The Sea Hunters II: More True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks Page 17

  Until now, Houston had been content to retreat. Three months prior, when Santa Anna’s troops had poured across the Rio Grande, the Texan army consisted of a small garrison located at the Alamo at San Antonio, another at the fort at Goliad, and a small contingent of troops that had assembled at Gonzales.

  The Texans were outnumbered and outgunned.

  * * *

  “Sir,” Kent reported, “we have no shot for the guns.”

  “I was afraid that might happen,” Houston said. “I’ve had the men scrounge around. We managed to locate enough scrap metal and broken glass to give Santa Anna something to think about.”

  “Scrap metal?” Kent said in surprise.

  “Nails, broken horseshoes, and metal chain,” Houston said.

  Kent smiled. “I’d hate to be hit by that,” he said quietly.

  “In that case, Mr. Kent,” Houston said, “I’d stay to the rear of the sisters.”

  * * *

  When the sun rose on the morning of April 21, 1836, it was tinged a blood red. Afternoon brought with it a haze, making the light dim and the mood sleepy. The temperature was in the low seventies, and a light breeze blew the smoke from the fires at the Mexican encampment at San Jacinto toward Houston, who was camped less than a mile away. There had been a few small skirmishes earlier in the day, but for the most part it was quiet.

  “The smoke has lessened,” Houston noted. “They have finished their afternoon meal.”

  “Is that what you have been waiting for?” Kent asked.

  “No, Mr. Kent,” Houston said, “I’m waiting for them to bed down. We will attack at siesta time.”

  “Make sure guards are posted, then relieve the men,” Santa Anna ordered.

  * * *

  Santa Anna waved his hand at a horsefly, then opened the flap of his tent and walked inside. The heavy noon meal and three glasses of wine had made him sleepy. His quartermasters had liberated several pigs from the Texas countryside, and he and the troops had enjoyed fresh meat for the first time in a week.

  Standing by his cot, he removed his uniform and folded it over a wooden chair. Dressed in slightly dingy long underwear, he scratched a bug bite under his arm, then climbed under his smooth silk sheets and embraced his mistress.

  * * *

  Sam Houston was walking along a line of troops.

  “This is for Texas, men,” he said. “Move quietly forward, flanking the twin sisters. When you hear the sisters sing, we go straight to the center.”

  Houston stared at his men. They were a ragtag group dressed in fringed buckskin, dirty work clothes, even a few old uniforms left over from the Revolutionary War. For weapons they carried their personal black powder guns, knives, and swords. They were farmers, ranchers, prospectors, and blacksmiths.

  But they burned with the fervor of the righteous.

  “Yes, sir,” the troops said as one, “for Texas.”

  “And let every man remember the Alamo,” Houston added.

  The sister to the right sang first. A second later, her sibling cried out as well.

  Yelling at the top of their lungs, the Texans lunged into the fray, urged on by a soldier with a flute playing “In the Bower.”

  “Remember the Alamo — remember Goliad!” they shouted.

  It was three-thirty in the afternoon when the first load of nails shredded two Mexican tents on the far edge of the battlefield. The guns continued to fire until their barrels were cherry-red. Then a swarming horde of screaming Texans charged the Mexicans’ crude barricade. Black powder smoke filled the air, while bayonets and swords flashed through the haze. The Mexican troops tried to rouse themselves from their slumber, but they were unable to assemble before they were inundated by the determined Texans.

  “Into the center,” Houston screamed.

  As soon as he heard the first cannon fire, Santa Anna stumbled from his tent. All he could see were smoke and chaos. The element of surprise proved a strong equalizer. Eighteen minutes after the first shot was fired, the battle was over. The Mexicans suffered 630 dead, 208 wounded, and the rest were taken prisoner. Nine Texans died that day. Twenty-eight others, including Houston, were wounded.

  Santa Anna surrendered his army and any claim to Texas at San Jacinto, thanks in large part to the Twin Sisters.

  1865

  “Lemonade or whiskey,” Rob Harris, the proprietor of the Harris House, said.

