The Strollers Part 56

After the reverberations, carried from rock to rock with menacing reiteration, had ceased, the stillness was absolute. Even the song-bird remained frightened into silence by those awful echoes. Then the sun rested like a benediction on the land and the white cross of Cortez was distinctly outlined against the blue sky. But soon the long roll of drums followed this interval of quiet.

"Fall in!" "Attention; shoulder arms!" And the sleeping spirit of the Aztec war-G.o.d floated in the murmur which, increasing in volume, arose to tumultuous shout.

"On to Chapultepec! On to Chapultepec!" came from a thousand throats; arms glistened in the sun, bugles sounded resonant in the air, and the pattering noise of horses' hoofs mingled with the stentorian voices of the rough teamsters and the cracking of the whips. Like an irresistible, all-compelling wave, the troops swept out of the valley to hurl themselves against castle and fortress and to plant their colors in the heart of the capital city.

CHAPTER VII

A MEETING ON THE MOUNT

Clothed at its base in a misty raiment of purple, the royal hill lifted above the valley an Olympian crest of porphyritic rock into the fathomless blue. Here not Jupiter and his court looked serenely down upon the struggling race, "indifferent from their awful height," but a dark-hued G.o.d, in Aztec vestments, gazed beyond the meadows to the floating flower beds, the gardens with their baths, and the sensuous dancing girls. All this, but a panorama between naps, soon faded away; the G.o.d yawned, drew his cloak of humming bird feathers more closely about him and sank back to rest. An uproar then disturbed his paleozoic dreams; like fluttering spirits of the garish past, the b.u.t.terflies arose in the forest glades; and the voices of old seemed to chant the Aztec psalm: "The horrors of the tomb are but the cradle of the sun, and the dark shadows of death the brilliant lights for the stars." Even so they had chanted when the early free-booters burst upon the scene and beheld the valley with its frame-work of mountains and two guardian volcanoes, the Gog and Magog of the table-land.

Now again, from the towering column of Montezuma's cypress, to the city marked by spires, the thunder rolled and echoed onward even to the pine-clad cliffs and snow-crowned summits of the rocky giants.

Puffs of smoke dotted the valley beneath the mount, and, as the answering reports reverberated across s.p.a.ce, nature's mortars in the inclosure of mountains sent forth threatening wreaths of white in sympathy with the eight-inch howitzers and sixteen-pounders turned upon the crest of the royal hill.

When the trees were yet wet with their bath of dew the booming of artillery and the clattering of small arms dispelled that peace which partook of no harsher discord than the purling of streams and the still, small voices of the forest. Through the groves where the spirit of Donna Marina--the lost love of the marauder--was said to wander, shrieked the round shot, sh.e.l.ls and grape. Through tangled shrubberies, bright with flowers and colored berries, pierced the discharge of canister; the air, fragrant at the dawn with orange blossom and starry jessamine, was noisome with suffocating, sulphurous fumes, and, beneath the fetid shroud, figures in a fog heedlessly trampled the lilies, the red roses and "flowers of the heart."

From the castle on the summit--mortal trespa.s.s upon the immortal pale of the G.o.ds!--the upward shower was answered by an iron downpour, and two storming parties, with ladders, pick-axes and crows, advanced, one on each side of the hill, to the attack. Boom! boom! before one of the parties, climbing and scrambling to the peak, belched the iron missives of destruction from the concealed mouths of heavy guns, followed by the rattling shower from small arms.

Surprised, they paused, panting from the swift ascent, some throwing themselves p.r.o.ne upon the earth, while the grape and canister pa.s.sed harmlessly over them, others seeking such shelter as rocks, trees and shrubs afforded. Here and there a man fell, but was not suffered to lie long exposed to the fire of the redoubt which, strongly manned, held them in check midway to the summit. Doggedly their comrades rescued the wounded and quickly conveyed them to the rear.

"They've set out their watch-dogs," remarked the general commanding the a.s.sault on that side of the hill, to one of his officers, as he critically surveyed the formidable defense through the tangled shrubbery. "Here is a battery we hadn't reckoned on."

"It was to be expected, sir," responded the officer. "They were sure to have some strong point we couldn't locate."

"Yes," grumbled the general; "in such a jumble of foliage and rocks it would take an eagle's eye to pick out all their miserable ambuscades."

