Ahead of the Army

by William Osborn Stoddard

  CHAPTER VIII.

  OUT OF THE TIERRA CALIENTE

  Those were days of great commotion in the Congress of the United States.The whole nation, South as well as North, was divided in opinion as tothe righteousness and expediency of the war with Mexico. There were twogreat parties, both of which have long since passed away, for thequestion of the annexation of Texas is no longer before the people, andall this was more than half a century ago. One of the parties calleditself "Whig," but its enemies described its members as "Coons," in thehabit of roosting up a tree out of reach. The other party called itself"Democratic," while its opponents lampooned its members as "Loco-focos,"comparing them to the blue-headed sulphur matches of that name, whichwere largely manufactured and did not burn very well. Party feeling ranhigh, and the debates in Congress were red-hot. The DemocraticPresident, James K. Polk, was a man of far greater ability andstatesmanship than his party enemies were willing to give him creditfor, and he was supported by a brilliant array of politicians. On theother hand, the Whig party contained a number of our most distinguishedstatesmen, and, curiously enough, most of the generals of the army,including Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, were well-known Whigs. Itwas not altogether unnatural, therefore, that the Democratic party inpower should wish to put the command of any army preparing for theinvasion of Mexico into the hands of officers who were in favor of thewar which they were to carry on. Questions like this, and some othersrelating to the unprepared condition of the American army for sotremendous an undertaking, were responsible for the fact that there wasa long delay in all military operations, even after the hard andsuccessful fighting done by General Taylor's forces at the Rio Grande.

  American cruisers were tacking to and fro over the waters of the Gulf ofMexico and the Caribbean Sea, without any especial errand of which theircommanders were aware. Regiments of eager volunteers were forming inseveral of the States, and were trying hard to discover officers whoknew how to drill and handle them. The politicians were everywherecalling each other harder and harder names. Not one soul in all theUnited States, however, knew anything of a party of mounted men, acarriage, and a spring-wagon, which quietly made its way out of the cityof Vera Cruz, not long after sunset, one sultry and lazy evening. At thehead of this cavalcade rode two men, who sat upon their spirited horsesas if they were at home in the saddle. At their right, however, was ayoung fellow on a black pony who was entirely satisfied with the factthat the beast under him did not seem to have any spirit at all. He wasat that moment steadying his feet in the stirrups, and remarking tohimself:

  "I'm glad none of them saw me mount him. I got upon a high box first,and even then my machete was tangled with my legs, and I all but fellover him. I'll get the senor to show me how, or I'll be laughed at bythe men."

  He was doing fairly well at present, for the road went up a hill, andthe night was not one for foolishly fast travelling. He could listen allthe better, and one of his companions was saying to the other:

  "My dear Zuroaga, we have gained four miles. Every one of them is worthsomething handsome to you and me. In my opinion, we did not get away amoment too soon to save our necks."

  "Not one minute!" replied the other, with strong emphasis. "Not even ifGuerra can succeed in gaining for us the best part of another day, as hebelieved he could. Perhaps our best chance, after all, is that he hasonly one company of lancers, and that any officer sent with it mighthave instructions which would take him by another road than this."

  "The inspector-general had with him an escort of his own," said Tassara."If he should send those fellows, they would be likely to know how tofind us. They are not under the orders of Guerra."

  "If," exclaimed Zuroaga, fiercely, "they do not overtake us until afterthe middle of our second day out, I believe they would be unlucky to tryto arrest us. I hope they will be wise, and not tire out their horseswith too much haste. I feel as if I could shoot pretty straight if Ishould see them coming within range."

  "So could I," replied Tassara.

