Ahead of the Army Part 17

"I declare!" said Ned. "Either their friends or some robbers have cleaned this place of all there was in it that was worth stealing. Not so much as a bed left. I'll go and take a look at my old room. It was a cubby-hole of a place, but it would do first-rate for me now."

Perhaps it was so small and so out of the way that Ned had an agreeable surprise ready for him when he reached it, for there still hung his hammock, and nothing else in the room had been molested.

"Hurrah!" he shouted. "I've looked into every other room in the house, and this is the only one they didn't finish. I guess I'll camp here to-night, after I've been out to get something to eat."

It was true that he had orders for army rations, if he had known where to find them, but he was also able to purchase whatever he might need, and he preferred to do so. At the same time, he had a clear understanding that, if he expected to ever see the United States again, he had better not show a great deal of cash in the city of Vera Cruz just now.

"There are plenty of fellows here," he remarked, "who would cut my throat for a silver dollar, let alone a gold piece."

He sheathed his machete peaceably, and went out by the back door, determining to let as few people as possible suspect that the Ta.s.sara mansion contained a boarder,--or it was more nearly correct to say lodger. This was a wise decision to make, but he was not to hunt far for his supplies that evening. Hardly had he gone a hundred paces from the Ta.s.sara place before he was unceremoniously halted, and it was not by a lancer this time. Before him, blocking his way, stood a very fat and apparently much astonished woman.

"Madre de Dios!" she loudly exclaimed. "Senor Carfora! Santa Maria!

Santa Catarina! San Jago! Diablos! Where did you come from?"

Ned had never before heard himself called by all those pet names, but he knew at a glance that this was no other than Anita, formerly the cook of Senora Ta.s.sara, and believed to be a devoted friend of the family.

"Anita!" he exclaimed. "I'll tell you!" and he proceeded to do so, to her great gratification, for she was as hungry for news as he was for his rations.

"You come to my house," she said, "and I will give you something fit to eat, and that is a good deal to say in Vera Cruz in these days. Santa Maria! How these ragged banditti do devour everything. We are to be devoured by the accursed gringos, too, and we must eat while we can."

Her idea, as a good cook, appeared to be that, if several thousands of people were about to be shut up and starved to death, they ought all to feed themselves as liberally as possible before the actual process of starvation should begin. Ned felt a strong sympathy with that notion, as he walked along with her, and he was ready to tell her anything but the perilous truth concerning the lost battle at the north. As to that, it was quite enough to a.s.sure her and half a dozen other patriotic Mexican women, who were at her humble home when he went in, that the great and successful General Santa Anna was hastening to rescue them from the American barbarians who were at this hour getting ash.o.r.e with a great deal of difficulty through the surf, which was wetting every uniform among them. If anything at all resembling a "norther" had been blowing, the landing would necessarily have been postponed until it had blown over. Among other things, however, Ned told Anita of his visit to the house, and when the very good supper was ended, she led him to a room which must have contained at least a third of all the s.p.a.ce under her roof. It was anything but hollow s.p.a.ce now, for it was heaped to the ceiling with furniture, beds, bedding, and a miscellaneous collection of other household goods.

"There, Senor Carfora!" she said, exultingly. "The Puebla robbers did get some things, but we saved all these. They were not ready to carry off heavy stuff, and when they came again, with a cart, at night, it had all been cared for. The senora has not lost so much, after all."

"You are a faithful woman!" said Ned, admiringly. "I'm glad, too, that they could not steal the house, for I want to sleep there."

"It's the best place you can find," she told him. "But you had better always bar the door at night, and sleep with your machete and pistols where you can reach them."

CHAPTER XV.

UNDER FIRE

"Where am I?" exclaimed Ned, as his eyes came lazily open the next morning, and in a moment more they were open very widely.

He knew the room he was in, and his thoughts came swiftly back to him.

There hung his sheathed machete at the head of the hammock, and his pistols lay at his side. There was as yet only just enough light to see them by, but he sprang out and began to get ready for his first day in a besieged city. His satchel and pony, he remarked, would be safe enough at headquarters, and he could go after them whenever he might need them.

"I'll go to Anita's for breakfast," he added. "I can pay her for it, too. Then I want to see the American fleet, if I can. Oh, but am I not glad that General Zuroaga gave me that old telescope? I've seen lots of mountains with it, and now I'll make it show me the ships and the army.

Oh, my soul and body! I'm part of the garrison of Vera Cruz."

