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 to the righteousness and expediency of the war with Mexico. There were two great parties, both of which have long since passed away, for the question of the annexation of Texas is no longer before the people, and all this was more than half a century ago. One of the parties called itself “Whig,” but its enemies described its members as “Coons,” in the habit 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, which were largely manufactured and did not burn very well. Party feeling ran high, and the debates in Congress were red-hot.The Democratic President, James K. Polk, was a man of far greater ability and statesmanship than his party enemies were willing to give him credit for, and he was supported by a brilliant array of politicians. On the other hand, the Whig party contained a number of our most distinguished statesmen, and, curiously enough, most of the generals of the army, including Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor, were well-known Whigs. It was not altogether unnatural, therefore, that the Democratic party in power should wish to put the command of any army preparing for the invasion of Mexico into the hands of officers who were in favor of the war which they were to carry on. Questions like this, and some others relating to the unprepared condition of the American army for so tremendous an undertaking, were responsible for the fact that there was a long delay in all military operations, even after the hard and successful fighting done by General Taylor’s forces at the Rio Grande.
American cruisers were tacking to and fro over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, without any especial errand of which their commanders were aware. Regiments of eager volunteers were forming in several of the States,and were trying hard to discover officers who knew how to drill and handle them. The politicians were everywhere calling each other harder and harder names. Not one soul in all the United States, however, knew anything of a party of mounted men, a carriage, and a spring-wagon, which quietly made its way out of the city of Vera Cruz, not long after sunset, one sultry and lazy evening. At the head of this cavalcade rode two men, who sat upon their spirited horses as if they were at home in the saddle. At their right, however, was a young fellow on a black pony who was entirely satisfied with the fact that the beast under him did not seem to have any spirit at all. He was at that moment steadying his feet in the stirrups, and remarking to himself:
“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 fell over him. I’ll get the señor to show me how, or I’ll be laughed at by the men.”
He was doing fairly well at present, for the road went up a hill, and the night was not one for foolishly fast travelling. He could listen all the better, and one of his companions was saying to the other:
“My dear Zuroaga, we have gained four miles. Every one of them is worth something handsome to you and me. In my opinion, we did not get away a moment too soon to save our necks.”
“Not one minute!” replied the other, with strong emphasis. “Not even if Guerra can succeed in gaining for us the best part of another day, as he believed he could. Perhaps our best chance, after all, is that he has only one company of lancers, and that any officer sent with it might have 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 to find us. They are not under the orders of Guerra.”
“If,” exclaimed Zuroaga, fiercely, “they do not overtake us until after the middle of our second day out, I believe they would be unlucky to try to arrest us. I hope they will be wise, and not tire out their horses with too much haste. I feel as if I could shoot pretty straight if I should see them coming within range.”
“So could I,” replied Tassara.
The road which they were then following ran between cultivated lands on eitherside. It was not tree-shadowed, and, as Ned looked back, the moonlight showed him something that made him think rapidly. Additional horsemen had joined them after they had left the city behind them, and it occurred to him that arrangements had been made beforehand for something like a small war. There were not less than twenty armed men, besides himself and the pair who were with him. For some reason or other, moreover, the wagon, which was drawn by four mules, and the carriage, drawn by a pair of fine animals of the same sort, were driven on well in advance. It appeared, therefore, as if no danger was expected to meet them from the opposite direction, and that Señora Tassara and her daughter were fairly well protected from any peril which might come after them along the road from Vera Cruz. The next thing that struck Ned, little as he knew about war, was that these horsemen were riding two and two, not in a straggling procession, but in as perfect order as if they had been trained cavalry. If he had known a little more, he would have declared:
“That is just what they are.”
He might not also have known that all but six of them were from the Tassaraestates, and that the odd half-dozen were lifelong servants of the proscribed descendant of Hernando Cortes. If he could have understood those men, he might also have comprehended one important feature of the tangled politics of Mexico, and why ambitious military men were every now and then able to set up for themselves, and defy the central government until it could manage to capture them, and have them shot as rebels. Wiser men than he, looking at the matter from the outside, might also have understood how greatly it was to the credit of President Paredes that he was making so good a stand against the power of the United States while hampered by so many difficulties. Ned was no politician at all, and it was a mere impulse, or a tired feeling, which led him to pull in his pony and let the men catch up with him, so that he might chat with them, one after another, and get acquainted. He found that they were under no orders not to talk. On the contrary, every man of them seemed to know that Ned had come home from the school which he had been attending in England, and that he had been instrumental in procuring powder and bullets for them and for the Mexican army. They were full of patriotism of a peculiarkind. It would have made them fight gringos or any other foreigners to-day, and to-morrow to fight as readily in any causeless revolution which their local leaders might see fit 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 let them know how uncomfortable he felt in that saddle. They surely would have despised any young Mexican who had forgotten how to ride while he was travelling in Europe.