  “Whiskey, but we’re a little short,” Graves said. “How much for the bottle?”

  Harris lifted the square glass bottle and made sure the cork was loose, then handed it over the front desk to Graves. “It’s on me, soldier.”

  “You’re a true Southern gentleman,” Harris said.

  “There’s some tin cups in the sideboard,” Harris said. “You boys make yourself comfortable on the porch. You can usually find some breeze there.”

  Graves collected the cups, then walked out onto the porch. Barnett was upstairs in his room, felled by the measles. Thomas, Pruitt, and Taylor were out back at the well pump, washing off the dust from the journey. Dan was dozing under the shade of an alder tree.

  Graves poured a tin cup of whiskey, then sat in a rocking chair. Taking a sip, he stared at the town and began to plan. Harrisburg was a thriving hamlet. Along with the Harris House were two other hotels, several stores, and a steam mill to hew raw lumber. The railroad depot, located at Magnolia and Manchester, consisted of the station, a machine shop, and yards where a few locomotives were stored. All told, there were a few hundred souls — some friendly, some not.

  A whistle from a steamer on Buffalo Bayou broke the silence, and Graves turned his head to the east. Buildings blocked his view, but he could see the trail of smoke from the stack. He watched the smoke travel north, then start east. The vessel was starting up Bray’s Bayou, the smaller stream directly in front of the hotel. She was on her way to Houston.

  Graves sipped the burning liquid. His eyes watered, and he wiped them on his sleeve. A skinny dog, little more than bones and fur, rolled in the dirt of Kellogg Street in front of the hotel. At the sound of an approaching wagon, the dog jumped to its feet and ran north along Nueces Street. The sun was down, and the sky was growing darker. To the east, Graves could just make out the first star of the coming night.

  “Henry,” Pruitt said, “you seem lost in your own world.” Pruitt was wiping his face with a threadbare cotton hand towel.

  “Just thinking,” Graves said, “about the sisters.”

  “While you were cleaning up, I reconnoitered,” Pruitt said. “There’s a wooded area north of the train station near Bray’s Bayou.”

  “What’s the land like?” Graves asked.

  “It’s rough,” Pruitt admitted, “but there’s a crude wagon path.”

  Sol Thomas climbed up the front steps. His face was fresh-scrubbed, and that made his swollen jaw more visible. “No dentist in town, but the blacksmith offered to help,” he said. “I declined.”

  “Here,” Graves said, pouring a cup of whiskey “this should help.”

  Thomas took the cup and downed it in a single gulp.

  Jack Taylor limped out of the front door onto the porch. “So how’s this going to work?” he asked.

  “Let me explain,” Graves said.

  * * *

  Just past midnight, with a crescent moon overhead, the men slipped one at a time from the hotel and met up at the stables. John Barnett had rustled himself out of bed, but he did not look good. In the dim light, he glowed a blotchy pale white. He and Dan were the only two not to partake of the whiskey, and it showed. The others seemed filled with an alcohol-fueled fervor. Dan just looked scared.

  “Matches?” Graves asked.

  “Got them,” Thomas said, “and the tools.”

  “I was just up at the station,” Taylor said. “It’s quiet.”

  “I walked the path an hour ago,” Graves said. “There’s nobody to the north of the train station — it’s clear all the way to Bray’s.”

  They mov
ed through the town like silent wraiths. Two blocks west, they turned. Two more west to Manchester Street, passing a few houses that were blissfully quiet. Turning north, they passed a few blocks of empty fields until they reached the station and found the Twin Sisters, still on their carriages amid a jumbled mass of other, larger cannon. The air smelled of gunpowder and grease, swamp soil and sweat. Graves stared for a second at the pair of famous cannon, then turned to Thomas.

  “I hear something,” Thomas whispered.

  “Get down,” Graves ordered.

  The men crouched alongside the landing.

