by Blake, J
13
On the tenth of September he rose before daybreak and joined some of the other wounded aboard a hospital wagon transport for the three-mile trip to the central plaza in San Angel to attend the punishments of the San Patricios who had there been convicted. Dominguez had not yet returned from Veracruz. The armistice had come to an end three days before and the outskirts of the capital shook steadily with artillery blasts and crackled with small arms. The air again smelled of rotting flesh, smoke, gunpowder and dust.
La Plaza de San Jacinto was packed with spectators a dozen deep in a wide semicircle in front of the church. Every American soldier in San Angel not then engaged in the fighting had turned out to witness the punishments and most of the local citizenry was in attendance as well. The eastern sky was a scarlet riot as the sun broke over the mountains. People watched from rooftops and wagon beds, from their horses and from up in the trees. The town dogs raced about in a yapping frenzy. An army band played “Hail, Columbia” while across the square a Mexican string band strummed out a sequence of extemporaneous ballads in praise of the San Patricios. A gallows had been erected in front of the church, a simple scaffold of four thick beams—an overhead stringer some forty feet long supported by a fourteen-foot beam at either end and another in the center. Sixteen nooses dangled from the stringer and positioned directly below them were eight muledrawn flatbed wagons, each facing in the direction opposite to that of the one beside it and each with a Mexican driver at the reins. At one end of the gallows, resplendent in full-dress uniforms, General Scott and his officers sat their horses. Near to them stood seven black-robed priests. At the other end of the scaffold a squad of soldiers in their undershirts tended a large blacksmith’s brazier shimmering with heat and holding several branding irons and throwing off sparks with each puff of the bellows. A wooden stool was close at hand and a pile of spades. A few yards beyond stood a large oak tree with a coil of rope lying at its base.
Now the drums began to roll and the murmur of the troops rose to an excited babble and then erupted in execrations as a small group of Saint Patricks in their blue Mexican uniforms with their hands manacled in front of them was led into the plaza from around the side of the municipal building. They were seven and John was the second man in the column, directly behind Riley, who was the only one among them being vilified by name. Edward’s heart turned over at the sudden thought that these were the men about to be hanged, that he had misunderstood the newspaper reports, that Scott had changed his mind and decided he’d yet hang them all. But the prisoners were not put aboard the hanging wagons. They were made only to line up facing the gallows.
Then came another column into the plaza and these men had their hands bound behind them and were the men about to die. They were led to the wagons and helped up onto them, two men to a wagon. Their boots were removed and pitched aside and they were made to stand toward the rear of the flatbeds. “How come it’s only sixteen of em?” Edward heard someone ask. “It was twenty spose to hang here.” Someone said he’d heard the other four would be hanged tomorrow at Mixcoac, about a mile and a half away.
“How come’s that?” the first man asked.
“Hell, old son,” the second said, “who knows why the army does anything the way it do?”
Most of the seven prisoners standing witness to the executions were staring down at their own feet, but not John or Riley. Their gaze was fixed on one of the condemned, a graybeard who looked down at them and grinned. “So long, Johnny boys!” he called down through the steady drumbeat. “See you in hell!” A white hood was draped over his head and the same done to the others and then the nooses were set round their necks and snugged up tightly. The drums abruptly fell silent and now the only sounds in the square were the susurrant prayers of the priests and the squawking of crows in the high branches and the sudden barking of a solitary dog. The hoods of the condemned were pulsing against their faces with their quickened breath.
A captain stepped up to the end of the scaffold nearest General Scott and raised a pistol in the air. The muledrivers made ready with their whips. The drums again rolled, louder and faster than before. The captain was watching Scott intently. Scott’s gaze was set on the sixteen hooded men. He looked to Edward like an old man tired with killing. He appeared to sigh. Then his mouth tightened and he nodded and the captain fired the pistol and the drums cut short and the drovers cracked their whips and four wagons clattered to the east and four to the west and sixteen men dropped off the flatbeds. The crowd gasped and there followed immediately a medley of male laughter and cursing and of women’s wails and sobs. Some of the hanged died on the instant and some kicked wildly for a moment before going limp in the unmistakable attitude of death, but one of them, the graybeard who had called down to John and Riley, was kicking in a way that made it clear his neck was not broken, that his noose had been poorly set and he was slowly choking to death. Soldiers were pointing at him and laughing.