Hour after hour went by, and on every level stretch of road the wheeled vehicles were driven at a moderate trot. The horses of what Ned called the cavalry also trotted occasionally, but it was well for him that his pony did not seem to know how. Whenever he was asked to go faster, he struck into a rocking canter, which was as easy and about as lazy as a cradle, so that his rider received hardly any shaking, and was able to keep both his seat and his stirrups. Brief halts for rest were made now and then. Bridges were crossed which Ned understood were over small branches 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 on for a hundred yards or more intoa magnificent forest, where the moonlight came down among the trees to show how old and large they were.
“Halt! Dismount!” came sharply from Colonel Tassara. “It is twelve o’clock. We have made over twenty miles. We will camp here until daylight. Pablo, put up the tents.”
Every rider but Ned was down on his feet in a twinkling, but he remained upon his pony’s back as still as a statue. He saw a white tent leave the top 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 señora and Felicia; one for the colonel; and one for Señor Zuroaga. Not any for me or for the men. Oh, dear! How shall I ever get down? I can’t move my legs. If I can’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 kind and thoughtful friend, the general,—if he was one,—for Zuroaga now came 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 did come out somehow, and then he made an extra effort not to fall asleep with his head on the general’s shoulder.
“Used up completely!” exclaimed Zuroaga. “Can you walk? Stretch your legs. 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 again by 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 lame and awkward fashion, but he was glad to reach the tent. “It’s big enough for two,” he said, as he crawled in.
“Is it?” said the general. “Bah! I do not use one half the time. I am a soldier and a hunter, and I prefer to bivouac in such weather as this. I must 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 unbuckling his machete, and that was the last that he knew that night of the camp or of anybody in it. Probably, nothing less than the reportof a cannon fired over that tent would have aroused him to go for his horse-pistols or draw his Mexican sabre.
Señora Tassara and her daughter had disappeared immediately, and they, also, must have been wearied with their long, hot journey, but all the rest of the party were old campaigners, and they were ready to take care of the horses and eat cold rations, for no fires were kindled.
A few minutes later, if Ned had been awake instead of sleeping so soundly, 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 are very 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 have followed us well. But there cannot be more than half a dozen of them. It is 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-morrow night. 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 Carfora at 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, his own man, Pablo, stood before him. Pablo had been running fast, but he had breath enough left to say, quite coolly and not loudly:
“Lancers, general. Officer and four men. They have been running their horses, and they won’t travel far to-morrow. I was in the bushes.”
“All right, Pablo,” said Zuroaga. “It was kind of Colonel Guerra to order them to use up their horses. We shall not hear of that squad again. Put Andrea on watch, and go to sleep. Our first danger is over.”
Pablo bowed and turned away without another word, and Zuroaga resumed his conference with Tassara, for those two were brave men, and were well-accustomed to the peril-haunted lives they were leading.
“Colonel,” he said, “it is evident that my young friend Carfora must go with you. He is not fit for a swift ride of three hundred miles. Besides, he must have anychance which may happen to turn up for getting home. Will you take care of him? He is a fine young fellow, but he cannot ride.”
Therefore the pony and that saddle had done something good for Ned, and Colonel Tassara cheerfully responded:
“With great pleasure, my dear general. I shall be glad to make American friends. I may need them. He will be safe enough with me, but I fear it will be a long time before he can get out of Mexico. As for me, I shall meet more than a hundred of my own men at Orizaba, ready to escort me across the sierra into my own State of Puebla. After that, my reputation for loyalty will soon be reëstablished by raising my new regiment. I think, however, that it will not march into the city of Mexico until his Excellency President Paredes has set out for the Rio Grande, or as far north 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. Carfora will remain with me until then. You are right. He would not be safe anywhere else. As for yourself, you must push on.”
“I think,” said Zuroaga, “that I shall be almost safe after I am a few miles beyondTeotitlan. I may have a fight or two on the way. Carfora must not be killed in any skirmish of that kind. You will not see me again, dead or alive, until a week or two after the Americans have taken the city of Mexico, as in my opinion they surely will. I shall be there then, with five hundred lancers, to uphold the new government which will take the place of the bloody dictatorship of Paredes, unless the new affair 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 old student of military operations. Do you really think the Americans will capture our capital? It will be well defended.”
“Bravely enough, but not well,” replied Zuroaga. “We have not one scientific, thoroughly educated engineer officer fit to take charge of the defences against, for instance, General Scott. Not even Santa Anna himself, with all his ability, is a general capable of checking the invaders after they have taken Vera Cruz, and that they will do. He is a scheming politician rather than a military genius. He and Paredes and some others whom you and I could name must be whipped out ofpower before we can put up an entirely new government, better than any we have ever had yet. What do you think about it?”
