Home of the Brave (39 page)

“I’m not a lady, Sarah; I’m
just married to a gentleman. I used to work in a
brothel.”

“You never.”

“I did.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Playing poker and
entertaining men.”

“You?”

“Yes. I have a very jaded
past.”

“Does anybody else
know?”

“I’ve never tried to keep it
a secret.”

“Well, I’ll be. I sure took
you for an educated lady.”

“I said that I wasn’t a
lady. I didn’t say I wasn’t educated. Do I get the
room?”

“You sure that you want to
stay here?”

“Yes. It’s far better than
alone in that hospital or in a tent with Zach Taylor’s
army.”

Sarah looked unconvinced.
“I’m bigger and meaner than most men, but look at you. You’re such
a little thing.”

“I have a little helper
though.” Marina crossed her legs, pulled up the hem of her dress
and showed Sarah the holster strapped to her calf.

“Yer little helper is too
little.”

“Little but lethal. This is
one of the new Derringer pocket pistols. I used to keep a little
custom made Swiss pepperbox in my garter that Jean Lafitte gave me,
but it was hard to load and you had to mold your own bullets. This
is a standard .41 caliber, caplock. It’s much easier to load, more
reliable, and more accurate.”

“D’ ya think you could use
it if you had to?”

“I have before.”

“Well then. There’s a nice
room down the hall from me on the third floor. I’ll get it ready
for ya. Why don’t you come back in an hour?”

Marina stood up. “Send
someone to get me when it’s ready, please. I’ll be in the cantina
playing poker after I finish my bath. Where’s the
bathroom?”

“On the other side of the
stairs. Tell ‘em to bill your room.”

“Thank you.” Marina walked
out through the cantina, around the sweeping staircase and into the
door in the back.

“Help you?” a girl asked in
English.

“I need a bath in clean
water and a clean towel,” Marina replied in Spanish. “A little
privacy would be good too.”

“I can give you the first
tub and a clean towel but all I can do for your privacy is what you
see.” She gestured toward the space behind her where bathtubs were
only partially hidden by cotton sheets suspended from the
ceiling.

“That’s fine. Bill my room.
Marina Van Buskirk.”

“Ah,” a man said from
nearby. “I thought I recognized a voice from my past.”

“Where are you, William?”
Marina picked up her towel, the small bar of soap and the brass tag
with her tub number on it.

He pulled on the sheet to
make it bounce. “Here.”

Marina walked back between
the rows of sheets, pushed one aside and stepped in next to the
bathtub. “Every peace officer on both sides of the border is
looking for you, William,” she said in a near whisper.

“I know. Aren’t you proud
that I’m so popular?” He pulled the sheet on his right back.
“Mother, I’d like you to meet Savannah Hansen. Savannah, this is my
mother, Marina Cortés Van Buskirk.”

“Charmed,” Savannah replied,
waggling her bubble-dripping, bejeweled fingers.

William let the sheet fall.
“I’d ask you to sit down, Mother, but, alas, there’s no visiting
area.”

“I think we’ve said
everything that needs to be said.”

“If you should change your
mind, Savannah and I have started a business across the river in
the camp followers settlement at Fort Brown. It’s a big white tent
with a sign on the front that says Lucky’s.”

“I’ll try not to remember
that.” Marina turned and ducked back under the sheet to find her
own bathtub.

September 24,
1846

Monterrey, Mexico

After the stinging defeats
and the loss of Matamoros, General Santa Anna ordered the surviving
three-thousand-man Mexican Army of the North, now under General
Pedro de Ampudia, to retreat to Saltillo. Ampudia, fearing mutiny
from his disheartened men, ignored Santa Anna’s order and instead
made a stand at the fortified city of Monterrey.

The American infantry
attack was launched on September 21
^st
and repelled with heavy
casualties.

On the following day, Taylor
sent Captain Braxton Bragg at the city with his flying artillery,
but concentrated cannon fire from four little hills to the west
shredded Brag’s force and he too was forced to withdraw.

On the morning of the
24
^th
,
a company of General William J. Worth’s Texas Ranger Division,
supported by an infantry company, stormed the hills and turned the
cannons on the fleeing Mexican artillerymen. After a short lull,
the hills came under intense attack from batteries inside the city
and the captured cannons were withdrawn beyond the crest to protect
them.

Captain Josiah Whipple
crawled forward with Daniel O’Hara, a young Ranger lieutenant, and
aimed his telescope at the city. “Them guns there ain’t firing no
Mexican powder.”

“How do you know?” O’Hara
asked.

“Too accurate.” He pointed
at a battery with an emerald green battle flag waving in the breeze
above the cannons. “Who the devil is that? It ain’t English or
Spanish on their guidon.”

“That’s the God Damned San
Patricios.” O’Hara spit in the dirt.

Whipple looked at the
younger man, surprised by his vehemence. “Never heard of ‘em.
Seeing how you just reacted, ‘guess I should of,
though.”

“They’re deserters commanded
by Lieutenant John Riley, an Irish artilleryman who deserted at
Matamoros.”

“Ya don’t say. So I guess,
you bein’ a Irishman and all, that troubles y’ more’n it does
me.”

“The flag says ‘Erin go
Bragh’ which means ‘Ireland forever’ in Gaelic.”

“Seems a odd mot-to since we
ain’t got no fight with the Irish.”

“I resent the fact that the
dirty bastards are my countrymen and bragging about it.”

Whipple rolled onto his back
to look toward the sound of an approaching horse and then slid down
the hill and got to his feet.

“General Worth’s compliments
and congratulations, sir,” the aide said. “The general wishes to
inform you that a detachment of artillerymen and additional
infantry is on their way to take charge of these guns and relieve
you of this position.”