“Pull on him!” John cried out. “Pull on him, goddamnit!” The sergeant of the guard strode quickly down the line to John and punched him full in the mouth, staggering him, shouting, “No talking, prisoner!” Riley looked as if he might kick at him but the sergeant pulled a club from his belt and squared off and Riley held back.
Two of the priests dashed forth and each grabbed one of the graybeard’s legs and tugged down on him and more soldiers joined in the laughter as the graybeard’s pants went dark with piss. John was gaping at the strangling man in anguish with blood running from his mouth. The graybeard yet struggled weakly and there issued from under his hood a horrid croak as the redfaced priests hung their weight on his legs. The man’s neck was now stretched grotesquely and Edward thought his head might tear off. But now a pair of Mexican muledrivers ran over to the priests and took the graybeard’s legs from them and they lifted the man up about two feet and jerked him down hard and snapped his neck and killed him.
The dead were then cut down and the priests bore away seven of them in handcarts, seven who were devout Catholics and had taken Holy Communion and the last rites prior to being ushered to the gallows. They would be buried in a monastery graveyard a mile north of San Angel. The other nine were dragged by the heels around to the side of the church and laid in a line. Already the flies had found them and swarmed over the hooded faces and stained trousers.
The drums began anew and the punishments continued. The seven prisoners spared hanging were now made to form a line before the oak tree and Riley was the first of them ordered to step up to it and strip to the waist. He was stood with his chest against the tree trunk and his arms were bound tightly around it. The muscles stood like cords along his arms and back. General Twiggs was in charge of carrying out the punishments and had appointed a pair of burly Mexican muleteers to take turns delivering the floggings. He considered the turncoats unworthy of being whipped by Americans. Now one of the skinners stepped out with a rawhide lash in hand and set himself a few feet behind Riley. “Tell them to lay on with all the severity they can muster!” Twiggs called out to his interpreter. “Tell them if they do not, I will have them whipped to blood pudding.” The interpreter relayed the order and the muleteers nodded grimly.
The first lash popped like a pistolshot and laid a red stripe across Riley’s back and the onlooking troopers cheered. His muscles bunched and spasmed. Again the whip flashed and Riley’s head threw back and his teeth showed white in his grimace. The muleteer worked with the steady rhythm of a man hewing timber, laying the strokes on hard and with barely a pause between them. The whip cracked and cracked and the stripes cut one over the other and blood stippled the branches and leaves overhead and streaked down Riley’s back to darken his trousers and still he did not cry out, not until the nineteenth stroke, and his first yowl and each he let thereafter on every lash that followed roused louder cheers yet from the American troops. At thirty lashes he was groaning between the cracks of the whip and the soldiers were laughing at him and chiding him for a weakling. The muleskinner was
pouring sweat. He grunted with every stroke. By the fortieth lash Riley was sagging against his bonds and the bloodstripes were no longer distinct one from the other but had shaped now a single massive wound and his pants were bloodsoaked to the thighs. Edward thought he might die before the last stroke was laid on. And then it was done. At the count of fifty Riley hung limp on the trunk but was yet conscious. His bonds were loosed and he crumpled to the ground and some of the soldiers cheered this too and derided him for a little sister. The sergeant of the guard prodded him with his boot toe and said something to him too softly for Edward to hear. And Riley, grunting, got to his feet without assistance and turned toward the ranks of troops watching him. He spat at his feet and grinned a crooked wavering grin. Those who had not let off taunting him howled in rage and cursed him and threatened to kill him at the first opportunity. The sergeant of the guard took him aside and sat him down near the brazier. The men tending the fire made mean gibes and the smitty raised a redly glowing branding iron and shook it at him and said he was going to burn him right through to his teeth. Riley muttered for him to fuck his mother. The smitty’s face went livid and he started toward him but the sergeant told him to get back to the fire and mind his duty. “We aint quits,” the smitty said to Riley.