“Think?” exclaimed Tassara, angrily. “I think it will be after you and I are 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, but neither of the two political prophets appeared to have much more to say. They separated, as if each might have something else to employ him, and shortly all the night camp in the grand old forest seemed to be asleep.
The remaining hours of darkness passed silently, and the sun arose with a promise of another hot day. Small fires were kindled for coffee-making, but the preparations for breakfast were hurried. Before six o’clock the mules were harnessed, the horses were saddled, and all things were made ready for a diligent push southward. It had been a difficult 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 coffee and corn-cakes did a great deal for him, and he madeout to pretend to help Pablo in getting the fat pony ready for the road. Then, however, he was willing to see Pablo walk away, and he bravely led the pony to the side 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 theGoshawk. “I saw how some of them mounted. You put your left foot into the stirrup, and then you make a kind of spring into the saddle. If my knees 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 he arose slowly, painfully to the level of the pony’s back. Then his right leg went over, and he was actually there, hunting a little nervously for the other stirrup, with his machete away around behind him.
“Glad you have done it!” exclaimed a decidedly humorous voice near the pony’s head. “We are all ready to be off now. Before long, you will be able to mount as the rancheros do, without touching the stirrup. But then, I believe that most of them were born on horseback.”
They also appeared to be able to dopretty well without much sleep, for Ned could not see that they showed any signs of fatigue. The camping-place was speedily left behind them, but it was no longer a night journey. Ned was almost astonished, now that the darkness was gone, 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, but the cavalcade began to meet other wayfarers,—men and women,—on foot and on horseback, and hardly any of them were willing to be passed without obtaining the latest news from Vera Cruz and from the war.
“I guess they need it,” thought Ned. “The general says there are no newspapers taken down here, and that, if there were, not one person in five 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 were as capable of being developed and educated to better things. As to this being a new country, it came slowly back into Ned’s mind that there had been a great and populous empire here at a time when the island upon which 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 few dollars’ worth of kettles and beads.
“I guess I’m beginning to wake up,” thought Ned. “When theGoshawkwas lying in the Bay of Vera Cruz, I was too busy to see anything. No, I wasn’t. I did stare at the Orizaba mountain peak, and they told me it is over seventeen thousand feet high. First mountain I ever saw that could keep on snow and ice in such weather as this. I don’t want to live up there in winter. Well! Now I’ve seen some of the biggest trees I ever did see. I wonder if any of them were here when the Spaniards came in. I guess they were, some of them.”
He was really beginning to see something of Mexico, and it almost made him forget the hardness of that unpleasant saddle. At the end of another mile, he was saying to himself:
“That field yonder is tobacco, is it? The one we just passed was sugar-cane, and Pablo said the plantation across the road was almost all coffee. 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 dangerous character had been encountered by the fugitive travellers when, at about the middle of the forenoon, they came to a parting of the ways. A seemingly well-travelled road went off to the left, or southward, while the one they were on turned more to the right and climbed a hill, as if it were making a further effort to get out of thetierra caliente. A great many things had been explained to Ned, as they rode along, and he was not surprised, therefore, when Señor 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 my chances for reaching my place of refuge in Oaxaca. It is not a very good chance, but I must make the best of it that I can. Take good care of yourself. I have already said good-by to the señora and the señorita. I think they will soon be out of danger.”
Ned was really grateful, and he tried to say so, but all he could think of just then was:
“General Zuroaga, I do hope you’ll get through all right. I hope I shall see you again safe and sound.”
“You never will,” said Zuroaga, as he wheeled his horse, “unless I get out of this Cordoba road. It is a kind of military highway, and I might meet my enemies at any minute—too many of them.”
“Good-by!” shouted Ned, and the general, who was still a great mystery to him, dashed away at a gallop, followed by Pablo and the wild riders from the Oaxaca ranches.
The cavalcade had hardly paused, and it now went on up the long, steep slope to the right. Not many minutes later, it was on high enough ground to look down upon the road which had been taken by Zuroaga. Ned was not looking in that direction, but at some snow-capped mountains in the distance, northward, and he was saying to himself:
“So that is the Sierra Madre, is it? This country has more and higher mountains in it— Hullo! What’s that? Is she hurt?”
His change of utterance into an anxious exclamation was produced by a piercing scream from the carriage, and that was followed by the excited voice of Señora Tassara calling out:
“Husband! The general is attacked! Look! Hear the firing!”
“O father! Can we not help him?” gasped Señorita Felicia.
