Mayne Reid - The Guerilla Chief, and Other Tales

“ Agua! por amor Dios, agua – aguita !” (Water! for the love of God, a little water!)

I heard these words, as I lay in my tent, on the field of Cerro Gordo.

It was the night after the battle bearing this name – fought between the American and Mexican armies in the month of April, 1847.

The routed regiments of Santa Anna – saving some four thousand men captured upon the ground – had sought safety in flight, the greater body taking the main road to Jalapa, pursued by our victorious troops; while a large number, having sprawled down the almost perpendicular cliff that overhangs the “Rio del Plan” escaped, unperceived and unpursued, into the wild chapparals that cover the piedmont of Peroté.

Among these last was the lamé tyrant himself, or rather should I say, at their head leading the retreat . This has always been his favourite position at the close of a battle that has gone against him; and a score of such defeats can be recorded.

I could have captured him on that day but for the cowardice of a colonel who had command over me and mine. I alone, of all the American army, saw Santa Anna making his escape from the field, and in such a direction that I could without difficulty have intercepted his retreat. With the strength of a corporal’s guard, I could have taken both him and his glittering staff; but even this number of men was denied me, and nolens volens was I constrained to forego the pleasure of taking prisoner this truculent tyrant, and hanging him to the nearest tree, which, as God is my judge, I should most certainly have done. Through the imbecility of my superior officer, I lost the chance of a triumph calculated to have given me considerable fame; while Mexico missed finding an avenger.

Strictly speaking, I was not in the engagement of Cerro Gordo. My orders on that day – or rather those of the spruce colonel who commanded me – were to guard a battery of mountain howitzers, that had been dragged to the top of the cliff overlooking El plan – not that already mentioned as the field of battle, and which was occupied by the enemy, but the equally precipitous height on the opposite side of the river.

From early daylight until the Mexicans gave way, we kept firing at them across the stupendous chasm that lay between us, doing them no great damage, unless they were frightened by the whizz of an occasional rocket, which our artillerist, Ripley – now a second-rate Secesh general – succeeded in sending into their midst.

As to ourselves and the battery, there was no more danger of either being assaulted by the enemy than there was of our being whisked over the cliff by the tail of a comet. There was not a Mexican soldier on our side of the barranca ; and as to any of them crossing over to us, they could only have performed the feat in a balloon, or by making a circuitous march of nearly a dozen miles.

For all this security, our stick-to-the-text colonel held close to the little battery of howitzers; and would not have moved ten paces from it to have accomplished the capture of the whole Mexican army.

Perfectly satisfied, from the “lights with which we had been furnished,” that there was no danger to our battery, and chafing at the ill-luck that had placed me so far away from the ground where laurels were growing, and where others were in the act of reaping them, I lost all interest in Ripley and his popguns; and straying along the summit of the cliff, I sat me down upon its edge.

A yucca stood stiffly out from the brow of the precipice. It was the tree-yucca, and a huge bole of bayonet-shaped leaves crowning its corrugated trunk shaded a spot of grass-covered turf, on the very edge of the escarpment.

Had I not scaled the Andes, I might have hesitated to trust myself under the shadow of that tree. But a cliff, however sheer and stupendous, could no longer cause a whirl in my brain; and to escape from the rays of a tropical sun, at that moment in mid-heaven, I crept forward, caught hold of the stem of the yucca, lowered my extremities, all booted and spurred as they were, over the angle of the porphrytic rock, took a Havana out of my case, drew a fusee across the steel-filings, and, hanging ignited the cigar, I commenced watching the deadly strife then raging in full fury on the opposite side of the ravine.

The prudent nawab , who preferred looking at a tiger-hunt out of a two-storey window, or the spectator of a bull-fight in the upper tier of a “plaza de toros,” could not have been safer than I, since, without running the slightest risk, I had a “bird’s-eye view” of the battle.

I could see the steady advance of Worth’s division of regulars, supported by the fiery squadrons of Harney’s Horse; the brigade of Twiggs – that hoary-headed sexagenarian bavard , since distinguished as the “traitor of Texas;” the close-lined and magnificently-mounted troop of dragoons with horses of light grey, led by Phil Kearney – Kearney, the accomplished gentleman – the best cavalry officer America ever produced; the dashing, daring Phil Kearney, who, under my own eyes, lost his right arm in the garita of San Antonio de Abad; the lamented Phil. Kearney, since become a victim to the accursed Secesh rebellion, or rather to the mismanagement of that wooden-headed pretender whose stolid “strategy” ignorance still continues to mistake for genius – McClellan.

I saw them, one and all, regulars and volunteers, horse and foot, move at the “forward.” I saw them advance towards the hill “El Telegrafo.” I saw them mending their pace to the double-quick, and break into a run at the “charge!”

I could hear the charging signal and the cheer that succeeded it. I could see the base of the hill suddenly empurpled with smoke – a belt of conglomerate puffs rapidly merging into one another. I could perceive the opposing puffs upon the summit, growing thinner and thinner, as the blue mantle below caped gradually up towards the shoulder of the “cerro.”

Then the smoke upon the summit became dissolved into translucent vapour; the tricoloured Mexican flag flickered for a moment longer through its film, until, as if by some invisible hand, it was dragged down the staff; while at the same instant the banner of the stars and stripes swept out upon the breeze, announcing the termination of the battle of Cerro Gordo.

Despite the chagrin I felt at being literally hors de combat , I could not at this moment avoid surrendering myself to a feeling of exultation.

Both my chagrin and exultation were suddenly checked. A spectacle was before my eyes that inspired me with a vivid hope – a dream of glory.

Like a string of white ants descending the side of one of their steepest “hills,” I perceived a long line moving down the face of the opposite cliff. In the distance – a mile or more – they looked no larger than termites . Like them, too, they were of whitish colour. For all that, I knew they were men – soldiers in the cheap cotton uniforms of the Mexican infantry.

Without any strain upon my powers of ratiocination, I divined that they were fugitives from the field above, who, in their panic, had retreated over the precipice – anywhere that promised to separate them from their victorious foemen.

The moving line was not straight up and down the cliff, but zigzagged along its face. I could tell there was a path.

At its lower end, and already down near the “plan” of the river (Plan del Rio), I perceived a group of men, dressed in dark uniforms. There were points on the more sombre background of their vestments that kept constantly scintillating in the sun. These were gold or gilt buttons, epaulettes, steel scabbards of sabres, or bands of lace.