Chapter 27

 

While Norton claimed he had rescued me so that the Mexicans would not have another go at killing me, almost one of the first things he did was to give them another chance, although the odds were not in their favour. I had talked for much of that first night before falling asleep by the fire. The sun was high in the sky when I awoke and after the recent days it was a relief to remember that I was now at liberty again. While I had dozed, Norton had been preparing for my journey north. His son Hamish was to accompany me, for I would need a guide and Norton himself was too old to travel quickly.

“Santa Anna’s army must be moving north by now,” he told me. “And the Mexicans on the coast will be heading north too now that they have beaten your army. There will be nothing to stop him recapturing all of Texas.”

“We heard General Houston was raising a new army,” I told him. “It was supposed to be at Gonzalez. He may have a few hundred men.”

Norton scoffed. “Santa Anna had at least a thousand men marching to him as reinforcements after the Alamo fell, we saw them. They boasted there were even more on the road behind. How many soldiers did he have left after the battle?”

“Well over a thousand,” I admitted.

“And the general coming up the coast, he has at least a thousand men. So the Mexicans have at least three thousand to your few hundred. The Texas forces cannot win.”

I was sure then that he was right, for I recalled that when we had been in San Antonio, Bowie and Travis were receiving reports that the total size of Santa Anna’s army was around five thousand men. There could have been another sizeable column of them somewhere we were not even aware of. Some of them died at the Alamo and Coleto, but it was still hard to see the forces of Texas beating odds of ten to one. The Texians might have their rifles, but I doubted that they had any cannon left now. In contrast, the Mexicans had a whole park of artillery, with the guns they had brought with them as well as the ones they had captured.

I shuddered at the thought of being seized by them again. The sooner I was safely back over the border in Louisiana the better I would like it. I remembered the look of fear on the faces of the locals at Goliad when they came to see us in the orchard. Both the Tejanos and the few Texian civilians who were left there looked frightened and cowed by the recent slaughter. It was clear now what would happen to anyone who took up arms against Santa Anna. I wondered if Houston’s army had stood firm or if that had melted away. I could hardly blame them if they deserted the cause, for that was my intention too, but it would be a dangerous journey. Apart from avoiding Mexican patrols and armies on the move, I would also need to be wary around civilians. There were bound to be a few willing to turn me in to prove their loyalty to the new government, or as a means of getting clemency for someone else.

From where we were, it was three hundred miles to Louisiana. To get there, I would need to get around the Mexican army and anything that was left of the Texian one. In addition I had avoid the more hostile Indians and assorted banditry on the roads and be wary of anyone else I met on the way. I thought I would be glad of Hamish’s company; he seemed a resourceful young man.

“We will need horses,” he announced when the venture was put to him. I was in full agreement there, as the ability to ride away from trouble would be invaluable. I might have been able to cover three hundred miles on foot in a couple of weeks in my youth, but that was in an army with someone else looking after supplies. I doubted if I could do it in three or four weeks now, especially as we would have to detour around enemies and obstacles and find our own food. The obvious problem, though, was that Norton’s band did not have any mounts at all. Hamish proposed to solve this by stealing from the Mexicans, whose cavalry was camped on the outskirts of Goliad. He thought that they could creep in there and cut some out. Having done the same at the Alamo, I was not sure it would be that easy. I had only succeeded because the troopers were too busy celebrating their victory to mount proper pickets. As it turned out, we did not need to worry, for the Mexicans brought the horses to us.

The plan had been for me to rest and recover my strength during my first full day with Norton. Hamish and some of the other warriors would steal horses overnight and we would set off the next morning. I was happy for him to take all the risk and it was good to catch up with my old friend. At worst if things went awry getting the mounts, we could travel north on foot and I could disguise myself as an Indian again. It would not be the first time I had done that. I was dozing in one of the shelters when a bird call had my new companions scurrying about.

“What is it?” I asked, yawning.

“A Mexican patrol,” whispered Norton. “Lancers, they must be looking to clear any hostile Indians away so that they can get stone from the quarry again.” He clapped me on the shoulder and grinned. “We just need to lure them over here and then those horses are ours.”

