Forty-three
Santa Anna turned to his left upon entering the Alamo. He walked across the wooden bridge over the irrigation ditch and then followed the wall to the officers’ quarters. He looked in, sniffed at the sight of the sprawled and mutilated bodies, and walked on. At the north wall, he stopped and stared up at Travis’s body.
“Colonel Travis, sir,” he was informed. Travis’s body had not been hacked on. Neither had the body of Bowie or Crockett. Most of the other dead were unrecognizable.
“One shot through the head,” Santa Anna said. “I wonder if he killed himself in despair?”
Some historians have toyed with that theory, but reports from Mexican soldiers who were there, both officers and enlisted men, state unequivocally that William Travis fought bravely and was felled by a shot from a Mexican rifle. He did not commit suicide.
Santa Anna shrugged his shoulders and walked on, after giving this command, “Separate the bodies of my brave fallen from this Texas rabble. I wish my men to be buried with dignity.”
They were not. Reports state that many of them were tossed into the beds of wagons, taken some distance from town, and left to rot and be eaten by animals while others were simply rolled into ditches and others thrown into the river.
Santa Anna looked up at the flag that still fluttered proudly over the dead defenders of the Alamo. “Take down that goddamn flag!” he ordered.
What happened to the flag the men from Gonzales brought with them to fly over the mission is unknown. The only flag to survive was the flag the volunteers from New Orleans brought with them. It read: THE FIRST COMPANY OF TEXAN VOLUNTEERS FROM NEW ORLEANS. It was sent to Mexico City.
Santa Anna and escort left the site of Travis’s death and walked over to the east wall, to the artillerymen’s quarters. He looked in. Many of the bodies had been hacked with machetes so fiercely they resembled nothing more than heaps of bloody rags. From there he walked to the edge of the hospital building and his eyes narrowed and his lips turned to cruel slits when he saw Davy Crockett’s big hand still locked in place around the sergeant’s throat.
“Get that hand away from the throat of that brave soldier,” he ordered.
“We tried, sir,” a lieutenant said. “The fingers are in a death grip.”
Santa Anna turned cruel eyes on the officer. “Then either break the fingers free or cut them free.”
“Yes, sir.”
Santa Anna turned to go and stopped, looking back at the buckskin-clad frontiersman. “Who is that man?”
“Davy Crockett, sir.”
Santa Anna grunted. “He wasn’t as tough as he thought he was, was he?”
All present wisely decided not to comment on that rather ridiculous question. Any fool could plainly see that Davy Crockett had personally killed twenty-five or thirty soldiers in this spot alone before he was bayoneted to death.
Several senior sergeants cut their eyes to one another, then looked Heavenward. Remarks like that only made them believe more firmly that most officers were so stupid they needed help to piss.
Santa Anna looked toward the church, toward a group of men guarding the entrance. “Prisoners? I said no prisoners.”
“Women and children and two black slaves, sir.”
“Ahh! Well, we’ll see about them in a bit.” He pointed to another building. “What’s over there that is so interesting men must gather around and gawk?”
“The body of Jim Bowie, sir.”
Santa Anna gave one more look at Crockett’s badly mutilated body and then walked over and looked in. Sam had been removed to the church. Bowie’s body still lay on the blood-soaked blankets.
“Start the men gathering wood to burn the bodies,” Santa Anna ordered.
“The commanders, sir?” he was asked.
“The what?”
“Travis, Crockett, and Bowie?”
“What about them?”
“Do we, ah... bury them or, ah... ?”
“Burn them with the rest of this Texas rabble!”
* * *
It was slow going for Jamie. Several times he’d had to very quickly find hiding places from the roaming Mexican patrols. Finally he decided to ride parallel from the road, staying some five or six miles south of it and ride cross-country. By doing that, he cut down the chances of being spotted by any Mexican patrol. It slowed him considerably, for the country was rough, but Bowie’s horse was a stayer, and he loved the trail.
Jamie had more than ample provisions, for Ruiz had insisted on outfitting him as if he were going on some far-flung expedition. It was almost seventy miles to Gonzales, and Jamie was not going to kill a good horse in some wild ride. Jamie had no news to tell the citizens of Gonzales; he did not know if any final battle had taken place or not. So he took his time, the pouch containing the precious last words from the defenders of the Alamo under his buckskin shirt, next to his flesh.
When the sun was directly overhead, the heavy thought came to Jamie that it was probably all over back at the mission. There was no way that one hundred and eighty-odd men could withstand for long a sustained charge from thousands of the enemy. He sagged in the saddle, saddened by that thought. Jamie had made many good friends with the men of the Alamo during the short time he’d been there. If indeed they were gone, their memory was not, and would never be as long as he was alive.
Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Dickerson, Esparza, Walker, Evans, Bonham, Jameson, Fuqua, Pollard, Holland, Cloud, Autry, Martin, Kimball, McGregor, Baugh... and all the others.
Jamie began angling more closely to the main east/ west road, for he knew that the farther he rode away from San Antonio, the less likely the chances of running into any Mexican patrols. The Mexican army had learned the hard way that small patrols did not last long roaming about alone in the Texas countryside. Those that were sent out had a habit of not returning. And never being seen again.
He decided he would make his camp for that evening at about the midpoint between San Antonio and Gonzales. Along the banks of the Guadalupe River.