The Quest of the Four Part 35

"It was a great battle!" said Phil, with a look of pride.

"And a great victory!" said Middleton, he, too, although older, feeling that flash of pride.

Phil was glad enough now to seek sleep. The nervous excitement that kept him awake and alert was all gone. He remembered the fire beside which Bill Breakstone and Arenberg slept, and made his way back there.

Neither had moved a particle. They still lay with their heads on their elbows, and they drew long, deep breaths with such steadiness and regularity that apparently they had made up their minds to sleep for years to come. Four other men lay near them in the same happy condition.

"Six," said Phil. "Well, the fable tells of the Seven Sleepers, so I might as well complete the number."

He chose the best place that was left, secured his blanket from his saddlebow, wrapped himself thoroughly in it, and lay down with his feet to the fire. How glorious it felt! It was certainly very cold in the Pa.s.s of Angostura. Ice was forming, and the wind cut, but there was the fire at his feet and the thick blanket around him. His body felt warm through and through, and the hard earth was like down after such a day.

Now victory came, too, with its pleasantest aroma. Lying there under the stars, he could realize, in its great sense, all that they had done.

And he had borne his manly part in it. He was a boy, and he had reason for pride.

Phil stared up for a little while at the cold stars which danced in the sky, myriads of miles away, but after awhile his glance turned again toward the earth. The other six of the seven sleepers slept on, not stirring at all, save for the rising and falling of their chests, and Phil decided that he was neglecting his duty by failing to join them at once in that vague and delightful land to which they had gone.

He shut his eyes, opened them once a minute or two later, but found the task of holding up the lids too heavy. They shut down again, stayed down, and in two minutes the six sleepers had become the seven.

Phil slept the remainder of the night as heavily as if he had been steeped in some eastern drug. He, too, neither moved hand nor foot after he had once gone to oblivion. The fire burned out, but he did not awake. He was warm in his blanket, and sleep was bringing back the strength that body and mind had wasted in the day. It was quiet, too, on the battlefield. The surgeons still worked with the wounded, but they had been taken back in the shelter of the pa.s.s, and the sounds did not come to those on the plateau. Only the wind moaned incessantly, and the cold was raw and bitter.

About half way between midnight and morning Bill Breakstone awoke. He merely opened his eyes, not moving his body, but he stared about him in a dim wonder. His awakening had interrupted a most extraordinary dream.

He had been dreaming that he was in a battle that had lasted at least a month, and was not yet finished. Red strife and its fierce emotions were still before him when he awoke. Now he gazed all around, and saw only blackness, with a few points of light here and there.

His eyes, growing used to the darkness, came back, and he saw six stiff figures stretched on the ground in a row, three on each side of him. He looked at them fixedly and saw that they were the figures of human beings. Moreover, he recognized two of them, and they were his best friends. Then he remembered all about the battle, the great struggle, how the terrible crisis came again and again, how the victory finally was won, and he was glad that these two friends of his were alive, though they seemed to be sleeping as men never slept before.

Breakstone sat up and looked at the six sleepers. The blankets of two of them had shifted a little, and he pulled them back around their necks. Then he glanced down the valley where the lights of Santa Anna's army flickered, and it all seemed wonderful, unbelievable to him. Yet it was true. They had beaten off an army of more than twenty thousand men, and had inflicted upon Santa Anna a loss far greater than their own. He murmured very softly:

"Dreadful was the fight, Welcome is the night; Fiercely came the foe, Many we laid low; Backward he is sent, But we, too, are spent.

I believe that's about as true a poem as I ever composed," he said, "whatever others may think about the rhyme and meter, and to be true is to be right. That work well done, I'll go back to sleep again."

He lay down once more and, within a minute, he kept his word. Phil and his comrades were awakened just at the break of day by Middleton. Only a narrow streak of light was to be seen over the eastern ridges, but the Captain explained that he wanted them to go on a little scout toward the Mexican army. They joined him with willingness and went down the southern edge of the plateau. A few lights could be seen at the points that Phil had marked during the night, and they approached very cautiously. But they saw no signs of life. There were no patrols, no cavalry, none of the stir of a great army, nothing to indicate any human presence, until they came upon wounded men, abandoned upon the rugged ground where they lay. When Phil and his comrades, belief turned into certainty, rushed forward, Santa Anna and his whole army were gone, leaving behind them their dead and desperately wounded. Tents, supplies, and some arms were abandoned in the swift retreat, but the army itself had already disappeared under the southern horizon, leaving the field of Buena Vista to the victors.

They hurried back with the news. It spread like fire through the army.

Every man who could stand was on his feet. A mighty cheer rolled through the Pa.s.s of Angostura, and the dark gorges and ravines of the Sierra Madre gave it back in many echoes.

The victory, purchased at so great a price, was complete. Mounted scouts, sent out, returned in the course of the day with the information that Santa Anna had not stopped at Agua Neva. He was marching southward as fast as he could, and there was no doubt that he would not stop until he reached the City of Mexico, where he would prepare to meet the army of Scott, which was to come by the way of Vera Cruz. The greatness of their victory did not dawn upon the Americans until then. Not only had they beaten back a force that outnumbered them manifold, but all Northern Mexico lay at the feet of Taylor. The war there was ended, and it was for Scott to finish it in the Valley of Mexico.

The following night the fires were built high on the plateau and in the Pa.s.s of Angostura. Nearly everybody rested except the surgeons, who still worked. Hundreds of the Mexican wounded had been left on the field, and they received the same attention that was bestowed upon the Americans. Nevertheless, the boy soldiers were cheerful. They knew that the news of their wonderful victory was speeding north, and they felt that they had served their country well.

