On March 31, which was Thursday, camp was made in the bottom-lands near Groce’s Ferry, of the Brazos between San Felipe and Washington. It looked as though this was to be a camp for several days, at least, for the general set everybody at work clearing away the brush on the margin of a large pond back from the river.
What next? Nobody seemed to know. The army had retreated over 200 miles from Gonzales, and now had dwindled down from the 1300 men at the Colorado to only a little more than 500 men. But the general was energy itself. He never quit for a minute. The steamboat Yellowstone, commanded by Captain Ross, was found at Groce’s Ferry loading with cotton for the Gulf. The general ordered this seized and held, to be used should the army cross to the east bank.
He formed the little army into regiments. General Burleson commanded the first, and Lieutenant-Colonel Sidney Sherman of the Kentucky volunteers (the company with the beautiful flag) was promoted to command the second. The cavalry were attached to this regiment, and now for the first time Jim and Ernest were under a settled officer. Leo remained in the infantry, under Colonel Burleson, and Sion was still down opposite the ruins of San Felipe, with the Captain Baker company.
The camp was aroused each morning by the three taps of the drum at the general’s quarters, and there were daily drills. There also was rain――rain, rain, rain, until the camp was a mud island, for the river Brazos overflowed and surrounded it. Rain, mud, and measles, and bad water; half the men ill with one disease or another, and the general laid up, part of the time, in a tent that he had procured.
Then, on the second of April, came bad news. It permeated the discontented camp like wild-fire. Colonel Fannin and his men had not been paroled, but had been killed: shot down, or bayoneted, on Palm Sunday, March 27, at Goliad, by the Mexican companies! Three hundred and twenty――think of it――320 of the rank and file, marched out upon the prairie, and slain by the Mexican soldiers! Santa Anna himself had sent the orders.
The New Orleans Grays, the Red Rovers of Alabama, the Mustangs of Kentucky, and all――all except twenty-six or twenty-seven who had dodged the bullets and had escaped in the brush. Colonel Fannin and Colonel Ward of the Georgians had been shot separately. It was worse than even the Alamo.