“Si. May the Virgin de los Remedios [4] be their help! An urgent appeal for assistance was sent to Fanning at Goliad. Senor Navarre, took it on a horse fleet as the wind. You will see that on the third day he will be smoking in his balcony, in the way which is usual to him.”
“Will Fanning answer the appeal?”
“If the answer be permitted him. But Urrea may prevent. Also other things.”
Santa Anna entered San Antonio on Tuesday the twenty-third of February, 1836, and by the twenty-seventh the siege had become a very close one. Entrenched encampments encircled the doomed men in the Alamo, and from dawn to sunset the bombardment went on. The tumult of the fight—the hurrying in and out of the city—the clashing of church bells between the booming of cannon—these things the Senora and her daughters could hear and see; but all else was for twelve days mere surmise. But only one surmise was possible, when it was known that the little band of defiant heroes were fighting twenty, times their own number—that no help could come to them—that the Mexicans were cutting off their water, and that their provisions were getting very low. The face of Ortiz grew constantly more gloomy, and yet there was something of triumph in his tone as he told the miserably anxious women with what desperate valor the Americans were fighting; and how fatally every one of their shots told.
On Saturday night, the fifth of March, he called Antonia aside, and said, “My Senorita, you have a great heart, and so I speak to you. The end is close. To-day the Mexicans succeeded in getting a large cannon within gunshot of the Alamo, just where it is weakest. Senor Captain Crockett has stood on the roof all day, and as the gunners have advanced to fire it he has shot them down. A group of Americans were around him; they loaded rifles and passed them to him quickly as he could fire them. Santa Anna was in a fury past believing. He swore then ‘by every saint in heaven or hell’ to enter the Alamo to-morrow. Senor Navarro says he is raging like a tiger, and that none of his officers dare approach him. The Senor bade me tell you that to-morrow night he will be here to escort you to Gonzales; for no American will his fury spare; he knows neither sex nor age in his passions. And when the Alamo falls, the soldiers will spread themselves around for plunder, or shelter, and this empty house is sure to attract them. The Senorita sees with her own intelligence how things must take place.”
“I understand, Captain. Will you go with us?”
“I will have the Jersey wagon ready at midnight. I know the horses. Before sun-up we shall have made many miles.”
That night as Antonia and her sister sat in the dark together, Antonia said: “Isabel, tomorrow the Alamo will fall. There is no hope for the poor, brave souls there. Then Santa Anna will kill every American.”
“Oh, dear Antonia, what is to become of us? We shall have no home, nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep. I think we shall die. Also, there is mi madre. How I do pity her!”
“She is to be your care, Isabel. I shall rely on you to comfort and manage her. I will attend to all else. We are going to our father, and Thomas—and Luis.”