"I have no doubt, sir, the men are rested now," ventured the other.

"No doubt they are," chuckled the general, still studying the situation, glancing to the right and the left of the redoubt. "The more fighting they get the more they want. They are not so band-boxy as they were, but remind me of an old, mongrel dog I once owned. He wasn't much to look at--but I'll tell you the story later." A sudden quick decision appearing on his face. Evidently the working of his mind had been foreign to his words.

"Saint-Prosper," he said, "I suppose the boys on the other side are going up all the time? I promised our troops the honor of pulling down that flag. I'm a man of my word; go ahead and take the batteries and"--stroking his long gray goatee--"beat Pillow to the top."

A word; a command; they rushed forward; not a laggard in the ranks; not a man who shirked the leaden shower; not one who failed to offer his breast openly and fearlessly to the red death which to them might come when it would. Unwaveringly over rocks, chasms and mines, they followed the tall figure of their leader; death underfoot, death overhead! What would courage avail against concealed mines? Yet like a pack of hounds that reck naught while the scent is warm, they pressed forward, ever forward; across the level opening, where some dropped out of the race, and over the ramparts! A brief struggle; confusion, turmoil; something fearful occurring that no eye could see in its entirety through the smoke; afterwards, a great shout that announced to the palace on the mount the fate of the intermediary batteries!

But there was sharper and more arduous work to come; this, merely a foretaste of the last, fierce stand of the besieged; a stand in which they knew they were fighting for everything, where defeat meant the second conquest of Mexico! From the batteries the a.s.sailants had captured to the foot of the castle seemed but a little way to them in their zeal; no one thought of weariness, or the toil of the ascent.

But one determination possessed them--to end it all quickly; to carry everything before them! Their victory at the redoubt gave them such sudden, wild confidence that castles seemed no more than ant-hills--to be trampled on! Instinctively every man felt sure of the day and already experienced the glory of conquering that historic hill; that invincible fortress! Over the great valley, so beautiful in its physical features, so inspiring in its a.s.sociations, should hang the stars of the North, with the stars of heaven!

The scaling ladders were brought up and planted by the storming party; the first to mount were hurled back, killed or wounded, to the rocks below, but others took their places; a lodgment was effected, and, like the water bursting over a dike, a tide of besiegers found ingress.

Under a galling fire, with shouts that rang above the noise of rifles, they drove the ma.s.ses of the enemy from their guns; all save one, not a Mexican from his fair skin, who stood confidently beside his piece, an ancient machine, made of copper and strengthened by bands of iron.

A handsome face; dead to morality, alive to pleasure; the face of a man past thirty, the expression of immortal one-and-twenty! A figure from the pages of Ovid, metamorphosed to a gunner of Santa Anna! The bright radiance from a cloudless sky, the smoke having drifted westward from the summit, fell upon him and his gun.

With inscrutable calmness, one hand fondling the breech, he regarded the fleeting figures and the hoa.r.s.e-throated pursuers; then, as if to time the opportunity to the moment, he bent over the gun.

"I wonder if this first-born can still bark!" he muttered.

But an instant's hesitation, friend and foe being fairly intermingled, was fatal to his purpose; the venerable culverin remained silent, and the gunner met hand-to-hand a figure that sprang from the incoming host. Simultaneously the rapid firing of a new wave of besiegers from the other side of the castle threw once more a pall of smoke over the scene, and, beneath its mantle, the two men were like figures struggling in a fog, feeling rather than seeing each other's blade, divining by touch the cut, pa.s.s or aggressive thrust.

"Faugh!" laughed the gunner. "They'll kill us with smoke."

The discharge of small arms gradually ceased; the fresh breeze again cleared the crest of the mount, showing the white walls of the structure which had been so obstinately defended; the valley, where the batteries now lay silent, having spoken their thundering prologue, and the alien flag, the regimental colors of the invaders, floating from the upper walls. Below on the road toward the city, a band of white across the table land, successive spots of smoke momentarily appeared and were succeeded, after a considerable interval, by the rub-a-dub of rifles. From the disenchanting distance the charge of a body of men, in the attempt to dislodge a party entrenched in a ditch, lost the tragic aspect of warfare, and the soldiers who fell seemed no larger than the toy figures of a nursery game.

