Ironically, reinforcements not many miles away would have tripled Santa Anna’s forces had the Texan attack waited much longer. But Houston had taken precautions against that. He had sent scout Deaf Smith to burn the bridge over which Cós and his men had marched early that morning. Any further Mexican reinforcements would have had to swim or find a boat.

In burning the bridge, Houston had not only prevented any further reinforcement of Santa Anna’s troops but had eliminated any chance of escape for his own, had the battle gone the other way.

Late on the day after the battle, a handful of men brought in some straggling prisoners. One of them was dressed much like the rest of the common soldiers, but at sight of him many of the earlier prisoners began to show excitement. Several said, “It is el presidente. It is Santa Anna!”

Houston had had two horses shot from under him in the fight and now lay in pain at the foot of a live oak tree, one ankle shattered by a Mexican musket ball. But with dignity he accepted the president’s surrender.

The proud military dictator, who had once declared that it was a soldier’s great privilege to die for him, was reduced to pleading that he not be killed. While other Mexicans cursed him for cowardice, he signed away Mexico’s claim on Texas in return for Houston sparing his life.

In camp that night, James and Andrew and Sly Shipman began making plans to return home. It was past time to be planting their corn.

XXVIII

JAMES WAS concerned about the lateness of planting. If an early frost should come before the crops matured, part or all might be lost. But Andrew had been here more than fifteen years. He said the odds were that they would make a crop despite the late start. Enough, at least, to see them through the next winter. After that there would be another spring, a new beginning, just as Texas had been given a new beginning.

Gamble or not, the Lewis families were more fortunate than many whose homes had been in the path of Santa Anna’s advancing armies. What the retreating Texans had not burned to deprive the Santanistas of their use, the Mexicans had usually torched for their own reasons. Evidently the troops had not passed this way, for the Lewises found their cabins, sheds, and pens intact. They managed to find and drive back most of their livestock that had strayed up or down the Colorado River.

James had lost Walker, and he had never seen the borrowed sorrel again once he turned him over to a cavalry officer for the attack on San Jacinto. He did not know whether the horse had survived. If it had, the chances were that it would seek its way back to its original home the first time it was turned loose. Horses had a strong homing instinct. James was fortunate in catching a Mexican cavalry horse after the battle. It had brought him home. Andrew had gotten his own horse back, once the officer who had borrowed him had no more use for him.