Through March’s third gray dawn, a horseman veered
across the prairie, slowing on a swell
of shrubby earth. The Alamo appeared
past sawtooth tents. Horse and rider could smell
the breakfast fires. Above the fort, the pale
blue flag brought from New Orleans gave no doubt
that Travis and his garrison held out.
Within the mission, the distant pop and rattle
made sentries stir. “The gate! Open the gate!”
The oak began to groan, as sounds of battle
were answered from the walls. With one last great
exertion, the small pony bore its freight
over the lunette spikes, with all the grace
of a champion at a fence in steeplechase.
The cheers died when the courier closed the door
to Travis’s headquarters. It was cold,
like its one occupant. “A ranger corps
has joined us, from Gonzalez,” Travis told
James Bonham. “Thirty men, no more.” His old
companion did not speak. “I take it, then,
that Fannin will be sending us no men.”
The Carolinian lit a flaring smoke;
the burst, in that room’s darkness, made his face
a gargoyle’s mask highlighted by a stroke
of storm light. “Fannin will not leave that place,
and I can’t blame him. It was quite a chase,
when I got through the lines. Four hundred men
might help us die. They cannot help us win.”
“I sent for reinforcements, not regrets,”
snapped Travis. Then he ran a weary hand
through tangled bangs. “Why am I wasting threats
on you? I just . . . I have a whole command
depending on me. It’s not what I planned,
it’s not at all . . .” His old friend offered him
one of two glasses filled up to the brim.
<snip>
At sunset on the fifth of March two weeks
of thumping cannonade abruptly stopped.
Around the guns, as ripples warp a creek’s
transparency around a pebble dropped
smack on its roof, the silence spread and lapped
the mission walls. A distant barking drifted
on winds across the quiet grass they sifted.
Inside the fort’s headquarters, below
the shadows that the candles animated,
sat all but two chiefs of the Alamo.
Captain John Baugh, the adjutant, waited
by Amos Pollard, surgeon of the ill-fated
contingent. Colonel Bonham made a wager
with Hiram Williamson, a sergeant major.
Elial Melton, quartermaster, paced
with nervous energy around the room.
Green Jameson sat and whittled. Blazeby chased
one drink with another, fighting the gloom,
the New Orleans Greys’ commander. Still as doom
sat Captain Robert White, of the Bexar Guards.
Beside him, Captain Baker shuffled cards.
Bill Harrison, the captain of the troop
from Tennessee, pulled a watch from his pocket;
the one “high private” found within his group
shared murmurs with him, Colonel David Crockett.
George Kimbell of Gonzalez squeezed a locket
that held his painted Prudence. Captain Carey
sat pert by Major Evans, slumped and weary.
The man whom they awaited paused alone
in his monastic cell. From that to this
alternative his glancing thoughts were thrown,
reflections from a watch a moving wrist
will flick across a room. He was depressed,
he was exhilarated with despair;
he brimmed with tenderness, he did not care.
Till now, somehow, he had known a cavalry
would sweep down and then sweep away the foe,
the way that gulls, appearing far from sea,
miraculous as a midsummer snow,
would sometimes plummet through a planted row,
saving a farm from locusts. Now he knew
that there would be no gulls. The crunching grew.
“Gentlemen.” Chairs scraped, as officers rose.
“At east.” With fluency, the young commander
had spoken once. He paused now, as he chose
each word. "When we received the initial tender
of terms, I chose – we chose – not to surrender,
knowing that the alternative would be the sword
if the enemy should take the fort.
"Until the last few days, I still believed
that reinforcements, sent from Goliad
to Bexar by Colonel Fannin, might have relieved
this fortress. Gentlemen, it is my sad
and bitter duty to report the bad
news that most of you already know:
there is no rescue for the Alamo.
"The massacre of Johnson’s captured men
by Santa Anna’s troops only a few days
ago near Goliad is proof again
our enemy is willing to disgrace
his uniform by murder. Now the face
of tyranny is seen behind the mask.
Why Texas fights, no one henceforth need ask.
“The silence of his guns may indicate
that Santa Anna’s ordered an attack
tonight, or tomorrow. The hour of our fate
is his to choose. We can’t survive a sack;
before we fall, however, we can make
his victory far worse than a retreat,
and his advance a progress to defeat.”
The men were silent. Travis took a breath,
resumed. “Our purpose, gentlemen, is clear.
Our enemies right now prepare our death;
our task’s to make that death a death we share,
leaving Santa Anna with few troops to spare.”
He acted confident, though deeply pained;
a virtue feigned can be a virtue gained.