Now John was shed of his shirt and brought forth to the flogging tree and quickly made fast to it and the other muleteer took up the lash while the first recruited himself with a dipper of water and a cigarette. This time Edward flinched with every crack of the whip. Like Riley, John was limp but still sensible after the fiftieth stroke. “Bedamn if it don’t look like wolves done et on that boy’s back,” said a man near Edward with an arm that ended at the elbow.
“Hell, it aint so bad,” someone else said. “I seen men flogged open to the backbone and all they ribs showed through. I don’t see much bone showing on these boys. They aint hardly getting whipped, you ask me.”
John was made to sit beside Riley and neither man looked at the other as the floggings continued. The blood ran off their backs and soaked their pants and stained the cobblestones beneath them. Whipcracks and outcries and cheers echoed off the plaza walls. Then all seven had received their fifty lashes and the trunk and underbranches of the tree were bespattered with blood. Only two of the Patricks had been unconscious when loosed from the tree and one of them recovered his senses within a few minutes. It was thought the other would die and bets were made among the soldiers but the prostrate Patrick at last bestirred himself after a second dousing with a bucket of water and sat up and his back wore a coat of bloody mud. Those who lost the wager cursed him now more hotly than they had damned him for a traitor.
By the time the last man was set free of the whipping tree the army spectators were chanting, “The iron! The iron! The iron!” in anticipation of the brandings.
Now the prisoners’ hands were manacled behind them and they were again formed into a column with Riley at its head. He was made to sit on the stool hard by the brazier and a burly soldier on either side pinned him fast by an arm and a third man, a huge barrel of a corporal, stood behind him and put an armlock on his head and twisted it tight against his chest so that the right cheek was turned outward. The grinning smitty drew a red iron from the fire and said, “Hold the bastard fast now.”
He put the brand to Riley’s cheek and there was a low sizzle and Riley screamed and the troops cheered and in the next moment Edward caught the sickly-sweet odor of the seared flesh. But now the sergeant of the guard was gesturing angrily at the smitty and calling him a stupid shit and the smitty only shrugged and smiled a wide foolish grin and said, “Hell, it was a accident is all, I can easy enough make it right.” The other members of the branding detail were grinning too and now Edward saw the reason for their good humor: the D brand on Riley’s cheek had been applied backward.
General Twiggs hupped his horse over to the branding party and asked what the hell was going on and the sergeant told him. Twiggs looked down at Riley and chuckled and said, “Well now fella, I guess we all make mistakes, don’t we?”
Word of Riley’s botched branding spread among the soldiers and there was laughter and cheering and cries of, “Well done, smitty!” Twiggs smiled at the blacksmith and said, “Do him proper on the other cheek, soldier, and let’s have no more accidents. General Scott wants to be done with this in quick order.”
The big corporal twisted Riley’s head to the other side and exposed his left cheek and the smitty pressed a fresh red iron to it and Riley screamed again.
And then it was John screaming on the stool. They all of them screamed in their turn and soon each bore a dark D on his misshapen right cheek.
The prisoners were then handed spades and ordered to dig nine deep graves alongside the church. They swayed and stumbled like drunks at their painful labor to the amusement of the watching soldiers but yet they achieved the task. And when they had done with the digging they lowered into the ground the nine dead men still with the hoods on their faces and covered them up.
