Ahead of the Army Part 3

Very possibly, the list of American slain would contain the announcement that a mere second lieutenant, named Ulysses S. Grant, had been struck by a chance shot from one of the Mexican batteries.

CHAPTER III.

THE FORTUNE OF WAR

The morning of the 9th of May dawned brightly on the ocean and on the sh.o.r.e. There was a heavy sea running on the Gulf of Mexico, but the wind that was blowing was little more than a ten-knot breeze. Before this, at distances of a few miles from each other, a trio of armed vessels, representing three of the great powers of the world, were dashing along under full sail, as if they were in a hurry. They were so, for they all were searching hungrily after a double-flagged bark, which they had caught the day before, but which had managed to escape from them in the night. She had done it mysteriously and impudently. Instead of her, there now toiled along, away behind them, a dingy-looking Brazilian coffee schooner, the skipper of which did not conceal his satisfaction over the idea that he had unintentionally aided some other sailor--he did not care who--to get away from all those war-sharks. Well to the westward, with every sail spread that she could carry, the _Goshhawk_ sped along in apparent safety, but she was once more carrying the American flag, and Ned Crawford, busy below at his breakfast, felt a great deal easier in his patriotic mind. He could almost forget, for the moment, that he was taking a cargo of the worst kind of contraband of war goods to the armies of the enemies of his country. He was shortly on deck again, to be heartily greeted by Captain Kemp with:

"Hullo, my boy, where are all your ships of war?"

Ned took a long, sweeping glance around the horizon, and replied:

"It looks as if we'd lost 'em."

"We've done it!" chuckled the captain. "I think we'll not see any more of that lot. We made a fine run in the night, and we may be within three days' sail of Vera Cruz. But that depends a great deal on the wind and on our luck in keeping out of difficulties."

The captain turned away to his duties, and Ned went forward among the sailors. He could always manage to have good chats with them, and they were especially ready just now to discuss the war and their chances for running against more cruisers. Ned did not count as one of them exactly, but he was not to be looked down upon as a mere pa.s.senger. His father had sent him out as a kind of honorary supercargo, or ship's clerk, in the hope that he might learn something which would be of use to him when he should grow up into a full-sized merchant. Perhaps he had already found out a number of things upon which his father had not calculated when he said good-by to him. He was about to learn some other things which were not upon the ship's books, for he had reached the heel of the bowsprit, where Senor Zuroaga was standing, gazing dreamily westward.

"Good morning, senor!" said Ned. "We did get away."

"I don't know how good a morning it is for me," replied the dark-faced Mexican, wearily. "I may have only three or four days to wait before I shall know whether or not I am to be shot at Vera Cruz by order of his Excellency, President Paredes. My best chance is that he cannot know that I am coming. After I get ash.o.r.e, my life may very soon depend upon his being beaten out of power by the armies of the United States."

"It couldn't be so in any other country," said Ned. "What have you ever done against him?"

"I won't say just now," replied the senor, "but he knows that I am his enemy. So I am of Santa Anna, if he is to get back. He murdered my father and confiscated our property in Oaxaca. Do you know where that is?"

"No," said Ned; "I don't know anything about the States of Mexico. It's hard enough to keep track of the United States. They make a new one every few weeks. They may have let in half a dozen while we've been at sea."

"No," said Zuroaga, "but they've tightened their grip on Texas, and I hope they'll hold on hard, if only to keep Paredes and Santa Anna from murdering all the best men in it. Well, Oaxaca lies due south of the State of Vera Cruz, and I can escape into it if I have half a chance.

I'd be safe then, for I have plenty of friends there. We have owned huge tracts of land in Oaxaca ever since the Spaniards conquered Mexico."

"How did your folks get so much of it?" inquired Ned.

