A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  Finally, the Brit, Captain Furlock, translated a most pointed question from the generalissimo: “Why did you desert the Yankees?”

  The deserter scowled. “The abuses of the Yankee officers on immigrant soldiers have reached a most dastardly level.”

  Furlock translated the remark, and the follow-up question from the general: “The general asks what your intentions are, now that you have deserted.”

  Riley drew himself up into a most soldierly posture. “I seek an officer’s commission to form a company of Irishmen. An artillery unit. Those of us who have deserted—and the hundreds to come—have scores to settle.”

  General Ampudia considered the offer only briefly, then nodded and spoke to Furlock.

  “Congratulations on your promotion, Second Lieutenant Riley.” Furlock offered his hand.

  Riley, an officer now, never thought he would feel so elated to shake the hand of an Englishman. His thoughts whirled back to Mackinac Island. He had promised Charles O’Malley that he would attain his former rank or die. The newly appointed Lieutenant John Riley may have broken his oath to serve the U.S. Army, but he had kept his promise to O’Malley. And, he had remained true to his religion and his heart. This border conflict was now a holy war to Riley. Let any man who would raise arms against the Catholic faith go to hell and face the devil.

  Captain

  WILLIAM J. HARDEE

  Rancho de Carricitos

  April 25, 1846

  Dawn broke over Captain William J. Hardee’s right shoulder, a singular beam torching the tops of mesquites. He twisted in the saddle, looking back to see the orange glow through the thorns of the chaparral. Beautiful. It somewhat soothed his nerves, as he breathed in the aroma of horseflesh and the stinging odor of trampled weeds.

  He sat listening to the heated conversation going on between the commander of his scouting party, Captain Seth Thornton, and the Mexican citizen who had been serving as his guide. The guide was shaking his head, looking worried.

  “Capitan, I go no más from here. No más.”

  “You must go, senor. It is your duty.”

  “It is yours, Capitan. Not mine. My duty is to tell you this: Do not go on. No más!” The guide angled his glare from Thornton’s eyes to Hardee’s, as if Hardee might be able to do something. Then he spurred his little mustang back downstream and trotted away into the rising sun.

  Hardee rode forward. “Captain, may I have a word with you?” he said to Thornton.

  Thornton tossed his head toward a high roll on the trail ahead. They trotted that way together.

  Except for a two-hour rest last night, the men had been in the saddle twenty hours straight and had meandered across twenty-five miles of the valley upstream of Fort Texas, making inquiries, through their guide, of any local residents they came across. A rumor had reached General Zachary Taylor’s headquarters at the garrison yesterday. The rumor suggested that the renowned Mexican cavalry commander, General Anastasio Torrejon, had crossed the Rio Grande somewhere upstream with a thousand cavalrymen—lancers. Taylor had ordered Captain Thornton to ride upstream with a mere sixty-five dragoons to investigate the rumor.

  Fifteen days ago, Colonel Trueman Cross, Taylor’s quartermaster, had disappeared outside of camp while pleasure riding. A few days later, his body was found. Apparently he had been murdered. A week ago, Lieutenant Theodoric Porter, leading a patrol near camp, had been ambushed and killed, along with one of his soldiers. Captain Hardee realized that these foul deeds could not be proven to be the work of regular Mexican soldiers. Mexican vigilantes, militiamen, or bandits, all known collectively as rancheros, were suspected. In order to persuade Congress to declare a war, President Polk would require an attack on American troops by regular Mexican Army soldiers. On this morning, Hardee couldn’t shake the feeling that he was riding into exactly what the president had been awaiting.

  He pulled rein on the trail where he and Thornton could look over the rise and see ahead to the west. Being from Georgia, Hardee saw what he thought of as a plantation up ahead. The Mexicans would call such a place a hacienda, the village around it a rancheria.

  “What’s on your mind, Bill?” Thornton asked.

  “Captain Thornton,” Hardee said to his equal in rank, who was nonetheless his superior in the field at this moment, “should we take precautions?”

  Thornton sat slumped in his saddle. He always looked a bit peaked. “We will go ahead, Bill. We will question anyone we may find at that rancheria ahead.”