Phil did not know until long afterward that at home the army of Taylor had been given up as lost. News that Santa Anna was in front of him with an overwhelming force had filtered through, and then had come the long blank. Nothing was heard. It was supposed that Taylor had been destroyed or captured. It was known that his force was composed almost wholly of young volunteers, boys, and no chance of escape seemed possible.

In the West and South, in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, the anxiety was most tense and painful. There, nearly every district had sent some one to Buena Vista, and they sought in vain for news. There were dark memories of the Alamo and Goliad, especially in the Southwest, and these people thought of the disaster as in early days they thought of a defeat by the Indians, when there were no wounded or prisoners, only slain.

But even the nearest states were separated from Mexico by a vast wilderness, and, as time pa.s.sed and nothing came, belief settled into certainty. The force of Taylor had been destroyed. Then the messenger arrived literally from the black depths with the news of the unbelievable victory. Taylor was not destroyed. He had beaten an army that outnumbered him five to one. The little American force held the Pa.s.s of Angostura, and Santa Anna, with his shattered army, was flying southward. At first it was not believed. It was incredible, but other messengers came with the same news, and then one could doubt no longer.

The victory struck so powerfully upon the imagination of the American people that it carried Taylor into the White House.

Meanwhile, Phil, in the Pa.s.s of Angostura, sitting by a great fire on the second night after the battle, was thinking little of his native land. After the tremendous interruption of Buena Vista, his mind turned again to the object of his search. He read and reread his letter. He thought often of the lava that had cut his brother's feet and his own.

John was sure that they had gone through a pa.s.s, and he knew that a woman at a well had given him water. The belief that they were on the trail of those forlorn prisoners was strong within him. And Bill Breakstone and Arenberg believed it, too.

"Our army, I understand, will go into quarters in this region," he said, "and will make no further advance by land into Mexico. We enlisted only for this campaign, and I am free to depart. I mean to go at once, boys."

"We go with you, of course," said Bill Breakstone. "Good old Hans and I here have already talked it over. There will be no more campaigning in Northern Mexico, and we've done our duty. Besides, we've got quests of our own that do not lead toward the valley of Mexico."

Phil grasped a hand of each and gave it a strong squeeze.

"I knew that you would go with me, as I'll go with you when the time comes," he said.

They received their discharge the next morning, and were thanked by General Taylor himself for bravery in battle. Old Rough and Ready put his hand affectionately on Phil's shoulder.

"May good fortune follow you wherever you may be going," he said. "It was such boys as you who won this battle."

He also caused them to be furnished with large supplies of ammunition.

Middleton could go no farther. He and some other officers were to hurry to Tampico and join Scott for the invasion of Mexico by the way of Vera Cruz.

"But boys," he said, "we may meet again. We've been good comrades, I think, and circ.u.mstances may bring us together a second time when this war is over."

"It rests upon the knees of the G.o.ds," said Arenberg.

"I know it will come true," said the more sanguine Breakstone.

"So do I," said Phil.

Middleton rode away with his brother officers and a small body of regulars, and Phil, Arenberg, and Breakstone rode southward to Agua Neva. When they had gone some distance they stopped and looked back at the plateau and the pa.s.s.

"How did we ever do it?" said Phil.

"By refusing to stay whipped," replied Arenberg.

"By making up our minds to die rather than give up," replied Bill Breakstone.

They rode on to the little Mexican town, where Phil had an errand to do.

He had talked it over with the other two, and the three had agreed that it was of the utmost importance. All the time a sentence from the letter was running in Phil's head. Some one murmuring words of pity in Mexican had given him water to drink, and the voice was that of a woman.

"It must have been from a well," said Phil, "this is a dry country with water mostly from wells, and around these wells villages usually grow.

Bill, we must be on the right track. I can't believe that we're going wrong."

"The signs certainly point the way we're thinking," said Bill Breakstone. "The lava, the dust, and the water. We've pa.s.sed the lava and the dust, and we know that the water is before us."

They came presently to Agua Neva, a somber little town, now reoccupied by a detachment from Taylor's army. The people were singularly quiet and subdued. The defeat of Santa Anna by so small a force and his precipitate flight made an immense impression upon them, and, as they suffered no ill treatment from the conquerors, they did not seek to make trouble. There was no sharpshooting in the dark, no waylaying of a few hors.e.m.e.n by guerillas, and the three could pursue without hesitation the inquiry upon which they were bent.

Wells! Wells! Of course there were wells in Agua Neva. Several of them, and the water was very fine. Would the senors taste it? They would, and they pa.s.sed from one well to another until they drank from them all. Breakstone could speak Spanish, and its Mexican variations, and he began to ask questions--chance ones at first, something about the town and its age, and the things that he had seen. Doubtless in the long guerilla war between Texas and Mexico, captives, the fierce Texans, had pa.s.sed through there on their way to strong prisons in the south.

Such men had pa.s.sed more than once, but the people of Agua Neva did not remember any particular one among them. They spent a day thus in vain, and Phil, gloomy and discouraged, rode back to the quarters of the American detachment.

"Don't be downhearted, Phil," said Breakstone. "In a little place like this one must soon pick up the trail. It will not be hard to get at the gossip. We'll try again to-morrow."

They did not go horseback the next morning, not wishing to attract too much attention, but strolled about the wells again, Breakstone talking to the women in the most ingratiating manner. He was a handsome fellow, this Breakstone, and he had a smile that women liked. They did not frown upon him at Agua Neva because he belonged to the enemy, but exchanged a gay word or two with him, Spanish or Mexican banter as he pa.s.sed on.

They came to a well at which three women were drawing water for the large jars that they carried on their heads, and these were somewhat unlike the others. They were undoubtedly of Indian blood, Aztec perhaps, or more likely Toltec. They were tall for Mexican women, and it seemed to Phil that they bore themselves with a certain erectness and pride. Their faces were n.o.ble and good.