Remember the Alamo Part 31

"And mi madre, Antonia? I fear, indeed, that she will lose her senses.

She will not speak to Thomas, nor even to me. She has not said a prayer since Jack's death. She cannot sleep. I am afraid of her, Antonia."

"To-night we are to move further east; perhaps the journey may waken her out of this trance of grief. I can see that our father is wretched about her; and Thomas wanders in and out of the room as if his heart was broken."

"Thomas loved Jack. Luis told me that he sat with him and Lopez, and that he sobbed like a woman. But, also, he means a great revenge. None of the men slept last night. They stood by the camp-fires talking.

Sometimes I went to the door and looked out. How awful they were in the blaze and darkness! I think, indeed, they could have conquered Santa Anna very easily."

Isabel had not misjudged the spirit of the camp. The news of the ma.s.sacre at Goliad was answered by a call for vengeance that nothing but vengeance could satisfy. On the following day Houston addressed his little army. He reminded them that they were the children of the heroes who fought for liberty at Yorktown, and Saratoga, and Bunker Hill. He made a soul-stirring review of the events that had pa.s.sed; he explained to them their situation, and the designs of the enemy, and how he proposed to meet them.

His voice, loud as a trumpet with a silver sound, inspired all who heard it with courage. His large, bright visage, serious but hopeful, seemed to sun the camp. "They live too long," he cried, "who outlive freedom.

And I promise you that you shall have a full cup of vengeance. For every man that fell fighting at the Alamo, for every one treacherously slaughtered at Goliad, you shall be satisfied. If I seem to be flying before the enemy now, it is for his destruction. Three Mexican armies united, we cannot fight. We can fight them singly. And every mile we make them follow us weakens them, separates them, confuses them. The low lands of the Brazos, the unfordable streams, the mora.s.ses, the pathless woods, are in league with us. And we must place our women and children in safety. Even if we have to carry them to General Gaines and the United States troops, we must protect them, first of all. I believe that we shall win our freedom with our own hands; but if the worst come, and we have to fall back to the Sabine, we shall find friends and backers there. I know President Jackson, my old general, the unconquered Christian Mars! Do you think he will desert his countrymen? Never! If we should need help, he has provided it. And the freedom of Texas is sure and certain. It is at hand. Prepare to achieve it. We shall take up our march eastward in three hours."

Ringing shouts answered the summons. The camp was in a tumult of preparation immediately; Houston was lending his great physical strength to the mechanical difficulties to be encountered. A crowd of men was around. Suddenly a woman touched him on the arm, and he straightened himself and looked at her.

"You will kill Santa Anna, General? You will kill this fiend who has escaped from h.e.l.l! By the mother of Christ, I ask it."

"My dear madam!"

He was so moved with pity that he could not for a moment or two give her any stronger a.s.surance. For this suppliant, pallid and frenzied with sorrow, was the once beautiful Senora Worth. He looked at her hollow eyes, and shrunk form, and worn clothing, and remembered with a pang, the lovely, gracious lady clad in satin and lace, with a jewelled comb in her fine hair and a jewelled fan in her beautiful hands, and a wave of pity and anger pa.s.sed like a flame over his face.

"By the memory of my own dear mother, Senora, I will make Santa Anna pay the full price of his cruelties."

"Thank you, Senor"; and she glided away with her tearless eyes fixed upon the curl of black hair in her open palm.

CHAPTER XVI. THE LOADSTONE IN THE BREAST.

"But to the hero, when his sword Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard.

The thanks of millions yet to be,"

"Who battled for the true and just,

"And grasps the skirts of happy chance, And b.r.e.a.s.t.s the blows of circ.u.mstance.

"And lives to clutch the golden keys, To mould a mighty state's decrees."

The memorial of wrongs, which resulted in the Declaration of Texan Independence, was drawn up with statesmanlike ability by David G.

Burnett, a native of New Jersey, a man of great learning, dignity, and experience; who, as early as 1806, sailed from New York to join Miranda in his effort to give Spanish America liberty. The paper need not be quoted here. It gave the greatest prominence to the refusal of trial by jury, the failure too establish a system of public education, the tyranny of military law, the demand that the colonists should give up arms necessary for their protection or their sustenance, the inciting of the Indians to ma.s.sacre the American settlers, and the refusal of the right to wors.h.i.+p the Almighty according to the dictates of their own consciences. Burnett was elected Governor, and Houston felt that he could now give his whole attention to military affairs.