Her mother was holding to her eyes with trembling hands what Ned took for an opera-glass, and he wished that he had one, although he could make out that something like a skirmish was taking place on the other road. It was too far to more than barely catch the dull reports of what seemed to be a number of rapidly fired pistol-shots.
“They are fighting!” he exclaimed. “I wish I was there to help him! He may need more men. I could shoot!”
Whether he could or not, he was almost unconsciously unbuckling the holster of one of his horse-pistols, when the señora spoke again.
“Santa Maria!” she exclaimed. “The dear general! They are too many for him. Madre de Dios! Our good friend will be killed!”
“Give me the glass, my dear,” said her husband. “Your hands are not steady enough. I will tell you how it is.”
“Oh, do!” she whispered, hoarsely, as she handed it to him. “They are lancers in uniform. Oh, me! This is dreadful! And they may follow us, too.”
Colonel Tassara took the glass with apparentlyperfect coolness, and Ned took note that it did not tremble at all, as he aimed it at the distant skirmish. It was a number of seconds, however, before he reported:
“Hurrah! The general rides on, and he rides well. I feel sure that he is not badly wounded, if at all. He has now but three men with him. There are riderless horses. There are men on the ground. There are four only that are riding back toward the Cordoba road. Thank God! The general has made good his escape from that party of unlucky lancers. He is a fighter!”
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 gets there, if we kill all our horses doing it. Push on!”
CHAPTER IX.LEAVING THE HACIENDA
It was near the close of a bright summer day, and a deeply interested company had gathered in the dining-room of the Crawford home in New York. Dinner was on the table, but nobody had yet sat down. The number of young persons present suggested that Ned must have older brothers and sisters.
“Father Crawford,” exclaimed one of the grown-up young men, “what is this about another letter from Edward? I came over to hear the news.”
“Letter?” said Mr. Crawford. “I should say so! I guess I’d better read it aloud. It was a long time getting out and coming around by way of England. There are all sorts of delays in war-time. It is the last of three that he wrote before escaping into the interior of Mexico with his new friends. I am glad that he did go with them, though, and there must be otherletters on the way. We shall hear from him again pretty soon.”
They all were silent then, and he read the letter through, with now and then a few words of explanation, but Mrs. Crawford had evidently read it before, and all she could say now was:
“Oh, dear! I don’t like it! I wish he had come home!”
“It’s all right, mother,” said Mr. Crawford, “for I have something more to tell. Captain Kemp is here, and, from what he says, it is plain that it would not have done for Ned to have remained anywhere on the coast. He will be safe where he is, and he will learn a great deal. I would not have him miss it for anything. What’s pretty good, too, we have been paid all our insurance money for the loss of theGoshawk, and our firm has been given a contract to furnish supplies for the army. I shall be down on the gulf before long myself, in charge of a supply ship, and I can make inquiries about Ned. He will turn up all right.”
Everybody appeared to be encouraged except Ned’s mother, and it was a pity she could not have seen how well he was looking at that very time. If, for instance, she had possessed a telescope which wouldhave reached so far, she might have seen a fine, large bay horse reined in to a standstill in front of a modern-appearing country-house, well built of a nearly white kind of limestone. Around this residence was a wide-spreading lawn, with vines, shrubbery, flowers, and other evidences of wealth and refinement. The rider of the horse appeared to sit him easily, and he was a picture of health and high spirits, but for an expression of discontent that was upon his sunburned face.
“This is all very beautiful,” he said, as he glanced around him, “but I wish I were out of it. I want to hear from home. They must have my letters by this time, but they couldn’t guess where I am now.”
He was silent for a moment, and the horse curveted gracefully under him, as if in doubt whether to gallop away again, or to ask his rider to get off.
“Well!” said Ned, with a pull on the rein. “It seems like a long, wonderful dream since I saw General Zuroaga ride away from us at the cross-roads. What a skirmish that was! Then we made our way through the mountains, and came here, and hasn’t it been a curious kind of life ever since? I’ve learned how to ride like a Mexican. I’ve seen all there is to seefor miles and miles around this place. I’ve seen lots of old ruins, all that’s left of ancient houses and temples and altars. I believe the señora likes nothing better than to tell me yarns about the Montezuma times and about her ancestors in Spain. That’s a great country. I think I’ll go over there, some day, and see Granada and the Alhambra and the old castles and the Spanish people. I like the Mexicans first-rate, all that I have seen of them. They will be a splendid nation one of these days, but they’re awfully ignorant now. Why, every one in these parts believes that our army is all the while being whipped all to pieces by theirs, and I can’t exactly swallow that. I’d like to know just what is really going on. I’m all in the dark.”
“Señor Carfora!” called out a clear, ringing voice.
