He sat down amid roars of applause and universal approval. Did they not know? Mexicans were boasting already that Taylor would have to surrender to Santa Anna without a battle. Bill Breakstone stole a glance toward the place where the gray-haired man had stood, but he was gone now."Did you know that old Rough and Ready himself was listening to you there toward the last?" asked Grayson."Is that so?" replied Breakstone. "Well, I'm not ashamed of anything that I said, and now, if I've entertained you boys a little, I'd like to rest awhile. You don't know how hard that kind of work is, whether your work be good or bad."Rest he certainly should have. They had found too great a treasure, these fighting men in a far land, to let him be spoiled by overwork, and they brought him an abundance of refreshment, also.Breakstone drank a cup of light wine made in Saltillo, as he lay back luxuriously on a pallet in one of the tents. He felt that he had reason to be satisfied with himself, and perhaps, he, playing the actor, had seized an opportunity, and had made it do what might be an important service in a great campaign."What was the last piece that you recited?" asked Grayson. "Somehow it seemed to fit in with our own situation here.""That," replied Breakstone, "was a speech from King Henry V. He is in France with a small army, and the French have sent to him to demand his surrender. He makes the reply that I have just quoted to you."There was a thoughtful silence, although they had known his meaning already, and presently Phil and his comrades, making themselves comfortable in their tents, went to sleep. They were formally enrolled among the Kentucky volunteers the next day, and began their duties, which consisted chiefly of patrolling. Phil was among the sentinels stationed the next night on the outskirts of the city.CHAPTER XIITHE PASS OF ANGOSTURAIt was almost midwinter now in Mexico, and here, in the northern part of the republic, on the great plateau, it was cold. Phil more than once had seen the snow flying, and far away it lay in white sheets on the peaks of the Sierra Madre. He had obtained a heavy blanket coat or overcoat from the stores, and he was glad enough now to pull it closely around him and turn its collar up about his neck, as he walked back and forth in the chilly blasts. At each end of his beat he met another sentinel, a young Kentuckian like himself, and, for the sake of company, they would exchange a friendly word or two before they parted.The night was dark, and, with the icy winds cutting him, Phil, after the other sentinel had turned away, felt more lonesome in this far strange land than he had ever been before in his life. Everything about him was unfriendly, the hard volcanic soil upon which he trod, the shapeless figures of the adobe huts on the outskirts of the town, and the moaning winds from the Sierra Madre, which seemed to be more hostile and penetrating than those of his own country. It was largely imagination, the effect of his position, but it contained something of reality, also. It certainly was not fancy alone that peopled the country about with enemies. An invader is seldom loved, and it was not fancy at all that created the night and the cold.Phil's beat was at the edge of open country, and he could see a little distance upon a plain. He thought, at times, that shadowy figures with soundless tread passed there, but he was never sure. He spoke about it to the sentinel on his right, and then to the sentinel on his left. Each in turn watched with him, but then the shadows did not pass, and he concluded that his fancy was playing him tricks. Yet he was troubled, and he resolved to watch with the utmost vigilance. His beat covered a path leading into the town, while to right and left of him was very difficult country. It occurred to him that anybody who wanted to pass would come his way, and he was resolved that nobody should pass. He examined every shadow, even if it might be that of a tree moved by the wind, and he listened to every sound, although it might be made by some strange Mexican animal.Thus the time passed, and the fleeting shadows resolved themselves into a figure that had substance and that remained. It took the shape of a man in conical hat and long Mexican serape. He also carried a large basket on one arm, and he approached with an appearance of timidity and hesitation. Phil stepped forward at once, held up his rifle, and called: "Halt!" The man obeyed promptly and pointed to the basket, saying something in Spanish. When Phil looked, he pulled back the cover and disclosed eggs and dressed chickens."To sell to the soldiers?" asked the boy.The man nodded. Phil could not see his face, which was hidden by the broad brim of his hat and the folds of his serape, drawn up around his chin, evidently to fend off the cold. His surmise was likely enough. The Americans had made a good market at Saltillo, and the peons were ready to sell. But he did not like the hour or the man's stealthy approach."No come in," he said, trying to use the simplest words of his language to a foreigner. "Orders! Orders must be obeyed!"The man pointed again to his basket, as if, being in doubt, he would urge the value of a welcome."No come in," repeated Phil. "Go back," and he pointed toward the woods from which the Mexican had come.The man hesitated, but he did not go. He turned again toward Phil, and at that moment the wind lifted a segment of his wide hat-brim. Phil sprang back in amazement. Despite the dark, he recognized the features of de Armijo, who could have come there for no good, who must have come as a spy or worse."De Armijo!" he cried, and sprang for him. But the Mexican was as quick as lightning. He leaped backward, dropped his basket, and the long blade of a knife flashed in the air. It cut through the sleeve of Phil's coat, and the sharp point, with a touch like fire, ran along his arm. It was well for him that he had put on the heavy blanket coat that night, or the blade would have grated on the bone.The pain did not keep Phil from throwing up his rifle, and de Armijo, seeing that his stroke had not disabled the boy, wheeled and ran. Phil fired instantly, and saw de Armijo stagger a little. But in a moment the Mexican recovered himself and quickly disappeared in the darkness, although Phil rushed after him. He would have followed across the plain, but he knew it was his duty to go no farther, and he came back to meet the other sentinels, who were running toward him at the sound of the shot. Phil quickly explained what had occurred, telling the identity of the man, and adding that he was crafty and dangerous."A Mexican officer," said one of them. "No doubt he was trying to enter the town in order to get more complete information about us and our plans than they have yet obtained. He would have remained hidden by day in some house, and he would have slipped out again at night when he had learned all that he wanted. You did a good job, Bedford, when you stopped him.""You did more than stop him," said another, who had brought a small lantern. "You nicked him before he got away. See, here's a drop of blood, and here's another, and there's another."They followed the trail of the drops, but it did not lead far. Evidently the effusion of blood had not been great. Then one of the men, glancing at Phil rather curiously, said:"He seems to have touched you up, Bedford. Do you know that a little stream of blood is running down your left sleeve?"Phil was not conscious until then that something moist and warm was dripping upon his hand. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten all about the slash of the knife, but, now that he remembered it, he felt a sudden weakness. But he hid it from the others, and it passed in a minute or so.The chief of the patrol ordered him to go back and report to an officer, and this officer happened to be Middleton, who was sitting with Edgeworth in one of the open camps before a small fire. Phil's arm meanwhile had been bound up, although he found that the cut was not deep, and would not incapacitate him. Phil saluted in the new military style that he was acquiring, and of which he was very proud, and said, in reply to Middleton's look of inquiry:"I have the honor to report, sir, that a spy, a Mexican officer, tried to pass our lines at the point where I was stationed. He was disguised as a peon, coming to sell provisions in our camp. When I stopped him he slashed at me with his knife, although the wound he inflicted was but slight, and I, in return, fired at him as he ran. I hit him, as drops of blood on the ground showed, although I think his wound, like mine, was slight."Captain Middleton smiled."Come, Phil," he said, "you've done a good deed, so hop down off your high horse, and tell it in your old, easy way. Remember that we are still comrades of the plains."Phil smiled, too. The official manner was rather hard and stiff, and it was easier to do as Middleton suggested."Captain," he said, "I recognized the man, and it was one that we've met more than once. It was de Armijo.""Ah, de Armijo!" exclaimed the Captain. "He was trying to spy upon us. He is high in the Mexican councils, and his coming here means much. It is lucky, Phil, that you were the one to stop him, and that you recognized him. But he did not love you much before, and he will not love you any more, since you have spilled some of his blood with a bullet.""I know it," replied Phil confidently, "but I feel able to take care of myself as far as de Armijo is concerned.""You go to your tent and sleep," said Middleton, "and I'll put another man in your place. You must not get too much stiffness and soreness in that arm of yours. You will be likely to need it soon--also, every other arm that you have."Phil, not loth, returned to his tent, which he shared with Breakstone and two or three others. Bill awoke, and, after listening to a narrative of the occurrence, dressed and rebound the arm carefully."I agree with the Captain that things are coming to a head," he said. "When you see a storm bird like de Armijo around, the storm itself can't be far behind. I'm glad he didn't get a good whack at you, Phil, but, as it is, you're so young and so healthy, and your blood is so pure that it won't give you any trouble. I'll dress it again to-morrow, and in a few days it will be well."Bill Breakstone's prediction was a good one. In three or four days Phil's wound was entirely healed, and two or three days later he could use his arm as well as ever. The boy, meanwhile, was getting better acquainted with the troops, and, like his comrades, was becoming thoroughly a member of the little army. It was reduced now, by the steady drains to strengthen Scott, to 4,610 men, of whom less than five hundred were regular troops. But the volunteers, nearly all from the west and south, little trained though they might be, were young, hardy, used to life in the open air, and full of zeal. They had all the fire and courage of youth, and they did not fear any number of Mexicans.But the New Year had come, January in its turn had passed, and the news drifting in from a thousand sources, like dust from the desert, grew more alarming. The army organized by Santa Anna at San Luis Potosi was the largest that had ever been gathered in Mexico, with powerful artillery and a numerous cavalry. Santa Anna himself was at his best, drilling, planning, and filling his officers with his own enthusiasm. In Saltillo itself the people grew bolder. They openly said that it was time for the Americans to run if they would save themselves from the invincible Mexican commander and president. It seemed to many of the Americans even that it would be wise to retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, but the old general, his heart full of bitterness, gave no such order. He had begun the campaign in victorious fashion, and then he had been ordered to stop. He had asked to be allowed to serve as second to Scott in the great campaign that would go forward from Vera Cruz, and that had been refused. Then he had asked that more of his troops, especially the regulars, be left to him, and that, too, had been refused. He was expected to yield the ground that he had gained, and retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy.Phil saw General Taylor many times in those days. Any one could see him as he passed about the city and camp, a gray, silent man, with little military form, a product of the West and the frontier, to which Phil himself belonged. It was for that reason, perhaps, that Phil could enter so thoroughly into the feelings of the general, a simple, straightforward soldier who believed himself the victim of politics, a man who felt within him not the facility for easy and graceful speech and manners, but the rugged power to do great things. He was very gentle and kind to his men in these days. The soldier who had spent a lifetime on the frontier, fighting Indians and dealing with the roughest of his kind, was now more like the head of a great family, a band knitted all the more closely together because they were in a foreign land confronted by a great danger.Phil was picking up Spanish fast, and his youth, perhaps, caused the people about the city to make more hints, or maybe threats, to him than they would have made to an older man. Santa Anna had with him the whole might of Mexico. He would be before Saltillo in three days, in two days, to-morrow perhaps. The very air seemed to the boy to be charged with gunpowder, and he had his moments of despondency. But he had been through too much danger already to despair, and he allowed no one to think that at any time he was apprehensive.Bill Breakstone was, for the present, the best man in the army. No other made acquaintances so fast, no other had such a wonderful flow of cheering words, and he was--or had been--an actor. To many of these youths who had never seen a play he must certainly have been the greatest actor in the world. Nor was he like a prima donna, to be coaxed, and then to refuse four times out of five. He recited nearly every evening in front of his tent, and he did more than any other man to keep the army in good heart. General Taylor and his second, General Wool, said nothing, but the younger