I got up and went to see for myself. The Indian camp was in the trees next to another small creek that we were using for water. Small pockets of trees dotted the prairie but, looking for Indians, who always preferred to ambush their prey, the lancers were wisely staying well clear and keeping out in the open. There were six of them and I watched as an officer studied another grove of trees with his telescope. I suspected that as soon as they had spotted their quarry, one of the troopers would be despatched to bring some infantry and possibly a cannon, while the rest ensured that we did not make a run for it across the open ground. “Well I don’t see how we are going to get them to come close,” I murmured.

“That is easy,” explained Norton. “We use you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling suddenly alarmed.

“They know you were captured by us when we killed your guard. They will think we have held you prisoner ever since. You just need to go out there and shout that you have escaped from us and ask to be taken back to Goliad.”

“We should tie his hands so that he is like we found him,” added Hamish.

“To hell with that!” I exploded. “I am not going out in front of lancers trussed up like some bloody fowl for the oven, they’ll run me through as soon as look at me. Look, surely it would be better to stick to our original plan and go and get some horses after dark.”

“No,” insisted Norton. “If they ride around the other side of the creek, they will see our shelters and then we will have lost the element of surprise. It would be better for you to attract them. There are only six; we will kill them all if you can get them close enough.”

Reluctantly, I agreed, we did not really have a choice. I would not let them tie my hands but had them behind my back as though they were still bound. It was then I discovered that there were only five muskets between them; two of the warriors were using bows and arrows instead. The only weapon they could spare me was a large knife that I hid in the back of my belt. As I walked out into the open prairie my throat was dry, but not due to thirst. This felt a mad venture, reliant on five men hitting each of their fast-moving and mounted targets with notoriously inaccurate muskets. It would only take one of them to miss for me to end up skewered on a twelve-foot steel-tipped pole

“Stagger about, Flashman,” hissed Norton. “You have been on the run, remember?”

Obediently, I tottered about as I took a deep breath and yelled for help in Spanish. They heard my distant bellow instantly and I watched as one pointed in my direction. The officer got his glass out to study me and I duly staggered and collapsed down on my knees like an exhausted fugitive. I could hear whispering in the nearby trees as the marksmen argued over the best cover. “Come on, you bastards,” I murmured to myself. I have never liked lancers and wanted to touch the scar on my thigh from when I was attacked by the Polish variety in Spain.

If we were hoping that they would trot conveniently up to where I kneeled, we were to be disappointed. Mexican lancers had not got to be their elite horsemen for nothing and they must have been used to avoiding Indian ambushes. Like a pack of wolves they separated, one pair coming straight on, while the other two approached on either flank. Even then they did not ride together; the front horseman was some ten yards in front of the other, who would give him cover. I quickly realised that stealing their mounts would be no easy task.

“Who are you?” shouted the officer who led the central pair. I weakly shouted back something that was deliberately incoherent to get him to come closer. The pair to the officer’s left were closest to the trees and while the front man was studying me, his mate was looking carefully at the undergrowth. The Indians should be able to shoot them, I thought, if they were not spotted first. It was the ones to the officer’s right who worried me. They were circling around so that I was between them and the Indians. It would take some exceptional shooting to miss me and hit them. “Who are you?” the officer repeated. He was now just fifty yards away, his lance lowered in readiness and this time I did not think I could avoid giving him an answer.

The trouble was I was not sure that the truth in this case would serve. If I told him that I was an escaped American, the chances were that they would just kill me out of hand anyway. I stared down, looking for some inspiration and found the answer right under my nose. I was still wearing the blue coat I had taken at the Alamo. It might be covered in mud and stone dust, but I thought it was still recognisable as Mexican army issue. Surely they would not kill one of their own?

“I am a Mexican soldier,” I shouted. “I was with the president at the Alamo, but was sent with supplies to Goliad. We were ambushed by those cursed Indians on the way. Have you found any others from our column?”

