GARZA: But I’m worried, Excellency, that this Alamo thing might be differently interpreted. It didn’t happen in Tampico. It happened here, and norteamericanos interpret Béjar and Tejas differently from the way they do Tampico.
SANTA ANNA: Again you’re wrong. Our great victory here, and Urrea’s in Goliad, will show them that Tejas really is an indivisible part of Mexico. That they no longer have any interest in it. They never did.
GARZA: They think they did, and that’s what counts. Look at what the messenger said about the men at Goliad who are to be shot if your order prevails. Men from Georgia. From New Orleans. And Louisville. Irishmen. Poles. This is not a collection of random volunteers, like the Alamo.
SANTA ANNA (very persuasively, his voice low and controlled): The more reason they must be punished, and openly. See that the order to Urrea goes out promptly.
GARZA: Excellency, I must protest. I must.
SANTA ANNA: Are you a loyal mexicano? Or a damned norteamericano?
GARZA: I hope to be your governor of Tejas one of these days.
SANTA ANNA (laughing): And so you shall be, or someone like you. Because from now on, Tejas is forever mexicano.
GARZA: So I speak as a future governor … if things go well.
SANTA ANNA: I’m sure they will. With Béjar and Goliad in our hands, with our men in control of the coast, with the norteamericanos burning down their own towns—all we have to do is pin this Sam Houston down somewhere and finish him off. Clean out Nacogdoches and never again allow a norteamericano to live west of the Sabine.
GARZA: A large order, Excellency.
SANTA ANNA: It’s almost done. (Then, snapping his fingers): I’ll make you my district governor at Nacogdoches. You can guard our frontier.
GARZA: It is Nacogdoches, Excellency, that I’m worried about. Béjar and Goliad have fallen. Suppose you overtake Houston somewhere on the banks of the Brazos and wipe him out. Don’t you see that this drags you all the way to the Louisiana border, and as you approach there, it’s going to be like a spring? You compress it and compress it, and always it grows more powerful until … poof. It blows you apart.
SANTA ANNA: What do you mean?
GARZA: I mean simply this. That you can annihilate the Alamo in fair battle, and that’s acceptable. And you can defeat Fannin at Goliad, and that’s acceptable. But if you shoot the Goliad prisoners, and then march north, every man in Kentucky and Tennessee and Alabama and Mississippi is going to rally to the cause, so that when you reach the Sabine you will face the whole Estados Unidos.
SANTA ANNA: If the norteamericanos give me any more trouble, I may march all the way to Washington. The execution of the prisoners, that is a risk we must take. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, because I feel sure that when they see the irresistible force of our armies—and remember, Garza, I’ll have eight thousand shortly and they’ll have trouble mustering one thousand …
GARZA: Their thousand will be led by Sam Houston, and he’s no Fannin.
SANTA ANNA: I know little about him. What kind of man is he?
GARZA: Most of us have never seen him.
SANTA ANNA: What have you heard?
GARZA: He’s drunk most of the time, but very clear-eyed when sober. He fought with their President Jackson against the Indians, but he also loves the Indians and is just in his treatment of mexicanos. The norteamericanos I know find him unfathomable.
SANTA ANNA: Nothing but a frontier gallant.
GARZA: But if you proceed with the execution of the Goliad prisoners, Excellency, you place a terrible weapon in the hands of this Houston.
SANTA ANNA: What weapon?
GARZA: Revenge. Excellency, the norteamericanos may forget the Alamo in time. It was a fair fight and they lost. But they could never forget a massacre at Goliad. They will fight us every inch of the way. They’ll cut our supply lines, and our lines will be very long.
SANTA ANNA: Damnit, you sound like a yanqui.
GARZA: I want to be governor of a state that can be governed. If we make a just settlement now, bring men like Houston into a decent companionship …
SANTA ANNA (slowly and with careful reasoning): I have them by the throat, Garza. With reinforcements arriving every day, I have a chance to wipe them out. Another Zacatecas. Another Tampico. Teach them a terrible lesson, pacify them, and go back to governing Mexico as it should be governed. (A long pause) So the execution of the prisoners at Goliad must be seen as part of a grand design. All pieces fall into place if you look at it that way.
