A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  “Let us have a look, then,” Grant said, smiling at his company commander.

  They spurred their mounts together and began the race. Grant looked back to see half a dozen other mounted officers joining in the adventure. Within two minutes the heaving horses stood atop the highest roll in the prairie for miles around, yet the end of the mustang herd still could not be seen, lost in the dust of its own making. He had no way of calculating the size of the herd.

  Grant stared with his mouth hanging open as some other officers pulled rein to his right and left, forming a line on the knoll. The bay colt backed his ears and nipped at a sorrel with a Spanish brand that was standing too near.

  “Good heavens, Captain … Do you think that many horses could all fit inside the state of Rhode Island?”

  “Perhaps,” McCall answered. “But in a day’s time not a blade of grass would be left and they’d all have to move on to Connecticut for fresh pasturage.”

  Some officers chuckled at the captain’s assessment, then they all just sat astraddle their mounts and gawked for a time.

  “We must remember this, boys,” McCall said. “Those of us who survive this war will tell our grandchildren about the great Texas band of wild horses in 1846.”

  Just then, Grant’s mount let out a long, plaintive whinny, his whole body shuttering under the Ringgold saddle. The men laughed.

  Grant stroked the bay’s sweat-soaked neck. “Sorry, boy. You’ve joined the army. There will be no going back to civilian life until your enlistment is done.”

  SARAH BOWMAN

  Arroyo Colorado

  March 19, 1846

  For the past two weeks or more on the smuggler’s road, the average daily death toll for rattlesnakes seemed to have been about a dozen, give or take a couple. Soldiers bludgeoned and hacked the poisonous reptiles indiscriminately, leaving the small ones lying and draping the larger trophies over mesquite limbs. As she plodded along with the column, Sarah’s burro approached a headless four-footer left by the side of the road. The burro lowered his head for a better look and stomped on the diamondback without breaking stride as they trundled ever southward.

  “You sic ’em, Pedro,” she said, scratching the tireless beast on the back with her long, thorny mesquite stick.

  The numbers of rattlers represented quite a minority compared to the herds of wild horses and deer, the huge flocks of turkeys, and the packs of wolves and coyotes she had witnessed on this trek. This was a wild and peculiar land where javelinas snapped their tusks at invading humans, panthers screamed at night from the chaparral, and tarantulas scurried across her face in her sleep.

  Sarah remembered wondering, with the smuggler Commodore Baker, why the Mexicans would want to fight for this frontier at all. She had since learned why, by listening to the talk of the army officers for whom she cooked and mended uniforms. Mexico favored the Nueces for a border because it was a relatively short river, extending only three hundred miles or so inland. The idea was that the western border of Texas would end at the head of the Nueces and, from there, extend due north, limiting the westward sprawl of the new American state. The Texans, and most Americans, preferred the Rio Grande del Norte as the border. It reached almost two thousand miles inland, heading into the great Rocky Mountains, providing for a huge state, including the old Spanish settlements on the east banks of the Rio Grande—El Paso del Norte, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Taos.

  This dusty, thorny, fang-infested hell between the lower valleys of the Nueces and the Rio Grande really was worth fighting for. It was like the toothy mouth of a gator. It was hazardous, but if you could subdue it, you could lay claim to all the riches beyond. You could feast on its meat and go into the suitcase business. No one really knew the extent of the resources that might lie inland to the north and east of the Rio Grande. Rich farmlands? Timber? Cattle ranching empires? Silver? Gold?

  She mused over the ambitions of men in power. How hastily they sent poor soldiers into battle to carry out their lofty whims. She thought of her husband wasting away in the hospital tent. Though she prayed for him daily, she doubted God would spare him. John never would have become this ill back at Jefferson Barracks. This campaign was killing him. She knew it. Yet she knew the Lord worked His ways through many mysteries, and she found some good in it all. Besides laundress and cook, Sarah had become a capable nurse, having spent all of her spare hours caring for her husband and the other sick or injured men.