The seat of Government was removed to Harrisburg, a small place on the Buffalo Bayou; and Houston was sure that this change would cause Santa Anna to diverge from his route to Nacogdoches. He dispatched orders to the men scattered up and down the Brazos from Was.h.i.+ngton to Fort Bend--a distance of eighty miles--to join him on the march to Harrisburg, and he struck his own camp at the time he had specified.

In less than twenty-four hours they reached San Felipe, a distance of twenty-eight miles. The suffering of the women and children on that march can never be told. Acts of heroism on the part of the men and of fort.i.tude on the part of the women that are almost incredible, marked every step of the way. The Senora sat in her wagon, speechless, and lost in a maze of melancholy anguish. She did not seem to heed want, or cold, or wet, or the utter misery of her surroundings. Her soul had concentrated all its consciousness upon the strand of hair she continually smoothed through her fingers. Dr. Worth, in his capacity of physician, accompanied the flying families, and he was thus able to pay some attention to his distraught wife; but she answered nothing he said to her. If she looked at him, her eyes either flamed with anger, or expressed something of the terror to be seen in the eyes of a hunted animal. It was evident that her childish intelligence had seized upon him as the most obvious cause of all her loss and misery.

The condition of a wife so beloved almost broke his heart. The tragic death of his dear son was not so hard to endure as this living woe at his side. And when they reached San Felipe and found it in ashes, a bitter cry of hopeless suffering came from every woman's lips. They had thought to find there a little food, and a day's sheltered resting-place. Even Antonia's brave soul fainted, at the want and suffering around her. She had gold, but it could not buy bread for the little ones, weeping with hunger and terrified by the fretfulness of mothers suffering the pangs of want and in the last stage of human weariness.

It was on this night Houston wrote: "I will do the best I can; but be a.s.sured the fame of Jackson could never compensate me for my anxiety and mental pain." And yet, when he was told that a blind woman and her seven children had been pa.s.sed by, and did not know the enemy were approaching, he delayed the march until men had been sent back to bring them into safety.

During these days of grief and privation Isabel's nature grew to its finest proportions. Her patient efforts to arouse her mother, and her cheerfulness under the loss of all comforts, were delightful. Besides which, she had an inexhaustible fund of sympathy for the babies. She was never without one in her arms. Three mothers, who had died on the road, left their children to her care. And it was wonderful and pitiful to see the delicately nurtured girl, making all kinds of efforts to secure little necessaries for the children she had elected to care for.

"The Holy Mother helps me," she said to, Antonia. "She makes the poor little ones good, and I am not very tired."

At San Felipe they were joined by nearly one hundred men, who also brought word that a fine company were advancing to their aid from Mississippi, under General Quitman; and that two large cannon, sent by the people of Cincinnati, were within a few miles. And thus hoping and fearing, hungry and weary to the death, they reached, on the 16th of April, after a march of eighteen miles, a place called McArley's. They had come over a boggy prairie under a cold rain, and were depressed beyond expression. But there was a little shelter here for the women and children to sleep under. The men camped in the open. They had not a tent in their possession.

About ten o'clock that night, Doctor Worth was sitting with his wife and children and Antonia in one corner of a room in a deserted cabin. He had the Senora's wasted hand in his own, and was talking to her. She sat in apathetic silence. It was impossible to tell whether she heard or understood him.

"I wonder where Isabel is," said Antonia; and with the words the girl entered the room. She had in her arms a little lad of four years old, suffering the tortures of croup.

"Mi madre," she cried, "you know how to save him! He is dying! Save him!

Listen to me! The Holy Mother says so"; and she laid the child on her knee.

A change like a flash of light pa.s.sed over the Senora's face. "The poor little one!" Her motherly instincts crushed down everything else. In the child's agony she forgot her own grief. With glad hearts the doctor and Antonia encouraged her in her good work, and when at length the sufferer had been relieved and was sleeping against her breast, the Senora had wept. The stone from her heart had been rolled away by a little child.

Her own selfish sorrow had been buried in a wave of holy, unselfish maternal affection. The key to her nature had been found, and henceforward Isabel brought to her every suffering baby.

