James saw that most of the Texan force had swept on ahead of him. He felt compelled to move forward, to try to catch up. But shortly he came upon a familiar figure. Young Manuel Zaragosa stood with a smoking rifle at arm’s length, looking down upon a Mexican officer who lay on the ground, one hand clutching weakly at the air. Blood ran from the officer’s mouth. James recognized the man even before Manuel turned his tear-streaked face upward to tell him, “He was my father’s good friend. His name is Díaz, and I shot him. Now I wish I had not.”

James remembered. This was the Díaz who as a sergeant had given him and the family so much trouble when they had first entered Texas, who had jailed James and Frank for a time in Nacogdoches, before Andrew and Elizandro Zaragosa had come to free them.

He knelt. The bullet had taken Díaz high in the chest. He was still alive, but barely.

Manuel asked in a breaking voice, “Can we help him?”

James shook his head. “I don’t think so, but we can try.”

A couple of men in buckskin came trotting up. They gave Díaz a quick glance. One of them said, “That Meskin’s not dead yet.”

The other one pointed his rifle at Díaz’s head and fired. James jumped back at the explosion.

“Now he’s dead,” the second man said. He gave Manuel a suspicious look. “This boy is Meskin too. Is he one of them?”

James moved quickly in front of Manuel. “He’s one of us. He’s with me.”

“One of them brown-skinned bastards looks just like another one to me,” the man said. “We ought to kill every one of them while we got the chance.”

James brought his rifle up, pointing at the man’s belly. “You’ll have to kill me first.”

The first man tugged at the other’s sleeve. “There’s aplenty more ahead yonder. Let’s go.”

Manuel had paled at the shot that killed Díaz. Now he turned and lost what little he had eaten that day. James waited. He saw no reason to go any farther after the rest of the Texan troops. The outcome was no longer in doubt. Let those who still had a taste for blood continue the chase. The battle had been won.

“You’d better stay with me,” he told Manuel. “Somebody else may mistake you for a Santanista and kill you. I think we’ve both had enough, anyway.”

Manuel nodded grimly and turned away from the body of Lieutenant Díaz. James pointed back in the direction from which he had come. “Let’s go find Andrew.”

THE SHOOTING went on sporadically until darkness finally forced a halt to the killing and Texan soldiers came straggling back. No semblance of company formations remained. Once the shooting had begun, they had become individual fighting men, each going his own way. Had Santa Anna had a few disciplined cavalry units with him, and these had remained cool-headed, they might have made short work of the disorganized Texas force. On another day, or even earlier in the same day, his foot soldiers might have held the line and turned the Texan advance into a rout. But his men had struggled against the elements all the way across Texas, and they were decimated by illness and fatigue. The reinforcements brought that morning by General Cós were especially weary from a nightlong forced march. Santa Anna’s arrogant over-confidence had caused him to let down his guard and had condemned fully half of his force to a violent death. His losses on the field of San Jacinto were comparable in number to the Texan losses in the Alamo and at Goliad.