Ahead of the Army Part 19

The father and son were not walking very fast, but they could talk rapidly, and they had a great many things to say. They had some things to see, as well, for everywhere, as they went, they encountered detachments of United States soldiers patrolling the city, restoring order and setting things to rights. That they were doing so appeared to be a tremendous surprise to large numbers of the inhabitants, who had almost been expecting to be ruthlessly plundered, if not murdered outright, by these cruel barbarians from the awful republic of the North. Not all of them were panic-stricken in this way, however, for when the house of old Anita was reached, she was standing in the doorway, and she greeted them loudly with:

"O Senor Carfora! I knew all the while that you were a gringo. I am so glad that we have surrendered! Santa Maria Gloriosa! Praise all the saints! We shall have no more cannonading! We shall have plenty to eat!"

"That is just what we want, Anita," replied Ned. "This is my father. He has come to see me, and you must give him some dinner. Then I will tell you all about General Scott and the American soldiers."

She had neighbors with her, as usual, and some of them had become accustomed to regarding Ned as a kind of newsboy. They were now also prepared to thank a large number of religious personages that he was a genuine gringo, and on good terms with the conquering invaders, who were henceforth to have the control of affairs in Vera Cruz.

It was late that night when Ned said good-by to his father, and it was like pulling teeth to let him go, but there was no help for it, as the sailing of the supply-ship could not be delayed. Ned was once more alone in Mexico, and it took all his enthusiasm for his expected army life to reconcile him to the situation. Perhaps there was not a great deal of sound sleeping done, in the hammock that swung in the little room in the Ta.s.sara mansion, but at an early hour next morning he was on his way to hunt up the camp of the Seventh Infantry and the tent of Lieutenant Grant. This was accomplished without much difficulty, and almost immediately Ned made a discovery. His probable coming had, of course, been reported to the colonel commanding the regiment, and that officer's common-sense remark was:

"Unenlisted orderly, eh? Yankee boy that can speak Spanish, and that knows every corner of this miserable city? Just what we want. I'm glad old Fuss and Feathers sent him to us. He is the greatest general in the world. Send your scout right here to me. I've errands for him."

Therefore, the next chapter in Ned's Mexican experiences was that he found himself sent out, soldierlike, upon a long list of duties, for which he was peculiarly well prepared by knowing where to find streets and houses which were as yet unknown to the rank and file of the gallant Seventh. The men, on their part, soon came to regard him as a soldier boy, like themselves, and he had a fine opportunity for learning, from day to day, the processes by which General Scott was organizing his force for his intended march across the sierra, on the road he had selected for reaching the city of Mexico. It was soon to be plainly understood that, whenever that army should march, it would do so as a sort of human machine, ready to perform any military work which its commander might require of it.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MOUNTAIN Pa.s.sES

"Grant," said Captain Lee, "what did Crawford say to you about that Cerro Gordo road? I want to know all I can."

"Well, Captain Lee," replied Grant, "here he is, to speak for himself.

He says he came down that trail in midwinter. He studied it, too, because his friend, General Zuroaga, told him it was built by a Spanish fellow by the name of Cortes."

"Good!" said Lee. "Seems to me I've heard of him somewhere, but who is Zuroaga? Tell me about him, Crawford. Does he know anything?"

By this time, Ned had become pretty well acquainted with Lee and a number of other officers, and with their free, open-hearted way of dealing with each other. He could tell, therefore, without any restraint or bashfulness, all that was necessary concerning his distinguished Mexican friend and benefactor.

"I see," said the captain. "He is one of their many revolutions. All right. But I wish old man Cortes hadn't left his road so narrow and steep as they say it is. Tell me all you saw, Crawford. I have other accounts, but I want yours. Look at this map and answer my questions."

He held in his hand what purported to be a very rough sketch of the highway from the city of Jalapa to the city of Mexico. It also pretended to give a fair idea of the section of that road which crossed the mountain spur known as Cerro Gordo.

"From there to there," said Lee, "how is it?"

"Crooked as a rail fence," replied Ned. "It isn't like that at all. It's a zigzag, with rocks on one side and ravines on the other."