They were ordered to put their shirts on and some among them grimaced at the touch of the cloth against their flayed backs, but not John, whom Edward was watching. As they were marched from the plaza one of the prisoners collapsed and the soldiers cheered and chanted “Die! Die! Die!” Riley pulled the man up and draped him over his shoulder and bore him onward. Others of them looked ready to fall but managed to keep their feet. The bloody seven staggered by within ten yards of Edward. As they were passing, John looked over as if drawn by the intensity of Edward’s gaze and their eyes met and Edward wondered if his brother could read in his face the anguish he felt, the fury, the rage to howl and wreak destruction. In John’s maimed face he saw naught but indifference so vast it was frightening. The look of one who cared not at all if the sun should never rise again.
14
On the following day he went to Mixcoac and saw hanged the other four Saint Patricks convicted at San Angel. He’d not intended to witness any more of the executions after the Tacubaya hangings but that night Daddyjack had come to him in a shadowy dream, eye aglitter and bloody hair wild, whispering, “It aint done, it aint done.” He’d asked what he was talking about but Daddyjack only shook his head and hissed again, “It aint done, I tell ye!” He seemed nigh to lunacy.
The dream upset Edward, filled him with forboding that John might yet be hanged, and so he went to Mixcoac to see for himself that he was not. He kept his own company all the rest of that day and all of the next, his thoughts consumed by his brother.
That evening the Spy Company returned from its Veracruz mission and Dominguez and Spooner showed up at the hospital and secured Edward’s release. The three repaired to a cantina and there drank beer and tequila and ate chicken mole. Dominguez and Spooner grinningly accused Edward of malingering.
“A damn limp aint no excuse for staying off a horse, goddamnit,” Spooner said. “There we been, riding all over the damn mountains and all through lowland brush and risking our lives to rid Mexico of bandidos, and here you been, laying about and acting like it’s a chore to walk and eating three meals a day and getting fat.”
Dominguez laughed. “If we get rid of all the bandidos in Mexico there would not be one hundred people left in this country.”
“Well for damn sure I’ll be with them other ninety-nine,” Spooner said, “but I caint say about you boys.”
Dominguez and Spooner wanted to witness the execution of the thirty Saint Patricks convicted by the court at Tacubaya. Edward agreed to go with them. He did not tell them of his brother, but his apprehension that John was still in peril of the noose would not dismiss until he had seen the last of the executions carried out.
15
They arrived as the sun broke over the mountains in a shattering vermilion blaze. The gallows was of the same design as at San Angel but twice as long in order to accommodate the thirty condemned at once. It stood on a hill just outside of Mixcoac with a clear view to Mexico City and the castle of Chapultepec on a higher hill jus
t west of the capital. The branding brazier was set close by and a smitty already at work on the bellows. The artillery assault on the castle had begun before daybreak and the booming strikes and smoke of the shells were easily visible from the Mixcoac hilltop. So too were the ranks of dragoon and infantry troops down in the valley awaiting the order to attack.
In charge of the executions was Colonel William Selby Harney whose decision to hang all thirty at a stroke was in keeping with his reputation, which as his obituary in 1890 would record was that of a “right hard hater always; somewhat ferocious, too, in the award of punishments.” He was said to have beaten a recalcitrant female slave to death in Saint Louis some dozen years before. During the Indian Wars in Florida he was given to decapitating prisoners and posting their heads on stakes along the riverbanks as warning to the savages. There were tales throughout the army of his prodigious appetite for Indian girls whom he afterwards prevented from bringing charges against him by hanging them for spies. He would now hang the last thirty turncoats in his own fashion.
The three compañeros sat their nervous stamping horses alongside a troop of dragoons posted hard by the gallows and watched a column of ten mule-driven carts come clattering up the hill with three men seated in each cart but for the last, which held only two. The men were bound both hand and foot and when Edward saw that John was not among them his relief was so utter he suddenly felt exhausted. Harney demanded to know of the lieutenant in charge of the prisoner detail why only twenty-nine men had been brought out. The lieutenant explained that one of the condemned, a man named Francis O’Connor, had lost both legs in the Churubusco fight and the doctors had said he was not expected to live more than another day or two.