  Two Union soldiers were stumbling along the tracks from east to west. They were safely in their cups after a night of liberty and oblivious to their surroundings. Singing an Irish ditty, they cut across a field outside the station, making their way northwest to their encampment three-quarters of a mile distant. Had they turned to the south, they might have been able to make out the men crouched along the platform. Instead, they stumbled toward home. Graves waited until they were out of sight before speaking.

  “That was close,” he said. “Let’s drag the guns from the pile and get out of here.”

  Feverishly, they began moving the cannon and their carriages into the darkness, Graves and Dan pulling on one, Pruitt, Thomas, and Taylor dragging the other. Barnett stumbled along in the rear, keeping watch.

  After moving a few hundred yards into the trees and bushes, they stopped not far from the bayou.

  “Gather some tinder,” Graves ordered Dan.

  Thomas removed the matches from a round metal container, then began to arrange the twigs and leaves Dan retrieved. Barnett was leaning against a tree, unable to be of help.

  “Henry, the wood of the carriages is good and dry,” he said slowly. “Won’t smoke much.”

  Graves nodded. “You just take it easy, John. We’ll handle the work.”

  Taylor removed one of the shovels from the wagon and limped a short distance away. He started poking the ground, seeking soft earth. Thomas broke a few more twigs into smaller pieces, then struck a match. It sputtered, then fizzled out. Removing a knife from his pocket, he shaved the sulfur from a half-dozen matches and piled them on some dried leaves. Positioning himself on his knees, he bent his head down next to the tinder.

  “Come on, now,” he whispered, as he struck another match.

  The match sparked, and he thrust it into the pile of sulfur, which burst into flames. The leaves ignited, and the small tinder began to burn. Thomas waited a few minutes, then began to fan the flames with his hat.

  Graves stared at the crescent moon. A few clouds passed in front, and then it was clear again. “Hotter than a smitty’s forge,” he noted.

  The whiskey the men had consumed was wearing off, and with it went the false bravado. If the nearby Union troops stumbled across their little operation, it could mean imprisonment, even death. It was time to move this along.

  “You find a spot?” he said to Taylor, who stepped into the light from the fire.

  “Got one, Henry,” Thomas whispered. “It’s near those pines over there.”

  “Light those cattails in the fire for torches,” Graves said. “Dan, you go with Jack and get the hole started.”

  Dan followed Taylor a short distance into the woods.

  “I have a good fire,” Thomas noted.

  “Then let’s start lifting these carriage pieces onto the Same,” Graves said.

  Taylor was soaked in sweat. The first few feet had been easy. Sandy soil and loose loam. Then the pair had struck a layer of solid soil. Now they were going down inch by inch.

  “Wish we had a pick,” Dan said easily. “Make this go quicker.”

  Graves poked in the fire with a stick. Dragging out a metal fitting, he waited until Pruitt poured water over the blackened metal, then reached down and tossed it aside. There was already a pile of metal plates and bolts, enough to fill a bucket.

  “Fill that empty bucket with what metal will fit,” Graves said to Pruitt, “then dump it in the bayou. Bring back a full bucket of water.”

  Pruitt bent down and began tossing the warm metal pieces into the bucket.

  Graves walked over to where the digging was progressing and whispered to Taylor, “How far you down?”

  “About three feet,” Taylor noted.

  “That’s deep enough. Help pull the twins over here and drop them in their grave.”

  Dan climbed from the hole. The cattails were almost out, and the light had grown dim. “Ain’t much of a hole, Mr. Taylor.”

  “No, it ain’t, Dan,” he said, “but it’ll have to do.”

  As if on cue, Graves, Pruitt, and Thomas appeared, dragging one of the cannon.

  “Jack,” Graves whispered, “you and Dan on one side, me and Sol on the other.”

  Walking the few feet to the hole, they tossed it in, then walked back and repeated the procedure with the second gun.

  “Ain’t much of a hole, Jack,” Graves said, grinning.

  “That soil was a damn shade harder than it looked, Henry,” Taylor said.

  Dan began to shovel dirt over the guns, as Graves stepped back and wiped his hands on his pants. “Let me have your pocketknife, Sol,” he said quietly.

