by David Xavier
Andrés Pico had Salomon outfitted properly. He had no extra saddle or horse, as a lancer regiment must move quickly and under stealth. A supply wagon would slow the force considerably. But he packed his saddlebags with grain and food, paper cartridges, a spyglass, a knife, and a rifle, which he fashioned a sling for and tied alongside his horse. As the nights were getting cold, he gave him a blue army coat to wear beneath his serape.
They rode side by side, Salomon at the front alongside the capitán. He kept his eyes on the landscape, a task made easier by the silence that Capitán Pico shared with him. Unlike his brother, Andrés did not tell stories on horseback. He rode with his hands in front of him at all times, not like some of the soldiers he’d turned in the saddle to see with their hands in their pockets, lances strapped alongside the horses. And his eyes stayed on the outline of the land, aware of any figure to rise on that outline. Here his brother Pío would glance about occasionally while talking, seeming to ride unconcerned with who they might share the skyline.
At first he sent him on day long expeditions, scouting a ridgeline to the east or a valley floor for water, hills for antelope. Then he sent him ahead of the regiment, into the barren California deserts and high forests to track United States military movements.
Weeks passed and Salomon rode with US forces in sight, racing back to his regiment with their positions. Capitán Pico was an expert of military positioning, always finding and taking advantage of the land and forcing the US Army of the West to retreat or realign their movements with little engagement between forces but disrupting patterns and advances just as effectively. They could gain no foothold to advance upon as Pico continued to menace in canyons and plains alike, and the US Army of the West had to seek advancement elsewhere, where the Mexican Army was weak and unorganized.
Salomon became comfortable in these hills of southern California. Here he would sleep among the many names of cactus and stare at the stars until the earth fell away beneath him. He dreamed of Juana and the beds of grass they used to share beneath the heavens. Always she came from afar in his dreams, starting as a speck on the horizon and coming closer each night, crossing the distance between them on foot with windtossed hair. Each time he could see her face come more into focus, and it looked like she had something to say, but she could never get it out before he woke. He would see her as he rode, floating through the forest, glowing from tree to tree, making him stop and look twice, and he would push his face away from the desert pools and turn when he saw her reflection. He spoke her name often, aloud as often as he could, for just her name could bring him peace and break the loneliness of the silent sunbaked land.
Several times he came across US scouting parties, surprising each other with their sudden presence. They gave chase, looking to cut off any reports Salomon could give mexican commanders, but he had been riding the hills and deserts for months and vanished before their eyes like a rode upon mirage.
He found other things as he toed among the cacti and dropped a shoulder passing under the joshua and piñon. Wagon tracks followed by weighted mules. He traced it to find three white men in a rickety chuckwagon, following the creeks and stepping out often to wade and stoop the waters. They seemed to have no mind to their whereabouts, just a direction to go in each day, and Salomon watched from a distance as they fumbled in their hunting efforts and had to settle for pancooked bread. When he approached them, they stood with faces drained of color and said one thing.
“Gold.”
Comanche war parties also left their tracks, moving quickly across the land, burning any homesteads they came across. Salomon slept one night in blackened adobe ruins until he tricked himself into hearing movements on the floors he slept upon, chains dragging, boards creaking, and feet resting the weight they carried, suddenly silent when he lifted his head. He picked up in the middle of the night and moved as far away from the haunt as he could and slept among the dead fingers of greasewood shrubs.
One night he came to a burning homestead, a single beacon in the desert, alight as if it would never go out. As if the flame came from the ground itself, a release of pressure from the earth where a valve could not be shut off. He stood his horse a ways off in the treeline of the hills with his rifle drawn, and watched as figures rushed howling across the flamelight, their shadows longlegged on the ground before fading and becoming a part of the night. Several times he sighted a figure along his gun barrel but he did not fire. Hours later he went to the coals, his presence scattering the wolves, and he found the smoldering skeletal remains of a family of five, charred and shattered about the forearms and skulls.
He rode south through the Santa Rosa Hills, staying in the valleys between the mounds, and stepping along the broken shale that skirted the peaks, careful not to skyline himself. He came to a valley below the hills, with a clear creek running like a thin wire between the joshuas. He sat in the forest edge, watching the valley until satisfied before nudging his horse forward. The horse was skittish on the descent, moving quickly at times, and drawing to a complete stop at others. Salomon dismounted and waited until the horse’s ears relaxed and the animal put its head down for a drink. Then he dropped to his knees and hands beside it.
The horse shied then, and Salomon squatted at the creekbank. On the far side of the valley, too far to distinguish a man’s face, a single rider stepped from the trees. He sat his horse, looking directly at Salomon’s position. He wore a fur hide over his head and shoulders, buffalo or bear, and he wore the blue slacks with red piping of the United States cavalry. He wore stitched hide moccasins. The horse he sat bareback was a wild roan. They watched each other across the sweet smelling valley, the creek babbling at Salomon’s feet, and then the rider turned and rode over the hill, staying out of the trees as if to show he was heading away.