"Just as I supposed," said Lee. "Now, mark the zigzags on this other paper, as well as you can remember them."

They were sitting in Grant's tent, in the camp of the Seventh Regiment, and the entire advance-guard of the army was encamped in like manner, waiting for orders from General Scott to climb the mountains before them. Ned took the crayon handed him, and he really appeared to do pretty well with it, but he explained that the rough weather and the condition of his pony had compelled him to dismount and come part of the way down the mountain on foot, so that he had more time for making observations.

"If they put cannon on a breastwork on that road," he said, "they can blow anything in front of them all to pieces."

"Grant," said Lee, "that's just what they can do. Santa Anna has posted his artillery at Crawford's zigzags, and that Cerro Gordo position cannot be carried in front. It is perfectly una.s.sailable."

"What on earth are we to do, then?" said Grant. "Our only road to Mexico seems to be shut and bolted."

"I don't know about that," said Lee. "There are others, if we chose to try them. But the general has ordered me, with an engineer party, to go out and find if there is not some way for getting around Santa Anna's obstructions. I want you to let Crawford go with me."

"O Lieutenant Grant!" eagerly exclaimed Ned, "General Zuroaga told me there was another place as good for a road as that is."

"Go along, of course," said Grant. "I'd give a month's pay to go with you. Anything but this sleepy camp."

Ned was ready in a minute, but he found that he was not expected to carry with him any other weapon than his machete.

"Take that," said Captain Lee. "It will do to cut bushes with. I believe I'll carry one myself. We shall have a few riflemen, but we must be careful not to do any firing. We must scout like so many red Indians."

Ned had formerly been on the wrong side of the army lines. During all the long months of what he sometimes thought of as his captivity among the Mexicans, he had been occasionally worried by a feeling of disgrace.

He had felt it worst when he was a member of the garrison of Vera Cruz, and on such remarkably good terms with the rest of the garrison and its commander. So he had been exceedingly rejoiced when General Scott battered down his walls and compelled him to surrender. It had been a grand restoration of his self-respect when he found himself running errands for the officers of the Seventh, but now he suddenly felt that he had shot up into full-grown manhood, for, with a bush-cutting sword at his side, he was to accompany one of the best officers in the American army upon an expedition of great importance and much danger.

It was still early in the day when Captain Lee's party, all on foot, pa.s.sed through the outer lines of the American advance, at the base of the mountain. All of them were young men, as yet without any military fame, and there was no one there who could tell them that their little band of roadhunters contained one commander-in-chief and one lieutenant-general of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, and one commander-in-chief and four major-generals, or corps commanders, of the armies of the United States. It was not by such subordinates as these that General Santa Anna was a.s.sisted in his engineering or other military operations. That day, however, and for a few days more, he felt perfectly sure of his really well-chosen position among the rocks and chasms of the Cerro Gordo.

The engineering party was well aware that its movements might possibly be observed from the heights beyond, as long as it remained in the open, therefore it wheeled out into the fields as it went onward, and was soon lost to view among woodlands.

"Now, Crawford," said Captain Lee, "recall and tell me, as well as you can, all that Zuroaga told you about his proposed new road."

Ned proceeded to do so, but, at the end of his recollections, he added:

"Well, the general said it would cost a pot of money to do it, now, and that Cortes had no gunpowder to throw away. He could not have done any rock-blasting."

"Our difficulty about that is as bad as his was," replied the captain.

"We can have all the gunpowder we need, but we can't use any of it, for fear of letting his Excellency, General Santa Anna, know what we are up to. As for the cost of a new road, there is no government in Mexico that will think of undertaking it. It would cost as much, almost, as a brand-new revolution."

There was a great deal of hard work done after that, searching, climbing, and bush-cutting, and Ned wondered at the ready decisions made here and there, by the engineers. It seemed to him, too, that Captain Lee and other officers paid a great deal of deference to a young lieutenant by the name of McClellan. A small force of riflemen was with them and a party of sappers and miners, but there had not been a sign of military opposition to the work which they were trying to do.

