Darkness came as a friend. He heard a horse moving very near, possibly no more than fifty feet away. But James could not see him or his rider, nor could the horseman see James. He held still as death, taking short breaths and holding them. The horseman passed on by and soon was gone.

James sat up, finally, as the moon arose cold and bright over the heavy thicket. He took stock of his situation and found it bleak. Here he was afoot, without food, in a part of the country he had never seen, surrounded by Mexican soldiers on the lookout for him. He had not found Michael and now knew there was no hope whatever that he would. He would do well if he got out alive himself. The only thing in his favor was that he had kept his rifle and his shot pouch and powder horn.

He waited until he had heard no sound of the horsemen for what he thought had been an hour or more. Then he got to his feet and found the creek. If he followed it upstream, it would lead him in a generally northerly direction. That was as good as he could ask for, under the circumstances. Maybe by daylight he could put some miles behind him.

He had a lot of miles to travel.

XXIII

ISAAC BLACKWOOD stood on a narrow riflemen’s walkway behind the high stone wall and stared out over the town of San Antonio de Bexar, beyond the river that ran almost beside the mission compound. He could see Mexican people leaving afoot, in ox carts, and on horseback, most of them heading eastward. Rumors had been circulating for days that Santa Anna had crossed the Rio Grande at Laredo and was on his way with a huge army. Most of the officers had taken the reports with skepticism if not outright disbelief. It seemed only logical that Santa Anna would wait for spring, for the grass. To march northward into Texas now, in the dead of a wet, cold, and miserable winter, without fresh grass for the horses along the way, seemed highly improbable for a man who had Santa Anna’s reputation as a military strategist. There was a tendency among some of the officers like Travis to dismiss any report of Mexican origin simply because it was Mexican.

But the Mexican people of Bexar seemed to believe it, for many were putting the town behind them. They remembered too well the storming of Mexican troops by the Texans in December, and the carnage that campaign had wrought. They did not want to stay and witness another like it. Isaac had a cold feeling in his stomach as he watched the exodus. Some would say good riddance; they wished all the Mexicans would leave. But Isaac took it as a bad omen.

Down in the open plaza within the fortress walls he watched Elizandro Zaragosa standing with his son, a boy Isaac took to be around sixteen. He had heard him called Manuel. The two were arguing with considerable emotion. Isaac could hear the words but did not understand them, for he had never seen any need to learn Spanish. He surmised by the pointing and other movement of the hands that Zaragosa was telling the boy to leave, and the boy was begging his father to let him stay. At length the argument ended. Isaac watched the two embrace each other. The boy mounted a nice-looking black horse and rode out the open gate, looking back over his shoulder. Isaac thought he was crying. Zaragosa followed his son to the gate and stood watching him as he rode across the wooden bridge toward the heart of the town, the old San Fernando cathedral, and the main plaza. When the Mexican finally turned, his dark eyes were sad.