I thought that finishing with that question was a convincing touch, but the officer was still suspicious. “How do I know you were at the Alamo? What regiment were you in?”

I had no idea how to answer the second question and so I concentrated on the first. “The invaders used to fire a cannon three times a day, just after dawn, at midday and just before dusk. When we beat the traitors, we piled their bodies into two huge pyres near the south wall.”

At last he seemed convinced and, raising his lance point, he trotted his horse forward. “We have not seen anyone else,” he told me and then he frowned as he must have remembered that I had still not answered his earlier question. “Are you with the Toluca regiment?” he enquired, casually.

He was only twenty yards off now and I glanced nervously into the trees. Why hadn’t they opened fire? “Yes, that’s right, I am a sergeant in the Toluca,” I replied, thinking that such a rank would explain my greying hair. Too late I realised that the question was a trap. In the blink of the eye the lance was once more at the horizontal. As the officer shouted out a warning to his men, he spurred his horse forward. I was almost mesmerised by the steel lance point hurtling towards my chest. Then I threw myself to one side as everything happened at once.

Gunfire thundered out from the trees just behind me. My eyes locked on the officer charging towards me; he was hit in the chest, his body flung from the saddle while the lance stuck in the grass just a few feet from where I stood. Frantically, I glanced around. The two horsemen to my right were both down, one with his wounded horse on top of him. An Indian ran out with a tomahawk to despatch the rider. The two horsemen to my left, furthest from the ambush, were already wheeling their mounts around and heading back out into the prairie. It was the horseman following the officer who now worried me. He was not wheeling away and showed no sign of being wounded from the recent volley of shots.

Already he was lowering his weapon and he gave a roar as he spurred his mount forward. I knew that to run now would be fatal and so I dropped the knife, which would be useless, and instead picked up the fallen lance. By the time I had got the business end pointing at my assailant he was only ten yards away and closing fast. I pushed the spear out in front of me as far as I could and tried to yell a challenge of my own. It sounded more like a bear being gelded, but while it did not deter the lancer, it did his mount. Horses are not stupid; they will never charge into an infantry square lined with sharp bayonets and this one did not like the look of the lance point aimed at its chest. It whinnied in panic and tried to pull up, and when its rider dug in his heels to urge the creature on, the horse reared up in confusion. The lancer had to pull up his weapon to stay in the saddle and, seeing the opportunity, I charged forward determined to give him a taste of his own medicine. As I ran, I heard a ‘zeep’ noise over my head and then my prey was falling from the saddle, an arrow embedded deeply in his chest. I just had time to grab the reins of the horse and sooth the animal before it tried to bolt.

In a matter of moments four of the lancers were either dead or soon would be. One of their horses was dying too, but we still had the other three. The two surviving horsemen, having seen the fate of their fellows, wheeled about and headed back to Goliad.

Norton looked up at the sky. “I doubt that they will get any infantry here until early tomorrow, but they will send out patrols looking for you. They will guess that you are heading north. You had better be on your way.”

“What about you?” I asked.

Norton grinned, “It was good of them to supply a spare horse for me so I will not slow down the rest of my band. We will head south,” he gestured to the creek, “in the stream for a while so that we do not leave a trail for them to follow. We will be long gone by the time they get back.” He stepped forward and shook my hand, “It was good to see you again, Thomas. Give my regards to your wife when you see her.”

I realised that I had not got around to telling him about George Norton and how his namesake had driven us to leave the country, but there was no time for that now. London felt a lifetime away. Looking across at the rudimentary shelters that they had been living in when I found them, I wondered if he missed his old life. “Why don’t you come with us?” I blurted out. “Come with me to Louisiana and then on to New York. I will pay for your passage home and then you can see Dunfermline again.”

For a moment he looked wistful as he considered it. He stared across at where two of the women were hastily packing belongings ready to move and then shook his head. “There is nothing for me there anymore,” he said quietly. “My place is here now, but look after my boy for me. He is all I have left.” He took a deep breath and then forced another smile across his features. “When you get home,” he added, “raise a glass of good whisky to my memory.”