officers commented openly and favorably. Thus the last days of January went by, and they were deep into February. The menacing reports still came out of the south, and now it was known definitely that Washington expected Taylor to fall back. Gloom overspread the young volunteers. They had not fought their way so far merely to go back, but orders were orders, and they must be obeyed.Early in the evening Bill Breakstone was reciting again in front of his tent, and at least two hundred stood about listening. This time he was reciting with great fire and vigor his favorite: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends," and, when he had said it once, there was a vigorous call for it again. Obligingly he began the repetition, but when he was midway in it Middleton strode into the circle and held up his hand. His attitude was so tense, and his air and manner showed so much suppressed excitement that every one turned at once from Breakstone to him. Breakstone himself stopped so short that his mouth was left wide open, and he, too, gazed at Middleton."My lads," said Middleton, "an order, an important order has just been issued by the commander-in-chief. You are to prepare at once for breaking camp, and you are to march at daylight in the morning."Some one uttered a groan, and a bold voice spoke up:"Do we retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, or do we hide somewhere on the way?"The speaker could not be seen from the place where Middleton stood, nor would the comrades around him have betrayed him. But Middleton looked in the direction of the voice, and his figure seemed to swell. Phil, who was standing near, thought he saw his eyes flicker with light."My lads," said Middleton, and his voice was full and thrilling, "we do not retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, nor do we hide on the way. We do not retreat at all. We march forward, southward, through the mountains to meet the enemy."A cheer, sudden, tremendous, and straight from the heart, burst forth, and it was joined with other cheers that came from other points in the camp."Now make it three times three for old Rough and Ready!" cried Phil in his enthusiasm, and they did it with zeal and powerful vocal organs. Middleton smiled and walked on. Immediately everything was haste and excitement. The men began to pack. Arms and ammunition were made ready for the march. Youth looked forward only to victory, thinking little of the risks and dangers. Breakstone smiled to himself and said under his breath the words:"We would not seek a battle as we are,Nor as we are, we say we will not shun it.So tell your master."Old Rough and Ready perhaps does not seek a battle, but he is willing to go forward and meet it. Ah! these brave boys! these brave boys!"Then he turned to Phil and Arenberg, who were among his tent-mates."We three must stick together through everything," he said. "We've lost Middleton for the time, because he's got to return to his duties as an officer.""What you say iss good," said Arenberg."It's a bargain," said Phil.They looked to the horses--they were in the cavalry--and at midnight went to sleep. But they were up before dawn, still full of energy and enthusiasm. As the sun cast its first rays on the cold peaks of the Sierra Madre, they mounted, fully armed and equipped, and marched out of Saltillo, although Taylor left a strong guard in the city, wishing to preserve it as a base.Phil rode knee to knee with Arenberg and Breakstone, and the thrill that he had felt the night before, when Middleton told the news, he felt again this morning. Horse, foot, and artillery, they were only between four and five thousand men, but the whole seemed a great army to the boy. He had never seen so many men under arms before. Breakstone saw his eye kindling."They are stained by travel and tanned by weather, but it's fine crowd, just as you think it is, Sir Philip of Saltillo. Don't you agree with me, Hans, Duke of the Sierra Madre?""It can fight," said Arenberg briefly."And that's what it has come out to do."Phil saw the people of Saltillo watching them as the army left the suburbs and moved on toward the mountains. But the spectators seemed to be silent. Even the children had little to say. Phil wondered what they thought in their hearts. He did not doubt that most of them were sure that this army, or what was left of it, would come back prisoners of Santa Anna. He was glad when they left them behind, and henceforth he looked toward the mountains, which upreared cold peaks in the chilly sunshine of winter. But the air was dazzlingly clear and crisp. Pure and fresh, it filled all on that high plateau with life, and Phil's mood was one that expected only the best."We are not going to ride straight over those mountains, are we?" he said to Bill Breakstone."No," replied Bill, "we feel pretty nearly good enough for anything, but we will not try any such high jumping as that. There's a pass. You can't see it from here, because it's a sort of knife-cut going down deep into the mountains, and they call it the Pass of Angostura. We'll be there soon."There was much noise as the army began its march, friend calling to friend, the exchange of joke and comment, wagon drivers and cannon drivers shouting to their horses, and the clanking of arms. But they soon settled down into a steady sound, all noises fusing into one made by an army that continued to march but that had ceased to talk.Phil studied the mountains as they came nearer. They were dark and somber. Their outlines were jagged, and they had but little forest or verdure. The peaks seemed to him volcanic, presenting a multitude of sharp edges.As the sun rose higher, the day grew somewhat warmer, but it was still full of chill. The horses blew smoke from their nostrils. Scouts coming out of the passes met them and repeated that Santa Anna was now advancing from San Luis Potosi. Nor had rumor exaggerated his forces. He outnumbered the American army at least five to one, and his front was covered by a great body of cavalry under General Minon, one of the best Mexican leaders.This news quickly traveled through the columns, and Phil and his friends were among the first to hear it. Breakstone gazed anxiously at the peaks."They don't know just how far Santa Anna has come," he said, "but it's mighty important for us going to the south to get through that pass before he, coming to the north, can get through it.""We'll make it," said Phil, with the sanguine faith of youth. "I don't believe that Santa Anna is yet near enough to dispute the pass with us.""Likely you are right, Sir Philip of the Brave Heart and the Cheerful Countenance," replied Bill Breakstone. "But we shall soon see for certain. In another hour we will enter the defiles."Phil said nothing, but rode on with his comrades. The city had now dropped behind them and was far out of sight. On their flanks rode scouts who would be skirmishers if need be. They marched on a level and good road, and about six miles from Saltillo they passed a hacienda and tiny village."What village is that?" asked Phil of some one."Buena Vista," was the reply.Phil heard it almost without noticing, although it was a reply to his own question. Yet it was a name that he was destined soon to recall and never to forget. How often for years and years afterward that name came back to him at night, syllable by syllable and letter by letter! Now he rode on, taking no thought of it, and the little village and hacienda lay behind him, sleeping peacefully in the sun. His attention was for the mountains, because they were now entering the defile, the pass of Angostura, which cuts through the spur thrown out by the Sierra Madre. This is lofty, and the way narrowed fast. Nor did the sunlight fall so plentifully there, and the winds grew colder as they whistled through the pass. After the brilliant opalescent air of the plain, they seemed to be riding in a sort of twilight, and Phil felt his spirits droop. Deeper and deeper they went into the cut. Above him loomed the mountains, dark and menacing. Shrub and dwarfed plants clung here and there in the crannies, but the range was bare, and often it was distorted into strange shapes, sometimes like that of the human countenance. The sky showed in a ribbon above, but it had turned gray, and was somber and depressing. Behind came the long line of the army, the wheels of the artillery clanking over the stones.Once or twice Phil thought he saw figures in sombreros and serapes far up the mountainside, watching them. Mexicans, no doubt, ready to report to Santa Anna the advance of the American army. He expected that some stray shots might be fired down into the pass by these spies or guerillas, but evidently they had other business than merely to annoy, and no bullets came.Phil's horse stumbled, and the boy saved him from a fall with a quick pull. Arenberg's horse stumbled, also, and Phil noticed that his own was now walking gingerly over a path of solid but dark stone, corrugated and broken into sharp edges. Well might a horse, even one steel-shod, be careful here! Phil knew it was volcanic rock, lava that had flowed down ages ago from the crests of the peaks about them, once volcanoes but extinct long since.His horse stumbled again, but recovered himself quickly. It certainly was dangerous rock, sometimes sharp almost like a knifeblade, and the shoes of the infantry would be cut badly. Cut badly! A sudden thought sprang up in his brain and refused to be dislodged. It was one of those lightning ideas, based on little things, that carry conviction with them through their very force and swiftness. His free hand went up to the breast of his coat and clutched the spot beneath which his brother's letter lay. He had read a hundred times the words of the captive, telling how his feet had beer cut by the sharp stone. Lava might be found at many places in Mexico, but it was along these trails in Northern Mexico that the fighting bands of Mexicans and Texans passed. He reasoned with himself for a few moments, saying that he was foolish, and hoping that he was not, but the idea remained in his head, and he knew that it was fixed there. He leaned over and said, in a husky whisper to Bill Breakstone:"Bill, have you noticed it! The rock! The lava! How it cuts! How it would quickly slice the sole from the shoe of a captive who had marched far! Bill! Bill, I say, have you noticed it?"Bill Breakstone looked in astonishment at his young comrade, but he was a man of uncommonly quick perceptions, and in a moment he comprehended."I understand," he said. "Your brother's letter and the passage in which he tells of his shoes being cut by the sharp stone while he was led along blindfolded. He may have passed along this very road, Phil. It may be. It may be. I won't say you are wrong.""What if we are near him now!" continued Phil. "I've often heard you quote those lines, Bill, saying there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy. I told you before that if the letter could reach me so far away in Kentucky it could also bring mo to the place where it was written! I believed it then, Bill, and I believe it now. What if John is here in these mountains, within forty or fifty miles of us, or maybe twenty!""Steady, boy, steady!" said Bill Breakstone soothingly. "Your guess may be right. God knows I'm not the one to deny it, but we've got to fight a battle first. At least, I think so, and for the present we must put our minds on it."Phil was silent, but his idea possessed him. Often we dwell upon things so long and we seek so hard to have them happen in a certain way that the slightest indication becomes proof. He could not think now of Taylor or Santa Anna, or of a coming battle, but only of his brother between four narrow stone walls, sitting at a narrow window that looked out upon a bleak mountainside. His horse no longer felt the guiding hand upon the bridle rein, but guided himself. Breakstone noticed that the boy's mind was far away, and, his heart full of sympathy, he said nothing for a long time.They passed after awhile into a narrow valley, down the center of which ran a dry arroyo, fully twenty feet deep, with perpendicular banks. The rest of the valley was crisscrossed with countless gullies worn by winter storms and floods, and the army was compelled to march in a slender file in the bed of the arroyo. Here many of the cavalrymen dismounted and led their horses. The cannon wheels clanked louder than ever."I'll be glad when we're through this," said Bill Breakstone. "Seems to me the place was built for a trap, and it's mighty lucky for us that there's nobody here to spring it. Look out, Phil, you'd better watch your horse now! Some of these turnings are pretty rough, and you don't want a thousand pounds or so of horseflesh tumbling down upon you."Phil came back from his visions and devoted himself to the task before them, one that required the full attention of every man. An entire battery became stuck in a gully that intersected the arroyo. He and other cavalrymen hitched their horses to the guns and helped pull them out. The whole army was now stumbling and struggling over the fearful ground. Every effort was made to save artillery and horses alike from injury. But as they approached its lower end the Pass of Angostura became still more difficult. The gullies increased in number, and many of the deep intersecting ravines ran far back into the mountains. A swarm of sure-footed skirmishers on either flank could have done great damage here to the Americans, but the peaks and the lava slopes on either side presented only silence and desolation.It was a long journey, difficult in the extreme, and attended by thousands of falls, cuts, and bruises, but the army came through the Pass of Angostura at last, marching out upon a series of promontories or ridges, each about a mile long and perhaps a third of a mile across. From these the exhausted troops looked back at the frowning mountains and the deep defile through which they had come."That was certainly a job," said Bill Breakstone."Yes," said Middleton, who stood near, "but what a place for a defense, the plateau and these promontories running out from it, and all the ravine and gullies behind!"It is a matter of chronicle