  The road which they were then following ran between cultivated lands oneither side. It was not tree-shadowed, and, as Ned looked back, themoonlight showed him something that made him think rapidly. Additionalhorsemen had joined them after they had left the city behind them, andit occurred to him that arrangements had been made beforehand forsomething like a small war. There were not less than twenty armed men,besides himself and the pair who were with him. For some reason orother, moreover, the wagon, which was drawn by four mules, and thecarriage, drawn by a pair of fine animals of the same sort, were drivenon well in advance. It appeared, therefore, as if no danger was expectedto meet them from the opposite direction, and that Senora Tassara andher daughter were fairly well protected from any peril which might comeafter them along the road from Vera Cruz. The next thing that struckNed, little as he knew about war, was that these horsemen were ridingtwo and two, not in a straggling procession, but in as perfect order asif they had been trained cavalry. If he had known a little more, hewould have declared:

  "That is just what they are."

  He might not also have known that all but six of them were from theTassara estates, and that the odd half-dozen were lifelong servants ofthe proscribed descendant of Hernando Cortes. If he could haveunderstood those men, he might also have comprehended one importantfeature of the tangled politics of Mexico, and why ambitious militarymen were every now and then able to set up for themselves, and defy thecentral government until it could manage to capture them, and have themshot as rebels. Wiser men than he, looking at the matter from theoutside, might also have understood how greatly it was to the credit ofPresident Paredes that he was making so good a stand against the powerof the United States while hampered by so many difficulties. Ned was nopolitician at all, and it was a mere impulse, or a tired feeling, whichled him to pull in his pony and let the men catch up with him, so thathe might chat with them, one after another, and get acquainted. He foundthat they were under no orders not to talk. On the contrary, every manof them seemed to know that Ned had come home from the school which hehad been attending in England, and that he had been instrumental inprocuring powder and bullets for them and for the Mexican army. Theywere full of patriotism of a peculiar kind. It would have made themfight gringos or any other foreigners to-day, and to-morrow to fight asreadily in any causeless revolution which their local leaders might seefit to set going. They were eager for all the news Ned could give them,and he was soon on good terms with them, for he took pains not to letthem know how uncomfortable he felt in that saddle. They surely wouldhave despised any young Mexican who had forgotten how to ride while hewas travelling in Europe.

  Hour after hour went by, and on every level stretch of road the wheeledvehicles were driven at a moderate trot. The horses of what Ned calledthe cavalry also trotted occasionally, but it was well for him that hispony did not seem to know how. Whenever he was asked to go faster, hestruck into a rocking canter, which was as easy and about as lazy as acradle, so that his rider received hardly any shaking, and was able tokeep both his seat and his stirrups. Brief halts for rest were made nowand then. Bridges were crossed which Ned understood were over smallbranches of the Blanco River, but they were still in the lowlands when,at about midnight, the little column wheeled out of the road and went onfor a hundred yards or more into a magnificent forest, where themoonlight came down among the trees to show how old and large they were.

  "Halt! Dismount!" came sharply from Colonel Tassara. "It is twelveo'clock. We have made over twenty miles. We will camp here untildaylight. Pablo, put up the tents."

  Every rider but Ned was down on his feet in a twinkling, but he remainedupon his pony's back as still as a statue. He saw a white tent leave thetop of the baggage in the wagon and set itself up, as if by magic.Another and another followed, and he said to himself:

  "They are little picnic tents. One is for the senora and Felicia; onefor the colonel; and one for Senor Zuroaga. Not any for me or for themen. Oh, dear! How shall I ever get down? I can't
move my legs. If Ican't, I shall have to go to sleep in the saddle!"

  That was just what he might have done if it had not been for his kindand thoughtful friend, the general,--if he was one,--for Zuroaga nowcame to the side of the pony to inquire, with a merry laugh:

  "How are you now, my boy? I knew how it would be. Tired out? Stiff withso long a ride? Lean over this way and I'll help you down. Come!"

  Ned leaned over and tried to pull his feet out of the stirrups. They didcome out somehow, and then he made an extra effort not to fall asleepwith his head on the general's shoulder.

  "Used up completely!" exclaimed Zuroaga. "Can you walk? Stretch yourlegs. Kick. It's your first long ride? You'll soon get used to it.There! Now I'll put you into my tent, but we must be on the march againby six o'clock in the morning. You can sleep till breakfast."