Nevertheless, it began to dawn upon Ned's mind that sometimes picks and spades and crowbars may be as important war weapons as even cannon. That is, there may be circ.u.mstances in which guns of any kind are of little use until after the other tools have been made to clear the way for them.

Night came, and the entire reconnoitring party camped among the cliffs of Cerro Gordo, but at about the middle of the next forenoon all the officers gathered for a kind of council. They were not yet ready to send in a full and final report, but they had formed important conclusions, and at the end of the council Ned was called for.

"Crawford," said Captain Lee, "take that despatch to Captain Schuyler Hamilton, or whoever else is on duty at General Scott's headquarters. In my opinion, this Zuroaga road will do, after we shall have made it, and we can climb around into the rear of the Mexican army. If so, all their batteries in the old road are but so many cannon thrown away."

Ned's heart gave a great thump of pride as he took that carefully folded and sealed up paper. To carry it was a tremendous honor, and he was not half sure that it did not make him, for the time being, a regular member of General Scott's corps of military engineers. He hastened back to the Jalapa highway, and the first advanced post that he came to furnished him with a pony. Then he galloped on to the camps and to the general's headquarters, as if he had been undergoing no fatigue whatever. He seemed to himself, however, to have seen hardly anything or anybody until he stood before Captain Hamilton, and held out that vitally important despatch. Even then he did not quite understand that it was almost as important as had been the surrender of Vera Cruz. But for that surrender, the American expedition would have been stopped at the seash.o.r.e. But for this feat of the engineers, it would have been disastrously halted at the foot of the Cerro Gordo pa.s.s. One minute later, Ned's heart jumped again, for he heard the deep voice of the general himself commanding:

"Hamilton, bring Crawford in. He seems to know something."

Whether he did or not, he could answer questions quite bravely, and he could tell a great many things which had not been set forth in the brief report of the engineers. Probably they had not felt ready to say or a.s.sert too much until they had done and learned more, but Ned was under no such restriction, and he thoroughly believed in what he still regarded as General Zuroaga's road. That is, if somebody like Cortes, for instance, could and would afford the necessary amount of gunpowder to blast away the rocks which he had seen were in the way.

"That will do," said the general, at last. "You may go, Crawford.

Captain Hamilton, we have beaten Santa Anna!"

There may have been a slightly arrogant sound in that confident a.s.sertion, but it was altogether in accord with the positive and self-reliant character of General Winfield Scott. He had unbounded faith in his own mental resources, and, at the same time, he had perfect confidence in the men and officers of his army. It was, therefore, less to be wondered at that they on their part entertained an almost absurd respect for their martinet commander.

Orders went out immediately for putting all the force which could be employed upon the construction of the mountain road. Much of the work would have to be performed at night, to keep it secret, and the Mexicans, behind their impa.s.sable entrenchments on the old Cerro Gordo pa.s.s, had no idea of the hidden plans of their enemies. Santa Anna himself may have believed that his antagonist had given up the hope of ever reaching the city of Mexico by that route. The new one, by which he did intend to reach it, grew rapidly to completion, and Ned Crawford obtained from his friend Grant repeated permissions to go and see if Captain Lee wanted him, and then to come back and report progress to his own camp.

"Lieutenant Grant's a man that hardly ever says anything," said Ned to himself, "but he's a prime good fellow, and I like him. He says he isn't much of an engineer, though, and he couldn't build that road."

Such a road it was, too, with bridges over chasms, where the builders had to climb up and down like so many cats. Even after it was said to be complete, it was fit for men only, for not even the most sure-footed mule could have pa.s.sed over it. It was finished on the 17th of April, and on the following day General Scott issued his orders for all the various parts of the coming battle of Cerro Gordo. Strong bodies of infantry were to engage the Mexican front, and keep Santa Anna's army occupied, while the engineers piloted another and stronger column to the real war business of the day. Ned had managed to get himself tangled up with this climbing force, if only to see what use was to be made of his and Zuroaga's new road. The morning came, and even before the sun was up some of the troops were moving.