that at least fifty officers were saying the same words at almost the same time, and even Phil, without military training, could see the truth of it. Taylor pushed on to Agua Neva, arriving there in the evening. But the next morning the reports of Santa Anna's advance in overwhelming force became so numerous that he fell back with the main army to the mouth of the Pass of Angostura, leaving Marshall with his brave Kentuckians as a rear guard at Agua Neva, and with instructions to make the utmost resistance if they were attacked.The next night came on somber and cold. It was the evening of February 21, 1847, and the next day would be the birthday of the great Washington, a fact not forgotten by these young volunteers so far from the states in which they were born. This was a land totally unlike their own. Cold black peaks showed in the growing twilight. Around them were the gullies, the ravines, and the arroyos, with the sheets of the ancient black lava. It was like a region that belonged in the far beginning of time.A great force under Wool, the second in command, was throwing up intrenchments of earth and rock and fortifying the heads of the ravines. Lieutenant Washington, with five heavy guns, was planted in the roadway, or rather trail, in front of all. Other guns were placed on the plateau and promontories, and behind guns and parapets the army went into camp for the night."This doesn't look much like Kentucky and the Bluegrass, does it, Phil?" said Grayson, as they drank their coffee.Phil glanced at the mountains, the crests of which were now hidden in the darkness, and listened to the cold wind moaning through the narrow pass by which they had come. Then he replied:"It doesn't, by a long sight, and I can tell you that I'm mighty glad I've lots of company here. If I were alone, I'd feel that the ghosts of the old Aztecs and Toltecs were surrounding me in the darkness. It's good to see the fires."Many fires had been lighted, mostly in the ravines, where they were sheltered from the wind, but Phil had no doubt that the scouts of Santa Anna saw points of light at the mouth of the pass. After his supper he stood upon one of the promontories and strove to pierce the darkness to the south. But he could see nothing. The night hung an opaque veil over the lower country.CHAPTER XIIIA WIND OF THE DESERTAlthough many of the soldiers, the more hardened, had lain down to sleep, Phil did not feel that he could close his eyes. Too many deep emotions stirred his soul. He felt that he was at the verge of a great event, one in which he was to take a part to the full extent of his strength and courage, and there, too, was the sign of the lava, always coming back, always persisting. He might reason with himself and call himself foolish, but he could not dispossess his mind of the idea that it was an omen to show him that he was upon the trail by which that letter had come so vast a distance to him in the little town of Paris.Every nerve in the boy was astir. He walked back and forth on one of the promontories, looking at the mountains which now in the darkness had become black and full of threats, and trying in vain to soothe and quiet himself so he could lie down like the others and take the rest and forgetfulness that all men need before going into battle. While he was there, Middleton called to him:"Come, Phil," he said, reverting to his old manner of comradeship, "you ride with us to-night.""Ride to-night!" replied Phil. "Where?""To the south, to meet Santa Anna. I am ordered to take thirty men and keep going until I come into touch with the enemy. I am to have thirty men of my choice, and you, Breakstone, and Arenberg were the first three that I named. You don't have to go unless you wish.""But I wish!" exclaimed Phil earnestly. "Don't think I'm unwilling, Captain! Don't think it!"Middleton laughed."I don't," he said. "I knew that you would be keen for it. Saddle your horse and look to your arms. We ride in five minutes."Phil was ready in three, and the thirty troopers rode silently down one of the ravines and into the lower country. Phil looked back and saw the fires of the camp, mere red, yellow, and pink dots of flame. The mountains themselves were fused into a solid mass of black. The troop, arrow headed in shape, with Middleton at the point of the shaft, and Phil, Breakstone, and Arenberg close behind him, rode in silence save for the beat of their horses' hoofs. The wind here did not moan like that in the pass, but it seemed to Phil to be colder, and it had an edge of fine particles that stung his cheeks and eyes.The night was bright enough to allow of fairly swift riding, and the ground was no longer cut and gullied as at the mouth of the pass. Hence the troopers were not compelled to devote their whole attention to their horses and they could watch the country for sign of an enemy. But they did not yet see any such sign. Phil knew that they were on the road, leading southward to Santa Anna, and he felt sure that if they kept upon it they must soon come upon the Mexican army. Yet the silence and desolation were complete here. The pass had been weird and somber to the full, but there they had thousands of comrades, and the fires in the ravines had been cheering. Now the unlit darkness was all about them, and it still had that surcharged quality that it had borne for Phil when in the pass. Nor did the fine dust cease to sting his face."What is it, Bill?" he asked. "Where does it come from, this dust?""It's a wind of the desert that stings us, Phil," replied Breakstone. "It comes vast distances, and I think, too, that it brings some of the fine dust ground off the surface of the lava. Its effect is curious. It's like burnt gunpowder in the nostrils. It seems to heat the inside, too.""It makes me feel that way," said Phil, "and it seems to be always urging us on.""An irritant, as it were," said Breakstone, "but I don't think we need it. The event itself is enough to keep us all on edge. Feel cold, Phil?""No, I've got a pair of buckskin gauntlets. Fine thing for riding on nights like this.""So have I. But the night is cold, though. Now we're always thinking of warm weather in Mexico, but we never find a country what we expect it to be. Ah, we're leaving the road. The Captain must think there is something not far ahead."They turned at a sharp angle from the road, and entered a thin forest. Phil looked back toward the mouth of the pass from which they had come. Everything there was behind an impenetrable black veil. The last point of fire had died, and the mountains themselves were hidden. But he took only a single backward look. The wind of the desert was still stinging his face, and it seemed to arouse him to uncommon fire and energy. His whole attention was concentrated upon their task, and he was eager to distinguish himself in some way. But he neither heard nor saw anything unusual.They proceeded slowly through the forest, seeking to prevent all but the least possible noise, and came presently to a field in which Indian corn seemed to have grown. But it was bare now, save for the dead stalks that lay upon the ground, and here the troop spread out, riding almost in a single line.It was Phil, keen of eye and watchful, who first saw a dim red tint under the far southern horizon, and he at once called Middleton's attention. The Captain halted them instantly, and his gaze followed the line of Phil's pointing finger."It is Santa Anna's army," he said, "and you, Phil, have the honor of locating it first. The dim band of light which you pointed out is made by their camp fires, which are many. We need not try to conceal that fact from ourselves.""We take a nearer view, do we not, Captain?" asked Bill Breakstone."Of course," replied Middleton, "but be cautious, all of you. It is important to see, but it is equally important to get back to General Taylor with the tale our eyes may tell."They rode forward again in a long and silent line. Phil's heart began to throb. The desert wind was still stinging his face with the fine impalpable dust that seemed to excite every nerve. As they advanced, the red tint on the southern horizon broadened and deepened. It was apparent that it stretched far to east and west."It iss a great army, and it means much harm," said Arenberg softly, more to himself than to anybody else.Nearer and nearer rode the bold horsemen, stopping often to watch for the Mexican lancers who would surely be in advance of the army, beating up the country, despite the darkness, but they did not yet see any. They rode on so far that they heard the occasional sound of a trumpet in the Mexican camp, and the fires no longer presented a solid line."Captain," asked Bill Breakstone, "what do you think the sound of those trumpets means at an hour like this?""I'm not sure, Bill," replied Middleton, "but it must signify some movement. The Mexicans, like many other people, love color and parade and sound, but they would scarcely be indulging in such things at midnight just for their own sakes. It is some plan. Santa Anna is a man of great energy and initiative. But we must discover what it is. That is what we came for."The advance was renewed, although they went slowly, guarding as well as they could against the least possible sound from their horses. They were now so near that they could see figures passing before the fires, and the dark outline of tents. They also heard the hum of many voices, the tread of hoofs by hundreds, and the jingling of many, spurs and bridle bits. Phil watched almost breathless, and the desert wind still blew on his face, stirring him with its fine, impalpable powder, and adding new fire to the fire that already burned in his veins. And Phil saw that Middleton shared in this excited interest. The officer's gloved hand on his bridle rein quivered with eagerness."Yet a little nearer, my lads," he whispered. "We must risk everything to find out what Santa Anna is intending at so late an hour."Screened by a narrow thicket of strange, cactuslike plants, they rode so close that they could see between the leaves and thorns directly into the camp. Here they sat on motionless horses, but Phil heard a deep "Ah!" pass between Middleton's closed teeth. The boy himself had experience and judgment enough to know now what was going forward. All this jingling of bits and spurs meant the gathering of the Mexican cavalry. The Mexican camp fires burned along a front that seemed interminable, and also scores of torches were held aloft to guide in the work that was now being done.Phil saw the Mexican horsemen wheel out by hundreds, until there was a great compact body of perhaps two thousand men, gaudily dressed, well mounted, and riding splendidly. Many carried rifles or muskets, but there were at least a thousand lancers, the blades of their long weapons gleaming in the firelight. Officers in gorgeous uniforms were at their head. Presently the trumpet blew again, and the great force of cavalry under General Minon began to move."An advance at midnight," breathed Middleton, but Phil heard him. "And there go infantry behind them. It is an attack in force. I have it! I have it! They are going toward Agua Neva. Santa Anna thinks that our whole army is there, and probably he believes he can get in our rear and cut us off. Then he'll compress us between his vast numbers as if we were in the jaws of a vise."Then he added, in a slightly louder tone:"Come, my lads, we ride to Agua Neva, but we must be as careful as ever. We know now what our task is, and we will do it."They turned and rode away. Fortune was with them. No horse neighed. Perhaps the sound of their hoofs might have been heard now, had it not been for the great Mexican column marching toward Agua Neva, where the rear guard under Marshall was hurrying the stores, that had been left there, northward to Taylor. Middleton swung his little troop to one side, until they were well beyond the hearing of Minon's cavalry."There can no longer be any doubt that they are heading for Agua Neva," he said, "and we must beat them there, no matter what happens. Ride, boys, ride!"They broke into a gallop, sweeping in a long line across some open fields, riding straight for a few points of light behind which they knew was Agua Neva. They were now well ahead of the great column, and Middleton took the chance of meeting any stray band of Mexican scouts and skirmishers. They did meet such a band, but it was small, and, when the Mexican hail was answered with a shout in a foreign tongue, it quickly scattered and gave the Americans free passage. A few shots were fired, but nobody in Middleton's troop was touched, and none in the other. Without breaking line the Americans rode on. The lights grew clearer and increased in number. In a few moments they clattered down on Agua Neva, and ready sentinels, rifle in hand, halted them."Friends!" cried Middleton. "I am Captain Middleton, with scouts from General Taylor. I must see your commander at once!"But Marshall was there as he spoke, and Middleton exclaimed in short words, surcharged with emphasis and earnestness:"Santa Anna is coming down upon you! We have seen his cavalry marching, and the infantry are behind them! They will soon be here! They must think that our whole army is in Agua Neva, and evidently they intend to surround it.""All right," said Marshall calmly. "Most of the wagons are already on the way to the pass. We cover their retreat, and the General told us to hold on here as long as we could. We mean to do it. Are you with us, Captain?""Certainly," replied Captain Middleton briefly. "You can depend on us to the last.""Minon's cavalry must be coming now," said Marshall. "It seems to me that I hear the tread of many horsemen.""It is they," said Middleton. Marshall's men and his then fell back toward the little town. They were only a few hundred in number, but they had no idea of retreating without a fight. They were posted behind some stone walls, hedges, and a few scattered houses. The last of the wagons loaded with stores were rumbling away northward toward the Pass of Angostura.Phil sat on his horse behind a stone wall, and all was silence along the line. The wind still blew, and stung his face with the dust of the desert. His heart throbbed and throbbed. He