  "I can walk, thank you," responded poor Ned, and he did so, after a lameand awkward fashion, but he was glad to reach the tent. "It's big enoughfor two," he said, as he crawled in.

  "Is it?" said the general. "Bah! I do not use one half the time. I am asoldier and a hunter, and I prefer to bivouac in such weather as this. Imust be on the lookout, too, to-night. Crawl in and go to sleep."

  Ned was already in. Down he went upon a blanket, without even unbucklinghis machete, and that was the last that he knew that night of the campor of anybody in it. Probably, nothing less than the report of a cannonfired over that tent would have aroused him to go for his horse-pistolsor draw his Mexican sabre.

  Senora Tassara and her daughter had disappeared immediately, and they,also, must have been wearied with their long, hot journey, but all therest of the party were old campaigners, and they were ready to take careof the horses and eat cold rations, for no fires were kindled.

  A few minutes later, if Ned had been awake instead of sleeping sosoundly, he might have heard what two men were saying, in half-whispers,close to the door of his tent.

  "Colonel," said Zuroaga, "we are well-hidden in here. The bushes arevery thick along the edge of the road."

  "Hark!" interrupted Tassara. "Do you hear that? There they are!"

  "I hear them," replied the general. "It may be so. If it is, they havefollowed us well. But there cannot be more than half a dozen of them. Itis not any mere squad like that that we need be afraid of."

  "This may be only an advance party, I think," said his friend,thoughtfully. "A larger force may be on our trail before to-morrownight. But they must not take us. They might merely arrest me, to haveme shot at Vera Cruz, but they would cut down you and poor young Carforaat once. He is an American, and they would show him no mercy."

  There had been a sound of horse hoofs on the road, and it had gone by,but before Zuroaga could make any response to so gloomy a prophecy, hisown man, Pablo, stood before him. Pablo had been running fast, but hehad breath enough left to say, quite coolly and not loudly:

  "Lancers, general. Officer and four men. They have been running theirhorses, and they won't travel far to-morrow. I was in the bushes."

  "All right, Pablo," said Zuroaga. "It was kind of Colonel Guerra toorder them to use up their horses. We shall not hear of that squadagain. Put Andrea on watch, and go to sleep. Our first danger is over."

  Pablo bowed and turned away without another word, and Zuroaga resumedhis conference with Tassara, for those two were brave men, and werewell-accustomed to the peril-haunted lives they were leading.

  "Colonel," he said, "it is evident that my young friend Carfora must gowith you. He is not fit for a swift ride of three hundred miles.Besides, he must have any chance which may happen to turn up forgetting home. Will you take care of him? He is a fine young fellow, buthe cannot ride."

  Therefore the pony and that saddle had done something good for Ned, andColonel Tassara cheerfully responded:

  "With great pleasure, my dear general. I shall be glad to make Americanfriends. I may need them. He will be safe enough with me, but I fear itwill be a long time before he can get out of Mexico. As for me, I shallmeet more than a hundred of my own men at Orizaba, ready to escort meacross the sierra into my own State of Puebla. After that, my reputationfor loyalty will soon be reestablished by raising my new regiment. Ithink, however, that it will not march into the city of Mexico until hisExcellency President Paredes has set out for the Rio Grande, or as farnorth as the luck of this war will permit him to travel. Very possibly,he may be hindered by the gringos before he reaches the border. Carforawill remain with me until then. You are right. He would not be safeanywhere else. As for yourself, you must push on."

  "I think," said Zuroaga, "that I shall be almost safe after I am a fewmiles beyond Teotitlan. I may have a fight or two on the way. Carforamust not be killed in any skirmish of that kind. You will not see meagain, dead or alive, until a week or two after the Americans have takenthe city of Mexico, as in my opinion they surely will. I shall be therethen, with five hundred lancers, to uphold the new government which willtake the place of the bloody dictatorship of Paredes, unless the newaffair is to be Santa Anna. In any event, I shall be able to help you,and I will."