"I'll tell you," said the senor, proudly, and with a fiery flash in his coal-black eyes. "A man by the name of Hernando Cortes really conquered Mexico, without much help from the King of Spain. The king made a great deal of him for it, at first. He made him a marquis, which was a great thing in those days, whatever it is now. He also gave him a royal grant of some of the land he had won for Spain. This land was the valley of the Tehuantepec River, that empties into the Pacific Ocean near the eastern boundary of Oaxaca. So his t.i.tle was Marquis del Valle, and his descendants hold a great deal of that land to this day. I am one of them,--one of the Marquisanas, as they call us. I am a direct descendant of Hernando Cortes, and that isn't all. One of my ancestors married an Aztec princess, and so I am also descended from the Montezumas, who were emperors of Mexico before the Spaniards came. I'm an Indian on one side, and I've more than one good reason for hating a Spaniard and a tyrant."

Ned Crawford had read the story of the conquest of Mexico, like a great many other American boys. That is, he had read it as if it had been a tip-top novel rather than a reality. He had admired Hernando Cortes, as a hero of fiction, but here he was, now, actually talking with one of the hero's great-great-grandchildren, who was also, after a fashion, one of the Montezumas. It was like a short chapter out of some other novel, with the night race of the _Goshhawk_ thrown in by way of variation. He was thinking about it, however, rather than asking questions, and the senor went on:

"It's a rich, beautiful country, all that eastern part of Oaxaca. There are splendid mountains and great forests of mahogany, rosewood, and pine. Through it runs the Coatzacoalcos River, northerly, to the gulf.

Along the rivers and through the mountain pa.s.ses, there is an old road that Cortes himself made to lead his little army across to the Pacific."

"I'd like to go over on it!" exclaimed Ned. "I guess I will, some day. I want to know all about Mexico."

He made up his mind, from what his companion went on to tell him, that there would be a great deal worth seeing, but at that time n.o.body was dreaming how many Americans, older and younger, were soon to travel over the old Cortes road. California was to be annexed, as well as Texas, and before Ned Crawford would be old enough to cast his first vote, there was to be a great tide of eager gold hunters pouring along what was called the Tehuantepec route to the placers and diggings.

The days of California gold mining had not yet come, and while Ned and the senor talked on about the terrible history of Mexico, with its factions, its b.l.o.o.d.y revenges, its p.r.o.nunciamentos, and its fruitless revolutions, the _Goshhawk_ sailed swiftly along toward Vera Cruz and the powder-needing garrison of the castle of San Juan de Ulua.

Whether or not the war had actually begun was still a puzzling question in the mind of Captain Kemp, but he would have had no doubt whatever if he had been with General Taylor and his remarkable gathering of young students of the art of war. They all obtained several important lessons that day. One of these was that it is both difficult and dangerous for an advancing army to push on through dense bushes and high gra.s.s in hot weather, with Mexican lancers ready to pounce upon them among the lanes of the chaparral. It was found, not only before but after the short, sharp collision with the Mexican forces at Resaca de la Palma that a number of valuable lives had been lost in the bushy wilderness.

The American army moved slowly forward, and before nightfall the long lines of its blue uniforms went over the prairie rolls in full sight of the fort. The Stars and Stripes were still flying above the badly damaged ramparts, and cheer after cheer went up from thousands of throats, including those of the rescued garrison. They had not really lost many men, killed or wounded, but among the killed was their commander, Major Brown, after whom the fort was now named. In later years, a town grew up around the site of the frontier fortress, and it is called Brownsville. General Taylor's men had triumphantly cut their way through the difficult twenty miles from the sea to the siege, but perhaps any individual hero among them might have safely quoted the wise remark of Lieutenant Grant, as he looked at the fort and recalled his exploits of the day.

"Well, after all," he said to himself, "I don't know but what the battle of Resaca de la Palma would have been won just as well if I had not been there."

Long years afterward, it was to be said of a number of other battles that they would not have been won just as well if he had not been there to win them, and the same would be equally true of several of his young companions, as inexperienced as himself, and as ignorant of the great things before them in the far future.

Their army went into camp near the fort; and the Mexican forces, for the greater part, were believed to have retreated across the Rio Grande.