  Ahead on the trail, she saw two soldiers attempting to lift an unconscious comrade into a wagon. Heatstroke and fatigue had taken its toll on many a man during the march. The two men, themselves exhausted, were trying to hoist the limp body over the sideboards of the wagon bed when an officer rode up. It was First Lieutenant Braxton Bragg of the Third Artillery, known as the sternest of the West Point disciplinarians.

  “Lift that man in there, you dirty Dutch bastards!” He drew his saber and beat one of the soldiers over the back with the flat of his blade, as if whipping a beast of burden. “We haven’t all day to waste over a dying immigrant!”

  Sarah rolled up and stopped her cart. Jumping out, she rushed to help, getting her shoulder under the unconscious man’s ribs to buoy him upward with her strong legs and back. The man was rolled onto a pile of tattered tents with a couple of other incoherent soldiers.

  Bragg only scowled at her, then turned his fierce glare on the German soldiers who had stopped to help a countryman. “Get back in line! March!”

  “You’re welcome,” Sarah muttered, as the lieutenant charged away on his mount. She didn’t know if she had ever met a meaner son of a bitch than Lieutenant Bragg. The man possessed an outspoken hatred for the German and Irish soldiers, many of whom had seen combat with other armies in Europe, while Bragg had seen none.

  “Git up, Pedro,” she ordered, having climbed back into her cart. A half hour later, passing over one of those low rolls in the prairie, she could see that the column had halted up ahead. Through the dust, she made out a barrier of taller chaparral punctuated by bright green willows down in the next low swell. That meant a stream—the Arroyo Colorado. The entire column was drawing up and gathering here. Many of the officers had predicted a fight with the Mexican Army at this arroyo.

  As her donkey cart bounced past some bull whackers, Sarah joshed with the men who forever gawked at her uncommonly large and shapely frame. “Take a break, you horny beasts!”

  “You talkin’ to us or the oxen?” a sergeant replied.

  “If the shoe fits…”

  “What are you gonna do about it?” a private asked.

  “Take your bullwhip to your hide, if you don’t mind your manners.”

  The men guffawed, and she joined in the laughter with them, until she saw a soldier relieving himself at the edge of the chaparral alongside the road. “Hey, Private, reel that in and button up your tongs. You’re liable to get snakebit!”

  “Ma’am, it is part rattlesnake!” the man boasted.

  “Well, what in tarnation stunted its growth?”

  The men roared, and she drove on past the ranks of the mule skinners, shouting encouragement and suggestive jocularities to the soldiers. She never feared any untoward advances from these men. First off, she was pretty sure she could whip most of them in a fair fight. And though not all were perfect gentlemen, the vast majority of them possessed a military code that honored womanhood—at least for white women such as herself.

  Approaching the head of the column, she saw a stampede of dragoons galloping back up from the banks of the arroyo to the place where General Taylor was talking with his officers, about how to ford the stream, she supposed. Sarah drove her burro cart up close to them, anxious to listen in on the developments. She stopped near the place where Taylor sat atop Old Whitey, jumped out of her cart, and strolled over near the gathering of officers as the cavalry arrived from the arroyo.

  “I want the artillery placements ready at dawn,” Taylor was saying to Lieutenant Scarritt, of the engineers. “I don’t care if
the men have to work all night.” The general angled his eyes toward Captain Mansfield, who had just ridden up from the stream. “Report, Captain.”

  “The enemy is waiting across the stream, sir.”

  “How many?”

  “We were unable to determine their numbers. They’re hidden in the chaparral brush and the timber.”

  “Artillery? Cavalry?”

  “We couldn’t see any guns, General, but we did see some lancers moving about. And we spoke to a Mexican officer across the water.”

  Taylor’s eyebrows lifted casually. “The man spoke English?”

  “Very fluently. He identified himself as a captain. He said any attempt of the Army of Occupation to cross the arroyo would be considered an act of war.”

  “Very well, Captain. You’re dismissed. We’ll camp here for the night and prepare to cross at dawn.” Taylor swung laboriously down from his tall, white horse. “Bill!”