  "You are a gloomy prophet," responded Tassara, "but you are an oldstudent of military operations. Do you really think the Americans willcapture our capital? It will be well defended."

  "Bravely enough, but not well," replied Zuroaga. "We have not onescientific, thoroughly educated engineer officer fit to take charge ofthe defences against, for instance, General Scott. Not even Santa Annahimself, with all his ability, is a general capable of checking theinvaders after they have taken Vera Cruz, and that they will do. He is ascheming politician rather than a military genius. He and Paredes andsome others whom you and I could name must be whipped out of powerbefore we can put up an entirely new government, better than any we haveever had yet. What do you think about it?"

  "Think?" exclaimed Tassara, angrily. "I think it will be after you and Iare dead and buried before this miserable half-republic, half-oligarchy,will be blessed with a solid government like that of the United States."

  "And that, too, might get into hot water," muttered his friend, butneither of the two political prophets appeared to have much more to say.They separated, as if each might have something else to employ him, andshortly all the night camp in the grand old forest seemed to be asleep.

  The remaining hours of darkness passed silently, and the sun arose witha promise of another hot day. Small fires were kindled forcoffee-making, but the preparations for breakfast were hurried. Beforesix o'clock the mules were harnessed, the horses were saddled, and allthings were made ready for a diligent push southward. It had been adifficult business to get Ned Crawford out of his tent, but here he was,trying his best to move his legs as if they belonged to him. His coffeeand corn-cakes did a great deal for him, and he made out to pretend tohelp Pablo in getting the fat pony ready for the road. Then, however, hewas willing to see Pablo walk away, and he bravely led the pony to theside of what may have been an old and apparently abandoned ant-hill.

  "I can get on board," he said, as if his patient quadruped had been the_Goshhawk_. "I saw how some of them mounted. You put your left foot intothe stirrup, and then you make a kind of spring into the saddle. If myknees will bend for me, I can do it without anybody's help."

  It was the ant-hill that helped him, for he did not make any spring.After his foot was in the stirrup, he made a tremendous effort, and hearose slowly, painfully to the level of the pony's back. Then his rightleg went over, and he was actually there, hunting a little nervously forthe other stirrup, with his machete away around behind him.

  "Glad you have done it!" exclaimed a decidedly humorous voice near thepony's head. "We are all ready to be off now. Before long, you will beable to mount as the rancheros do, without touching the stirrup. Butthen, I believe that most of them were born on horseback."

  They also appeared to be able to do pretty well without much sleep, forNed could not see that they showed any signs of fatigue. Thecamping-place was speedily left behind them, but it was no longer anight
journey. Ned was almost astonished, now that the darkness wasgone, to discover that this was by no means a wild, unsettled country.Not only were there many farms, with more or less well-built houses, butthe cavalcade began to meet other wayfarers,--men and women,--on footand on horseback, and hardly any of them were willing to be passedwithout obtaining the latest news from Vera Cruz and from the war.

  "I guess they need it," thought Ned. "The general says there are nonewspapers taken down here, and that, if there were, not one person infive could read them. They seem a real good-natured lot, though."

  So they were, as much so as any other people in the world, and they wereas capable of being developed and educated to better things. As to thisbeing a new country, it came slowly back into Ned's mind that there hadbeen a great and populous empire here at a time when the island uponwhich the city of New York was afterward built was a bushy wilderness,occupied by half-naked savages, who were ready to sell it for a fewdollars' worth of kettles and beads.

  "I guess I'm beginning to wake up," thought Ned. "When the _Goshhawk_ waslying in the Bay of Vera Cruz, I was too busy to see anything. No, Iwasn't. I did stare at the Orizaba mountain peak, and they told me it isover seventeen thousand feet high. First mountain I ever saw that couldkeep on snow and ice in such weather as this. I don't want to live upthere in winter. Well! Now I've seen some of the biggest trees I everdid see. I wonder if any of them were here when the Spaniards came in. Iguess they were, some of them."