saw Middleton open his watch, hold it close to his face in order that he might see the hands in the moonlight, and then shut it with a little snap."Midnight exactly," he said, "and here they come!"The heavy tread of many men was now in their ears, and the lances gleamed in the moonlight, as the great Mexican force swung into the open space about the little town. They came on swiftly and full of ardor, but a sheet of fire blazed in their faces. The long rifles of the Americans were well aimed, despite the night--they could scarcely miss such a mass--and horses and riders went down together.While they were still in confusion, Marshall's little force loaded and fired again. A terrible uproar ensued. Men groaned or shouted, horses neighed with fright or screamed with pain. Many of them ran riderless between the combatants. Phil heard the Mexican officers shouting orders and many strange curses. Smoke arose and permeated the night air already charged with the dust of the desert. The Mexicans fired almost at random in the darkness, but they were many, and the bullets flying in showers were bound to strike somebody. Two or three Americans dropped slain from their horses, or, on foot, died where they were struck, behind the walls. The Mexicans in a vast half circle still advanced. Marshall and Middleton conferred briefly."How many men have you?" asked Marshall."Thirty.""I have about fifty more cavalrymen. Take them and charge with all your might. They may think in the darkness that you have a thousand.""Come!" said Middleton to his men, and he and the eighty rode out into the open. They paused there only an instant, because the great half circle of the Mexicans was still advancing. Phil, in the moonlight, saw the enemy very distinctly, the lances and escopetas, the tall conical hats with wide brims, and the dark faces under them. Then, at the command of Middleton, they fired their rifles and galloped straight at the foe.Phil could never give any details of that wild moment. He was conscious of a sudden surge of the blood, the thudding of hoofs, the blades of lances almost in his face, fierce, dark eyes glaring into his own, and then they struck. The impact was accompanied by the flashing of sabers, the falling of men and horses, shouts and groans, while the smoke from the firing to the right and left of them drifted in their faces.Phil felt a shock as his horse struck that of a Mexican lancer. The lance-blade flashed past his face, and it felt cold on his cheek as it passed, but it did not touch him. The Mexican's horse went down before the impact of his, and he saw that the whole troop, although a few saddles were emptied, had crashed through the Mexican line. They had cut it apart like a knife through cheese. While the Mexicans were yet reeling from the shock, Middleton, a born cavalry leader, wheeled his men about, and they charged back through the Mexican line at another point. The second passage was easier than the first, because Minon's men had been thrown into disorder, yet it was not made without wounds. Phil was slightly grazed in the side by a bullet, and a lance had torn his coat on his shoulder. If the cloth had not given way he would have been thrown from the saddle. As it was, he nearly dropped his rifle, but he managed to retain both seat and weapon."All right!" shouted a voice in his ear. It was that of Breakstone, who was watching over him like a father."All right," returned Phil confidently, and then they were back with Marshall's men, all but a dozen, who would ride no more."Good work," said Marshall to Middleton. "That startled them. They will ride back a little, and our riflemen, too, are doing almost as good work in the moonlight as they could in the sunlight."The blood was pounding so heavily in Phil's ears after the double charge that he did not realize until then that the heavy firing had never ceased. The little American force reloaded and pulled the trigger so quickly that the volume of their firing gave the effect of numbers three or four times that of the real. The darkness, too, helped the illusion, and the Southerners and Westerners replied to the shouts of the Mexicans with resounding cheers of their own. An officer galloped up, and Phil heard him shout to Marshall above the crash of the firing:"The last of the wagons is beyond the range of fire!""Good," said Marshall. "Now we, too, must fall back. The moment they discover how few we are they can wrap us in a coil that we cannot break. But we'll fight them while they follow us."The little force was drawn in skillfully, and the horsemen on either flank began to retire from Agua Neva. The Mexicans, urged by Minon, Torrejon, Ampudia, and Santa Anna himself, pushed hard against the retiring force, seeking either to capture or destroy it. More than once they threatened to enfold it with their long columns, but here the horsemen, spreading out, held them off, and the long range rifles of the Americans were weapons that the Mexicans dreaded. As on many another battlefield, the Westerners and Southerners, trained from their boyhood to marksmanship, fired with terrible accuracy. The moonlight, now that their eyes had grown used to it, was enough for them. Their firing, as the slow retreat northward toward the Pass of Angostura went on, never ceased, and their path was marked by a long trail of their fallen foes. Santa Anna and his generals sought in vain to flank them, but the darkness was against the greater force. It was not easy to combine and make use of numbers when only moonlight served. Regiments were likely to fire into one another, but the small compact body of the Americans kept easily in touch, and they retreated practically in one great hollow square blazing with fire on every side. "Hold on as long as you can," Taylor had said to Marshall, but Marshall, in the face of twenty to one, held on longer than any one had dreamed.Santa Anna had expected to get his great cavalry force in the rear of Taylor at Agua Neva, but at midnight, finding Taylor not there and only a small detachment left, he had hoped to capture or destroy that in a few minutes. Instead, half his army was fighting a most desperate rear guard action with a few hundred men, and every second Marshall saved was precious to the commander back there at the Pass of Angostura.Phil was grazed by another bullet, and his horse was stung once. Arenberg was slightly wounded, but Breakstone was untouched, and the three still kept close together. The boy could not take note of the passage of time. It seemed to him that they had been fighting for hours as they gave way slowly before the huge mass of the Mexican army. Great clouds of smoke from the firing had turned the moonlight to a darker quality. Now and then it drifted in such quantities that the moon was wholly obscured, and then it was to the advantage of the Americans, who could fire from their hollow square in every direction, and be sure that they hit no friend.They had now left the town far behind and were well on the way to the Pass. Phil noticed that the fire of the Mexicans was slackening. Evidently Santa Anna had begun to believe that it would not pay to follow up any longer a rear guard that stung so hard and so often. This certainly was the belief of Bill Breakstone."The pursuit is dying," he said, "not because they don't want us, but because our price is too high.It is not rightTo fight at nightUnless you knowRight well your foe.The darkness cumbersHim with numbers;The few steal away,And are gone at day."My verse is a little ragged this time, Phil, but it is made in the heat of action, and it at least tells a true tale. See how their fire is sinking! The flashes stop to the right, they stop to the left, and they will soon stop in the center. It's a great night, Phil, for Marshall and his men. They were ordered to do big things, and they've filled the order twice over. And we came into it, too, Phil, don't forget that! There, they've stopped entirely, as I told you they would!"The firing along Santa Anna's front ceased abruptly, and as the retreat continued slowly the columns of the Mexican army were lost in the darkness. No lance heads glittered, and the bugles no longer called the men to action. Bill Breakstone had spoken truly. Santa Anna found the rear guard too tough for him to handle in the darkness, and stopped for the rest of the night. When assured of this, Marshall ordered his little force to halt, while they took stock of the wounded and dressed their hurts as best they could at such a hurried moment. Then they resumed their march for the pass, with the wagons that they had defended so well lumbering on ahead.After the exertion of so much physical or mental energy the men rode or walked in silence. Phil was surprised to find that his hands and face were wet with perspiration, and he knew then that his face must be black with burnt gunpowder. But he felt cold presently, as the chill night wind penetrated a body relaxed after so great an effort. Then he took the blanket roll from his saddle and wrapped it around him. Breakstone and Arenberg had already done the same. Looking back, Phil saw a few lights twinkling where the Mexicans had lighted their new camp fires, but no sound came from that point. Yet, as of old, the desert wind blew, and the fine dust borne on its edge stung his face, and brought to his nostrils an odor like that of battle. Under its influence he was still ready for combat. He gloried in the achievement of this little division in which he had a part, and it gave him strength and courage for the greater struggle, by far, that was coming. Breakstone shared in his pleasure, and talked lightly in his usual fashion, but Arenberg was sober and very thoughtful."Well, we burnt old Santa Anna's face for him, if we did do it in the dark," said Bill, "and we can do it in daylight, too.""But did you see his numbers?" said Arenberg. "Remember how vast was his camp, and with what a great force he attacked us at Agua Neva. Ach, I fear me for the boys who are so far from their home, the lads of Kentucky and Illinois and the others!""Don't be downhearted, Hans, old boy," said Breakstone with genuine feeling. "I know you have things on your mind--though I don't ask you what they are--that keep you from being cheerful, but don't forget that we've the habit of victory. Our boys are Bonaparte's soldiers in the campaign of Italy, they don't mean to be beaten, and they don't get beaten. And you can put that in your pipe, too, and smoke it, Sir Philip of the Horse Battle and the Night Retreat. Look, we're approaching the Pass. See the lights come out one by one. Don't the lights of a friend look good?"Phil agreed with him. It was a satisfying thing to come safely out of a battle in which they had done what they had wanted to do, and return to their own army. It was now nearly morning, but the troops still marched, while the last wagons rumbled on ahead. Scouts came forward to hail them and to greet them warmly when they found that they were friends. There was exultation, too, when they heard the news of the fine fight that the little division had given to Santa Anna. Lieutenant Washington, who was in charge of the division that commanded the road, met Middleton and Marshall a hundred yards from the mouths of his guns, and Phil heard them talking. General Taylor had not yet returned from Saltillo, where he had gone to strengthen and fortify the division at that place, as he greatly feared a flank movement of Santa Anna around the mountain to seize the town and cut him off.Wool, meanwhile, was in command, and he listened to the reports of Marshall and Middleton, commending them highly for the splendid resistance that they had offered to overwhelming numbers. Phil gathered from their tone, although it was only confirmation of a fact that he knew already, that their little force was in desperate case, indeed. Never before had the omens seemed so dark for an American army. For in a desolate and gloomy country, with every inhabitant an enemy and spy upon them, with an army outnumbering them five to one approaching, brave men might well despair.It struck Phil with sudden force that the odds could be too great after all, and that he might never finish his quest. In another hour or two he might see his last sunrise. He shook himself fiercely, told himself that he was foolish and weak, and then rode toward the pass. They tethered their horses on the edge of the plateau, and at the advice of Middleton all sought sleep.But the boy's nerves were yet keyed too highly for relaxation. His weary body was resting, but his heart still throbbed. He saw the sentinels walking back and forth. He saw the dark shapes of cannon posted on the promontories, and above them the mountains darker and yet more somber. Several fires still burned in the ravines, and the officers sat about them talking, but most of the army slept. As Phil lay on the earth he heard the wind moaning behind him as it swept up the pass, but it still touched his face with the fine impalpable dust that stung like hot sand, and that seemed to him to be an omen and a presage. He lay a long time staring into the blackness in the direction in which Santa Anna's army now lay, where he and his comrades had fought such a good fight at midnight. He saw nothing there with his real eye, but with his mind's eye he beheld the vast preparations, the advance of the horsemen, and the flashing of thousands of lances in the brilliant light.When the morning sun was showing over the ridges and peaks of the Sierra Madre, and pouring its light into the nooks and crannies of the ravines, he fell asleep.
He sat down amid roars of applause and universal approval. Did they not know? Mexicans were boasting already that Taylor would have to surrender to Santa Anna without a battle. Bill Breakstone stole a glance toward the place where the gray-haired man had stood, but he was gone now.
"Did you know that old Rough and Ready himself was listening to you there toward the last?" asked Grayson.
"Is that so?" replied Breakstone. "Well, I'm not ashamed of anything that I said, and now, if I've entertained you boys a little, I'd like to rest awhile. You don't know how hard that kind of work is, whether your work be good or bad."
