“Or what, sonny?” The tall man, of indeterminate latter middle age with a deep, gravitas-rich voice and a manner to match belying his militia battledress bearing two thin chevrons on his biceps, said. The man’s face was lined by a life lived in the open air, chicken pox-pocked, and although weathered, handsome still. There was no real challenge in the question. The man was simply curious and gently, sceptical.
Greg Torrance was immediately struck by the man’s presence: one of those rare men whose entrance really does change the atmosphere of any gathering, and to whom everybody instinctively looks to for guidance. The crowd between him and the two CAF men parted, and as the newcomer and his companions approached, they were greeted with respectful nods of acknowledgement.
The young pilot swallowed hard, and tried to retain his composure.
“That depends, Corporal. I’m not about to give you chaps a pep talk. The mere fact that most of you are here means that you didn’t just roll over and surrender as soon as the first Mexican rifleman walked towards you.” He glanced to Bill Fielding for moral support. “Flight Sergeant Fielding and I were the last chaps out. Bill managed to get our kite fixed while the Spanish were shelling our old field at Big Springs. It strikes me that we’re all in pretty much the same boat. We keep waiting for the top brass to organise a defensive line but it hasn’t happened yet. Well, I’m fed up with taking a beating and watching our chaps running away.”
Practically everybody was looking at the tall man in the corporal’s uniform.
Greg Torrance pointed at the map on the wall.
“This is as good a place as any in this sector. If our side hangs on to this bit of the northern Texas Territory then the Spanish will leave a massive open left flank if they carry on driving towards the Mississippi…”
The tall man was standing very nearly in front of the much younger aviator.
“The Spaniards will have to get across the Red River if they plan to invade the Louisiana Country between there and the Big Muddy, son,” the other man observed, merely stating the obvious and clearly at pains not to pick a fight with, or in any way do down the CAF man. “In the meantime, we’ve only got a hundred or so effectives here, and down at Trinity Crossing.”
This rather took the wind out of the sails of the younger man.
The one hundred-and-eighty miles of desert and prairie west of the Red River – to all intents, as formidable a barrier as the great Mississippi itself – was an entirely different proposition to the forests, swamps and bayous blocking the one hundred-and-seventy tortuous miles beyond the Red River to the Mississippi, and much of the ground to the south was impassable to wheeled, or even tracked vehicles.
Talk of Santa Anna driving all the way to New Orleans was, perhaps, a little premature; a litmus test of the panic in the air.
“At the moment, yes,” Greg Torrance agreed, nodding. “I would just remind you that there were only three hundred Spartans at that pass at Thermopylae, they held back a hundred thousand Persians. And besides, they didn’t even have an airfield.”
The Corporal sighed.
He glanced over his shoulder to the men cramming the room and to his companions, whom Torrance could now identify as a Hispanic-looking man in his fifties, a younger man who could have been his son, and a blue-eyed young woman – booted and dressed in riding gear like the others – and then back to Greg Torrance.
“We’ve got families hereabouts,” he explained. “Most of us have got Mexican kith and kin, and proud of it. We hear what those boys back East say about the Mexicans; but take it from me, they know squat. A lot of people in these parts don’t believe they’d be any worse off living under Il Presidente de Soto, they say old Hernando ain’t so bad…” He shrugged. “I met General Santa Anna a couple of times back in the day. He’s a man like you and I, son. He’s got a wife and kids, and he wants the best for them. Just like I do for my family. A hundred years ago this country was a part of the Empire of New Spain, all of us around here grow up speaking Spanish.”
The younger man felt his face burning.
For all that there was a strange absence of malice in the other man’s voice, almost sympathy, in fact, the scout pilot began to bristle with anger.
Bill Fielding watched, figuring that the older man was trying to rile Greg Torrance; not really questioning his military but his moral authority to claim leadership. He was mightily relieved when his friend refused to rise to the bait.
“You may be right,” Greg Torrance shrugged. “I’ve never lived under a Catholic theocracy. What’s your name, friend?”
The Corporal straightened.
He was six feet tall if he was an inch, his shoulders stooped unless he was making an effort to stand with his head held high. Stepping forward, he had the gait of a man who has spent his life on horseback, a stiff erectness of posture that oddly defined him in this rag-tag collection of fleeing CAF personnel and local militiamen.