  “Of course. But should we address the men? Send scouts ahead? Guard our rear?”

  Thornton sighed. “I will ride at the head of the column. You guard the rear, Captain.”

  Hardee looked coolly at the Marylander Thornton. He didn’t sense any disrespect in the order to guard the rear. But he had hoped Thornton might adopt his other suggestions. “The guide seemed to think the enemy waits at that plantation ahead.”

  “He was tired of riding and wanted to go home. He’s been trying to convince me all along that the Mexican cavalry is always just ahead, beyond the next bend in the river. You have your orders.”

  Hardee nodded. They loped their mounts back toward the column, both captains riding fine American horses, for the Second Dragoons had ridden their own stock to Texas from their former post at Fort Jesup, Louisiana. Seth Thornton rode a huge red roan, while Hardee straddled a favored bay. Reaching the head of the column, Hardee continued his canter on toward the back of the formation, checking over the men as he rode.

  They looked tough and ready. The dragoons traditionally cultivated a wild and fearsome look. They grew long hair and long beards and, to a man, seemed to have practiced a menacing glare. Each carried a saber, a Hall carbine rifle, and a single-shot horse pistol that could also be used as a club. The pistol was carried in a saddle holster aside the pommel of their Ringgold saddles.

  Many of these men had been tested in skirmishes with the Seminoles and Creeks. Yet Hardee worried about how they would match up to true cavalry soldiers like the ones he suspected the Mexican general, Torrejon, had crossed over the Rio Grande. The dragoons could fight from the saddle, if need be, but they were more accustomed to dismounting and fighting afoot. They had just recently, in fact, been remounted, having been dismounted two years ago and designated as “dismounted rifles.” Since being remounted as dragoons, they had had little time to drill in cavalry tactics. How would they match up to the battle-hardened Mexican lancers?

  Captain Thornton seemed to believe that the Mexicans had not crossed the border at all, or that, if they had, they would not fight. Hardee had served some time with Thornton but could not say that he knew the man well. Some of the officers thought of Seth Thornton as a bit “tetched,” as the term went in Georgia, or touched in the head. Thornton had survived the explosion of the steamer Pulaski off the coast of North Carolina several years ago. As the ship sank, he had distinguished himself by diving into the waters time and time again to rescue women and children who otherwise would have drowned. When the lifeboats were full, he had lashed himself to a floating hen coop. He was fished out of the sea three days later, ranting like a lunatic.

  There were those in the officer’s corps who believed a bit of the maniac still lurked in Captain Thornton’s mind. Hardee did not agree. Thornton was recklessly aggressive, but he was not crazy. He wouldn’t be able to claim insanity as an excuse for his actions, should something go amiss on this day.

  “Check your loads, boys!” Hardee said to the men as he rode past them. “Watch the chaparral!” He took up his place in the rear, next to Sergeant Tredo, a reliable soldier and tough leader of the enlisted men.

  “Stay alert, Sergeant,” he said to Tredo.

  “Like a hawk, sir.”

  The column started moving toward the hacienda a couple of miles ahead.

  The sun had risen over the mesquite tops by the time the head of the column arrived within musket range of the tiny settlement. From the rear, Hardee peered through the dust kicked up by h
ooves. The Rio Grande, its riffles sparkling in the sunshine, flanked the dragoons to the left. The chaparral grew dense in the valley but had been cleared above the brink of the riverbank to make way for a pasture, some houses, and some outbuildings.

  A virtually impenetrable fence made of thorny bushes, cacti, and stacked brush enclosed the field and the buildings. They called it a chaparral fence in this region. Hardee thought of it as a frontier answer to the European hedgerow. It was dense enough to hold wild cattle and too high for most mustangs to jump, yet a mounted man could see over the top of it.

  The field enclosed by the chaparral fence measured about forty acres square, by Hardee’s estimation. The houses and outbuildings were all located at the far end of the cleared pasture. He saw Thornton probing for an entrance through the chaparral fence. Finding none along the eastern approach, Thornton turned left around the first corner he came to, the column of dragoons snaking behind him.