He turned in the saddle, from seeming to gaze at the distant forest, and there, in the piazza which ran all along the front of the house, stood Señorita Felicia, her usually pale face flushed with excitement.
“We have a letter from father!” she shouted. “He has completed his regiment, and he is to command it. President Paredes is going north, to drive the gringos out of Mexico, and father may have to gowith him. He says it is time for us to move to the city of Mexico. We are to live with my aunt, Mercedes Paez, and you are to come with us. Is it not grand?”
“It is just what I was wishing for!” exclaimed Ned. “I’d give almost anything to see that city, after what your mother has told me.”
“Oh,” said Felicia, “she was born there, and she’ll make you see all there is of it. But we were all ready, you know, and we are to set out early to-morrow morning.”
“Hurrah!” responded Ned. “But I’d like to hear from General Zuroaga. I wish I knew whether or not he was much hurt in that fight in the road.”
“Father does not believe he was,” said Felicia. “Sometimes I almost think he knows all about it. But there are some things he won’t speak of, and General Zuroaga is one of them.”
Ned sprang to the ground, and a barefooted “peon” servant took charge of his horse. It was not at all the kind of dismounting he had performed at the camp in the woods on the road from Vera Cruz. Neither did he now have any machete dangling from his belt, to entangle himself with, and there were no pistol holsters in front of the saddle. He went on into thehouse with the señorita, and in a moment more he was hearing additional news from her mother. Señora Tassara was as stately as ever, but it was apparent that she had taken a liking to her young American guest, whether it was on account of his deep interest in her old stories, or otherwise. It may have been, in part, that company was a good thing to have in a somewhat lonely country-house, for she could not have thought of associating with Mexican neighbors of a social rank lower than her own. Was she not descended from Spanish grandees, and were they not, for the greater part, representatives of the mere Aztecs and Toltecs, whom her forefathers had conquered? It was that very feeling, however, which in the minds of such men as Paredes and similar leaders was standing in the way of every effort to construct a genuine republic out of the people of the half-civilized States of Mexico.
Ned’s next questions related to the war, and he inquired how many more great battles Colonel Tassara had reported.
“Battles?” exclaimed Señora Tassara. “Why, there has not been one fought since Resaca de la Palma. But he says that General Ampudia sends word that the American army is about to advance uponhim. They will attack him at the city of Monterey, and they never can take so strong a place as that is. He is ready for them, but President Paredes believes that it is time for him to take command of the army in person.”
It certainly was so. The Mexican President was a cunning politician, and he had been by no means an unsuccessful general. He was well aware that it would not be wise for him to now allow too many victories to be won by any other Mexican. It might interfere with his own popularity. On the other hand, if General Ampudia should be defeated, as he was quite likely to be, then it was good policy for the commander-in-chief, the President, to be promptly on hand with a larger force, to overwhelm the invaders who had ruined Ampudia. Therefore, it might be said that the Americans had the tangled factions and corrupt politics of Mexico working for them very effectively.
Ned Crawford already knew much about the condition of military and political affairs, but he was not thinking of them that evening. It was a great deal pleasanter to sit and talk with Señorita Felicia about the city of Mexico and others of the historical places of the ancient landof Anahuac. She still could remind him, now and then, that she hated all kinds of gringos, but at all events she was willing to treat one of them fairly well. He, on his part, had formed a favorable opinion of some Mexicans, but he was as firm as ever in his belief that their army could never drive the Americans out of Texas.
There was one place which was even busier and more full of the excitement of getting ready for a new movement than was the Tassara hacienda. It was among the scattered camps of General Taylor’s army, near Matamoras, at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Reinforcements had made the army more than double its former size, but it was understood that it was still of only half the numbers of the force it was soon to meet, under General Ampudia. It was a curious fact, however, that all of General Taylor’s military scholars were entirely satisfied with that computation, and considered that any other arrangement would have been unfair, as they really outnumbered their opponents when these were only two to one. What was more, they were willing to give them the advantage of fighting behind strong fortifications, for they knew that they were soon to attack the mountain city of Monterey. Part of whatwas now genuinely an invading army was to go up the river in boats for some distance. The other part was to go overland, and it was an open question which of them would suffer the more from the hot summer sun. It was to be anything but a picnic, for here were nearly seven thousand Americans of all sorts, who were obtaining their first experiences of what war might really be, if made in any manner whatever in the sultriest kind of southern weather. Much more agreeable for them might have been a march across the central table-lands beyond, at an elevation of four thousand feet above the sea level and thetierra caliente.