  “Yes, sir!” shouted Captain William Bliss, the general’s adjutant.

  “I want all of the regimental commanders and the engineers at my tent at sundown for a council of war.”

  “Yes, sir!” Bliss barked.

  Sarah admired the dashing adjutant. Known as Perfect Bliss, the captain was the quintessence of an army officer. He reined his mount away to carry out his orders.

  “General Taylor!” shouted Captain Charles Smith. “I respectfully request the honor of leading the infantry crossing in the morning!”

  Sarah heard a hush fall over the men within earshot, many of them Smith’s own infantry soldiers, who were sitting or standing nearby, listening. She glanced at their faces and found many stunned at their commander’s offer to lead them into what everyone expected to be the opening battle of the war.

  Suddenly she felt honor bound to speak up. “General Taylor!” she shouted in her loudest voice, so as many of the men as possible might hear her. “Give me a strong pair of tongs and I’ll wade across right now and whip every scoundrel I can lay hands on!”

  Taylor’s broad smile broke across his face and his shoulders shook with mirth, though Sarah heard no laughter. The laughter came, instead, from the enlisted soldiers within earshot.

  “That won’t be necessary, ma’am. The rest of you get back to your companies and await your instructions.”

  Satisfied that she had raised the hackles of this fighting force, Sarah withdrew to tend to her burro. She unhitched her cart and took Pedro to water, then staked him in some tall grass. She would set up her kitchen right here. If her boys wanted to dine tonight, they could come and find her, because she didn’t have the time or the inclination to track them down just now.

  * * *

  In her deep sleep, the night seemed to pass quickly. Sarah rose before dawn to prepare breakfast. Her boys ate quietly in the dark, their minds on the battle they expected to face at sunup. When she had finished the dishes, she loaded her things in preparation for the crossing and hitched Pedro to her cart. She then tied the burro to a mesquite tree.

  Next, she checked the loads in the double-barreled .50-caliber percussion pistol her husband had won from a gambler two years ago while playing stud poker in Saint Louis. She tucked the pistol under her apron strings and found a trail that led down toward the arroyo. She didn’t intend to miss the crossing of the army. But she had to hurry, for daylight had crept over no-man’s-land, and four companies of infantry, under Captain Smith, had already formed up to wade the brackish stream.

  As she approached the Arroyo Colorado, an unexpected noise caught Sarah’s attention, causing her to stop. A bugle? She heard it again and recognized the familiar notes of Assembly. But this bugle had come from across the Arroyo Colorado. Looking south, to the other side of the stream, she caught glimpses of red-and-blue uniforms darting around in the chaparral. She even saw the long, shining blades of lances rising and falling above the mesquite branches. She heard orders being shouted in Spanish. Then more bugle calls.

  A company of flying artillery raced by her, followed by General Taylor on Old Whitey. “Don’t judge the enemy’s strength by his noise, men!” the commander shouted to the infantry.

  Rushing ahead now to get a closer view, Sarah twisted and ducked through the willows along a deer trail. She heard the Mexican bugler blowing the notes of First Sergeant’s Call, indicating that the head enlisted man in the company across the way was about to form up his men—for what purpose, Sarah could only guess.

  She arrived at the bank of the brackish stream to find the water several feet below her, at the bottom of an eroded bank cut vertically through the dirt. This cut bank extended up and down the arroyo in both directions. But at dusk last evening, men with picks and shovels had begun carving a slanted road through it to facilitate the crossing of the wagons and artillery. She could see this road to her left.

  Now, as she watched, three six-pounders of the flying artillery under the dashing Major Ringgold drew up and unlimbered on the bluff to guard the crossing of the foot soldiers. These artillery placements had been cleared of thorny undergrowth overnight by soldiers with axes. She heard the officers calling for spherical case shot to be loaded. For all she knew, Mexican cannon might be aiming back her way at this very moment.

  Sarah found a fallen cottonwood near the water but far enough back in the willows to keep her concealed from Mexican snipers. She kicked at the log to roust out any snakes that might be lurking there, then took a seat on the horizontal trunk. With her pistol resting on her thigh, she would watch what just might turn out to be the beginning of a war.

