Ahead of the Army

by William Osborn Stoddard

  CHAPTER XVII.

  THE MOUNTAIN PASSES

  "Grant," said Captain Lee, "what did Crawford say to you about thatCerro Gordo road? I want to know all I can."

  "Well, Captain Lee," replied Grant, "here he is, to speak for himself.He says he came down that trail in midwinter. He studied it, too,because his friend, General Zuroaga, told him it was built by a Spanishfellow by the name of Cortes."

  "Good!" said Lee. "Seems to me I've heard of him somewhere, but who isZuroaga? Tell me about him, Crawford. Does he know anything?"

  By this time, Ned had become pretty well acquainted with Lee and anumber of other officers, and with their free, open-hearted way ofdealing with each other. He could tell, therefore, without any restraintor bashfulness, all that was necessary concerning his distinguishedMexican friend and benefactor.

  "I see," said the captain. "He is one of their many revolutions. Allright. But I wish old man Cortes hadn't left his road so narrow andsteep as they say it is. Tell me all you saw, Crawford. I have otheraccounts, but I want yours. Look at this map and answer my questions."

  He held in his hand what purported to be a very rough sketch of thehighway from the city of Jalapa to the city of Mexico. It also pretendedto give a fair idea of the section of that road which crossed themountain spur known as Cerro Gordo.

  "From there to there," said Lee, "how is it?"

  "Crooked as a rail fence," replied Ned. "It isn't like that at all. It'sa zigzag, with rocks on one side and ravines on the other."

  "Just as I supposed," said Lee. "Now, mark the zigzags on this otherpaper, as well as you can remember them."

  They were sitting in Grant's tent, in the camp of the Seventh Regiment,and the entire advance-guard of the army was encamped in like manner,waiting for orders from General Scott to climb the mountains beforethem. Ned took the crayon handed him, and he really appeared to dopretty well with it, but he explained that the rough weather and thecondition of his pony had compelled him to dismount and come part ofthe way down the mountain on foot, so that he had more time for makingobservations.

  "If they put cannon on a breastwork on that road," he said, "they canblow anything in front of them all to pieces."

  "Grant," said Lee, "that's just what they can do. Santa Anna has postedhis artillery at Crawford's zigzags, and that Cerro Gordo positioncannot be carried in front. It is perfectly unassailable."

  "What on earth are we to do, then?" said Grant. "Our only road to Mexicoseems to be shut and bolted."

  "I don't know about that," said Lee. "There are others, if we chose totry them. But the general has ordered me, with an engineer party, to goout and find if there is not some way for getting around Santa Anna'sobstructions. I want you to let Crawford go with me."

  "O Lieutenant Grant!" eagerly exclaimed Ned, "General Zuroaga told methere was another place as good for a road as that is."

  "Go along, of course," said Grant. "I'd give a month's pay to go withyou. Anything but this sleepy camp."

  Ned was ready in a minute, but he found that he was not expected tocarry with him any other weapon than his machete.

  "Take that," said Captain Lee. "It will do to cut bushes with. I believeI'll carry one myself. We shall have a few riflemen, but we must becareful not to do any firing. We must scout like so many red Indians."

  Ned had formerly been on the wrong side of the army lines. During allthe long months of what he sometimes thought of as his captivity amongthe Mexicans, he had been occasionally worried by a feeling of disgrace.He had felt it worst when he was a member of the garrison of Vera Cruz,and on such remarkably good terms with the rest of the garrison and itscommander. So he had been exceedingly rejoiced when General Scottbattered down his walls and compelled him to surrender. It had been agrand restoration of his self-respect when he found himself runningerrands for the officers of the Seventh, but now he suddenly felt thathe had shot up into full-grown manhood, for, with a bush-cutting swordat his side, he was to accompany one of the best officers in theAmerican army upon an expedition of great importance and much danger.

  It was still early in the day when Captain Lee's party, all on foot,passed through the outer lines of the American advance, at the base ofthe mountain. All of them were young men, as yet without any militaryfame, and there was no one there who could tell them that their littleband of roadhunters contained one commander-in-chief and onelieutenant-general of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, and onecommander-in-chief and four major-generals, or corps commanders, of thearmies of the United States. It was not by such subordinates as thesethat General Santa Anna was assisted in his engineering or othermilitary operations. That day, however, and for a few days more, he feltperfectly sure of his really well-chosen position among the rocks andchasms of the Cerro Gordo.