GARZA (pleading): Excellency, there’s one thing I haven’t told you … haven’t told anyone. But when you sent me into the Alamo to verify the bodies—Crockett and those—the first body I could name was that of my sister’s husband, Xavier Campbell, a good Catholic from Scotland.
SANTA ANNA: Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales … why do men from such places come to fight against us? What business have they in Mexico? (Then, gently): I am sorry for your sister. I shall send her a present, give her some land when this is over.
GARZA: My point is, Excellency, that at the spot which this dead Xavier Campbell defended lay nine dead mexicanos. When you cross the Brazos you will stand face to face with a thousand Xavier Campbells.
SANTA ANNA (as if he had not heard): So I want you, personally, to start riding right now with my message to General Urrea. Every prisoner he has must be shot. And if you do not report to me that this has been done, you will be shot.
• • •
So early on Thursday, 24 March, Benito Garza rode hard to Goliad in the company of three soldiers guiding extra mounts; he carried an order he did not want to deliver and one which he certainly did not want to see obeyed. Knowing something of General Urrea, he hoped that this strong-minded professional would refuse to obey Santa Anna and would set the prisoners free. But when he reached the stout walls of the presidio, with its four hundred and seven norteamericano prisoners, including those taken from other areas, he found that General Urrea, anticipating such an order, had generated an excuse to go south, leaving the presidio and its prisoners in the hands of a weak Colonel José Nicolás de la Portilla.
Portilla’s hands trembled when he opened the dispatch, and his face paled when he read the blunt command: ‘Immediate execution of every perfidious foreigner.’
He received these cruel instructions at about seven o’clock in the evening and spent the next hours in great anguish, because Urrea on departing had given him very specific orders of quite a different character: ‘Treat the prisoners with consideration, especially their leader Colonel Fannin, and protect them in every way so long as they remain in your custody.’
So there it was: ‘Shoot them all’ or ‘Protect them until they’re set free.’ Through the night he juggled these orders, and toward dawn he concluded that whereas his immediate superior, General Urrea, knew what was the military thing to do under the circumstances, his ultimate superior, General Santa Anna, knew what was best for the nation and was also in position to punish any subordinate who disobeyed his written order.
About half an hour before dawn on Palm Sunday, 27 March, Colonel Portilla rose, dressed in his finest uniform, and marched to the commissary, where he summoned his junior officers and told them: ‘We’re to shoot them all. I said all.’
A great commotion engulfed the presidio, with grim-lipped captains and lieutenants running here and there, and Lieutenant Colonel Juan José Holsinger still reassuring the Texicans: ‘We’re marching you to the boats. Home free.’ He believed what he was saying, because as a German known for his sympathies toward the prisoners, he had not been trusted with the truth.
The prisoners, delighted at the prospect of being freed, were formed into three groups, with Finlay Macnab and his fourteen-year-old son Otto among the Georgia Battalion that would march along the San Antonio River. ‘Can we be allowed to drop out when we pass our home?’ Macnab asked Holsinger, who replied jovially: ‘Yes, yes. That’s entirely reasonable.’
But just then Otto shouted: ‘It’s
Benito!’ and his cry attracted the attention of Santa Anna’s messenger of death, and when Garza saw that the Macnabs, part of his family, were among the unknowing doomed, he moved away lest they detect his anguish.
‘Benito!’ the boy cried, and Holsinger, seeing this, turned to Garza and told him: ‘Friends of yours,’ so Benito had to speak with them.
‘We’re going home at last,’ Otto cried, as he reached out to greet his friend.
‘Yes,’ Garza said. ‘You must stay close to me as we march out.’
‘I want to,’ Otto said, and his father added: ‘Holsinger said we could drop out when we reached our home. Will you be joining us, to help your sisters?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Campbell was killed, wasn’t he? A messenger from Gonzales said that he …’
‘He died.’
‘Were they all killed?’
‘Yes, yes,’ and in shame he moved away.