That was precisely the kind of pleasant journey that was performed by Ned Crawford and the imposing Tassara cavalcade on the morrow and during a couple of wonderful days which followed. There being no railway, whatever the señora wished to take with her had to be conveyed in wagons or on pack-mules, and the ladies themselves now preferred the saddle to any kind of carriage. In fact, Ned shortly discovered that Señorita Felicia was more at home on horseback than he was, and he more than once congratulated himself thatshe had never witnessed his first performances in mounting his fat pony.
“How she would have laughed at me!” he thought. “But at that time there wasn’t another spare saddle-horse, and she and her mother didn’t care a cent whether I could ride or not. They were thinking of Guerra’s lancers.”
The scenery was exceedingly beautiful as well as peaceful. There was nothing whatever to suggest that a dreadful war was going on. There were houses of friends to stop at, instead of hotels. There were towns and villages of some importance to be rapidly investigated by a tourist like Ned, from New York by way of England, and now a good young Mexican for the time being. Then there was an exciting evening, when all who were on horseback rode ahead of the wagons and on into the city, which occupies the site of the wonderful Tenochtitlan, which was captured by Hernando Cortes and his daring adventurers ever so long ago. From that time onward, during a number of busy days, Ned became better and better satisfied with the fact that his father had sent him across the sea to learn all that he could of Mexico and the Mexicans.
CHAPTER X.PICTURES OF THE PAST
“Oh, how I wish we had some news from the war!” exclaimed Ned.
“Well,” said Señorita Felicia, doubtfully, “there isn’t much, but I suppose there is some almost ready to come.”
“I’m tired of waiting for it,” replied Ned, “and if there isn’t to be any war news, I wish I had some books!”
The thought that was in Ned Crawford’s mind had broken out suddenly, as he sat at the dinner-table of Señora Mercedes Paez, at the end of those first days after his arrival in the city of Mexico. There were a number of persons at the table, and at the head of it was Señora Paez herself. She was shorter and stouter, but she was every ounce as stately and imposing as was even Señora Tassara. In front of her sat one affair which had, from the beginning of his visit in that house, made him feel more at home than he might otherwise havedone. He had become used to it, and it seemed like an old friend. That Seville coffee-urn had ornamented the table in the house at Vera Cruz, his first refuge after he came ashore out of the destructive norther. It had winked at him from a similar post of honor in the country-house out in Puebla, and Señora Tassara had affectionately brought it with her to the residence of her city cousin. She had said that she thought it would be safer here, even if the city should be captured by those terrible robbers, the Americans. They could not be intending to steal and melt up all the old silver in Mexico.
“Why, Señor Carfora!” exclaimed Señorita Felicia, indignantly. “Did you not know? Aunt Paez has piles and piles of books. They are up in the library. If you wish to read them, she will let you go there. I had forgotten that you know how to read. He may do it, may he not, Aunt Mercedes?”
“Of course he may,” replied the señora, “but it is a curious idea for a boy of his age.”
“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed Ned. “But what I’d like to have are some books that tell about old Mexico and about the city of Tenochtitlan, that stood here beforethe Spaniards came. I’ve been all around everywhere. I’ve seen the swamps and the lakes and the walls and forts and everything. The great cathedral—”
“That,” interposed Señora Tassara, “stands on the very spot where an old temple of the Aztec war-god stood. There were altars in it, where they used to kill and burn hundreds and thousands of human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli, and there were altars to other gods.”
“I can’t exactly speak that name,” said Ned, “but I want to know all about him and the sacrifices. I want to learn, too, just how Cortes and his men took the old city. I suppose that when the Americans come, it will be a different kind of fight—more cannon.”
“They won’t get here at all,” quietly remarked a military-looking old gentleman sitting near the other end of the table. “It is a long road from the Rio Grande, and President Paredes is to march, in a few days, to crush our enemies with an army of twenty thousand men. They have not so much as taken Monterey yet. You are right, though. If they should ever get here, they will find the city harder to take than Cortes did. They will all die before the walls.”
He spoke with a great deal of patriotic enthusiasm, and Ned knew that it was his turn to keep still, for the old gentleman had no idea that he was talking to a wicked young gringo. Señora Paez, however, calmly replied:
“Ah, Colonel Rodriguez, my dear friend, the President himself has said that, after he has beaten them at the northern border, as he surely will, the Americans are sure to make another attempt by way of Vera Cruz. That, too, was the opinion of our brave friend, Colonel Guerra, and he is making every preparation for a siege. It is part of our grateful hospitality to our guest, Señor Carfora, that his friends have supplied the Castle of San Juan de Ulua with the ammunition which will be needed. He came over on the ship which brought it, and he has remained with us ever since.”