  When Hardee brought up the rear around this same northeast corner of the fence, he saw that Captain Thornton had found a gap in the thorny hedgerow about halfway along the north side of the enclosure. Two long timbers, suspended one above the other, spanned the gap, serving as a gate. A soldier had dismounted to pull these wooden bars aside so the dragoons could enter the enclosed field. Most of the company was already inside the chaparral fence.

  This shocked and worried Hardee. He had expected that Thornton might send a platoon into the enclosure to search the houses for inhabitants, while leaving the main body of his company outside the chaparral fence, in the event escape should become necessary. Hardee brooded over Thornton’s lack of precautions. If Hardee had been given command of this company, he would have already ordered sentries to the four corners of the chaparral fence to watch for trouble. Thornton had called for no such safeguards. He led the entire company of dragoons into the pasture, single file, heading for the houses at the far end of the enclosure, a furlong from the gate.

  Has he never heard of shooting fish in a barrel?

  As the last man in the company to pass through the gate, Hardee turned back to look about the dense chaparral forest surrounding the outside of the fence. He felt nervous, entering this place. As far as he knew, there was no other way in or out of this fenced pasture. The thought occurred to him that the dragoons’ sabers could be employed, in a pinch, to hack a hole through a weak spot in the hedgerow.

  “Sergeant Tredo!” he said, entering the field.

  “Sir?” Tredo barked as he wheeled his mount to face the captain.

  “Follow the column up to those buildings, but keep your eyes on this gate. I’m going to see about posting some guards, so have eight men picked for sentry duty.”

  “Yes, sir!” Tredo’s nod showed that he approved of the idea.

  Hardee loped forward to find Thornton. Many of the dragoons had dismounted. Some apparently had been ordered to search the buildings, which seemed abandoned. Others were lighting cigars or drinking from canteens. His eyes located Thornton near the largest of the houses, which was still nothing more than a cabin made of planks and roofed with handmade shingles. The captain was talking to an old man who had been found inside.

  “Captain Thornton,” Hardee said.

  Thornton glanced at his second-in-command but did not answer. He turned back to the ancient ranchero.

  “Como se llama este rancho?” he said, laboring through his limited Spanish.

  “Rancho de Carricitos,” the old man replied, his jaw jutting defiantly.

  “Donde esta General Torrejon?” Thornton asked.

  The old man cupped his hand behind his ear.

  “I said, ‘Donde esta General Torrejon?’”

  “Torrejon?” the old man said. “Torrejon?” He shrugged. “Quien sabe?”

  “Captains!” The shout came from Sergeant Tredo. “The gate!”

  Hardee, still in the saddle, looked back at the gap. A wave of panic swept through his innards as he saw foot soldiers wearing dark blue uniforms and shakos that resembled top hats entering the fenced field. Dozens of them had already poured in through the gate. Above the thorny summit of the chaparral fence, he saw lancers spreading out along the outside of the chaparral fence, the blades of the weapons glinting in the sun, the riders wearing plumed helmets and tunics of red, green, and blue.

  “To horse!” Thornton ordered.

  Everywhere, men scrambled to mount and groped for their weapons.

  Hardee’s jaw tightened angrily. This is what he had feared. The Mexicans were pouring from the chaparral where they had hidden and were now spreading out to encircle the entire rancheria.

  “Charge!” Thornton ordered. “Charge the gate!” Laying spurs to his big roan, Thornton drew his saber and rode past his own company of dragoons to take the lead in the assault. There was no time to place the men in formation. No time for bugle calls.

  Hardee found himself riding around the opposite side of the men who were turning to follow Thornton, some of them still afoot, trying to mount. He passed lieutenants Kane and Mason, both of whom spurred their mounts to follow his example. Now he was third in the charge, behind Captain Thornton and Sergeant Tredo.

  As he galloped, Hardee drew his percussion pistol from the pommel holster and cocked it. His bay charged ahead bravely. Two hundred yards away and closing fast on the escape route, he saw more Mexican infantrymen streaming into the field to establish a skirmish line to the right side of the passageway. Outside the fence, more mounted troops in colorful tunics swarmed, brandishing escopetas.