Now the condemned norteamericanos were told to form three separate columns and to move toward the main gate. They would march about half a mile, each in a different direction, and then they would be halted, each file out of sight of the others but not out of hearing.
They were well on their way when a male nurse ran into the large room where about forty men wounded the week before lay on cots, Colonel Fannin among them with a leg wound which had nearly killed him. ‘Drag them all into the yard. They’re to be shot,’ the nurse cried hysterically. And slowly, laboriously, the cots were dragged into the sunlight, where the men who had been saved from death now lay dumbly awaiting it. Colonel Fannin, from his cot, begged his men to act bravely.
Soon Mexican soldiers began moving from cot to cot, jamming pistols against the heads of the men and blowing their brains out. Finally only Fannin was left.
West Point to the end, he never flinched, and assuming that his captors were gentlemen like himself, he made the kind of statement officers were supposed to make in a situation like this: ‘Sir, I give you my watch and my money, with only two requests. Please do not shoot me in the face. Please see that I am decently buried with the honors of war.’
When the blindfold was over his eyes the officer who had accepted the watch asked: ‘Bueno?’ and Fannin replied: ‘It is well placed.’ He was then shot right through the face and his body was tossed on the pile with the others to be burned, with the charred remains left for the coyotes and the vultures.
These intimate details are known because just before the executions started, a compassionate Mexican officer, knowing that General Urrea’s wounded needed medical care, moved quietly among the Texicans, selecting men who had proved helpful in caring for the sick. To each he whispered: ‘Move toward that corner. Hide.’ His personal courage in disobeying Santa Anna’s cruel orders meant that some two dozen Texicans survived, and it was they who in later years reported the atrocity which was now about to unfold.
The marching columns—three hundred and seventy men in all—could not know what had happened to the wounded prisoners, and the Georgia Battalion containing the Macnabs was well on its way to the river, with some of the men singing, when it was ordered to halt. At this moment Benito Garza, who was with the troops, grabbed Otto by the left shoulder, whirled him about, pointed to the nearby woods, and said one word: ‘Run!’
The boy, bewildered, did not move, so Garza gave him a strong shove and muttered again: ‘Run!’
‘My father!’
‘Run!’ Garza shouted, and this both spurred the boy into action and alerted a wiry Mexican lieutenant with a sword, who saw what was happening. He was about to chase after Otto, but the morning’s work began, which temporarily delayed him.
When the group of some hundred and twenty prisoners halted, the Mexican soldiers wheeled about, formed two lines, enclosing the Texicans, and upon command began to shoot each prisoner in the head. But when the captives realized the terrible thing that was happening, many started to fight their captors with bare fists, so that a general melee developed, with much aimless firing.
Otto, from his place among the trees, saw men from Tennessee grab the guns of their slayers and defend themselves with the butts until some Mexican shot them through the back of the head. Other men, wounded in the first fusillades, lay helplessly on the ground, looking up as soldiers came, pointed pistols directly in their faces, and blew their heads apart. He watched with horror as his father broke loose and started to run across the fields toward where he was hiding, and Finlay might have escaped had not three officers on horseback galloped after him, stabbing him in the back with their lances and cheering as he stumbled blindly about, the lances projecting from his back. Forming a circle about him with their horses, they fired at him six times, and rode off.
Desperately Otto wanted to run out to help his father, but common sense told him that Finlay was dead, so he retreated farther into the woods, and it was good that he did, because the officer who had seen him escape now came after him on foot, armed with sword and knife and pistol, to finish him off, but the sight of this great peril gave Otto newfound strength. Grasping for anything, he wrenched loose a stout oak branch, and with a power that frightened him, stripped off the twigs. He now had a heavy weapon with which to defend himself.
The officer, seeing the boy apparently defenseless, moved easily through the woods, brandishing his sword, and when he reached Otto he gave a mighty flash with his right arm, bringing the point of the sword directly athwart Otto’s neck, but the boy swerved, taking a deep cut from left ear to chin. So impassioned was he that he did not feel the cut or the flow of blood, but he fell to the ground as if mortally wounded, then jammed his oak branch between the officer’s legs. With a sudden twist, he threw the fellow down, grabbed his knife as it fell loose, and with three terrible stabs he struck the man in the chest, in the gut, and deep in the neck.
