Bonny Blue Flag 20.1

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6 JUNE 1851

WASHINGTON-ON-THE-BRAZOS, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

“Am I being bloodthirsty?” Stewart turned to Cleburne. “I probably ought to go straight back to General Lee… but after all that’s happened I think I owe it to myself—and to everyone who died because of him—to stay here to see William Walker hanged.”

“Then I’d say you weren’t so much bloodthirsty as, well, thorough.” Cleburne smiled and clapped him on the back. “Justified, too. I’ve no interest in seeing another man hanged—got more than enough of that in my travels—but it might make an interesting story for you to share with your uncle.” Stewart laughed, but even to himself the laugh sounded flat, even bitter.

Do I really want to go back to Virginia? The thought was unexpected, and it forced Stewart to look around him.

Bonny Blue Flag 19.7

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[concluding chapter 19]

“I won’t be going to Hampton Roads,” Stewart said, wincing as he sat upright and his leg protested. “My place, sir, is with General Lee, and my intent is to assist him in the defeat of the conspiracy within our government and army. They have the influence and reputation to see that justice is done. And they have the love of country that will compel them, I think, to do whatever is necessary.”

“That might be sufficient,” Travis said. His eyes narrowed, and Stewart got the impression of a man distracted by a sudden idea.

“If you have a message you wish delivered to our government,” Stewart said, “I can do that for you through General Lee.”

“A message.” The words were more expelled than enunciated. “Yes, I think I might want to send a message to your country from my country.”

Bonny Blue Flag 19.6

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[continuing chapter 19]

“I don’t believe I have properly thanked you, Captain Stewart, for all you have done to help us this week,” Travis said. “Please let me do so now. The Republic of Texas is most grateful, sir.” The secretary closed the door to his office and pointed Stewart to a chair. Then he sat behind his desk, opened a decanter and sloshed Bourbon into two glasses.

“I was only doing my duty, sir.” However little some people back home might regard it as my duty, he added silently. He sat, grateful for the opportunity to ease the pain in his leg, and took the glass offered to him. “If I might ask, sir, what are your plans for Captain Patton? He really is not much more than a schoolboy, sir. I am at least in part at fault for letting himself get in over his head.”

“Think nothing of it. Captain Patton is small fish to me. To us. I believe his brother is prepared to take him in hand, and the republic will be happy with that.” Travis sipped his drink, and the lines of his face seemed to harden. “How much more are you prepared to say? About your duty.”

Bonny Blue Flag 19.5

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[continuing chapter 19]

“I’m glad you feel that way, young man,” said a voice from the doorway. Patton turned to see Secretary Travis entering the room. He struggled to get up, and was grateful when Travis waved him back down. “This is an interrogation,” Travis said, “but I don’t think we’ll make it too formal. You being treated well?”

“Thank you, sir. Yes. My head hurts, but that’s no one’s fault but my own.”

“I’d love to know how you obtained your wound,” Travis said with a thin smile. “You appear to be one of the few prisoners we took who wasn’t injured by our single artillery piece.”

Bonny Blue Flag 19.4

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[continuing chapter 19]

A dark-complexioned woman replaced the cloth on Patton’s head, and after a momentary sting the cool damp felt as soothing as his mother’s touch. He sat in a comfortable, wood and canvas chair in a garden behind Travis’s house on the outskirts of Washington-on-the-Brazos, and a soft evening breeze plucked at the loose cotton shirt and trousers they’d given him to wear while someone washed the blood and grime from his clothes. He had been bathed, and his head wound cleaned and bound. Droplets of condensation clustered on the side of a mug filled with a punch of rum, water, and lemons—just enough rum to help numb the pain in his head without getting him drunk.

Bonny Blue Flag 19.3

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[continuing chapter 19]

You’re a Virginian, Patton reminded himself. You may be at fault here, but you’re still a Virginian. You can’t let them think you’re licked.

They had taken him from his litter and sat him in a chair on the porch of a farm or plantation house. His head ached almost unbearably, the injury and the damp, stifling heat of the day making him feel sick to his stomach. Under the circumstances it seemed ridiculous to be contemplating how to put on an appearance of competence and pride without seeming cocky or arrogant. Ridiculous, save that the reputations of Virginia and the entire Confederacy might be riding on the way these Texans responded to him.

“I apologize for my appearance, sir,” he said to the man who’d just introduced himself as William Barret Travis, the Texan secretary of state. “In both senses of the word.”

Bonny Blue Flag 19.2

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[continuing chapter 19]

At first, Walker didn’t comprehend who it was who stared at him. He had stopped thinking when the soldiers took him, grateful at the last for being relieved of any further responsibility for anything. The night march had been peaceful, the temperature blessedly cool. His life—what was left of it—was in God’s hands. When they told him to march, he marched. When they said to stop, he stopped. They’d driven him, and the few officers who’d stayed around to be taken with him, down the road toward the Texan capital, where the government’s officials were no doubt eagerly waiting to pass judgment on him. The staring man was standing behind a stone fence; Travis wouldn’t have noticed at all had his march not been halted so that two other Texans could come and fuss over the wounded Patton.

Bonny Blue Flag 19.1

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1 JUNE 1851

WASHINGTON-ON-THE-BRAZOS, REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

“You know what you’ve done, don’t you?”

Travis turned to the newspaperman. “I hope I’ve saved the republic, Russell.”

They sat on a stone fence alongside the road into Washington. Behind them somewhere, Susan Reynolds, white-faced and thin-lipped with shock and anger, supervised a makeshift hospital. Travis had commandeered the Reynolds place; it was only fair, and Thomas Reynolds was unlikely to ever appear to complain about it.

“Oh, aye,” said Russell. “That goes without saying.” Russell seized Travis’s hand, and shook it. “But you’ve also guaranteed yourself the presidency, should you want it. We voted for Mirabeau Lamar, after all, and all he did was beat a bunch of sleeping Mexicans at San Jacinto—and most would agree that you and Bowie had more to do with San Jacinto than he did. Ah, Travis, but you—you have defeated a desperate invasion by well organized and equipped white men. And you did it virtually by yourself.”