Just then Ned Crawford knew what it was to feel very mean indeed. He felt as if he himself were telling a large lie, and his cheeks flushed red-hot. He was aware, nevertheless, that even Señora Tassara had not been told everything, and that Señora Paez was reasonably honest in what she had been saying. There was no necessity for enlightening Colonel Rodriguez.Hardly, therefore, had the old gentleman vehemently exclaimed, “They never can take San Juan de Ulua!” than Ned went hastily back to his first subject of the ancient history.
“That’s it,” he said. “I want to find out how Cortes got ashore, and how he fought his way from the coast to this place. He must have had to cross the mountains, through the passes, just as our party did when we came.”
“Yes,” said the colonel. “He had to climb seven thousand and five hundred feet up out of thetierra caliente, and, if any gringos ever try that path, they will find all the passes full of fighting Mexicans and good artillery well posted. Hernando Cortes had all the gunpowder there was in America when he tried that road.”
“My dear young friend,” said Señora Paez, “you will find plenty of the books you wish for. My husband was fond of collecting them. After dinner, the señorita will show you the library, and you may read anything there.”
Ned was silent once more, for he was still feeling mean, and was asking himself whether he were not, after all, a kind of spy in the Mexican camp, going around in disguise, and all the while wishing that hecould help the American army to capture the city.
“Anyhow,” he thought, “I can’t help myself just now, and when the city is taken, everything in the Paez house will be entirely safe. I shouldn’t wonder if that old coffee-urn will be safer from thieves than it is now. There have been half a dozen burglaries since we came, and I’ve seen hundreds of the wildest-looking kinds of fellows from the mountains. Every man of them looked as if he’d like to steal some silver.”
While he was thinking, he was also listening, with a great deal of interest, to a description which the old officer was giving of the defences of Monterey, and of the reasons why the American troops would surely be defeated. It appeared that he had at one time been the commander of the garrison of the fortress known as the Black Fort, just outside of the walls of Monterey, on the north, and he evidently believed it to be impregnable. Ned was no soldier, and it did not occur to him to ask, as General Taylor might have done, whether or not it was possible to take the town without wasting time in taking the fort first.
“Come, Señor Carfora,” said Felicia,as they all arose from the table, “I will show you the library. You can’t do much reading there to-night, though, for the lamps have all been taken away. I do not wish to go there, anyhow, except in the daytime. It is a pokerish kind of place. Do you believe in ghosts? I do not, but, if I were a ghost, I would pick out that library for a good place to hide in. Come along. You are a foreigner, and any kind of good Mexican ghost won’t like you.”
Whether she herself did so or not, she led the way, and no lamp was as yet needed, although the day was nearly over and the shadows were coming. Up-stairs they went and through a short passageway in the second story of the Paez mansion, and they were almost in the dark when she said to him:
“Here we are. Hardly any one ever comes here, and it will be dreadfully dusty. Books are dusty old things anyhow.”
She turned the big brass knob in the dusky door before them, and shoved against it with all her might, but Ned had to help her with his shoulder, or the massive mahogany portal would not have yielded an inch. It did go slowly in, upon its ancient-looking bronze hinges, and then they were in a room which was worth lookingat. It was not so very large, only about fifteen feet by twenty, but it was unusually high, and it had but one tall, narrow slit of a window. Close by this, however, were a finely carved reading chair and table, ready to receive all the light which the window might choose to let in. Ned was staring eagerly around the room, when his pretty guide remarked:
“You had better see all you can before it gets any darker. Take down as many books as you want. I don’t care much for those fusty-musty old histories. I must go away now—”
“Hullo, señorita!” exclaimed Ned. “There is a lamp on the table. I have some matches—”
“I don’t believe you can make it burn,” she said, “but you can try. It has not been lighted for this ever so long, and the oil may have dried up.”
Around she whirled and away she went, leaving Ned to his own devices. His next thought was almost impolite, after all, for he was more than half glad that she did go, so that he might have the library all to himself to rummage in. He did not instantly examine the lamp, for he had never before been in just this kind of room, and it fascinated him. All its sides wereoccupied by high bookcases, every one of them crammed full of volumes of all sorts and sizes. He thought that he had never seen larger books than were some of the fat folios on the lower shelves. There were great, flat, atlas-looking concerns leaning against them, and out on the floor stood several upright racks of maps. Old Señor Paez may have been what is called a book-worm. At all events, Ned had understood that he was a very learned man, with a strong enthusiasm for American history.
“Heavens and earth!” suddenly exclaimed Ned. “What is that?”
He darted forward to a further corner of the room, as if he were in a great hurry to meet somebody who had unexpectedly come in. It certainly was something almost in human shape, but it had been standing there a long while, and the hand which it appeared to hold out to him was of steel, for it was nothing in the wide world but a complete suit of ancient armor. It was so set up in that corner, however, that it almost seemed alive, with its right hand extended, and its left holding a long, pennoned lance. Its helmet had a barred vizor, so that if there had been any face behind that, it would have been hidden. Nedwent and stood silently before it for a moment, staring at that vizor.