  With the artillery in place and a company of riflemen covering the Arroyo Colorado with double firing lines—the men in front kneeling while the soldiers behind them stood—the order was given to commence the crossing.

  Smith’s men waded in, holding their muskets and their ammunition pouches above their heads to keep them dry. They proceeded slowly as the artillerymen stood poised with lanyards in their hands, anxious to start the war with a yank of the cord. As the foot soldiers slogged across, a horseman plunged in behind them and overtook the wading men. It was the overzealous General William Worth. Apparently unable to restrain himself, Worth startled Captain Smith by joining him in the lead.

  Mexican bugles continued to sing, and lance tips appeared here and there above the brush. But they were farther away now. The first soldiers floundered ashore on the far bank and Sarah began to see the whole lance-and-bugle show for what it was: bluff and bluster. Her hero, General Taylor, had handled it well. The Mexicans were withdrawing.

  All signs of the opposing army vanished as Captain Smith waved All clear from the opposite bank. The fife and drums lit into “Yankee Doodle.” Men cheered.

  Sarah sighed. The thick grass at her feet seemed to beckon, so she slid off the log and reclined on the ground, face upward. The sun shone down through new green cottonwood leaves, illuminating them like stained glass windows. A spring breeze carried aromas of strange blossoms to her nostrils, mixed with the dank odor of rotten driftwood. She knew the men would take some time to cross, so she closed her eyes and drifted away, hearing the shouts of officers even in her sleep.

  * * *

  The curses of the mule skinners woke her, so Sarah sat up and climbed back up onto her log perch. She yawned and rubbed her eyes like a sleepy child. The first wagon was being eased down the steep slope the men had carved in the vertical cut bank. A group of soldiers behind the wagon held to a short rope tied to the rear axle to keep it from rolling too quickly into the water. Ahead, a long rope had been tied to the wagon tongue, passed between the swing mules, and then through the bridle of the lead mule. It led all the way across the arroyo, where a gang of twenty men pulled the mule team forward. In the middle of the stream, the wagon bed began to float, but the salty estuary moved sluggishly and the swimming mules easily pulled the load to the opposite bank.

  She watched two more wagons cross before the process, although impressive in its ingenuity, began to bore her. Time had come to find her pla
ce in line and make her own crossing. Taylor had ordered a two-day rest at a spring on the south side of the arroyo. She would set up her kitchen and find a hunter who had bagged a deer or a turkey or one of those wild piglike critters called javelinas. She would purchase some meat and make some stew for her boys. The excitement in camp would run high tonight. The enemy had been spotted, and had turned tail.

  Private

  ANDREW SINGER

  Rio Grande

  March 29, 1846

  “Some farmer done went to a lot of trouble for nothin’,” said Private Andrew Singer as he pulled up another six-inch stalk of corn. “Any of you boys ever push a plow?”

  “I learned to walk holdin’ on to a plow,” one private claimed.

  “I plowed a million acres before I was ten years old,” said another.

  “Well, some corn farmer had him a nice crop comin’ up till Zach Taylor’s army moved into the neighborhood.” Singer looked across the Rio Grande at the Mexican town of Matamoras, its gaily painted walls and wrought iron balcony railings visible in the afternoon sunshine. “That poor farmer’s probably on one of them balconies right now, cussin’ our sorry asses for pullin’ up his crop.”

  “They sure plant early down here,” said a farm boy from Ohio.

  “You damn pumpkin rollers,” said a soldier from Boston. “I’m glad I never had to make a living looking up a mule’s ass.”

  “Well, you’re in the cornfield with the rest of us now,” Singer said, pulling up another plant and smoothing the furrows underfoot with his boot.

  “That’s the bitter truth,” said the Bostonian, using his shovel to level the ground so the men could pitch their tents on this erstwhile cornfield. “Stuck here with you dumb hayseeds.”

  Singer threw a clod at the city slicker, which was answered with a shovelful of dirt hurled his way.

  “Singer!”