With the brightening of the summit to the light of day, eagerly the two combatants near the copper gun gazed for the first time into each other's eyes, and, at that trenchant glance, a tremor crossed the features of the gunner, and his arm, with its muscles of steel, suddenly became inert, powerless.

"_Mon Dieu!_--'Tis Ernest--little Ernest!" he exclaimed, wonderingly.

For all that his opponent's sword, ominously red from the fierce first a.s.sault at the wall, was at his breast, he made no effort to oppose its threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, pa.s.sing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose and fell with labored breathing, it was with an almost quizzical glance he regarded the other who stood as if turned to stone.

"That was not so easily done, Ernest," he said, not unkindly, "but surprise broke down my guard."

"Before G.o.d, it was not I!" cried the soldier, starting from a trance.

"And if it were!" With his free arm he felt his shoulder. "I believe you are right," he observed, coolly. "Swords break no bones."

"I will get a surgeon," said the other, as he turned.

"What for? To shake his head? Get no one, or if--for boyish days!--you want to serve me, lend me your canteen."

Saint-Prosper held it to his lips, and he drank thirstily.

"That was a draught in an oasis. I had the desert in my throat--the desert, the wild desert! What a place to meet! But they caught Abd-el-Kader, and there was nothing for it but to flee! Besides, I am a rolling stone."

To hear him who had betrayed his country and shed the blood of his comrades, characterize himself by no harsher term was an amazing revelation of the man's character.

The s.p.a.ce around them had become almost deserted; here and there lay figures on the ground among which might be distinguished a sub-lieutenant and other students of the military college, the castle having been both academy and garrison. Their tuition barely over, so early had they given up their lives beneath the cla.s.sic walls of their _alma mater_! The exhilarating cheering and shouting had subsided; the sad after-flavor succeeded the l.u.s.t of conquest.

"Yes," continued the gunner, though the words came with an effort.

"First, it was the desert. What a place to roll and rove! I couldn't help it for the life of me! When I was a boy I ran away from school; a lad, I ran away from college! If I had been a sailor I would have deserted the ship. After they captured the prophet, I deserted the desert. So, hey for Mexico, a hilly place for a rolling stone!"

He gasped, held his hand to his shoulder and brought it away covered with red. But that Saint-Prosper knelt swiftly, sustaining and supporting him, he would have slid to the ground. He smiled--sweetly enough--on the stern soldier and placed his moist and stained hand caressingly on that of his companion. Seeing them thus, it was not difficult to trace a family likeness--a similarity in their very dissimilarity. The older was younger; the younger, older. The gunner's hair was light, his face wild as a gerfalcon beneath; the other's dark, with a countenance, habitually repressed, but now, at the touch of that dishonored hand, grown cold and harsh; yet despite the total difference of expression, the hereditary resemblance could not be stamped out. Even the smile of the wounded man was singularly like that of his brother--a rare transformation that seldom failed to charm.

"That's my story," he said, smiling now, as though all the problems of life and death could be thus dismissed. "As the prophet said: 'I have urged my camel through every desert!' You see I know my Koran well.

But how came you here, Ernest? I thought you were in Africa, colonizing--us!"

"It was impossible to stay there long," replied Saint-Prosper, slowly.

"There's that cloud of smoke again," muttered the wounded man, apparently oblivious to the other's response. As he spoke he withdrew his hand from that of his brother. At that moment the tropic sun was bathing him in its light and the white walls shone with l.u.s.ter. "No; it's like the desert; the dark hour before the sand-storm." Upon his brow the perspiration gathered, but his lip curled half-scornfully, half-defiantly. "Turn me toward the valley, Ernest. There's more s.p.a.ce; more light!"

The soldier, an automaton in pa.s.sive compliance, placed him where he commanded the outlook cityward; the open plain, protected by the breast-works of mountains; the distant spires trembling on the horizon; the lakes which once marked the Western Venice, a city of perfume and song. Striking a body of water, the sun converted it into a glowing shield, a silver escutcheon of the land of silver, and, in contrast with this polished splendor, the shadows, trailing on the far-away mountains, were soft, deep and velvety. But the freedom of the outlook afforded the wounded man little comfort.

"The storm!" he said.

A change pa.s.sed over his face, as of a shadow drawn before it. He groped helplessly with his hand.

"Feel in my burnoose, Ernest. A bag--around my neck--open it!"