The Furies Read Free Page B

She’d lost about ten pounds in the preceding two weeks, and it showed in hollows in her cheeks, and half-circles beneath her large, dark eyes. Her nose was a trifle too prominent for perfect beauty. But men still found her immensely attractive. She knew it, and in the past she’d occasionally capitalized on the fact.
    Outside, in the chapel, a child began to fret, as though caught in a nightmare. Amanda identified the voice as belonging to Angelina Dickinson, eighteen months. The child’s mother, Susannah, was married to Captain Almeron Dickinson, in charge of the garrison’s artillery. Almeron was undoubtedly up with the chapel cannon. His eighteen-year-old wife was the only other Anglo woman in the mission. The rest were wives or sweethearts of the Mexicans such as gunner Gregorio Esparza who had sided with the Americans against Santa Anna.
    Bowie’s big fingers shook as he tried to pick up the pistol Crockett had laid beside its mate and the knife.
    He acknowledged Amanda’s presence with a blink of his eyes, then a labored question: “How are you, Mandy?”
    “Well enough, Jim. You?”
    “Passable.”
    “Has Dr. Pollard looked at him tonight?” Amanda asked Crockett.
    The Tennessean shook his head. “I think he’s catching a few winks like the rest of the boys.”
    Sam, the black, said in a tense voice, “Santy Anny—he pretty quiet this evening.”
    Amanda nodded. Crockett said, “Too blasted quiet.”
    The Dickinson girl’s fretful crying faded. No doubt Angelina was sleeping wrapped in rags and her father’s Masonic apron—the warmest covering available. Bowie’s sunken eyes remained fixed on Amanda as she spoke to Crockett again.
    “There must be a reason for the silence, Colonel. Do you think the troops are moving closer to the walls?”
    “Can’t be certain with those clouds hiding the moon.” Crockett dug a nail against an upper gum, then spat out a bit of meat. “I’d expect so, however.” He inclined his head toward the man on the cot. “I reckon Jim feels the same way. He sent Sam to find me, so I could load his pistols.”
    “You”—her voice shook now—“you think it may be tonight?”
    Crockett shrugged. Gone was the ready grin that had buoyed the spirits of the defenders so often. He said, “There’s a good chance. If I was Santy Anny, I’d expect everybody to catch up on their rest when it was quiet—which is exactly what’s happened. Even Colonel Travis is asleep.”
    “Tha’s right.” Sam nodded. “I seen Joe a while ago. He tol’ me the colonel was sleepin’ like the dead.”
    Amanda looked at Bowie again, not certain that he was recognizing her any longer. She thought about the strange partnerships that fate often arranged. No two men could be more dissimilar than James Bowie and William Barret Travis—
    Amanda was a longtime friend of the massive, forty-year-old Bowie. He was a Catholic, with a checkered history of dueling, slave-running and land speculation. Grief had brought him to Gura’s Hotel often these past couple of years.
    Bowie had originally shared command at the Alamo with Travis. Suffering the first symptoms of pneumonia, he’d kept on working—until his ribs were crushed in an accident that happened while he was helping to raise a cannon to the plaza wall. Since then he’d been lying here in the chapel, with command of the garrison completely in Travis’ hands.
    Neither man liked the other very much. They had height in common, and sandy hair, but little else. Travis was nominally a colonel of the lately formed Texas cavalry. Bowie led the volunteers. Most of the men at the garrison preferred him to the ambitious Baptist lawyer from San Felipe de Austin—
    It was said that Travis had come to Texas after murdering a man in Alabama for trifling with his wife. Perhaps his wife hadn’t been altogether unwilling, since Travis had left her behind and had lately been courting another young woman. He was envious of Bowie’s popularity with the