Free The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation by James Donovan Page A

Halley’s Comet was visible in the night sky, and the men argued over whether it was a good omen or bad. When the news arrived that, on October 10, a group of Texians had taken control of the Presidio La Bahía near Goliad and its fifty-four Mexican troops, every man knew what that meant: the last Mexican soldiers in Texas lay ahead of them.
    One of the new arrivals was James Bowie, recently returned to Texas from another visit to Louisiana and Mississippi. He rode into camp with a group of friends and followers and immediately sent a courier into town conveying his compliments to the people of Béxar. Stephen Austin, grateful for Bowie’s veteran presence, gave him command of a large company and sent him toward the string of missions stretching a few miles downriver below the town, to reconnoiter and forage for corn or other stores for the hungry command. Bowie’s connections in Béxar proved invaluable, and he supplied Austin with much-needed intelligence—for instance, that Cós’s army numbered six hundred men at most.
    William Barret Travis was there also. He had joined a militia company in San Felipe just before the Gonzales incident, but a bout of influenza had prevented him from riding there immediately. When he finally arrived in Gonzales it was as an elected lieutenant. He was also a delegate to the Consultation, now rescheduled to meet in San Felipe on November 1, but he and several other representatives decided to remain with the army and march to Béxar.
    Another valuable addition was twenty-eight-year-old Juan Seguín, whose father, Erasmo, was a good friend of Stephen Austin’s and a former Béxar alcalde. Erasmo Seguín was one of the town’s most prominent citizens, and he had raised his children in a cultured, liberal atmosphere; both men were staunch federalists, and Juan had recently returned from skirmishing with centralist troops near Monclova. The Seguín family owned one of the largest ranches in the area, a nine-thousand-acre tract thirty miles downriver, where Erasmo had built a fortified compound known as Casa Blanca. General Cós, upon his arrival in Béxar, and upon learning of Juan’s siding with the rebels, had booted the elderly Erasmo out of town without a horse. He walked the thirty miles downriver to his ranch.
    The handsome young Seguín brought with him a company of thirty-seven other mounted Tejanos. Many of them were recruited from the ranches on the lower San Antonio River, though at least fourteen were deserters from the Alamo presidial garrison. From the town of Victoria to the southeast, alcalde Plácido Benavides arrived with another twenty-six Tejano volunteers, and at least forty more from the ranches south of Béxar rode into camp over the next several days led by Seguín’s brother-in-law, Salvador Flores. A total of 135 Mexican Texians would sign up, all declaring themselves loyal to the Mexican constitution of 1824. They would provide valuable scouting and foraging services, and also serve as fighters, in the months to come.
    San Antonio de Béxar lay in a valley of rolling prairie land between two parallel streams: San Pedro Creek on the west and the San Antonio River on the east. The area surrounding these waterways, nestled between low hills on either side and favored with large oaks and pecans, had attracted men for thousands of years, perhaps more; its beauty was such that many proclaimed it the prettiest spot in Texas. Between them was a town of some sixteen hundred souls, only a few of them Anglos—though many bexareños had fled their dwellings for the ranches along the river to the south. Thick-walled stone and mortar buildings crowded the broad dirt streets around the two squares, the Plaza de las Islas (Main Plaza), nearer to the river, and the Plaza de Armas (Military Plaza), to the west; between them stood the Church of San Fernando and its bell tower. Beyond the few blocks of downtown began a spread of log houses and even cruder habitations, the