  The engineering party was well aware that its movements might possiblybe observed from the heights beyond, as long as it remained in the open,therefore it wheeled out into the fields as it went onward, and was soonlost to view among woodlands.

  "Now, Crawford," said Captain Lee, "recall and tell me, as well as youcan, all that Zuroaga told you about his proposed new road."

  Ned proceeded to do so, but, at the end of his recollections, he added:

  "Well, the general said it would cost a pot of money to do it, now, andthat Cortes had no gunpowder to throw away. He could not have done anyrock-blasting."

  "Our difficulty about that is as bad as his was," replied the captain."We can have all the gunpowder we need, but we can't use any of it, forfear of letting his Excellency, General Santa Anna, know what we are upto. As for the cost of a new road, there is no government in Mexico thatwill think of undertaking it. It would cost as much, almost, as abrand-new revolution."

  There was a great deal of hard work done after that, searching,climbing, and bush-cutting, and Ned wondered at the ready decisions madehere and there, by the engineers. It seemed to him, too, that CaptainLee and other officers paid a great deal of deference to a younglieutenant by the name of McClellan. A small force of riflemen was withthem and a party of sappers and miners, but there had not been a sign ofmilitary opposition to the work which they were trying to do.Nevertheless, it began to dawn upon Ned's mind that sometimes picks andspades and crowbars may be as important war weapons as even cannon. Thatis, there may be circumstances in which guns of any kind are of littleuse until after the other tools have been made to clear the way forthem.

  Night came, and the entire reconnoitring party camped among the cliffsof Cerro Gordo, but at about the middle of the next forenoon all theofficers gathered for a kind of council. They were not yet ready to sendin a full and final report, but they had formed important conclusions,and at the end of the council Ned was called for.

  "Crawford," said Captain Lee, "take that despatch to Captain SchuylerHamilton, or whoever else is on duty at General Scott's headquarters. Inmy opinion, this Zuroaga road will do, after we shall have made it, andwe can climb around into the rear of the Mexican army. If so, all theirbatteries in the old road are but so many cannon thrown away."

  Ned's heart gave a great thump of pride as he took that carefully foldedand sealed up paper. To carry it was a tremendous honor, and he was nothalf sure that it did not make him, for the time being, a regular memberof General Scott's corps of military engineers. He hastened back to theJalapa highway, and the first advanced post that he came to furnishedhim with a pony. Then he galloped on to the camps and to the general'sheadquarters, as if he had been undergoing no fatigue whatever. Heseemed to himself, however, to have seen hardly anything or anybodyuntil he stood before Captain Hamilton, and held out that vitallyimportant despatch. Even then he did not quite understand that it wasalmost as important as had been the surrender of Vera Cruz. But for thatsurrender, the American expedition would have been stopped at theseashore. But for this feat of the engineers, it would have beendisastrously halted at the foot of the Cerro Gordo pass. One minutelater, Ned's heart jumped again, for he heard the deep voice of thegeneral himself com
manding:

  "Hamilton, bring Crawford in. He seems to know something."

  Whether he did or not, he could answer questions quite bravely, and hecould tell a great many things which had not been set forth in the briefreport of the engineers. Probably they had not felt ready to say orassert too much until they had done and learned more, but Ned was underno such restriction, and he thoroughly believed in what he stillregarded as General Zuroaga's road. That is, if somebody like Cortes,for instance, could and would afford the necessary amount of gunpowderto blast away the rocks which he had seen were in the way.

  "That will do," said the general, at last. "You may go, Crawford.Captain Hamilton, we have beaten Santa Anna!"

  There may have been a slightly arrogant sound in that confidentassertion, but it was altogether in accord with the positive andself-reliant character of General Winfield Scott. He had unbounded faithin his own mental resources, and, at the same time, he had perfectconfidence in the men and officers of his army. It was, therefore, lessto be wondered at that they on their part entertained an almost absurdrespect for their martinet commander.

  Orders went out immediately for putting all the force which could beemployed upon the construction of the mountain road. Much of the workwould have to be performed at night, to keep it secret, and theMexicans, behind their impassable entrenchments on the old Cerro Gordopass, had no idea of the hidden plans of their enemies. Santa Annahimself may have believed that his antagonist had given up the hope ofever reaching the city of Mexico by that route. The new one, by which hedid intend to reach it, grew rapidly to completion, and Ned Crawfordobtained from his friend Grant repeated permissions to go and see ifCaptain Lee wanted him, and then to come back and report progress to hisown camp.