  He was really beginning to see something of Mexico, and it almost madehim forget the hardness of that unpleasant saddle. At the end of anothermile, he was saying to himself:

  "That field yonder is tobacco, is it? The one we just passed wassugar-cane, and Pablo said the plantation across the road was almost allcoffee. He says that further on he will show me orange groves, bananas,and that sort of thing. But what on earth are grenaditas and mangoes?They'll be something new to me, and I want to find out how they taste."

  Nothing at all of a military or otherwise of an apparently dangerouscharacter had been encountered by the fugitive travellers when, at aboutthe middle of the forenoon, they came to a parting of the ways. Aseemingly well-travelled road went off to the left, or southward, whilethe one they were on turned more to the right and climbed a hill, as ifit were making a further effort to get out of the _tierra caliente_. Agreat many things had been explained to Ned, as they rode along, and hewas not surprised, therefore, when Senor Zuroaga said to him:

  "My young friend, this is the place I told you of. We must part here.You and your pony will go on with Colonel Tassara, and I will take mychances for reaching my place of refuge in Oaxaca. It is not a very goodchance, but I must make the best of it that I can. Take good care ofyourself. I have already said good-by to the senora and the senorita. Ithink they will soon be out of danger."

  Ned was really grateful, and he tried to say so, but all he could thinkof just then was:

  "General Zuroaga, I do hope you'll get through all right. I hope I shallsee you again safe and sound."

  "You never will," said Zuroaga, as he wheeled his horse, "unless I getout of this Cordoba road. It is a kind of military highway, and I mightmeet my enemies at any minute--too many of them."

  "Good-by!" shouted Ned, and the general, who was still a great mysteryto him, dashed away at a gallop, followed by Pablo and the wild ridersfrom the Oaxaca ranches.

  The cavalcade had hardly paused, and it now went on up the long, steepslope to the right. Not many minutes later, it was on high enough groundto look down upon the road which had been taken by Zuroaga. Ned was notlooking in that direction, but at some snow-capped mountains in thedistance, northward, and he was saying to himself:

  "So that is the Sierra Madre, is it? This country has more and highermountains in it-- Hullo! What's that? Is she hurt?"

  His change of utterance into an anxious exclamation was produced by apiercing scream from the carriage, and that was followed by the excitedvoice of Senora Tassara calling out:

  "Husband! The general is attacked! Look! Hear the firing!"

  "O father! Can we not help him?" gasped Senorita Felicia.

  Her mother was holding to her eyes with trembling hands what Ned tookfor an opera-glass, and he wished that he had one, although he couldmake out that something like a skirmish was taking place on the otherroad. It was too far to more than barely catch the dull reports of whatseemed to be a number of rapidly fired pistol-shots.

  "They are fighting!" he exclaimed. "I wish I was there to help him! Hemay need more men. I could shoot!"

  Whether he could or not, he was almost unconsciously unbuckling theholster of one of his horse-pistols, when the senora spoke again.

  "Santa Maria!" she exclaimed. "The dear general! They are too many forhim. Madre de Dios! Our good friend will be killed!"

  "Give me the glass, my dear," said her husband. "Your hands are notsteady enough. I will tell you how it is."

  "Oh, do!" she whispered, hoarsely, as she handed it to him. "They arelancers in uniform. Oh, me! This is dreadful! And they may follow us,too."

  Colonel Tassara took the glass with apparently perfect coolness, andNed took note that it did not tremble at all, as he aimed it at thedistant skirmish. It was a number of seconds, however, before hereported:

  "Hurrah! The general rides on, and he rides well. I feel sure that he isnot badly wounded, if at all. He has now but three men with him. Thereare riderless horses. There are men on the ground. There are four onlythat are riding back toward the Cordoba road. Thank God! The general hasmade good his escape from that party of unlucky lancers. He is afighter!"

  Then he lowered the glass to turn and shout fiercely to his own men:

  "Forward! We must reach Orizaba before the news of this skirmish getsthere, if we kill all our horses doing it. Push on!"