Rest he certainly should have. They had found too great a treasure, these fighting men in a far land, to let him be spoiled by overwork, and they brought him an abundance of refreshment, also.
Breakstone drank a cup of light wine made in Saltillo, as he lay back luxuriously on a pallet in one of the tents. He felt that he had reason to be satisfied with himself, and perhaps, he, playing the actor, had seized an opportunity, and had made it do what might be an important service in a great campaign.
"What was the last piece that you recited?" asked Grayson. "Somehow it seemed to fit in with our own situation here."
"That," replied Breakstone, "was a speech from King Henry V. He is in France with a small army, and the French have sent to him to demand his surrender. He makes the reply that I have just quoted to you."
There was a thoughtful silence, although they had known his meaning already, and presently Phil and his comrades, making themselves comfortable in their tents, went to sleep. They were formally enrolled among the Kentucky volunteers the next day, and began their duties, which consisted chiefly of patrolling. Phil was among the sentinels stationed the next night on the outskirts of the city.
CHAPTER XII
THE PASS OF ANGOSTURA
It was almost midwinter now in Mexico, and here, in the northern part of the republic, on the great plateau, it was cold. Phil more than once had seen the snow flying, and far away it lay in white sheets on the peaks of the Sierra Madre. He had obtained a heavy blanket coat or overcoat from the stores, and he was glad enough now to pull it closely around him and turn its collar up about his neck, as he walked back and forth in the chilly blasts. At each end of his beat he met another sentinel, a young Kentuckian like himself, and, for the sake of company, they would exchange a friendly word or two before they parted.
The night was dark, and, with the icy winds cutting him, Phil, after the other sentinel had turned away, felt more lonesome in this far strange land than he had ever been before in his life. Everything about him was unfriendly, the hard volcanic soil upon which he trod, the shapeless figures of the adobe huts on the outskirts of the town, and the moaning winds from the Sierra Madre, which seemed to be more hostile and penetrating than those of his own country. It was largely imagination, the effect of his position, but it contained something of reality, also. It certainly was not fancy alone that peopled the country about with enemies. An invader is seldom loved, and it was not fancy at all that created the night and the cold.
Phil's beat was at the edge of open country, and he could see a little distance upon a plain. He thought, at times, that shadowy figures with soundless tread passed there, but he was never sure. He spoke about it to the sentinel on his right, and then to the sentinel on his left. Each in turn watched with him, but then the shadows did not pass, and he concluded that his fancy was playing him tricks. Yet he was troubled, and he resolved to watch with the utmost vigilance. His beat covered a path leading into the town, while to right and left of him was very difficult country. It occurred to him that anybody who wanted to pass would come his way, and he was resolved that nobody should pass. He examined every shadow, even if it might be that of a tree moved by the wind, and he listened to every sound, although it might be made by some strange Mexican animal.
Thus the time passed, and the fleeting shadows resolved themselves into a figure that had substance and that remained. It took the shape of a man in conical hat and long Mexican serape. He also carried a large basket on one arm, and he approached with an appearance of timidity and hesitation. Phil stepped forward at once, held up his rifle, and called: "Halt!" The man obeyed promptly and pointed to the basket, saying something in Spanish. When Phil looked, he pulled back the cover and disclosed eggs and dressed chickens.
"To sell to the soldiers?" asked the boy.
The man nodded. Phil could not see his face, which was hidden by the broad brim of his hat and the folds of his serape, drawn up around his chin, evidently to fend off the cold. His surmise was likely enough. The Americans had made a good market at Saltillo, and the peons were ready to sell. But he did not like the hour or the man's stealthy approach.
"No come in," he said, trying to use the simplest words of his language to a foreigner. "Orders! Orders must be obeyed!"
The man pointed again to his basket, as if, being in doubt, he would urge the value of a welcome.
"No come in," repeated Phil. "Go back," and he pointed toward the woods from which the Mexican had come.
The man hesitated, but he did not go. He turned again toward Phil, and at that moment the wind lifted a segment of his wide hat-brim. Phil sprang back in amazement. Despite the dark, he recognized the features of de Armijo, who could have come there for no good, who must have come as a spy or worse.
"De Armijo!" he cried, and sprang for him. But the Mexican was as quick as lightning. He leaped backward, dropped his basket, and the long blade of a knife flashed in the air. It cut through the sleeve of Phil's coat, and the sharp point, with a touch like fire, ran along his arm. It was well for him that he had put on the heavy blanket coat that night, or the blade would have grated on the bone.
The pain did not keep Phil from throwing up his rifle, and de Armijo, seeing that his stroke had not disabled the boy, wheeled and ran. Phil fired instantly, and saw de Armijo stagger a little. But in a moment the Mexican recovered himself and quickly disappeared in the darkness, although Phil rushed after him. He would have followed across the plain, but he knew it was his duty to go no farther, and he came back to meet the other sentinels, who were running toward him at the sound of the shot. Phil quickly explained what had occurred, telling the identity of the man, and adding that he was crafty and dangerous.
"A Mexican officer," said one of them. "No doubt he was trying to enter the town in order to get more complete information about us and our plans than they have yet obtained. He would have remained hidden by day in some house, and he would have slipped out again at night when he had learned all that he wanted. You did a good job, Bedford, when you stopped him."
"You did more than stop him," said another, who had brought a small lantern. "You nicked him before he got away. See, here's a drop of blood, and here's another, and there's another."
They followed the trail of the drops, but it did not lead far. Evidently the effusion of blood had not been great. Then one of the men, glancing at Phil rather curiously, said:
"He seems to have touched you up, Bedford. Do you know that a little stream of blood is running down your left sleeve?"
Phil was not conscious until then that something moist and warm was dripping upon his hand. In the excitement of the moment he had forgotten all about the slash of the knife, but, now that he remembered it, he felt a sudden weakness. But he hid it from the others, and it passed in a minute or so.
The chief of the patrol ordered him to go back and report to an officer, and this officer happened to be Middleton, who was sitting with Edgeworth in one of the open camps before a small fire. Phil's arm meanwhile had been bound up, although he found that the cut was not deep, and would not incapacitate him. Phil saluted in the new military style that he was acquiring, and of which he was very proud, and said, in reply to Middleton's look of inquiry:
"I have the honor to report, sir, that a spy, a Mexican officer, tried to pass our lines at the point where I was stationed. He was disguised as a peon, coming to sell provisions in our camp. When I stopped him he slashed at me with his knife, although the wound he inflicted was but slight, and I, in return, fired at him as he ran. I hit him, as drops of blood on the ground showed, although I think his wound, like mine, was slight."
Captain Middleton smiled.
"Come, Phil," he said, "you've done a good deed, so hop down off your high horse, and tell it in your old, easy way. Remember that we are still comrades of the plains."
Phil smiled, too. The official manner was rather hard and stiff, and it was easier to do as Middleton suggested.
"Captain," he said, "I recognized the man, and it was one that we've met more than once. It was de Armijo."
"Ah, de Armijo!" exclaimed the Captain. "He was trying to spy upon us. He is high in the Mexican councils, and his coming here means much. It is lucky, Phil, that you were the one to stop him, and that you recognized him. But he did not love you much before, and he will not love you any more, since you have spilled some of his blood with a bullet."
"I know it," replied Phil confidently, "but I feel able to take care of myself as far as de Armijo is concerned."
"You go to your tent and sleep," said Middleton, "and I'll put another man in your place. You must not get too much stiffness and soreness in that arm of yours. You will be likely to need it soon--also, every other arm that you have."
Phil, not loth, returned to his tent, which he shared with Breakstone and two or three others. Bill awoke, and, after listening to a narrative of the occurrence, dressed and rebound the arm carefully.
"I agree with the Captain that things are coming to a head," he said. "When you see a storm bird like de Armijo around, the storm itself can't be far behind. I'm glad he didn't get a good whack at you, Phil, but, as it is, you're so young and so healthy, and your blood is so pure that it won't give you any trouble. I'll dress it again to-morrow, and in a few days it will be well."
Bill Breakstone's prediction was a good one. In three or four days Phil's wound was entirely healed, and two or three days later he could use his arm as well as ever. The boy, meanwhile, was getting better acquainted with the troops, and, like his comrades, was becoming thoroughly a member of the little army. It was reduced now, by the steady drains to strengthen Scott, to 4,610 men, of whom less than five hundred were regular troops. But the volunteers, nearly all from the west and south, little trained though they might be, were young, hardy, used to life in the open air, and full of zeal. They had all the fire and courage of youth, and they did not fear any number of Mexicans.
But the New Year had come, January in its turn had passed, and the news drifting in from a thousand sources, like dust from the desert, grew more alarming. The army organized by Santa Anna at San Luis Potosi was the largest that had ever been gathered in Mexico, with powerful artillery and a numerous cavalry. Santa Anna himself was at his best, drilling, planning, and filling his officers with his own enthusiasm. In Saltillo itself the people grew bolder. They openly said that it was time for the Americans to run if they would save themselves from the invincible Mexican commander and president. It seemed to many of the Americans even that it would be wise to retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, but the old general, his heart full of bitterness, gave no such order. He had begun the campaign in victorious fashion, and then he had been ordered to stop. He had asked to be allowed to serve as second to Scott in the great campaign that would go forward from Vera Cruz, and that had been refused. Then he had asked that more of his troops, especially the regulars, be left to him, and that, too, had been refused. He was expected to yield the ground that he had gained, and retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy.
Phil saw General Taylor many times in those days. Any one could see him as he passed about the city and camp, a gray, silent man, with little military form, a product of the West and the frontier, to which Phil himself belonged. It was for that reason, perhaps, that Phil could enter so thoroughly into the feelings of the general, a simple, straightforward soldier who believed himself the victim of politics, a man who felt within him not the facility for easy and graceful speech and manners, but the rugged power to do great things. He was very gentle and kind to his men in these days. The soldier who had spent a lifetime on the frontier, fighting Indians and dealing with the roughest of his kind, was now more like the head of a great family, a band knitted all the more closely together because they were in a foreign land confronted by a great danger.
Phil was picking up Spanish fast, and his youth, perhaps, caused the people about the city to make more hints, or maybe threats, to him than they would have made to an older man. Santa Anna had with him the whole might of Mexico. He would be before Saltillo in three days, in two days, to-morrow perhaps. The very air seemed to the boy to be charged with gunpowder, and he had his moments of despondency. But he had been through too much danger already to despair, and he allowed no one to think that at any time he was apprehensive.
Bill Breakstone was, for the present, the best man in the army. No other made acquaintances so fast, no other had such a wonderful flow of cheering words, and he was--or had been--an actor. To many of these youths who had never seen a play he must certainly have been the greatest actor in the world. Nor was he like a prima donna, to be coaxed, and then to refuse four times out of five. He recited nearly every evening in front of his tent, and he did more than any other man to keep the army in good heart. General Taylor and his second, General Wool, said nothing, but the younger officers commented openly and favorably. Thus the last days of January went by, and they were deep into February. The menacing reports still came out of the south, and now it was known definitely that Washington expected Taylor to fall back. Gloom overspread the young volunteers. They had not fought their way so far merely to go back, but orders were orders, and they must be obeyed.
Early in the evening Bill Breakstone was reciting again in front of his tent, and at least two hundred stood about listening. This time he was reciting with great fire and vigor his favorite: "Once more unto the breach, dear friends," and, when he had said it once, there was a vigorous call for it again. Obligingly he began the repetition, but when he was midway in it Middleton strode into the circle and held up his hand. His attitude was so tense, and his air and manner showed so much suppressed excitement that every one turned at once from Breakstone to him. Breakstone himself stopped so short that his mouth was left wide open, and he, too, gazed at Middleton.