Salomon crossed the hills and descended into the sandstone arroyos where vegetation was scarce again. He was making good time through the canyons when he came out of a gulch on top of an old campsite between the giant stone slabs. The fire was dead and long out, for a mouse darted between the fire rocks. He counted a dozen spots where men had slept in the dirt, and he counted as many horses.
It began to rain and they were easy to follow, but they crossed open land, dulled by overcast, and Salomon had to trace the hidden canyons parallel to any travel they made, unwilling to expose himself if they decided to doubleback. He found their tracks again on the other side of a misted valley. They had come up to the sandstones in search of pools. They had stayed a while, resting, and Salomon found the horse droppings still warm. He bellied up a crest and found them passing below him, idle talk and cursing. They were United States cavalry, although he counted fifteen riders in all. Three of them must have slept atop sandstone and made no mark. Or three of them stayed up on watch and gave no sleep marks for the sand to hold. One soldier pressed his throat with air, then leaned to the side and spat what he got.
Salomon followed them along the Santa Rosas, cutting through an easy path, the path that flowing rains were taking, following the little rivulets that beaded off the hills. They broke from the range and trotted with fog at their feet along an empty plain, straight to the Mission San Jacinto, a mission operated by one priest serving a dozen neophytes. They took the mission without a shot fired.
“What do they want with the Mission San Jacinto?” Andrés Pico said when Salomon returned. The regiment had moved coastward and south toward San Diego. Andrés was sitting with the blade of his lance between his knees. With a leather strop he whet each side in long motions. His lieutenant stood by, holding a map. Andrés shook his head and went back to his blade.
“There’s nothing there but a crazy priest. He makes his indians run laps. The Americans could stay there a hundred years and it wouldn’t make a difference.” He looked up again. “They’re holed up, waiting for another group. We should get there before they do.”
“We cannot attack them in the
mission,” the lieutenant said.
“No.” Pico stood and hefted his lance upward in one arm, inspecting the point. “But we can intercept the group they’re waiting for before they join forces. They will try for San Diego together.”
They moved out in the rain. The Lancers Los Galgos rode through the Santa Rosas, seventy-strong riders leaning forward in the saddles as their horses made the climb. Andrés Pico skirted the steep climb, finding the soft spots in the forest for quick progress. At the top he paused and called Salomon to the front. Salomon rode forward, spyglass in hand as the lancers watched him pass.
Andrés Pico pointed to the valley opening. “See that cut in the valley? Tell me what that is.”
Salomon pulled the spyglass, telescoping it, and held it to his eye, scanning until he found what he was supposed to. He lowered the spyglass and looked at Andrés, who nodded to him. Salomon looked again.
“American forces, capitán. Mounted dragoons, mostly. I count a hundred – a hundred twenty – a hundred fifty, sir. And they have pack mules but no horses at the rear, sir, and they’ve been riding a long time.”
“Good,” Andrés said. Then he straightened in his saddle and looked at Salomon. “Jesus. A hundred fifty.”
“That’s what I count, sir.” Salomon lowered the spyglass and handed it to Andrés.
After viewing the advancing American dragoons, Andrés handed the glass back and sat his horse, studying the valley below.
“Well, hell we’ve done more than a hundred fifty before.”
He made time on the descent, wave after wave of his lancers dropped down the embankment, lying back in the saddle with grit teeth as their horses ran downhill, the way a bronc rider looks at the peak of a buck. A resistant horse would have stumbled and spooked, eventually trapping itself and rider on the sheer drop, unwilling to move forward and unable to climb back. But the lancers’ horses kept up with gravity, their hooves finding the solid holds in the wet ground, trusting the ground, charging without effort or thought to the valley floor like a stampede.
Salomon watched as they dropped off the edge one by one, a short stepping about to gauge the hillside, then a trusting leap out of view and into the sheer forest that grew at a severe angle. He stood clutching his pony bareback at the edge, looking down. The lancers were soon gone, a small lifting of mist to show their passing. Alone he stepped his horse back and forth at the top, before his horse took the lead and went off the side. He found himself clutching the tied mane with both hands and leaning back, feeling his shoulders on the pony’s back. He could not see the direction they were going, nor could he see the ground for any trail to follow. Even if he could, he would not be able to influence his pony’s direction. It was all he could do just to hang on, a looselegged passenger cometing down the hillside, looking to the treetops in the gray sky.
The hill leveled out and he caught glimpses of the lancers already moving forward into the valley fog, into the smell of wet lavender. One lancer held back and stood his horse at the base of the hill. He was smiling and shaking his head as Salomon approached.
“Fancy bit of circus riding.”
“Is that what you call it?”
The soldier laughed. “The rest of us rode down. I don’t know what I’d call what you did.”
