”
“Goddamned if it hasn’t. I trust you’ll forgive me for not standing up. Orders of Dr. Ewing there. Push those books off that case. Sit down and tell me how you got here.”
“She got here because she was yella,” one of the men beyond the tree said in a false whisper.
Houston glared. “The next man who utters a remark like that will answer to me.” He glanced back to Amanda. “Passions are still running pretty high. I’m not too popular myself since I refused to let the men hang our Mexican friend.”
“I can understand their feelings. I was in the mission.”
“So I learned from Almeron Dickinson’s widow.”
“I saw what the Mexicans did—on Santa Anna’s direct order.”
“I’d like to hear your account of it.”
She told him, trying not to let the words conjure sounds and sights and smells. But they did. She was glad when she finished the story.
He reached out to grasp her hand. “Thank you. You’ve confirmed everything that was reported to me. I suppose I shouldn’t have asked. The memory is obviously unpleasant—”
“I try to forget how it sounded—how it looked—and how sickened it made me. I can’t.”
“No one can forget—even those of us who weren’t there. I told His Excellency much the same thing this morning. Before he decided we’d be easy to beat, he should have remembered the Alamo.” He squeezed her hand. “Are you up to telling me the rest of your experience?”
She nodded and, in a subdued voice, described how she’d been made a prisoner. She omitted the more personal details of her relationship with the major, characterizing him only as a man who had treated her in a humane way. At the end, she said, “I hope his body can be sent back to Mexico City. He—he had a wife there.”
“That may not be possible. Some of Santa Anna’s staff officers are going to do what they can about notifying next of kin. There’s no need for you to worry about such things—you’re a free woman now.”
Some of the men beyond the tree didn’t like that either. Houston’s lids flickered; he heard the angry whispers. But he didn’t turn to acknowledge them. Instead, he went on.
“You can join in the work to be done in Texas. We’ve got to rebuild. Get the government functioning—”
His hand strayed beneath one of the mussed blankets. He pulled out an ear of corn. Some of the kernels had been nibbled away.
“My afternoon meal.” He smiled. His thumb accidentally flicked three kernels from the ear. One of the men on the other side of the
tree scrambled forward to snatch them up.
“I could take this corn home an’ plant it, General.”
Houston glanced at the ear in his hand, then suddenly began shucking kernels from it.
“Here—all of you take some. Plant it in your fields. It’s time to cultivate the arts of peace now that you’ve shown yourselves masters of the art of war.”
Pleased by his flattery, the men crowded forward. Amanda was momentarily forgotten as the Texans laughed and jostled one another, straining to get some of the corn Houston dropped from his outstretched hand.
“By God, we ought to call this Houston corn!” one of the men shouted.
The general shook his head. “Honor yourselves, not me. Call it San Jacinto corn.”
With his forefinger he worked another kernel loose, then tossed the ear into the crowd. Noisily, the Texans swarmed around the man who caught it. Not a one of them was paying any attention to Amanda now. She wondered whether the byplay with the corn had been a ploy to divert them and blunt their hostility.
Not entirely, she realized, as Houston held out his hand.
“You take this one. It’s time for all of us to start thinking about the future.”
Amanda tried to speak. She couldn’t. With bleak eyes, she stared at the kernel resting in her palm.
“Dr. Ewing,” Houston said, “I think you’d better conduct the señora back to the surgical tent. If any man so much as touches her, report it to me and I’ll have him whipped till he can’t walk.”
She leaned on Ewing’s arm in the twilight. Along the way, the kernel of corn dropped from her other hand. She was aware of the loss. But she didn’t turn back to search. She had no field to plow and plant. Nothing to give the future meaning and value. That she was safe and unhurt seemed of small importance. The fabric of her life had been ripped to ruin—again.
iv
On a gray and showery afternoon in June, Amanda walked through the rubble in the lobby of Gura’s Hotel. With her was a small, fine-boned man in cleric’s robes, the parish priest, Don Refugio de la Garza.