"My lads," said Middleton, "an order, an important order has just been issued by the commander-in-chief. You are to prepare at once for breaking camp, and you are to march at daylight in the morning."
Some one uttered a groan, and a bold voice spoke up:
"Do we retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, or do we hide somewhere on the way?"
The speaker could not be seen from the place where Middleton stood, nor would the comrades around him have betrayed him. But Middleton looked in the direction of the voice, and his figure seemed to swell. Phil, who was standing near, thought he saw his eyes flicker with light.
"My lads," said Middleton, and his voice was full and thrilling, "we do not retreat all the way to the Rio Grande, nor do we hide on the way. We do not retreat at all. We march forward, southward, through the mountains to meet the enemy."
A cheer, sudden, tremendous, and straight from the heart, burst forth, and it was joined with other cheers that came from other points in the camp.
"Now make it three times three for old Rough and Ready!" cried Phil in his enthusiasm, and they did it with zeal and powerful vocal organs. Middleton smiled and walked on. Immediately everything was haste and excitement. The men began to pack. Arms and ammunition were made ready for the march. Youth looked forward only to victory, thinking little of the risks and dangers. Breakstone smiled to himself and said under his breath the words:
"We would not seek a battle as we are,Nor as we are, we say we will not shun it.So tell your master.
"We would not seek a battle as we are,Nor as we are, we say we will not shun it.So tell your master.
"We would not seek a battle as we are,
Nor as we are, we say we will not shun it.
So tell your master.
"Old Rough and Ready perhaps does not seek a battle, but he is willing to go forward and meet it. Ah! these brave boys! these brave boys!"
Then he turned to Phil and Arenberg, who were among his tent-mates.
"We three must stick together through everything," he said. "We've lost Middleton for the time, because he's got to return to his duties as an officer."
"What you say iss good," said Arenberg.
"It's a bargain," said Phil.
They looked to the horses--they were in the cavalry--and at midnight went to sleep. But they were up before dawn, still full of energy and enthusiasm. As the sun cast its first rays on the cold peaks of the Sierra Madre, they mounted, fully armed and equipped, and marched out of Saltillo, although Taylor left a strong guard in the city, wishing to preserve it as a base.
Phil rode knee to knee with Arenberg and Breakstone, and the thrill that he had felt the night before, when Middleton told the news, he felt again this morning. Horse, foot, and artillery, they were only between four and five thousand men, but the whole seemed a great army to the boy. He had never seen so many men under arms before. Breakstone saw his eye kindling.
"They are stained by travel and tanned by weather, but it's fine crowd, just as you think it is, Sir Philip of Saltillo. Don't you agree with me, Hans, Duke of the Sierra Madre?"
"It can fight," said Arenberg briefly.
"And that's what it has come out to do."
Phil saw the people of Saltillo watching them as the army left the suburbs and moved on toward the mountains. But the spectators seemed to be silent. Even the children had little to say. Phil wondered what they thought in their hearts. He did not doubt that most of them were sure that this army, or what was left of it, would come back prisoners of Santa Anna. He was glad when they left them behind, and henceforth he looked toward the mountains, which upreared cold peaks in the chilly sunshine of winter. But the air was dazzlingly clear and crisp. Pure and fresh, it filled all on that high plateau with life, and Phil's mood was one that expected only the best.
"We are not going to ride straight over those mountains, are we?" he said to Bill Breakstone.
"No," replied Bill, "we feel pretty nearly good enough for anything, but we will not try any such high jumping as that. There's a pass. You can't see it from here, because it's a sort of knife-cut going down deep into the mountains, and they call it the Pass of Angostura. We'll be there soon."
There was much noise as the army began its march, friend calling to friend, the exchange of joke and comment, wagon drivers and cannon drivers shouting to their horses, and the clanking of arms. But they soon settled down into a steady sound, all noises fusing into one made by an army that continued to march but that had ceased to talk.
Phil studied the mountains as they came nearer. They were dark and somber. Their outlines were jagged, and they had but little forest or verdure. The peaks seemed to him volcanic, presenting a multitude of sharp edges.
As the sun rose higher, the day grew somewhat warmer, but it was still full of chill. The horses blew smoke from their nostrils. Scouts coming out of the passes met them and repeated that Santa Anna was now advancing from San Luis Potosi. Nor had rumor exaggerated his forces. He outnumbered the American army at least five to one, and his front was covered by a great body of cavalry under General Minon, one of the best Mexican leaders.
This news quickly traveled through the columns, and Phil and his friends were among the first to hear it. Breakstone gazed anxiously at the peaks.
"They don't know just how far Santa Anna has come," he said, "but it's mighty important for us going to the south to get through that pass before he, coming to the north, can get through it."
"We'll make it," said Phil, with the sanguine faith of youth. "I don't believe that Santa Anna is yet near enough to dispute the pass with us."
"Likely you are right, Sir Philip of the Brave Heart and the Cheerful Countenance," replied Bill Breakstone. "But we shall soon see for certain. In another hour we will enter the defiles."
Phil said nothing, but rode on with his comrades. The city had now dropped behind them and was far out of sight. On their flanks rode scouts who would be skirmishers if need be. They marched on a level and good road, and about six miles from Saltillo they passed a hacienda and tiny village.
"What village is that?" asked Phil of some one.
"Buena Vista," was the reply.
Phil heard it almost without noticing, although it was a reply to his own question. Yet it was a name that he was destined soon to recall and never to forget. How often for years and years afterward that name came back to him at night, syllable by syllable and letter by letter! Now he rode on, taking no thought of it, and the little village and hacienda lay behind him, sleeping peacefully in the sun. His attention was for the mountains, because they were now entering the defile, the pass of Angostura, which cuts through the spur thrown out by the Sierra Madre. This is lofty, and the way narrowed fast. Nor did the sunlight fall so plentifully there, and the winds grew colder as they whistled through the pass. After the brilliant opalescent air of the plain, they seemed to be riding in a sort of twilight, and Phil felt his spirits droop. Deeper and deeper they went into the cut. Above him loomed the mountains, dark and menacing. Shrub and dwarfed plants clung here and there in the crannies, but the range was bare, and often it was distorted into strange shapes, sometimes like that of the human countenance. The sky showed in a ribbon above, but it had turned gray, and was somber and depressing. Behind came the long line of the army, the wheels of the artillery clanking over the stones.
Once or twice Phil thought he saw figures in sombreros and serapes far up the mountainside, watching them. Mexicans, no doubt, ready to report to Santa Anna the advance of the American army. He expected that some stray shots might be fired down into the pass by these spies or guerillas, but evidently they had other business than merely to annoy, and no bullets came.
Phil's horse stumbled, and the boy saved him from a fall with a quick pull. Arenberg's horse stumbled, also, and Phil noticed that his own was now walking gingerly over a path of solid but dark stone, corrugated and broken into sharp edges. Well might a horse, even one steel-shod, be careful here! Phil knew it was volcanic rock, lava that had flowed down ages ago from the crests of the peaks about them, once volcanoes but extinct long since.
His horse stumbled again, but recovered himself quickly. It certainly was dangerous rock, sometimes sharp almost like a knifeblade, and the shoes of the infantry would be cut badly. Cut badly! A sudden thought sprang up in his brain and refused to be dislodged. It was one of those lightning ideas, based on little things, that carry conviction with them through their very force and swiftness. His free hand went up to the breast of his coat and clutched the spot beneath which his brother's letter lay. He had read a hundred times the words of the captive, telling how his feet had beer cut by the sharp stone. Lava might be found at many places in Mexico, but it was along these trails in Northern Mexico that the fighting bands of Mexicans and Texans passed. He reasoned with himself for a few moments, saying that he was foolish, and hoping that he was not, but the idea remained in his head, and he knew that it was fixed there. He leaned over and said, in a husky whisper to Bill Breakstone:
"Bill, have you noticed it! The rock! The lava! How it cuts! How it would quickly slice the sole from the shoe of a captive who had marched far! Bill! Bill, I say, have you noticed it?"
Bill Breakstone looked in astonishment at his young comrade, but he was a man of uncommonly quick perceptions, and in a moment he comprehended.
"I understand," he said. "Your brother's letter and the passage in which he tells of his shoes being cut by the sharp stone while he was led along blindfolded. He may have passed along this very road, Phil. It may be. It may be. I won't say you are wrong."
"What if we are near him now!" continued Phil. "I've often heard you quote those lines, Bill, saying there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy. I told you before that if the letter could reach me so far away in Kentucky it could also bring mo to the place where it was written! I believed it then, Bill, and I believe it now. What if John is here in these mountains, within forty or fifty miles of us, or maybe twenty!"
"Steady, boy, steady!" said Bill Breakstone soothingly. "Your guess may be right. God knows I'm not the one to deny it, but we've got to fight a battle first. At least, I think so, and for the present we must put our minds on it."
Phil was silent, but his idea possessed him. Often we dwell upon things so long and we seek so hard to have them happen in a certain way that the slightest indication becomes proof. He could not think now of Taylor or Santa Anna, or of a coming battle, but only of his brother between four narrow stone walls, sitting at a narrow window that looked out upon a bleak mountainside. His horse no longer felt the guiding hand upon the bridle rein, but guided himself. Breakstone noticed that the boy's mind was far away, and, his heart full of sympathy, he said nothing for a long time.
They passed after awhile into a narrow valley, down the center of which ran a dry arroyo, fully twenty feet deep, with perpendicular banks. The rest of the valley was crisscrossed with countless gullies worn by winter storms and floods, and the army was compelled to march in a slender file in the bed of the arroyo. Here many of the cavalrymen dismounted and led their horses. The cannon wheels clanked louder than ever.
"I'll be glad when we're through this," said Bill Breakstone. "Seems to me the place was built for a trap, and it's mighty lucky for us that there's nobody here to spring it. Look out, Phil, you'd better watch your horse now! Some of these turnings are pretty rough, and you don't want a thousand pounds or so of horseflesh tumbling down upon you."
Phil came back from his visions and devoted himself to the task before them, one that required the full attention of every man. An entire battery became stuck in a gully that intersected the arroyo. He and other cavalrymen hitched their horses to the guns and helped pull them out. The whole army was now stumbling and struggling over the fearful ground. Every effort was made to save artillery and horses alike from injury. But as they approached its lower end the Pass of Angostura became still more difficult. The gullies increased in number, and many of the deep intersecting ravines ran far back into the mountains. A swarm of sure-footed skirmishers on either flank could have done great damage here to the Americans, but the peaks and the lava slopes on either side presented only silence and desolation.
It was a long journey, difficult in the extreme, and attended by thousands of falls, cuts, and bruises, but the army came through the Pass of Angostura at last, marching out upon a series of promontories or ridges, each about a mile long and perhaps a third of a mile across. From these the exhausted troops looked back at the frowning mountains and the deep defile through which they had come.
"That was certainly a job," said Bill Breakstone.
"Yes," said Middleton, who stood near, "but what a place for a defense, the plateau and these promontories running out from it, and all the ravine and gullies behind!"