  Charging on, he hoped the resolve of the Mexicans would break, but they held, the soldiers inside the fence kneeling now to fire. A hundred yards, and nearer, nearer, ever nearer. Would they ever fire? He felt a battle yell welling up within and let it escape from his lungs. The dragoons behind him joined in with war whoops. Hardee was beginning to think the Mexican show of force nothing but a bluff. Then the first blossoms of white smoke hurled a volley of whistling balls past him. He heard the musket balls thudding into men and horses, and yet Thornton charged on ahead of him.

  A well-timed second volley from the cavalrymen outside the fence rained death into the faces of the dragoons. Ahead of Hardee, Thornton turned aside to the right, directly in front of the Mexican skirmish line. Hardee could see him pulling reins, but Thornton’s big roan had panicked beyond the captain’s control. Hardee fired his single-shot pistol in the direction of the skirmish line as he wheeled to the right through a welcome cloud of smoke.

  “Captain!” he yelled at Thornton. “We’ve got to cut through this fence. We’re trapped.”

  “Cut through the fence!” Thornton ordered. “Use your sabers!”

  Musket fire seemed to rattle from everywhere now as the dragoons milled in confusion. Fish in a barrel. Thornton’s roan screamed and tumbled forward, slamming him to the ground packed hard by hooves. Thornton did not move.

  “Follow me!” Hardee yelled. He continued to gallop to the right, away from the skirmishers, toward the river. He looked over his shoulder to find men riding after him. Beyond them, he saw a number horses and dragoons on the ground, some of them already in the hands of the enemy.

  As he galloped toward the river, Hardee replaced his pistol in the pommel holster and drew his saber. The field inside the chaparral fence was large enough to ride beyond the effective range of the Mexican muskets and escopetas. His idea was to use sabers to chop through the hedgerow fence on the south side. If they could hack a hole, the dragoons could escape across the Rio Grande or find some cover from which to mount a defense.

  His bay, heaving for air, reached the south fence. Hardee looked over the top of the chaparral fence and felt his one hope for escape sink as he saw the river below. A tangle of thorny underbrush on the riverbank protected a perfect quagmire of bogs and quicksand below. It formed a natural moat along this side of the rancho. There was no escape.

  “What do we do, Captain?” a wild-eyed private yelled.

  Hardee looked downstream. The sou
theast corner of the fence was a furlong away, and Mexican lancers were already lining it, all the way to the riverbank. He looked upstream and saw the red-and-green tunics of riders above the fence in that direction as well.

  “Captain, we’re trapped!” a dragoon cried.

  “Form up!” Hardee ordered. “Form a line and face the enemy.”

  He inspected the dragoons as they obeyed his order. All of them were privates. Some had dropped weapons in the chaos. Many men and horses were bleeding from bullet wounds. He counted only twenty-five of the fifty-two privates who had left Fort Texas yesterday. The others had been captured, wounded, or killed in the last few terrifying minutes. Aside from Hardee, all the officers and noncommissioned officers were dead or taken prisoner. Hardee was the company commander now.

  He turned around to assess the enemy’s strength through the field of musket smoke. Mexican soldiers continued to march into the pasture while more cavalrymen streamed out of the chaparral to surround the hacienda beyond the fence.

  “There’s hundreds of them, Captain,” a private said behind him.

  Hardee looked at his options. Escape across the river was impossible. An offensive charge would prove suicidal. The idea of surrender was distasteful—but acceptable, considering the overwhelming odds against him. He turned his prancing bay back around to face his men.

  “I will ride forward to secure terms. If I am murdered, I expect the men of the Second Dragoons to sell their lives as dearly as possible. If we must be taken prisoner, we will do so with dignity and live to fight another day.” He heard no complaints from his men.

  Returning his saber to its scabbard, Captain William J. Hardee reined his mount to face the Mexican Army and rode forward at a walk. A third of the way across the field, he saw a single Mexican cavalry officer coming to meet him.