On the next day they marched ten miles through a heavy rain, and arrived at Burnett's settlement. The women had shelter, the men slept on the wet ground--took the prairie without cover--with their arms in their hands.

They knew they were in the vicinity of Santa Anna, and all were ready to answer in an instant the three taps of the drum, which was the only instrument of martial music in the camp, and which was never touched but by Houston.

Another day of eighteen miles brought them to within a short distance of Harrisburg. Santa Anna had just been there, and the place was in ashes.

It was evident to all, now, that the day and the hour was at hand.

Houston first thought of the two hundred families he had in charge, and they were quickly taken over the bayou. When he had seen the last one in this comparative safety, he uttered so fervent a "Thank G.o.d!" that the men around unconsciously repeated it. The bayou though narrow was twenty feet deep, and the very home of alligators. There was only one small bridge in the vicinity. He intended its destruction, and thus to make his little band and the deep, dangerous stream a double barrier between the Mexicans and the women and children beyond them. It was after this duty he wrote:

"This morning we are in preparation to meet Santa Anna. We will only be about seven hundred to march, besides the camp guard. But we go to conquest. The troops are in fine spirits, and now is the time for action. I leave the result in the hands of an all-wise G.o.d, and I rely confidently in his Providence.

"SAM HOUSTON."[5]

The women and children, under a competent guide, continued their march eastward. But they were worn out. Many were unable to put their feet to the ground. The wagons were crowded with these helpless ones. The Senora had so far recovered as to understand that within a few hours Santa Anna and the Americans must meet. And, mentally led by Isabel's pa.s.sionate hatred, she now showed a vindictiveness beyond that of any other woman.

She spent hours upon her knees, imploring the saints, and the stars, and the angel Michael, to fight against Santa Anna. To Isabel she whispered, "I have even informed the evil one where he may be found. The wretch who ordered such infamies! He poisons the air of the whole world as he goes through it. I shall never be happy till I know that he is in purgatory.

He will be hated even there--and in a worse place, too. Yes, it is pleasant to think of that! There will be many accusers of him there.

I shall comfort myself with imagining his punishment. Isabel, do you believe with your heart that Senor Houston and the Americans will be strong enough to kill him?"

"Mi madre, I know it."

"Then do be a little delighted. How can you bear things with such a provoking indifference? But as Luis is safe--"

"Chito! Chito! Do not be cruel, mi madre. I would stab Santa Anna with my own hands--very slowly, I would stab him. It would be so sweet. The Sisters told me of a woman in the Holy Book, who smiled upon the one she hated, and gave him milk and b.u.t.ter, and when he slept, drove a great nail through his temples. I know how she felt. What a feast it would be, to strike, and strike, and strike! I could drive ten, twenty, fifty nails, into Santa Anna, when I think of Juan."

No one had before dared to breathe her boy's name in her hearing. She herself had never spoken it. It fell upon the ears of both women like a strain of forgotten music. They looked at each other with eyes that stirred memory and love to their sweetest depths. Almost in whispers they began to talk of the dead boy, to recall how lovable, how charming, how affectionate, how obedient he had been. Then the Senora broke open the seals of her sorrow, and, with bitter reproaches on herself, confessed that the kiss she had denied her Juan was a load of anguish upon her heart that she could not bear.

"If I had only blessed him," she moaned; "I had saved him from his misfortune. A mother's blessing is such a holy thing! And he knelt at my knees, and begged it. I can see his eyes in the darkness, when my eyes are shut. I can hear his voice when I am asleep. Isabel, I shall never be happy till I see Juan again, and say to him, 'Forgive me, dear one, forgive me, for I have suffered.'"

Both were weeping, but Isabel said, bravely: "I am sure that Juan does not blame you now, mi madre. In the other world one understands better.

And remember, also, the letter which he wrote you. His last thought was yours. He fell with your name on his lips. These things are certain. And was it not good of Dare to die with him? A friend like that! Out of the tale-books who ever hears of such a thing? Antonia has wept much. In the nights, when she thinks I am asleep, I hear her. Have you seen that she has grown white and thin? I think that my father is very unhappy about her."

"In an hour of mercy may the merciful One remember Dare Grant! I will pray for his peace as long as I live. If he had left Juan--if he had come back alone--I think indeed I should have hated him."