It is a matter of chronicle that at least fifty officers were saying the same words at almost the same time, and even Phil, without military training, could see the truth of it. Taylor pushed on to Agua Neva, arriving there in the evening. But the next morning the reports of Santa Anna's advance in overwhelming force became so numerous that he fell back with the main army to the mouth of the Pass of Angostura, leaving Marshall with his brave Kentuckians as a rear guard at Agua Neva, and with instructions to make the utmost resistance if they were attacked.
The next night came on somber and cold. It was the evening of February 21, 1847, and the next day would be the birthday of the great Washington, a fact not forgotten by these young volunteers so far from the states in which they were born. This was a land totally unlike their own. Cold black peaks showed in the growing twilight. Around them were the gullies, the ravines, and the arroyos, with the sheets of the ancient black lava. It was like a region that belonged in the far beginning of time.
A great force under Wool, the second in command, was throwing up intrenchments of earth and rock and fortifying the heads of the ravines. Lieutenant Washington, with five heavy guns, was planted in the roadway, or rather trail, in front of all. Other guns were placed on the plateau and promontories, and behind guns and parapets the army went into camp for the night.
"This doesn't look much like Kentucky and the Bluegrass, does it, Phil?" said Grayson, as they drank their coffee.
Phil glanced at the mountains, the crests of which were now hidden in the darkness, and listened to the cold wind moaning through the narrow pass by which they had come. Then he replied:
"It doesn't, by a long sight, and I can tell you that I'm mighty glad I've lots of company here. If I were alone, I'd feel that the ghosts of the old Aztecs and Toltecs were surrounding me in the darkness. It's good to see the fires."
Many fires had been lighted, mostly in the ravines, where they were sheltered from the wind, but Phil had no doubt that the scouts of Santa Anna saw points of light at the mouth of the pass. After his supper he stood upon one of the promontories and strove to pierce the darkness to the south. But he could see nothing. The night hung an opaque veil over the lower country.
CHAPTER XIII
A WIND OF THE DESERT
Although many of the soldiers, the more hardened, had lain down to sleep, Phil did not feel that he could close his eyes. Too many deep emotions stirred his soul. He felt that he was at the verge of a great event, one in which he was to take a part to the full extent of his strength and courage, and there, too, was the sign of the lava, always coming back, always persisting. He might reason with himself and call himself foolish, but he could not dispossess his mind of the idea that it was an omen to show him that he was upon the trail by which that letter had come so vast a distance to him in the little town of Paris.
Every nerve in the boy was astir. He walked back and forth on one of the promontories, looking at the mountains which now in the darkness had become black and full of threats, and trying in vain to soothe and quiet himself so he could lie down like the others and take the rest and forgetfulness that all men need before going into battle. While he was there, Middleton called to him:
"Come, Phil," he said, reverting to his old manner of comradeship, "you ride with us to-night."
"Ride to-night!" replied Phil. "Where?"
"To the south, to meet Santa Anna. I am ordered to take thirty men and keep going until I come into touch with the enemy. I am to have thirty men of my choice, and you, Breakstone, and Arenberg were the first three that I named. You don't have to go unless you wish."
"But I wish!" exclaimed Phil earnestly. "Don't think I'm unwilling, Captain! Don't think it!"
Middleton laughed.
"I don't," he said. "I knew that you would be keen for it. Saddle your horse and look to your arms. We ride in five minutes."
Phil was ready in three, and the thirty troopers rode silently down one of the ravines and into the lower country. Phil looked back and saw the fires of the camp, mere red, yellow, and pink dots of flame. The mountains themselves were fused into a solid mass of black. The troop, arrow headed in shape, with Middleton at the point of the shaft, and Phil, Breakstone, and Arenberg close behind him, rode in silence save for the beat of their horses' hoofs. The wind here did not moan like that in the pass, but it seemed to Phil to be colder, and it had an edge of fine particles that stung his cheeks and eyes.
The night was bright enough to allow of fairly swift riding, and the ground was no longer cut and gullied as at the mouth of the pass. Hence the troopers were not compelled to devote their whole attention to their horses and they could watch the country for sign of an enemy. But they did not yet see any such sign. Phil knew that they were on the road, leading southward to Santa Anna, and he felt sure that if they kept upon it they must soon come upon the Mexican army. Yet the silence and desolation were complete here. The pass had been weird and somber to the full, but there they had thousands of comrades, and the fires in the ravines had been cheering. Now the unlit darkness was all about them, and it still had that surcharged quality that it had borne for Phil when in the pass. Nor did the fine dust cease to sting his face.
"What is it, Bill?" he asked. "Where does it come from, this dust?"
"It's a wind of the desert that stings us, Phil," replied Breakstone. "It comes vast distances, and I think, too, that it brings some of the fine dust ground off the surface of the lava. Its effect is curious. It's like burnt gunpowder in the nostrils. It seems to heat the inside, too."
"It makes me feel that way," said Phil, "and it seems to be always urging us on."
"An irritant, as it were," said Breakstone, "but I don't think we need it. The event itself is enough to keep us all on edge. Feel cold, Phil?"
"No, I've got a pair of buckskin gauntlets. Fine thing for riding on nights like this."
"So have I. But the night is cold, though. Now we're always thinking of warm weather in Mexico, but we never find a country what we expect it to be. Ah, we're leaving the road. The Captain must think there is something not far ahead."
They turned at a sharp angle from the road, and entered a thin forest. Phil looked back toward the mouth of the pass from which they had come. Everything there was behind an impenetrable black veil. The last point of fire had died, and the mountains themselves were hidden. But he took only a single backward look. The wind of the desert was still stinging his face, and it seemed to arouse him to uncommon fire and energy. His whole attention was concentrated upon their task, and he was eager to distinguish himself in some way. But he neither heard nor saw anything unusual.
They proceeded slowly through the forest, seeking to prevent all but the least possible noise, and came presently to a field in which Indian corn seemed to have grown. But it was bare now, save for the dead stalks that lay upon the ground, and here the troop spread out, riding almost in a single line.
It was Phil, keen of eye and watchful, who first saw a dim red tint under the far southern horizon, and he at once called Middleton's attention. The Captain halted them instantly, and his gaze followed the line of Phil's pointing finger.
"It is Santa Anna's army," he said, "and you, Phil, have the honor of locating it first. The dim band of light which you pointed out is made by their camp fires, which are many. We need not try to conceal that fact from ourselves."
"We take a nearer view, do we not, Captain?" asked Bill Breakstone.
"Of course," replied Middleton, "but be cautious, all of you. It is important to see, but it is equally important to get back to General Taylor with the tale our eyes may tell."
They rode forward again in a long and silent line. Phil's heart began to throb. The desert wind was still stinging his face with the fine impalpable dust that seemed to excite every nerve. As they advanced, the red tint on the southern horizon broadened and deepened. It was apparent that it stretched far to east and west.
"It iss a great army, and it means much harm," said Arenberg softly, more to himself than to anybody else.
Nearer and nearer rode the bold horsemen, stopping often to watch for the Mexican lancers who would surely be in advance of the army, beating up the country, despite the darkness, but they did not yet see any. They rode on so far that they heard the occasional sound of a trumpet in the Mexican camp, and the fires no longer presented a solid line.
"Captain," asked Bill Breakstone, "what do you think the sound of those trumpets means at an hour like this?"
"I'm not sure, Bill," replied Middleton, "but it must signify some movement. The Mexicans, like many other people, love color and parade and sound, but they would scarcely be indulging in such things at midnight just for their own sakes. It is some plan. Santa Anna is a man of great energy and initiative. But we must discover what it is. That is what we came for."
The advance was renewed, although they went slowly, guarding as well as they could against the least possible sound from their horses. They were now so near that they could see figures passing before the fires, and the dark outline of tents. They also heard the hum of many voices, the tread of hoofs by hundreds, and the jingling of many, spurs and bridle bits. Phil watched almost breathless, and the desert wind still blew on his face, stirring him with its fine, impalpable powder, and adding new fire to the fire that already burned in his veins. And Phil saw that Middleton shared in this excited interest. The officer's gloved hand on his bridle rein quivered with eagerness.
"Yet a little nearer, my lads," he whispered. "We must risk everything to find out what Santa Anna is intending at so late an hour."
Screened by a narrow thicket of strange, cactuslike plants, they rode so close that they could see between the leaves and thorns directly into the camp. Here they sat on motionless horses, but Phil heard a deep "Ah!" pass between Middleton's closed teeth. The boy himself had experience and judgment enough to know now what was going forward. All this jingling of bits and spurs meant the gathering of the Mexican cavalry. The Mexican camp fires burned along a front that seemed interminable, and also scores of torches were held aloft to guide in the work that was now being done.
Phil saw the Mexican horsemen wheel out by hundreds, until there was a great compact body of perhaps two thousand men, gaudily dressed, well mounted, and riding splendidly. Many carried rifles or muskets, but there were at least a thousand lancers, the blades of their long weapons gleaming in the firelight. Officers in gorgeous uniforms were at their head. Presently the trumpet blew again, and the great force of cavalry under General Minon began to move.
"An advance at midnight," breathed Middleton, but Phil heard him. "And there go infantry behind them. It is an attack in force. I have it! I have it! They are going toward Agua Neva. Santa Anna thinks that our whole army is there, and probably he believes he can get in our rear and cut us off. Then he'll compress us between his vast numbers as if we were in the jaws of a vise."
Then he added, in a slightly louder tone:
"Come, my lads, we ride to Agua Neva, but we must be as careful as ever. We know now what our task is, and we will do it."
They turned and rode away. Fortune was with them. No horse neighed. Perhaps the sound of their hoofs might have been heard now, had it not been for the great Mexican column marching toward Agua Neva, where the rear guard under Marshall was hurrying the stores, that had been left there, northward to Taylor. Middleton swung his little troop to one side, until they were well beyond the hearing of Minon's cavalry.
"There can no longer be any doubt that they are heading for Agua Neva," he said, "and we must beat them there, no matter what happens. Ride, boys, ride!"
They broke into a gallop, sweeping in a long line across some open fields, riding straight for a few points of light behind which they knew was Agua Neva. They were now well ahead of the great column, and Middleton took the chance of meeting any stray band of Mexican scouts and skirmishers. They did meet such a band, but it was small, and, when the Mexican hail was answered with a shout in a foreign tongue, it quickly scattered and gave the Americans free passage. A few shots were fired, but nobody in Middleton's troop was touched, and none in the other. Without breaking line the Americans rode on. The lights grew clearer and increased in number. In a few moments they clattered down on Agua Neva, and ready sentinels, rifle in hand, halted them.
"Friends!" cried Middleton. "I am Captain Middleton, with scouts from General Taylor. I must see your commander at once!"
But Marshall was there as he spoke, and Middleton exclaimed in short words, surcharged with emphasis and earnestness:
"Santa Anna is coming down upon you! We have seen his cavalry marching, and the infantry are behind them! They will soon be here! They must think that our whole army is in Agua Neva, and evidently they intend to surround it."
"All right," said Marshall calmly. "Most of the wagons are already on the way to the pass. We cover their retreat, and the General told us to hold on here as long as we could. We mean to do it. Are you with us, Captain?"
"Certainly," replied Captain Middleton briefly. "You can depend on us to the last."
"Minon's cavalry must be coming now," said Marshall. "It seems to me that I hear the tread of many horsemen."
"It is they," said Middleton. Marshall's men and his then fell back toward the little town. They were only a few hundred in number, but they had no idea of retreating without a fight. They were posted behind some stone walls, hedges, and a few scattered houses. The last of the wagons loaded with stores were rumbling away northward toward the Pass of Angostura.
