The Quest of the Four Part 29

This is lofty, and the way narrowed fast. Nor did the sunlight fall so plentifully there, and the winds grew colder as they whistled through the pa.s.s. After the brilliant opalescent air of the plain, they seemed to be riding in a sort of twilight, and Phil felt his spirits droop.

Deeper and deeper they went into the cut. Above him loomed the mountains, dark and menacing. Shrub and dwarfed plants clung here and there in the crannies, but the range was bare, and often it was distorted into strange shapes, sometimes like that of the human countenance. The sky showed in a ribbon above, but it had turned gray, and was somber and depressing. Behind came the long line of the army, the wheels of the artillery clanking over the stones.

Once or twice Phil thought he saw figures in sombreros and serapes far up the mountainside, watching them. Mexicans, no doubt, ready to report to Santa Anna the advance of the American army. He expected that some stray shots might be fired down into the pa.s.s by these spies or guerillas, but evidently they had other business than merely to annoy, and no bullets came.

Phil's horse stumbled, and the boy saved him from a fall with a quick pull. Arenberg's horse stumbled, also, and Phil noticed that his own was now walking gingerly over a path of solid but dark stone, corrugated and broken into sharp edges. Well might a horse, even one steel-shod, be careful here! Phil knew it was volcanic rock, lava that had flowed down ages ago from the crests of the peaks about them, once volcanoes but extinct long since.

His horse stumbled again, but recovered himself quickly. It certainly was dangerous rock, sometimes sharp almost like a knifeblade, and the shoes of the infantry would be cut badly. Cut badly! A sudden thought sprang up in his brain and refused to be dislodged. It was one of those lightning ideas, based on little things, that carry conviction with them through their very force and swiftness. His free hand went up to the breast of his coat and clutched the spot beneath which his brother's letter lay. He had read a hundred times the words of the captive, telling how his feet had beer cut by the sharp stone. Lava might be found at many places in Mexico, but it was along these trails in Northern Mexico that the fighting bands of Mexicans and Texans pa.s.sed.

He reasoned with himself for a few moments, saying that he was foolish, and hoping that he was not, but the idea remained in his head, and he knew that it was fixed there. He leaned over and said, in a husky whisper to Bill Breakstone:

"Bill, have you noticed it! The rock! The lava! How it cuts! How it would quickly slice the sole from the shoe of a captive who had marched far! Bill! Bill, I say, have you noticed it?"

Bill Breakstone looked in astonishment at his young comrade, but he was a man of uncommonly quick perceptions, and in a moment he comprehended.

"I understand," he said. "Your brother's letter and the pa.s.sage in which he tells of his shoes being cut by the sharp stone while he was led along blindfolded. He may have pa.s.sed along this very road, Phil.

It may be. It may be. I won't say you are wrong."

"What if we are near him now!" continued Phil. "I've often heard you quote those lines, Bill, saying there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy. I told you before that if the letter could reach me so far away in Kentucky it could also bring mo to the place where it was written! I believed it then, Bill, and I believe it now. What if John is here in these mountains, within forty or fifty miles of us, or maybe twenty!"

"Steady, boy, steady!" said Bill Breakstone soothingly. "Your guess may be right. G.o.d knows I'm not the one to deny it, but we've got to fight a battle first. At least, I think so, and for the present we must put our minds on it."

Phil was silent, but his idea possessed him. Often we dwell upon things so long and we seek so hard to have them happen in a certain way that the slightest indication becomes proof. He could not think now of Taylor or Santa Anna, or of a coming battle, but only of his brother between four narrow stone walls, sitting at a narrow window that looked out upon a bleak mountainside. His horse no longer felt the guiding hand upon the bridle rein, but guided himself. Breakstone noticed that the boy's mind was far away, and, his heart full of sympathy, he said nothing for a long time.

They pa.s.sed after awhile into a narrow valley, down the center of which ran a dry arroyo, fully twenty feet deep, with perpendicular banks. The rest of the valley was crisscrossed with countless gullies worn by winter storms and floods, and the army was compelled to march in a slender file in the bed of the arroyo. Here many of the cavalrymen dismounted and led their horses. The cannon wheels clanked louder than ever.

"I'll be glad when we're through this," said Bill Breakstone. "Seems to me the place was built for a trap, and it's mighty lucky for us that there's n.o.body here to spring it. Look out, Phil, you'd better watch your horse now! Some of these turnings are pretty rough, and you don't want a thousand pounds or so of horseflesh tumbling down upon you."

Phil came back from his visions and devoted himself to the task before them, one that required the full attention of every man. An entire battery became stuck in a gully that intersected the arroyo. He and other cavalrymen hitched their horses to the guns and helped pull them out. The whole army was now stumbling and struggling over the fearful ground. Every effort was made to save artillery and horses alike from injury. But as they approached its lower end the Pa.s.s of Angostura became still more difficult. The gullies increased in number, and many of the deep intersecting ravines ran far back into the mountains. A swarm of sure-footed skirmishers on either flank could have done great damage here to the Americans, but the peaks and the lava slopes on either side presented only silence and desolation.