It is said that after every storm there comes a calm, but it was not a pleasant calm in the neighborhood of the American camp. There were all the while strong parties of Mexican lancers hovering around in all directions, on the lookout for imprudent stragglers, and a sharp watch had to be kept to guard against sudden dashes at the outposts, for the "rancheros," as the Mexican hors.e.m.e.n were called, were both well-mounted and enterprising. There was yet another kind of calm of a curious character. General Taylor absolutely did not know what to do next, and he could not know until after he should hear from the President what the statesmen in Congress had decided. Beyond a doubt, war was going on right here, but there was a dispute as to the nature of it and as to what was to be done with it. The Mexican geographers claimed that the southern boundary of Texas, even if it had been legally annexed to the United States, was at the Nueces River, and that all their country south of that line was still their own. According to them, therefore, General Taylor's army was not in Texas at all, but in Mexico. On the other hand, the American geographers placed the boundary at the Rio Grande, many miles south of the Nueces, and claimed that the forces defeated by General Taylor had invaded the United States. If both parties were right, then it might have been said that all that land between the rivers did not belong to anybody until the t.i.tle to it should be settled by a military court and gunpowder arguments. That was really the way in which it was finally settled, and there is now no more dispute about it. History tells us that so have all the great national land t.i.tles of the world been argued and determined.

There was what some people call a waiting spell, and all things on sea or land might be spoken of as feverishly quiet for a day or two. In the afternoon of the third day, however, there was a sort of change in the weather at one spot away out on the gulf. There was not a cloud in the sky, indeed, and the _Goshhawk_ was skimming along under full sail so steadily that part of her crew had nothing better to do than to lie around on the deck, and feel satisfied that the breeze was so very good.

In the same manner, the American soldiers in the neighborhood of Fort Brown were lying around in and out of their tents, and wishing that they had more shade to protect them from the hot sun of Texas or Mexico, whichever it might be. At that hour, however, there arrived upon the _Goshhawk_ a bit of unexpected news which awakened everybody, for the man at the lookout announced, excitedly:

"Schooner under Mexican flag, sir! Well away to loo'ard. Looks as if she might come pretty nigh us."

"Just the thing I wanted!" shouted Captain Kemp, springing to his feet.

"We'll bear away for her. Up with the British flag, too. She'd shy the Stars and Stripes. They wouldn't tell us what the news is, either."

Once more, therefore, the _Goshhawk_ became an Englishman, and her chase after the latest news did not have to be a long one. Not many minutes later, the two vessels were within hailing distance, and the stranger spoke first, in a tone of evident anxiety:

"What ship is that?"

"_Goshhawk_, from Liverpool to Vera Cruz, with supplies for the Castle of San Juan de Ulua. What ship is that?"

"Schooner _Tampico_, from Havana to Matamoras, with supplies for General Ampudia," came much more cheerfully back. "We had to run away from Matamoras in ballast to escape the gringos. Their cruisers are around like hawks. You won't get to Vera Cruz if they can help it."

Captain Kemp already knew something about the reckless ways of men-of-war, but he did not say so. He merely responded:

"Is that so? How about the war? We've no news at all."

"War?" shouted the Mexican skipper, triumphantly. "Why, there have been three great battles already. We have whipped the Americans! General Taylor is surrounded, and will have to surrender. So will the fort on the Rio Grande. We shall drive the gringos out of Texas. I did not know until now that you British were going to help us."

There could be no further conversation, for the _Goshhawk_ was sweeping on out of hearing, but Ned Crawford exclaimed, indignantly:

"Our army defeated? How can that be? I don't believe it!"

Everybody on deck could hear the captain when he laughingly responded:

"The victories were won in that fellow's head, most likely. He was on board his schooner at Matamoras, and he didn't see it done. All he knows is that the war is really begun. It takes a long time, men, to make either an American or a British army think of surrendering. We shall hear a good deal more about those battles one of these days. I'd like to read the newspaper reports, though, on both sides."

"They would be good fun," dryly remarked Senor Zuroaga. "There is n.o.body on earth that can win victories like a newspaper editor."

"Hullo!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "Something's the matter with the captain! Did you hear that?"

There was quite enough to hear. A long, loud hail that came down from the rigging was followed by almost a yell from Captain Kemp.

"We're chased again!" he said. "Thank G.o.d, she's astern! Men, we're in for it! Now for Vera Cruz or a prison! I'm ready!"