Key Quotations
Chapter 6:
"Mary and Edmund drove through fields of lantana and expanses of shimmering wildflowers -- cloth-of-gold and dandelion and lovely blue dayflowers that grew along the edges of the brilliant yellow blossoms like the border on a quilt. The air was thick with the fragrance of these flowers, and on the edges of the salt marshes flocks of shorebirds came cascading down from the sky -- pink spoonbills and willets and pelicans whose preposterous bodies were as white as bed linen.
Chapter 19:
"Somebody shut that mule up!" one of the cazadores cried. "Somebody shoot it."
"My hands are too numb to pull a trigger," someone else replied after a long silence in which the mule continued to torture them with its cries.
"It can't breath," Blas said. Hurtado was sitting next to him, and he slid Isabella into his arms, then stood up on his stiff, cramped legs and grabbed a hatchet. He staggered through the snow-covered mounds that represented his men and approached the mule. The creature was still braying in panic, but it seemed to know enough not to run away as Blas reached out and grabbed its ear in one hand and with the other struck it on its frozen nose with the blunt end of the hatchet. The ice covering its nostrils broke like window glass, and the mule began to snort and gasp and, intoxicated now with the miracle of breath, began to prance back and forth in the weak glow of the firelight."
Chapter 29:
"We're in the hurrying business here, Will, in case you haven't noticed." He stood in the manner of a powerful man declaring a meeting at an end. Will stood up with him, and Crockett shook his hand.
"I'll get back to the Alamo as soon as I can," Will said.
Crockett slapped his nephew affectionately on the shoulder and shooed him away. Terrell could see that the older man was fighting back tears and looked away. Terrell shook Will's hand himself and then sat down again in front of the tree while Crockett unfolded a sheet of paper and took out a pen from a writing case.
"What do you want me to do?" Terrell said.
"I want you to sit there while I write a letter."
Chapter 34:
Joe had some difficulty finding Crockett since he did not know where he had been during the battle, but finally located somebody in front of the church that looked like him, and when they wiped the grime off his face Joe saw a tight and perverse version of the easy smile he had worn in life, and that had drawn men to him in the dark times of the siege.
"He asked me to thank you," the officer said after Santa Anna had finished contemplating the body of Crockett, "and to remind you that you have nothing to fear from us. His Excellency looks forward to interviewing you about the situation in Texas when you have recovered a little from the stress of the battle."
Santa Anna took off his hat and lifted his face to the rising sun and looked around at the horrible sights within the Alamo compound as if they gave him satisfaction. Then he smiled at Joe again and said something in Spanish as he stared at the blood-streaked face of the church and the tangled bodies still littering the yard. Joe thought Santa Anna was still talking to him, and he asked the officer what he had said.
"He said it was but a small affair," the man replied.