He had no time to assess his victory, because two other soldiers had heard the noise of the struggle and now closed in upon him. At first, as he ran for the river, he was so protected by trees that they could not use their rifles, but when he broke for the banks they had a clear shot at him and one bullet tore into his left shoulder, but did not shatter the bone.
Disregarding this second wound as he had the first, he dashed to the edge of the steep bank—it was almost a cliff—and without thinking of hidden rocks or invisible tree stumps he leaped into the water, submerged, and swam underwater for the opposite shore.
This was a mistake, for it allowed the two soldiers to spot him when he surfaced, but before they could take proper aim, he was underwater again, swimming this time for the very bank on which they stood. When he surfaced this time, right under them, they were too surprised to shoot, so down he went again, with them firing at his wake, and when signs of blood bubbled up, they assumed that they had killed him.
He had not moved. He had stayed right below them, holding his breath until he feared his lungs might burst, and this time when he edged his nose above the water and then his eyes, he found that they had left.
He remained in the river till late afternoon, allowing the water to cleanse his two wounds, and satisfying himself with probing fingers that the damage was not too serious. He was, however, losing a lot of blood, so at about five in the afternoon he climbed out on the far bank, turned his back on the scene of the massacre, and made his way eastward toward the Guadalupe, which would lead him home.
That night, resting under a tree, his left cheek and left shoulder throbbing with pain, he lost consciousness, and lay there bleeding. Toward morning he roused himself and continued his struggle toward safety, reaching the Guadalupe about sunset. Again he fell unconscious, but when he came to he saw that the bleeding had stopped.
Before dawn he was on his way again, further weakened by a rising fever. Alternately staggering forward and falling to his knees from dizziness, he reached a point along the river from which he could see the Campbell dog-run, and the realization that he was so close to salvation overwhelmed him. All the strength left his body and he fe
ll, face down, and even when he heard a barking and felt a warm tongue licking his face and knew it was Betsy, he could not move.
María, hearing the dog’s excited barking, came to her porch. For some minutes she could not see the body lying on the ground, but when Betsy ignored her whistle, she knew that something unusual must have happened, and in this way she found her adopted son.
This was the morning of Wednesday, 30 March, and Otto remained in a feverish coma till the next Sunday. Periodically he revived enough to learn that María was aware of her husband’s death in the Alamo, and he told her that his father was dead, too, at Goliad.
In one moment of lucidity he realized that Josefina was in the room, commiserating with her sister, two Mexican women bereft of their anglo husbands.
Mostly, however, he spent these feverish days under the care of stout María, and as he began to mend he felt her warmth rescuing him, her love embracing him, and once he muttered: ‘You’re like an angel with big hands.’ She told him that she had cut the bullet from his shoulder: ‘No damage. No danger.’ She said that he would always have a scar across his left cheek: ‘No damage, no danger.’ She fed him the food she had always prepared for her ailing men—refried beans, goat meat well shredded, tortillas, goat’s milk with a brown-sugar candy—and he regained his strength.
On Sunday, 10 April, exactly two weeks after his near-death at Goliad, Otto Macnab walked to his own home, fetched two of his father’s older rifles, and came back to the Campbell place to pick up one of Xavier’s guns and a pair of knives.
‘Where are you going?’ María asked, her eyes filled with tears.
‘To join Sam Houston.’
‘To fight against my people again?’
‘We’ve got to settle this.’
‘Settle!’ María wailed. ‘What can you settle? Xavier dead. Finlay dead. And God knows where my brother Benito is.’
‘He’s all right. He was with General Urrea.’
‘He was fighting against you and Campbell?’
‘He saved my life.’ And then a vision of that struggle under the trees returned and a thought of striking significance revealed itself: ‘María, the officer who almost killed me. He saw it was Benito who saved me. If he had lived, I know he would have reported Benito and maybe had him shot. I saw the look in his face when I started to run.’