Bonny Blue Flag 4.1

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5 MAY 1851

NATCHITOCHES, LOUISIANA

William Walker looked at the sodden grass beneath his boots and forced himself to remember that there was Divine reason behind everything God did. It was hard to see the reasoning behind these travails, though. Had it not been for the mess surrounding Captains Patton and Stewart, he would have been across the Sabine and in Texas by now. Instead, the need to wait for Captain Nelson’s return had placed him on the wrong bank of the river at a time when this week’s rains would make the crossing that much more difficult. It would be even worse if this rain had fallen in Texas as well; there were numerous small rivers and creeks that would have to be crossed without benefit of ferries. It is God’s will that this happen, he reminded himself. The reason would become apparent to him in time.


He turned, feeling with distaste the wet, yielding sensation of sodden turf beneath his boot, and strode over to where Captain Wheat was supervising the loading of the last of the wagons. The sun began to appear over the tops of the trees, promising a muggy, uncomfortable day. “When do you think we’ll be ready to set out?” he asked when he drew up at Captain Wheat’s side. Four of the men were struggling to load a crate into the back of one of the wagons—struggling with good cause, because the crate held the barrel of one of Walker’s two three-pounder cannon, guns he’d smuggled with great difficulty into Canada. He anticipated nearly as much trouble in getting the guns out of this benighted country; he’d hidden the barrels in crates, strapped the wheels to the sides of wagons in the hope that nobody would notice they were slightly smaller than wagon-wheels, and tried—without much success, he feared—to disguise the carriages as some kind of agricultural implement.
“I figure we can go in a couple hours if need be,” said Wheat. “I thought you wanted to wait for Nelson.”

“I’m beginning to think that’s no longer an option.” Walker smiled at Wheat and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. Captain Nelson is perfectly capable of looking out for himself.” Chatham Roberdeau Wheat and Allison Nelson were his best captains, though they were as unalike as two men could be. Nelson was an uncultured, taciturn Georgian; Wheat the ungodly handsome son of a wealthy Virginia planter, heir to a good-sized fortune who had nevertheless left family and estate to seek a different kind of fortune with Walker. Nelson was a hard man who doled out trust as though it was gold-dust; Wheat was a smiling, good-natured fellow who seemed to take pleasure in whatever he did, whether that was drinking, playing cards, riding seventy miles in a day or shooting Spaniards.

They had met him in Mexico, fighting for one of the private militias that had nobly but ineptly tried to oppose Santa Anna’s regency. From there they’d gone to Texas, fighting briefly with Travis and Lamar in the war of liberation. Soldiering in aid of someone else’s dreams had palled quickly, though, and the three men had next gone to Cuba, under that pathetic self-promoter Lopez; the latter had thought Walker and his men were his subordinates, but Walker had been advancing his own agenda, and only Lopez’s utter failure to gather intelligence about his opponents had prevented Walker from achieving his goal.


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