  Sol reached into his pocket, removed the knife, and flipped it open. He handed it to Graves, who pricked his finger and handed it back. Thomas did the same, then handed it to Taylor, who reached up and handed it to Bamett.

  “Now, men,” Graves said, “this is a blood pact that we tell no one about any of this until such time as the Confederacy rises again.”

  The men touched fingers together.

  “The Twin Sisters stay hidden,” Taylor said, “until they are safe.”

  The men repeated the mantra.

  “Mark a few trees with the ax,” Graves said, “and spread leaves over the hole.”

  Taylor grabbed the ax and hacked marks into several nearby trees, while Pruitt and Thomas covered the area with leaves and branches. Graves walked a few yards to the east and stared into the distance. He could just make out a light inside a top-floor room of a three-story house in Harrisburg. Taking his bearings from all points on the compass, he walked back Barnett had turned the wagon around and was pointed back toward the tracks.

  “Let’s get on out of here,” Graves said quietly.

  1905: FORTY YEARS LATER

  “We’re here, John,” Graves said easily.

  Barnett was staring out the window. “Seems so long ago, Henry,” he said, “like it was a dream.”

  Graves and Barnett stepped off the train in Harrisburg into a vastly different world. Harrisburg was slowly being absorbed into Houston, and the area had been greatly built up in the last four decades. Graves had become a doctor, while Barnett was now a successful businessman in Gonzales. The men had aged and were no longer the wild-eyed youthful soldiers of 1865. Graves’s hair was more white than blond. Barnett, for his part, sported salt-and-pepper hair and a middle-aged paunch. Over the years, the pair had lost touch with Taylor and Thomas. It was rumored that Taylor had settled in Oklahoma in the land rush of 1889. It was said Sol Thomas had gone north to the Dakota Territories when gold was discovered, then died when he stepped out in the street in Deadwood during a bank robbery and caught a stray bullet. No one really knew. Dan had chosen to remain in Graves’s employment after he was freed. He had passed away in 1878 when an outbreak of yellow fever swept through the South.

  “Let’s start back at the Harris House,” Graves said, staring up as a Ford Model C backfired on the street outside, then puttered away.

  The two men walked the short distance to Myrtle Street, then looked around in surprise. The block where the hotel had been located had been razed. To the north was a new building with a sign that said “Harrisburg Electrical Cooperative.”

  “Let’s ask in there,” Graves said.

  Barnett nodded and followed Graves inside.

  The clerk at the counter looked up as the two men entered. “Can I help you?�
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  “There used to be a hotel named the Harris House,” Graves said, smiling. “You familiar with that?”

  “No,” the clerk said, “but hold on. Jeff,” he shouted in back.

  An older man walked out carrying a rag. He wiped his hands. The man was tall and lean. His hair was going to gray, and he had a neatly trimmed beard.

  “Jeff’s been around these parts forever,” the clerk said.

  “Do you know where the Harris House Hotel was located?” Graves asked.

  “I haven’t heard that name in thirty years,” Jeff said, “since just after the War of Northern Aggression.”

  “We stayed there just after the war,” Barnett offered.

  “After the war,” Jeff said. “You boys Yankees?”

  “No, sir,” Graves said, “rebels. I’m Dr. Henry Graves from Lometa, this here’s John Barnett of Gonzales.”

  Jeff nodded. “Good. I don’t trust Yankees.”

  “About the hotel,” Barnett said.

  “You men are two blocks south of where the old hotel was located,” Jeff said. “The streets were all changed ’bout ten years after the war when they relaid the railroad tracks. It’s all different around here now.”

  “The tracks were moved?” Graves said anxiously.

  “Sure enough,” Jeff said. “This city’s been all changed around since you was last here.”

  “There used to be a three-story house near the bayou,” Graves said quickly. “You know the house I mean?”

  “The old Valentine place,” Jeff said. “That’s still there. Three blocks north and two blocks west.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Barnett said.

  “No problem,” Jeff said. “If you need some more help finding something, you just give me a shout.”

  That day, Graves and Barnett searched for where the cannon were buried.