It was a long journey, difficult in the extreme, and attended by thousands of falls, cuts, and bruises, but the army came through the Pa.s.s of Angostura at last, marching out upon a series of promontories or ridges, each about a mile long and perhaps a third of a mile across.

From these the exhausted troops looked back at the frowning mountains and the deep defile through which they had come.

"That was certainly a job," said Bill Breakstone.

"Yes," said Middleton, who stood near, "but what a place for a defense, the plateau and these promontories running out from it, and all the ravine and gullies behind!"

It is a matter of chronicle that at least fifty officers were saying the same words at almost the same time, and even Phil, without military training, could see the truth of it. Taylor pushed on to Agua Neva, arriving there in the evening. But the next morning the reports of Santa Anna's advance in overwhelming force became so numerous that he fell back with the main army to the mouth of the Pa.s.s of Angostura, leaving Marshall with his brave Kentuckians as a rear guard at Agua Neva, and with instructions to make the utmost resistance if they were attacked.

The next night came on somber and cold. It was the evening of February 21, 1847, and the next day would be the birthday of the great Was.h.i.+ngton, a fact not forgotten by these young volunteers so far from the states in which they were born. This was a land totally unlike their own. Cold black peaks showed in the growing twilight. Around them were the gullies, the ravines, and the arroyos, with the sheets of the ancient black lava. It was like a region that belonged in the far beginning of time.

A great force under Wool, the second in command, was throwing up intrenchments of earth and rock and fortifying the heads of the ravines.

Lieutenant Was.h.i.+ngton, with five heavy guns, was planted in the roadway, or rather trail, in front of all. Other guns were placed on the plateau and promontories, and behind guns and parapets the army went into camp for the night.

"This doesn't look much like Kentucky and the Bluegra.s.s, does it, Phil?"

said Grayson, as they drank their coffee.

Phil glanced at the mountains, the crests of which were now hidden in the darkness, and listened to the cold wind moaning through the narrow pa.s.s by which they had come. Then he replied:

"It doesn't, by a long sight, and I can tell you that I'm mighty glad I've lots of company here. If I were alone, I'd feel that the ghosts of the old Aztecs and Toltecs were surrounding me in the darkness. It's good to see the fires."

Many fires had been lighted, mostly in the ravines, where they were sheltered from the wind, but Phil had no doubt that the scouts of Santa Anna saw points of light at the mouth of the pa.s.s. After his supper he stood upon one of the promontories and strove to pierce the darkness to the south. But he could see nothing. The night hung an opaque veil over the lower country.

CHAPTER XIII

A WIND OF THE DESERT

Although many of the soldiers, the more hardened, had lain down to sleep, Phil did not feel that he could close his eyes. Too many deep emotions stirred his soul. He felt that he was at the verge of a great event, one in which he was to take a part to the full extent of his strength and courage, and there, too, was the sign of the lava, always coming back, always persisting. He might reason with himself and call himself foolish, but he could not dispossess his mind of the idea that it was an omen to show him that he was upon the trail by which that letter had come so vast a distance to him in the little town of Paris.

Every nerve in the boy was astir. He walked back and forth on one of the promontories, looking at the mountains which now in the darkness had become black and full of threats, and trying in vain to soothe and quiet himself so he could lie down like the others and take the rest and forgetfulness that all men need before going into battle. While he was there, Middleton called to him:

"Come, Phil," he said, reverting to his old manner of comrades.h.i.+p, "you ride with us to-night."

"Ride to-night!" replied Phil. "Where?"

"To the south, to meet Santa Anna. I am ordered to take thirty men and keep going until I come into touch with the enemy. I am to have thirty men of my choice, and you, Breakstone, and Arenberg were the first three that I named. You don't have to go unless you wish."

"But I wis.h.!.+" exclaimed Phil earnestly. "Don't think I'm unwilling, Captain! Don't think it!"

Middleton laughed.

"I don't," he said. "I knew that you would be keen for it. Saddle your horse and look to your arms. We ride in five minutes."

Phil was ready in three, and the thirty troopers rode silently down one of the ravines and into the lower country. Phil looked back and saw the fires of the camp, mere red, yellow, and pink dots of flame. The mountains themselves were fused into a solid ma.s.s of black. The troop, arrow headed in shape, with Middleton at the point of the shaft, and Phil, Breakstone, and Arenberg close behind him, rode in silence save for the beat of their horses' hoofs. The wind here did not moan like that in the pa.s.s, but it seemed to Phil to be colder, and it had an edge of fine particles that stung his cheeks and eyes.

The night was bright enough to allow of fairly swift riding, and the ground was no longer cut and gullied as at the mouth of the pa.s.s. Hence the troopers were not compelled to devote their whole attention to their horses and they could watch the country for sign of an enemy. But they did not yet see any such sign. Phil knew that they were on the road, leading southward to Santa Anna, and he felt sure that if they kept upon it they must soon come upon the Mexican army. Yet the silence and desolation were complete here. The pa.s.s had been weird and somber to the full, but there they had thousands of comrades, and the fires in the ravines had been cheering. Now the unlit darkness was all about them, and it still had that surcharged quality that it had borne for Phil when in the pa.s.s. