Once Upon a Time in Texas - The Line in the Sand

         February is the anniversary month of the famed Alamo siege. The fortress actually fell March 6^th, but about half of the “thirteen days of glory” took place at the end of February, 1836. It also happened to be a leap year. As a result, every February I tend to get into an Alamo frame of mind. It just so happened that last year, while working on another Alamo writing project, I was reminded of Moses Rose, a Yellow Rose of another sort, who was one of the few men who managed to escape the death trap in Bexar. 

William P. Zuber, the original author of the Line in the Sand legend 

         Back in 1871, San Jacinto veteran, William Physick Zuber, penned an account his family supposedly heard from the lips of Moses Rose shortly after his escape. This story, later printed in the 1873 Texas Almanac, became the source of the legendary tale of Lt. Col. William B. Travis drawing "the line in the sand." This phrase has since entered our lexicon - it's certainly frequently every Texas Legislature - and has been filmed more than a few times in various fashions. Historians still get in knock down drag out fights over whether it actually happened or not. I tend to think that it didn’t but Moses Rose has been proven to be a real person, and as far as we can tell, did indeed escape the Alamo sometime during the siege. Survivors such as Susanna Dickinson describe Travis drawing the line but not until after they were asked about it after the Zuber account was published. By then the survivors could have been saying just about anything to keep getting attention in their old age. Or there may indeed have been something to the story. More recent evidence has cropped up that seems to indicate the story might have been told by Rose to other people before Zuber wrote down his version. But this evidence is based on the memory of people trying to remember a story many decades after they supposedly heard it. Flimsy, at best.

         The “why’s and why not’s” of whether it actually happened would take up a book and I’m not going to go into it here. When I recently read the original version as printed in the Texas Almanac, I was stuck by how poorly Zuber's story is told. The speech given by Travis is obviously mostly Zuber’s invention. It doesn’t sound much like anything Travis wrote. It rambles all over the place and doesn’t have the poetry or inner fire we know Travis capable of. It’s no St. Crispin Day’s Speech. And if you have ever read the young colonel's incredible appeal for help to “The People of Texas and All Americans in the World”, Zuber's own version of Travis giving a speech falls flat. But perhaps Travis said something a bit like it, just more eloquently – if the legend of the Line is true. I doubt we will ever know. But reading about the Line made me want to write my own version of the tale. I would strive to make it as accurate as I could. Kind of a strange standard for something that likely didn't happen at all. But even if it's a tall tale, it has still become an important American myth, and it's certainly a symbol of what the men and women at the Alamo essentially did decide to do. I think it is always a story worth retelling. I am especially happy that famed historical artist (and THE best artist of the Texas Revolution) Gary Zaboly has allowed me to use a few of his incredible pictures to illustrate my take on the classic tale. J. Frank Dobie describes the Line in the Sand as "a line that not all the piety nor wit of research will ever blot out. It is a grand canyon cut into the bedrock of human emotions and historical impulses." I agree. I hope you enjoy my version of this mythic moment. 

         Artist Gary Zaboly's fantastic portrait of William B. Travis based on eyewitness accounts

A Line in the Sand

For days they ringed us with their flame,

For days their swarming soldiers came,

The battle wrack was gory.

We perished in the smoke and flame,

To give the world their traitor shame,

And our undying glory.

– Robert E. Howard

         The young man stepped into silence louder than cannon fire. Powder stained fingers rubbed through red beard stubble before pocketing worthless letters promising aid. Gravel crunching under his tread evoked dirt thudding on coffin lids. The garrison awaited him across the plaza in the cold shadow of the Alamo church; a worn stone cross, a crumbling memory of Spain, sprouting from the ground in the midst of them. He read the stress and marrow-deep exhaustion in each set of the jaw, in the powder reddened eyes. Some nodded off where they stood. More vibrated like violin strings, adrenaline electrifying their veins. Each expected a surprise cannonade to drop out of the sky any moment.

         How do you tell your men they will all be dead in a day or two? His stomach twisted. He did not ask for this command. He wanted to ride in the cavalry again, craved the freedom of lighting quick attacks, the wind in his ears. He was a firebrand, an instigator of revolution – of action. Instead he was now a rat beating his head against a cage.

         Little Enrique Esparza stared at the round faced man in the short tailed blue coat, a red sash wrapping a somewhat portly waist, eyes glowing iced fire. The boy’s mother squeezed a calloused hand around her son’s. Susanna Dickenson’s sad blue eyes looked down at her Angelina sleeping in her arms. A cat’s eye ring once belonging to the young commander dangled on a string about the child’s neck. Enrique and the Losoya boy shared their fright in an uneasy glance. Once playmates in the streets of Bexar, their families now huddled together. Gentlemen in battered top hats and dusty coats stood alongside rough n’ tumbles in buckskin. Slaves stood alongside their masters, not behind, feeling a sudden bizarre sense of equality in the face of annihilation.

Gary Zaboly's beautiful depiction of the types composing the garrison

         Travis breathed deep and thrust his shoulders back. He smiled tightly at little Enrique. I am never going to see my little boy again. It took him almost a minute to find his voice standing before the army of soon-to-be corpses. He choked on his words. Bowie watched through crusted eyes from a cot of fever stained sheets. He alone of the sick and wounded asked to be carried out to this meeting. At long last the rough-edged voice of William Barret Travis shattered the funerary silence.

          “Friends, as I am sure most of you are aware, another messenger arrived earlier today. He will be our last. The news is bleak as death. No help is coming. It seems none can be bothered to ride to our aid or those who wish to cannot now make it through the strangle hold of the Army of Operations. I also sent out one of our Bexareños to Santa Anna’s camp last night. As our hope of reinforcements has continued to dwindle, I felt it my duty to see how I might save the lives of the wounded and non-combatants. I...I put out feelers for an honorable surrender.” Shame seared his face. “But ‘Surrender at discretion or be put to the sword' is still the answer. After what that butcher did to the people of Zacatecas, he’ll show no mercy to us. Santa Anna will now attack as soon as possible. He must sack the Alamo simply to retain some semblance of glory. Once his commanders learn that an honorable surrender was under discussion they will demand he accept to avoid a pitched battle. Almonte and Castrillon are gentlemen even if their generalissimo is not. There would be no bloodshed and El Presidente would not win the sanguine laurels he so craves. Remember, he was blooded in his youth at the Battle of Medina. He was tutored in butchery by the Spaniard Arredondo. Half the male populace of Texas wiped out, women outraged and enslaved, Bexar devastated.  This was the school of Santa Anna. This is what we can expect for San Felipe, Gonzales, Nacogdoches and the rest. I believe our gothic enemy will launch upon us in two or three days. We must fight. And we must die. 

            Yet we are still faced with a choice. When the attack comes, a handful of us may be able to break out and escape in the confusion. Singly we might slip over the wall tonight and creep through the guards. Some could get through. Most would not. The Mexicans will be looking for a desperate escape attempt and any groups will be cut to pieces. But still, there is a chance that a few of us can make it through. So, it is up to each of us to decide - make a break for it or stay till the bitter end.

            As for me… I will stay. I did not ask to be here anymore than the rest of you. If Col. Neill had not been called away, I would likely be with the army back east. Yet destiny has placed me here, alongside you. I would have it no other way. It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your commander and I am so very, very proud of the high-souled courage with which you have manned these walls day after day. I am humbled to stand before you.  And now I must choose: my life or my duty. I choose the duty God has seen fit to rest upon me. I choose to bleed the enemy so he can only limp toward the homes of our friends and families. I choose to die a free man striking a blow against the tyranny of this so-called Napoleon of the West. I choose to fight to the death, so that the convention at Washington may have enough time to declare independence and create a Constitution. That would make this all worthwhile. For me. To know my heart’s blood cemented the drafting of a free government for a republic of heroes. To know my corpse was a stumbling block on the road to our settlements. To know that when my country cried out for succor, I answered the call and showed the world how a free man dies…to show how a free man lives.The Alamo cannot hold. But we few, we may still hamstring this murderous giant and send him crashing headlong to destruction. Like the Spartans at Thermopylae, shoulder to shoulder, brother beside brother, we can die so that our neighbors may live.”

                       Gary Zaboly's beautiful dramatization of the drawing of the Line
         

            His sword flashed lightning in the quickening sunset. The garrison lurched at the explosion of action. Sword point speared the earth and dredged a long line in the dirt before the entire mass of listeners. The shimmering blade wavered through their misty eyes.

            “Back in December when Old Ben Milam called for volunteers to assault Bexar, so many had already left for home. Still, he drew a line in the dirt and roared out “Who will go with Old Ben Milam into San Antone?”  An army of three hundred patriots answered the call. Ben died a martyr. But in the end, the line he dug was a path to victory. We may be martyred here, and may our bones reproach our country for its neglect, but the sacrifice we make will not be in vain. Our blood shall emancipate Texas and may posterity and our country do our memory justice.  So, my friends, make your choice. Between escape or immortality. Between escape or victory.”

         Silence reigned. The tricolored flag emblazoned with two stars, representing Tejas y Coahuila, flapped in the chill breeze above them. Leaves rustled on the giant cottonwood towering above that corner of the fort. Time stood still. 

         At last, a form slowly drifted forward from the ranks. Young Tapley Holland, body shaking but his boyish face a-light with some inner fire, stumbled out towards the line. “I am ready to die for my country,” he managed to choke out. He crossed over.

Travis and the Band of Brothers by Gary Zaboly 

      Crockett adjusted his iconic hat. “Well, hell. Alright boys, time to go ahead and vote with your feet!” He crossed over. Yet the great rider of comets seemed pale around the gills and his crooked smile hung a bit looser. More followed silently. Eyes and hearts overflowed, choking all speech.  Families moved with their menfolk. Slaves, for reasons known only to their hearts, crossed over. Bowie watched propped up on one arm. His voice gurgled phlegm as he tried to speak but a violent fit of coughing knocked his frail body back. Gasping, he stared up at the stars popping out in the dusk and remembered a night chasing Comanche and the songs of an old vaquero in all that lonesome dark.

         “And heroes of a million generations march across the unending fields of sky, lighting their lanterns to birth the stars.”

         He motioned to a few of his men, waved his arm towards the line. They bent down and lifted his rickety cot. They crossed over. Battle-scarred frontiersmen sobbed as they watched. Little Enrique later recalled, “My heart was in my mouth. My eyes were like coals of fire; but I would stay and listen.” Bowie was a god to him. Now the boy watched the remains of his hero as if he were a fragile, skeletal Christ pulled down from the Cross. Bowie's wandering eyes looked up into eternity, the silver voice of the vaquero in his ears. He saw Ursula wearing a crown of stars. She leaned over him and breathed her love into his lips. He slept.

         “You don't seem to be willing to die with us, Rose.” Crockett and the rest gazed at the one person who had not crossed over. A Frenchman with a heavy gray beard shook his head.

         “No, I am not prepared to die. If I can do anything to avoid it, I shall certainly do so.” 

         Crockett shook his head. “It cain’t be avoided, friend. I’ve been in many’s the tight scrape and escaped with little of my hide left to my name, but this is more’n likely the end. Might as well join up with us and give our executioners what-fer.”

                                        Moses Rose contemplates by Gary Zaboly

     Moses Rose shook his head again. He'd been contemplating slipping off for days now. His mind swept over the great vistas of his past – decorated by Napoleon himself for bravery, wading through the blood of Spain and Portugal, tramping into Russia, crawling back over the bodies of friends in one long road of frozen death. He would continue to sell his sword but he’d have no more friends or loyalties or illusions. Yet something had always held him back from fleeing the Alamo thus far. But now Travis had essentially given him permission to leave without slinking off like a snake. 

          “I’ve often done much worse than to climb over that wall.” All the eyes now on him made him sweat. He couldn’t look at them. He wasn’t a coward but nor was he a patriot. This fight was never really his. Travis and his histrionics got on his nerves anyway. What did that young fool know about the crash of massive armies, of the grinding slaughterhouse of war, of picking up random body parts that were once your friend? He surged with a sudden tide of anger against Travis, against all the staring eyes.There was no glory here. He picked up his musket and walked over to the wall. He climbed to the top. He looked back briefly. Everyone still watched in grim silence. Moses Rose crossed over and the new born night swallowed him up.

         Travis sheathed his sword. “God and Texas” he pronounced barely above a whisper. He gaze lingeringly over his compañeros. Then he turned and quickly walked back to his quarters. He sat in the dark alone till Joe stepped in and lit a candle. The young colonel shook himself free of his meditation and reached for his volume of Sir Walter Scott. He meditated on the line - “Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening.” The flickering candlelight would burn long into William Barret Travis’ last night upon earth.

         The garrison outside had gone back to their posts or to try their best at getting some sleep. Crockett ambled over to the stunned Mrs. Dickinson. “Well, ma’am, I just wanted to thank you for doing me the kindness of scrubbing my laundry yestertiddy. It was a job well done. Looks as if it were none too soon neither.  I'll be looking proud as a peacock when I meet my maker. But I tell you, ma’am, I think we had better just march out and die in the open air. I don’t like to be hemmed up...”

......“When Santa Anna and Castrillon were planning the assault, Santa Anna declared that none of the Alamo defenders should survive. It was then inevitable that the fort could hold out but little longer, and Castrillon was persuading the commander to spare the lives of the men of the Mexican Army. Santa Anna was holding in his hand the leg of a chicken, which he was eating and, holding it up, he said: “What are the lives of soldiers but so many chickens?”

         - Fernando Urissa, Aide-de-camp to Santa Anna, Texas Almanac, 1859

article copyright Ben Friberg, 2017