“The hell with you.”
“We’ll need a wrench to pry your hands off that mane.”
Andrés Pico came back through the mist. He called to Salomon and jerked his head to the valley. Salomon rode into the drizzling rain, sticking to the hillside, just inside treeline. He rode an hour, picking his way through the forest and stopping for brief periods. He found the Americans had made camp not far from where he had seen them in the spyglass. He left his pony and crept up a rockface and studied their outfit. They were heavily armed dragoons, rubbing down their horses and building fires. Some of the soldiers were already under tarps or tree limbs, sleeping. One tent had a line forming at the front, and soldiers came out the back of it one at a time with a steaming plate in hand. The smell of food made his stomach growl.
He came back along the treeline and into the wet grass and valley fog waist high. He followed the creek that flowed wide from one end to the other. His horse whickered and sidestepped. On the other side of the creek a single rider emerged from the fog. They looked up at the same time and found each other. The rider was young and wore the oversized coat of the US Army of the West, shared by the dragoons camped at the other end of the valley. Salomon drew his pistola but the only move the young scout made was to touch the brim of his hat. They moved past each other until the fog set thick between them, and both set off in a trampling of hoof beats.
“They’re set up at the valley opening, sir. They know we’re here.”
The lancers had set up a quick camp where the valley funneled between the hills around a narrow opening of boulders. The riders were handling their lances, preparing their horses. Some were stooped over small fires, eating. Andrés Pico was crouched over the creek with a tin cup at his mouth. He looked up at Salomon.
“Same numbers?”
“We counted correctly, sir. They are travel worn.”
“I don’t care if they are asleep in the saddle.” Andrés put the cup to his mouth again.
Salomon grimaced. “They are camped upstream, sir.”
Andrés looked at him.
“They are pissing in the water, sir.”
Andrés looked at his cup and at the creek. He tossed the water from his cup and leaned and spat. He looked at Salomon and spoke, his mouth carefully forming the words.
“Viva la California.”
When the clanking of American sabers and the occasional horse sneeze and hoof on the earth were heard, the Lancers Los Galgos were mounted and waiting side by side in tens with lances held under arm and fires smothered behind them. A daylong drizzle had wet and muted the valley, and sound carried. A suppressed cough at three hundred yards sounded as if it was just beyond the fog.
“You stay back, Sal.”
Capitán Pico was trotting his ranks when the silence broke to yells and hoof pounding. The lancers gripped their weapons and their horses stepped in place as blue riders materialized like ghosts before them, horses breathing like smoke. Pico wheeled and charged with his lance held level, his pistola remaining holstered, his face frozen in yells as his horse broke the portrait stillness of his lancers. They followed behind him in echo of howl and countenance. The Army of the West commander ordered the first volley fired, yet the air broke with few gunshots. American guns clicked on wet rounds, rain soaked and river crossed, and what few shots did fire went droning into the gray. Some dropped their weapons and reached for more, while others threw their weapons as rocks as spear points impaled their bodies and cleared their saddles.
The lancers were among them. Salomon rode with his pistola held high. He was pulling the hammer back and pulling the trigger, clicking on a used cartridge, finding targets and pulling the trigger again and again. He was through the first wave of dragoons. They were clawing and screaming in the dirt behind him when he heard the shouts of a second wave. He spun his horse and rode back through the bloodied grounds, following the white cross straps on blue of the lancer in front of him. An American jumped at him from the ground, his hands searching for a saddle to grip but none to find. Salomon hammered his gun barrel alongside the man’s head until he dropped. There was a moment before he fell where he saw the man’s eyes look to his, blood sheeting down his forehead and over his brows, staining the whites bloodshot and blinding him so that he lost direction in his look and held a stare of confusion and terror. He kept on, seeing the Los Galgos coats disappearing to where they came. He saw a downed lancer running alongside one of the horses, the rider of which reached and grabbed a belt and held on as they rode, the downed man pulling his legs up and holding them off the ground.
American soldiers turned in their saddles and circ
led about, pointing at fleeing figures and firing past them, until horse hooves sounded away and they found they were turning among themselves, stepping over fallen bodies groaning and reaching upward. They regrouped their strung forces and charged again into the unseen, not in an orderly column, but in a ragged bunch, a fist of dragoons striking the mist with knives and guns ready.
But there were no blue coats to fire at, no lancers charging back, only hoof beats continuing their drumming away. They kept after them on spurred horses, pointing at rocks and trees, any shapes that appeared as they came on, moving up the narrow passage where the valley emptied, around the boulders that bent the path.
They were there, side by side in the passage, so close and sudden that they could have picked their lances in the dirt and had the Army of the West run themselves through. But they charged in a sickening cry and rode through the reining soldiers, dismounting them and trampling them under. Few shots were fired, ricocheting off the rock walls in a ping of smoke and stinging powder.