That was stretching the facts of the case a little, but he certainly was serving under the wrong flag that morning. He felt queer and lonely in that empty, robber-haunted house, and he was glad to get out of it without being seen. Anita welcomed him enthusiastically, for he had brought to her and her neighbors the good news of the coming of Santa Anna's victorious army, and he was a young Mexican patriot for whom she was glad to cook a good breakfast for a fair price. After that was eaten, however, Ned's perplexities began, for the first Mexican officer whom he met, on leaving Anita's house, curtly demanded a look at his papers. He was altogether too well dressed a fellow to be allowed to pa.s.s by unnoticed. With almost a fainting heart, Ned produced the pa.s.s given him by the major at headquarters, but the next moment the brave soldier's arms were around him, and he was hugged as a true comrade who had ridden hard and far to bring good tidings.

"I will show you the gates myself!" exclaimed the lieutenant, for such he was. "I shall be in command of a patrol that is going out toward Sacrificios for a look at the gringos. Come on with me."

This was precisely what Ned was wishing for, and, as they hurried along, he was pumped for all the news he had and a good deal more. In fact, he found it a task of some difficulty to obey the stern commands of General Morales and still keep within the truth.

A gate was reached and pa.s.sed, the officer at the gate receiving a kind of pay in news, and then Ned drew a long breath, for he suddenly remembered that he had left the city, contrary to orders.

"Never mind," he said to himself, "I'm inside the Mexican army lines."

In a moment more, he had forgotten everything but his spy-gla.s.s, a pretty good one, for he and the squad of patrollers were at the summit of a low sand-hill, and there before them, only two miles away, the boats of the ships of war and the transport ships were coming and going through the surf with loads of American soldiers. With them, and on all the vessels in the offing, Ned saw something which had never before seemed to shine so splendidly, and it brought the hot blood fiercely from his heart to his cheeks, because he could not just then break out into a hurrah for the Stars and Stripes. The hurrah did get up into his throat, but there it had to stop, and it almost choked him. His prudence got the better of it, somehow, and his next thought was:

"Oh, but won't they have a tough time getting their cannon ash.o.r.e!"

He was not so far wrong, for that was a problem which was troubling General Scott and his engineers, but there was one thing more which Ned did not so much as dream of. In one of those boats a tall man, who was not in uniform, was leaning forward and gazing earnestly at the sh.o.r.e.

"Mexico!" he muttered. "Ned is in there somewhere. I must have a hunt for him as soon as I can. I wonder if I did right to ever let him go.

Even after we take Vera Cruz, there will be a long campaign and any amount of hard fighting. O Ned, my son, where are you?"

Ned was there, indeed, very near and yet very far, and he was wondering, as were many American officers and soldiers, why the Mexicans did not cannonade the invading army while it was coming ash.o.r.e. They might have done so effectively, and in a day or two they did put a few guns in position to send an occasional shot, but all the harm they did was to kill one man.

The patrol party had now performed its duty, and it marched back again, but in that morning adventure Ned had discovered that he was really free to come and go. Perhaps the Mexican commander had forgotten him in the pressure of his other affairs. Even when Ned went to the headquarters for his pony and baggage, he was treated by everybody as a young fellow of no importance whatever, and at dinnertime he was able to tell Anita all about the terrible ships and the swarms of invading gringos on the sh.o.r.e.

That night the lonely room in the Ta.s.sara house was almost too lonely.

Ned lay awake in his hammock through long hours, and was glad that he had two armies to think of, so that he might keep from listening for possible footsteps outside of his little chamber, or for an attempt by some marauder to force open his door. He had barred that, and he had fastened his window firmly, but he could not feel entirely secure, and he got up twice to go to the door and listen.

Day after day went by from that time in very much the same manner, and Ned believed that he was learning a great deal about war, whether or not it would ever do him any good in business affairs after the war had come to an end. The entire American army, guns and all, reached the sh.o.r.e in safety, and all the while Santa Anna and his army were reported as coming, coming, but they did not come, and the hearts of the besieged garrison and the terror-stricken people began to die within them.

"They will be too late now," thought Ned, but he did not dare to say as much to any of his Mexican friends.

From time to time he had been out to ply his telescope upon the fleet and upon the army. He knew that all the American camps had been established beyond the reach of any guns in the city fortifications, and he had watched with intense interest the slow, sure processes of a regular siege, conducted by a rarely capable general. He had seen the erection of battery after battery, of which General Scott's artillerymen were as yet making hardly any apparent use. He did not quite understand that, in merely being there, more and more of them, those batteries were already capturing the city. They were sending so few shots at the walls, or even at the grim Castle of San Juan de Ulua, because the American general wished to take Vera Cruz without bloodshed, if he could, and he came very near to the accomplishment of his humane purpose.