“I say,” he muttered, as if he did not care to speak any louder. “I don’t believe General Taylor’s men would care to march far with as much iron as that on them—not in hot weather. But the old Aztecs didn’t have anything that would go through that kind of uniform. If Cortes and his men wore it, there is no wonder that they went on killing the Indians without being much hurt themselves.”
In fact, not all of them had been dressed up in precisely such a manner, although they did wear armor.
Ned examined the whole affair, piece by piece, from head to foot, and then he turned away from his inspection, for the room behind him was getting dim and it was time for him to look at his lamp. He took out a match as he went toward the table at the window, and in a moment more he was busy with a wick which seemed to be determined not to burn for him.
“It’s an old whale-oil lamp,” he remarked. “Mother had one, once. I remember seeing her try to light it and it would sputter for ever so long. There! It’s beginning to kindle, but it’s too big for me to carry around and hunt for books with.I wish I had a smaller one. Hullo! Here’s one of the biggest of those old concerns, right here on the table.”
It was a folio bound in vellum, and when he opened it a great deal of dust arose from the cover which banged down. Then Ned uttered a loud exclamation, and was glad he had succeeded in lighting the lamp, for there before his eyes was a vividly colored picture of a most extraordinary description. Moreover, it unfolded, so that it was almost twice the size, length, and width of the book pages.
“They are all in Spanish,” he said, “but I guess I can read them. They’re more than a hundred years old. People don’t print such books, nowadays. Nobody would have time enough to read them, I suppose, and they couldn’t sell ’em cheap enough. This is wonderful! It’s a picture of the old Mexican god, Huitzilopochtli.”
There was an explanatory inscription, and the artist had pictured the terrible deity sitting upon a throne of state, gorgeously arrayed in gold and jewels, and watching with a smile of serene satisfaction the sacrifice of some unfortunate human victims on the altar in the foreground at the right. One of the priests attending at the altar had just cut open the bosom of atall man lying before him, and was tossing a bleeding heart upon the smoking fire, where other similar offerings were already burning.
“That must have been a horrible kind of religion,” thought Ned. “I’m glad that Cortes and his men in armor came to put an end to it. Señora Paez told me that in only a few years before he came, and her great-grandfather and his father with him, those priests cut up more than twenty thousand men, women, and children. He’s a curious kind of god, I should say, to sit there and grin while it was going on.”
He could not linger too long over one picture, however, for he had discovered that there were others in that volume which were as brilliantly colored and as interesting. On the whole, it was not necessary to hunt for anything better than this the first evening, and it appeared as if he were asking a useless question of the steel-clad warrior in the corner, when at last he turned to him to say:
“Did you ever see anything like this before? I never did. Were you there, in any of these battles? This is the way that Cortes and his cavalry scared the Indians, is it? They were awfully afraid of horses. You can buy horses for almost nothing,nowadays, anywhere in Mexico. I’ve learned how to ride ’em, too, but didn’t I get pitched off by some of those ponies! It would have scared mother half to death. I wish I could see her to-night, and show her some of these pictures. I’d like to see Bob and the girls, too. They never saw a book like this.”
He had examined a number of the pictures, and the lamp was burning fairly well, but a long time had elapsed since he came into that room, and he was not at all aware of it.
“Señor Carfora?” called out a voice in the doorway. “Oh, you are here. You did light the lamp. I was almost afraid you were in the dark.”
“No, I’m not,” said Ned. “I made it burn, and I’ve been looking at all sorts of things. These pictures are just wonderful.”
“Oh!” she said, “I would not be in this room in the dark for anything! I know all those things in that book, though. They are hideous! But they say that that suit of armor has the worst kind of ghost in it.”
“Maybe it has,” said Ned. “I don’t believe he can get out, anyhow. He’s just stuck in it. I’d rather wear the clothes I have on.”
“Well,” she replied, “mother sent meto find if you were here, and it is dreadfully late—”
“Oh, yes!” interrupted Ned. “I suppose it is time for me to go to bed. I’ll go, but I mean to see all there is in this library, señorita. I won’t try to read it all. I don’t care for ghosts, but I’d like to see one.”
“I do not care for them in the daytime, either,” she told him. “But old Margarita, the Tlascalan, says that they come at night and sit here and tell stories of all the Mexican idol gods. All of them hate us, too, because we turned them out of their temples, and I hate them.”
“I’m glad they are gone, anyhow,” said Ned, but it was really time to go, and he carried some of the most brilliant of those illustrations into some of his dreams that night.