“Very well, Lieutenant,”
Whipple replied. “Did the general say where we was to go when they
relieve us?”

“No, sir. But I would assume
it would be the assembly area at the command post.”

“That ain’t real useful,
Lieutenant. I don’t feel like walkin’ clear down this hill just to
be told to climb back up and run down t’other side. You been back
there at the command post. Gimme some idea of what the general’s
thinkin’.”

“There’s to be a diversion
on the north and south sides of the city to draw that artillery
away from this side, but I can’t say when.”

Whipple shrugged. “Guess
we’ll just wait here then. If we don’t get no contrary orders,
we’ll charge down the hill into the city when the diversion
starts.”

“I’ll tell the general what
you said, sir.” He saluted.

Whipple returned the salute
and sat down in the grass. “Now I remember how come I quit the damn
army.”

Lieutenant O’Hara had been
watching the rear while Whipple was talking to General Worth’s
aide. “Our howitzers.” He pointed. “They must have moved them up
the river from Port Isabel.”

“Well then, Lieutenant, as
soon as we’re relieved of these here guns, tell the men to find ‘em
a comfortable spot and take ‘em a little siesta. As soon as Worth
gets them howitzers unlimbered he’s gonna pound the city ‘til the
sunset’s a-shinin’ in them Mess-kin’s eyes. That when he’ll launch
the diversion.”

“What if the San Patricios
don’t fall for the diversion?”

“You’ll learn what it’s like
to be part of a forlorn hope, I reckon. Tell the men what the
doin’s is. And tell that captain of the infantry that he’s to be
reinforced while yer about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

~

“Are you awake, Captain
Whipple?” Lieutenant O’Hara asked.

“Yup.” Whipple sat up and
squinted into the setting sun. “What’s up?”

“Our guns have
stopped.”

“Get the men on their feet,
Lieutenant. It’ll take a while for the diversion to develop and the
sun ain’t quite low enough yet for it to start.”

“Any instruction for the
men, sir?”

“Just tell ‘em to run down
the hill and kill the enemy when I give the order to
charge.”

O’Hara didn’t look
satisfied.

“What? You wanna know what’s
gonna happen?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“If we make enough noise,
kill a few people and scare ‘em, the Mess-kins is gonna fall back
toward the plaza. Before long, they’ll be crammed in there and
stumblin’ all over each other. Then the onliest ones of ‘em that’ll
be able to fire at us is gonna be the front rank of maybe twenty
men in each street.”

“I see.”

“Do ya?”

“No.”

“The town’s laid out like a
wagon wheel.”

“A wagon wheel?”

Whipple nodded. “The plaza’s
the hub and all the roads lead in like spokes. Them roads is real
narrow. Donkey cart wide. Not hardly wide enough to put more’n
maybe a rifle squad on line.”

“I see.”

“Once the mess-kins retreat
to the plaza they’ll be bottled up. We could hold the whole blamed
army in there with no more’n our one little company and a few
cannons. That’s when Worth will start the howitzers again. He’ll
zero-in on the plaza and keep killin’ ‘em until Ampudia surrenders
or the whole army’s dead and the city’s in flames.”

O’Hara nodded. “Now I
understand.”

As the sun was near the
hilltops to the west of the city, an American demonstration began
on the north and south sides. Worth’s infantry swarmed around the
western hills and from their positions on the east side, sending a
wave of panic through the Mexican defenders. As the Mexican
infantry broke and retreated toward the plaza, the San Patricios
began to reposition their guns to the southern flank where they
expected the main attack.

At the city wall, Whipple
had been hit in the right cheek by a musket ball that had taken out
a back tooth and exited his left cheek. The impact had been
sufficient to knock him down and the blood from his mouth was
enough to convince Lieutenant O’Hara that Whipple was mortally
wounded so O’Hara had led the Rangers over the wall.

Dizzily, Whipple sat up,
spit a mouthful of blood and tooth fragments into the sand then
looked around at the fallen Americans near him. Because the Mexican
cannons had been diverted by the demonstration, the carnage was
less than might have been expected. As he was getting shakily to
his feet, he heard a muffled voice calling what might have been his
name. “Somebody say somethin’?”

“Over here.”

Whipple moved toward the
sound. “Talk some more.”

“Help me get this damn horse
off me, Josiah.”

Whipple stumbled toward the
nearby carcass of a horse. “Tom? What the hell are you doin’
here?”

“Not very much,” Colonel
Thomas Van Buskirk replied. “I seem to have broken my damned leg
and lost my regiment. Before that, I was looking for
you.”

Whipple sat down beside him
and braced both feet against the horse. “You ain’t lost your
regiment. They’re either over in the plaza killin’ Mess-kins or on
their way to do it. When I push you pull.”

~

Whipple looked over the wall
then ducked as a musket ball ricocheted near his face. “How’s yer
leg?” he asked.

“Not broken, after all,”
Thomas replied. “I think my knee’s dislocated or
something.”

“I never heard of no such of
a thing.”

“I think I could walk on it
if I splinted my knee so it didn’t bend backward.”

“Bendin’ backward don’t
sound so good.”

Thomas shrugged. “What’s
going on over there?” He gestured toward the wall.

“There’s a big, three-story
house about fifty yards from the wall with Mess-kins hangin’ outta
every window. They got my company and your regiment pinned down,
and that’s keepin’ all the streets on this side of the plaza
open.”

“See if you can find me
something to use for a splint and we’ll go over the wall and take
the house.”

“Be right back.” Ignoring
the heavy small-arms fire from the house, Whipple ran out among the
dead and wounded, picked up an unexploded 12-pounder shell, and
darted back.

“What’s that for?” Thomas
pointed at the shell.

“Still has some fuse on
it.”