Undoubtedly, he would have succeeded in starving out the city, if he, too, had not received daily notice of the nearer approach of Santa Anna and all the forces which he could gather. n.o.body but that general himself and his confidential officers knew how really few they were, or how unfit to a.s.sail the Americans in their fortified camps on the sh.o.r.e of the sea. So, a final day came when the surrender of Vera Cruz was formally demanded, under the awful penalty of a general bombardment by the American fleet and army in case of a refusal. Resistance, it was declared, was now hopeless, and there was no military necessity for killing anybody. General Morales sent back a positive rejection, for he still entertained a faint hope of the timely arrival of a.s.sistance, and he did not inform General Scott how sadly he had failed in all his attempts to obtain supplies for the inhabitants and his army. Famine was already beginning to threaten all of the poorer cla.s.ses who had neglected their opportunities to leave the city, or who had been unable to do so. As for Ned Crawford's provisions, he had continued to board with Anita, or with any mess of military men among whom he might happen to be. He had made many acquaintances, and he had found the ragged, unpaid, illiterate Mexican soldiers a genuinely hospitable lot of patriotic fellows. He came to his supper somewhat late on the evening of March 21st, and that night, after going to care for his pony, he came back and slept on a blanket on the floor of Anita's kitchen. On the morning of the 22d, he had but just walked out into the street when suddenly all the air around him seemed to be full of thunder. Roar followed roar, and peal followed peal, and then he heard affrighted shrieks in all directions. The bombardment had begun!

"O Madre de Dios!" moaned the voice of poor Anita behind him. "O Senor Carfora! We shall all be killed! What shall we do? Oh, the wicked gringos! What did they come here for? I never did them any harm."

That was a terrible war question which was troubling Ned himself.

Whatever might have been the evil doings of either of the two governments, or of all the scheming, ambitious politicians, the helpless people of Mexico were in no manner to blame. Why, then, he asked himself, should any of them, like Anita, for instance, be killed by cannon-shot or torn in pieces by bursting sh.e.l.ls? He could not settle the matter in his mind just then, but he said to her, encouragingly:

"Don't be so badly scared. Up here in this northern part of the town, we are as far away from the shooting as we could be. I'll go over to the southern side of the city and see what is going on. As soon as I find out, I'll come back and tell you."

"Oh, do!" she said, "but do not get killed. Come back and get some dinner. I will cook you a real good one, if you will."

That was something of a promise, for he knew that she was one of the prudent folk who had looked out for their supplies in time, but he walked away toward the southerly wall and the forts with a strong feeling that he must be in the middle of a kind of dreadful dream. He reached the line of antiquated and defective defences, which had been good enough long ago, but which were not constructed to resist modern artillery. Old as it might be, the wall was in the way of his intended sightseeing, but he saw a ladder leaning against the masonry, and up he went without asking permission of anybody. He was now standing upon the broad parapet, with his gla.s.s at his eye, and he was obtaining a first-rate view of the bombardment. On the land, stretching away to the west and south, were the long lines of the American batteries, within a not very long range of him, and from each of them at intervals the red sheets of fire burst forth, while over them the black clouds of powder smoke arose to be carried away by the brisk March wind that was blowing.

Far away to his right, or seaward, all at anchor in the positions a.s.signed them, lay the United States ships of war, of all kinds and sizes, and these, too, were getting at work, although they were as yet by no means putting forth their whole destructive power. It was as if they were but studying this siege business, getting the ranges correctly, and were preparing to do worse things than this in the days which were to come. Ned was gazing intently at a great 44-gun ship, which appeared to be sending her missiles at the castle, when a heavy shot from one of the batteries struck the wall within a few yards of him. It seemed to go deeply in, and the entire top of the parapet was torn away for a width of several feet. Ned hurried at once to get a good look down into the chasm, for it was the first time that he had seen anything of the kind.

"I wonder if our shot are doing this kind of thing for their batteries yonder," he said aloud, in the Spanish which was now habitual with him, but at that moment a not unfriendly hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a quiet, firm voice said to him:

"What are you doing here, Senor Carfora? You seem to have no fear."

"General Morales!" exclaimed Ned, in astonishment. "No, your Excellency.

I was not thinking of that, but of this big hole. I was wondering if the walls of the castle are not stronger than these. If they are not--"

"They are much stronger, my brave fellow," interrupted the general. "I am going over now to see how they are standing it. The Americans are very accurate gunners. Now, sir, you must not expose yourself in this manner. You are not a soldier. Go back into the city!"