  "Lieutenant Grant's a man that hardly ever says anything," said Ned tohimself, "but he's a prime good fellow, and I like him. He says he isn'tmuch of an engineer, though, and he couldn't build that road."

  Such a road it was, too, with bridges over chasms, where the buildershad to climb up and down like so many cats. Even after it was said to becomplete, it was fit for men only, for not even the most sure-footedmule could have passed over it. It was finished on the 17th of April,and on the following day General Scott issued his orders for all thevarious parts of the coming battle of Cerro Gordo. Strong bodies ofinfantry were to engage the Mexican front, and keep Santa Anna's armyoccupied, while the engineers piloted another and stronger column to thereal war business of the day. Ned had managed to get himself tangled upwith this climbing force, if only to see what use was to be made of hisand Zuroaga's new road. The morning came, and even before the sun was upsome of the troops were moving.

  "I guess it'll be an all-day's job," thought Ned, as he and one of theengineer officers reached the first steep declivity. "Hullo! they areunhitching those artillery horses. What's that for?"

  He was soon to know, for strong men took the places of the animals, andthe guns were hauled up and over the mountain by human hands. It wassevere work, but it was done with eager enthusiasm, and a few hourslater Ned was able to shout:

  "Hurrah! Here we are, right in behind them. Hurrah for General Scott!"

  Anything else that he might have felt like saying was drowned in thewild cheering which arose from thousands of soldiers, for there was nolonger any need for silence or secrecy. That part of the Mexican armywhich had been posted beyond the head of the pass was taken utterly bysurprise. Its commanders were for the moment unable to imagine whencehad come this numerous body of United States infantry, which appeared sosuddenly upon their unprotected flank. They therefore retreated, and theMexican army was cut in two, so that all of it which had been stationedin the pass itself was caught as in a trap, and compelled to surrender.These trapped prisoners were about three thousand in number, and Nedkindly remarked concerning them:

  "Oh, but ain't I glad we didn't have to kill 'em! We didn't catch oldSanta Anna himself, though. They say the Mexicans made him President forthe battle of Angostura. I guess they wouldn't have done it if they hadwaited till now."

  Whether or not he was correct in that calculation, the road to the cityof Mexico seemed now to be open, unless the unfortunate republic couldprovide its President with another army. As for the American commander,his troops had more faith in him than ever, and with better reasons forit. It was afterward said that General Scott's written orders for thebattle of Cerro Gordo, and for others which followed, would answer verywell for full reports of them after they were won.

  The whole American army, except the garrison of Vera Cruz and smallparties posted here and there along the road, had now escaped from the_tierra caliente_ and the yellow fever. Immediately after the battle ofCerro Gordo, it marched on to the old city of Jalapa, among themountains, where its quarters were cool and comfortable. Not many milesbeyond Jalapa begins the great central tableland of Anahuac, and it wasneedful that the road leading into it should be taken possession ofbefore the remnant of Santa Anna's army should rally and constructbarriers at positions from which it might prove difficult to drive them.

  "If they do," thought Ned, when he heard that matter under discussion bythe soldiers, "I hope General Scott'll send for me and the otherengineers. I'd like to trap some more prisoners."

  He was not to have any such chance as that, but he was not to be idlealtogether,--he and his engineers and his army. The division to which heand the Seventh Regiment belonged, under the command of General Worth,was shortly ordered on in the advance, to take and hold a strongposition, known as the town and castle of Perote, and here there wasindeed a long delay which was not engineered by the military forces ofMexico. The politicians and particularly the Congress of the UnitedStates had interfered very effectively on behalf of President SantaAnna. They had spent so much time in debates upon the legislationrequired for the gathering of fresh troops that the terms of enlistmentof about half of the soldiers under Scott were expiring. It was of nouse for him to move forward with a steadily vanishing army, and he wascompelled to wait for months at and about Perote, until the new mencould arrive and take the places of those who were going home.

  "I guess I won't enlist," thought Ned, as that idea came again and againinto his mind. "Neither mother nor father would wish me to do so. ButI'm getting to be an old soldier, after all, and I won't leave theSeventh till it gets into the city of Mexico."

  Whether it ever was to accomplish that feat was only to be determined byhard fighting, and there came a day, the 7th of August, 1847, when thedivision of General Worth, then encamped at Puebla, received orders togo forward. The entire army was to move, and General Scott had about asmany soldiers with him as when he had landed at Vera Cruz in the spring.

  "Hurrah for the city!" shouted Ned, when the news reached him. "I wantto make a morning call at the Paez house."