Phil sat on his horse behind a stone wall, and all was silence along the line. The wind still blew, and stung his face with the dust of the desert. His heart throbbed and throbbed. He saw Middleton open his watch, hold it close to his face in order that he might see the hands in the moonlight, and then shut it with a little snap.
"Midnight exactly," he said, "and here they come!"
The heavy tread of many men was now in their ears, and the lances gleamed in the moonlight, as the great Mexican force swung into the open space about the little town. They came on swiftly and full of ardor, but a sheet of fire blazed in their faces. The long rifles of the Americans were well aimed, despite the night--they could scarcely miss such a mass--and horses and riders went down together.
While they were still in confusion, Marshall's little force loaded and fired again. A terrible uproar ensued. Men groaned or shouted, horses neighed with fright or screamed with pain. Many of them ran riderless between the combatants. Phil heard the Mexican officers shouting orders and many strange curses. Smoke arose and permeated the night air already charged with the dust of the desert. The Mexicans fired almost at random in the darkness, but they were many, and the bullets flying in showers were bound to strike somebody. Two or three Americans dropped slain from their horses, or, on foot, died where they were struck, behind the walls. The Mexicans in a vast half circle still advanced. Marshall and Middleton conferred briefly.
"How many men have you?" asked Marshall.
"Thirty."
"I have about fifty more cavalrymen. Take them and charge with all your might. They may think in the darkness that you have a thousand."
"Come!" said Middleton to his men, and he and the eighty rode out into the open. They paused there only an instant, because the great half circle of the Mexicans was still advancing. Phil, in the moonlight, saw the enemy very distinctly, the lances and escopetas, the tall conical hats with wide brims, and the dark faces under them. Then, at the command of Middleton, they fired their rifles and galloped straight at the foe.
Phil could never give any details of that wild moment. He was conscious of a sudden surge of the blood, the thudding of hoofs, the blades of lances almost in his face, fierce, dark eyes glaring into his own, and then they struck. The impact was accompanied by the flashing of sabers, the falling of men and horses, shouts and groans, while the smoke from the firing to the right and left of them drifted in their faces.
Phil felt a shock as his horse struck that of a Mexican lancer. The lance-blade flashed past his face, and it felt cold on his cheek as it passed, but it did not touch him. The Mexican's horse went down before the impact of his, and he saw that the whole troop, although a few saddles were emptied, had crashed through the Mexican line. They had cut it apart like a knife through cheese. While the Mexicans were yet reeling from the shock, Middleton, a born cavalry leader, wheeled his men about, and they charged back through the Mexican line at another point. The second passage was easier than the first, because Minon's men had been thrown into disorder, yet it was not made without wounds. Phil was slightly grazed in the side by a bullet, and a lance had torn his coat on his shoulder. If the cloth had not given way he would have been thrown from the saddle. As it was, he nearly dropped his rifle, but he managed to retain both seat and weapon.
"All right!" shouted a voice in his ear. It was that of Breakstone, who was watching over him like a father.
"All right," returned Phil confidently, and then they were back with Marshall's men, all but a dozen, who would ride no more.
"Good work," said Marshall to Middleton. "That startled them. They will ride back a little, and our riflemen, too, are doing almost as good work in the moonlight as they could in the sunlight."
The blood was pounding so heavily in Phil's ears after the double charge that he did not realize until then that the heavy firing had never ceased. The little American force reloaded and pulled the trigger so quickly that the volume of their firing gave the effect of numbers three or four times that of the real. The darkness, too, helped the illusion, and the Southerners and Westerners replied to the shouts of the Mexicans with resounding cheers of their own. An officer galloped up, and Phil heard him shout to Marshall above the crash of the firing:
"The last of the wagons is beyond the range of fire!"
"Good," said Marshall. "Now we, too, must fall back. The moment they discover how few we are they can wrap us in a coil that we cannot break. But we'll fight them while they follow us."
The little force was drawn in skillfully, and the horsemen on either flank began to retire from Agua Neva. The Mexicans, urged by Minon, Torrejon, Ampudia, and Santa Anna himself, pushed hard against the retiring force, seeking either to capture or destroy it. More than once they threatened to enfold it with their long columns, but here the horsemen, spreading out, held them off, and the long range rifles of the Americans were weapons that the Mexicans dreaded. As on many another battlefield, the Westerners and Southerners, trained from their boyhood to marksmanship, fired with terrible accuracy. The moonlight, now that their eyes had grown used to it, was enough for them. Their firing, as the slow retreat northward toward the Pass of Angostura went on, never ceased, and their path was marked by a long trail of their fallen foes. Santa Anna and his generals sought in vain to flank them, but the darkness was against the greater force. It was not easy to combine and make use of numbers when only moonlight served. Regiments were likely to fire into one another, but the small compact body of the Americans kept easily in touch, and they retreated practically in one great hollow square blazing with fire on every side. "Hold on as long as you can," Taylor had said to Marshall, but Marshall, in the face of twenty to one, held on longer than any one had dreamed.
Santa Anna had expected to get his great cavalry force in the rear of Taylor at Agua Neva, but at midnight, finding Taylor not there and only a small detachment left, he had hoped to capture or destroy that in a few minutes. Instead, half his army was fighting a most desperate rear guard action with a few hundred men, and every second Marshall saved was precious to the commander back there at the Pass of Angostura.
Phil was grazed by another bullet, and his horse was stung once. Arenberg was slightly wounded, but Breakstone was untouched, and the three still kept close together. The boy could not take note of the passage of time. It seemed to him that they had been fighting for hours as they gave way slowly before the huge mass of the Mexican army. Great clouds of smoke from the firing had turned the moonlight to a darker quality. Now and then it drifted in such quantities that the moon was wholly obscured, and then it was to the advantage of the Americans, who could fire from their hollow square in every direction, and be sure that they hit no friend.
They had now left the town far behind and were well on the way to the Pass. Phil noticed that the fire of the Mexicans was slackening. Evidently Santa Anna had begun to believe that it would not pay to follow up any longer a rear guard that stung so hard and so often. This certainly was the belief of Bill Breakstone.
"The pursuit is dying," he said, "not because they don't want us, but because our price is too high.
It is not rightTo fight at nightUnless you knowRight well your foe.The darkness cumbersHim with numbers;The few steal away,And are gone at day.
It is not rightTo fight at nightUnless you knowRight well your foe.The darkness cumbersHim with numbers;The few steal away,And are gone at day.
It is not right
To fight at night
Unless you know
Right well your foe.
The darkness cumbers
Him with numbers;
The few steal away,
And are gone at day.
"My verse is a little ragged this time, Phil, but it is made in the heat of action, and it at least tells a true tale. See how their fire is sinking! The flashes stop to the right, they stop to the left, and they will soon stop in the center. It's a great night, Phil, for Marshall and his men. They were ordered to do big things, and they've filled the order twice over. And we came into it, too, Phil, don't forget that! There, they've stopped entirely, as I told you they would!"
The firing along Santa Anna's front ceased abruptly, and as the retreat continued slowly the columns of the Mexican army were lost in the darkness. No lance heads glittered, and the bugles no longer called the men to action. Bill Breakstone had spoken truly. Santa Anna found the rear guard too tough for him to handle in the darkness, and stopped for the rest of the night. When assured of this, Marshall ordered his little force to halt, while they took stock of the wounded and dressed their hurts as best they could at such a hurried moment. Then they resumed their march for the pass, with the wagons that they had defended so well lumbering on ahead.
After the exertion of so much physical or mental energy the men rode or walked in silence. Phil was surprised to find that his hands and face were wet with perspiration, and he knew then that his face must be black with burnt gunpowder. But he felt cold presently, as the chill night wind penetrated a body relaxed after so great an effort. Then he took the blanket roll from his saddle and wrapped it around him. Breakstone and Arenberg had already done the same. Looking back, Phil saw a few lights twinkling where the Mexicans had lighted their new camp fires, but no sound came from that point. Yet, as of old, the desert wind blew, and the fine dust borne on its edge stung his face, and brought to his nostrils an odor like that of battle. Under its influence he was still ready for combat. He gloried in the achievement of this little division in which he had a part, and it gave him strength and courage for the greater struggle, by far, that was coming. Breakstone shared in his pleasure, and talked lightly in his usual fashion, but Arenberg was sober and very thoughtful.
"Well, we burnt old Santa Anna's face for him, if we did do it in the dark," said Bill, "and we can do it in daylight, too."
"But did you see his numbers?" said Arenberg. "Remember how vast was his camp, and with what a great force he attacked us at Agua Neva. Ach, I fear me for the boys who are so far from their home, the lads of Kentucky and Illinois and the others!"
"Don't be downhearted, Hans, old boy," said Breakstone with genuine feeling. "I know you have things on your mind--though I don't ask you what they are--that keep you from being cheerful, but don't forget that we've the habit of victory. Our boys are Bonaparte's soldiers in the campaign of Italy, they don't mean to be beaten, and they don't get beaten. And you can put that in your pipe, too, and smoke it, Sir Philip of the Horse Battle and the Night Retreat. Look, we're approaching the Pass. See the lights come out one by one. Don't the lights of a friend look good?"
Phil agreed with him. It was a satisfying thing to come safely out of a battle in which they had done what they had wanted to do, and return to their own army. It was now nearly morning, but the troops still marched, while the last wagons rumbled on ahead. Scouts came forward to hail them and to greet them warmly when they found that they were friends. There was exultation, too, when they heard the news of the fine fight that the little division had given to Santa Anna. Lieutenant Washington, who was in charge of the division that commanded the road, met Middleton and Marshall a hundred yards from the mouths of his guns, and Phil heard them talking. General Taylor had not yet returned from Saltillo, where he had gone to strengthen and fortify the division at that place, as he greatly feared a flank movement of Santa Anna around the mountain to seize the town and cut him off.
Wool, meanwhile, was in command, and he listened to the reports of Marshall and Middleton, commending them highly for the splendid resistance that they had offered to overwhelming numbers. Phil gathered from their tone, although it was only confirmation of a fact that he knew already, that their little force was in desperate case, indeed. Never before had the omens seemed so dark for an American army. For in a desolate and gloomy country, with every inhabitant an enemy and spy upon them, with an army outnumbering them five to one approaching, brave men might well despair.
It struck Phil with sudden force that the odds could be too great after all, and that he might never finish his quest. In another hour or two he might see his last sunrise. He shook himself fiercely, told himself that he was foolish and weak, and then rode toward the pass. They tethered their horses on the edge of the plateau, and at the advice of Middleton all sought sleep.
But the boy's nerves were yet keyed too highly for relaxation. His weary body was resting, but his heart still throbbed. He saw the sentinels walking back and forth. He saw the dark shapes of cannon posted on the promontories, and above them the mountains darker and yet more somber. Several fires still burned in the ravines, and the officers sat about them talking, but most of the army slept. As Phil lay on the earth he heard the wind moaning behind him as it swept up the pass, but it still touched his face with the fine impalpable dust that stung like hot sand, and that seemed to him to be an omen and a presage. He lay a long time staring into the blackness in the direction in which Santa Anna's army now lay, where he and his comrades had fought such a good fight at midnight. He saw nothing there with his real eye, but with his mind's eye he beheld the vast preparations, the advance of the horsemen, and the flashing of thousands of lances in the brilliant light.
When the morning sun was showing over the ridges and peaks of the Sierra Madre, and pouring its light into the nooks and crannies of the ravines, he fell asleep.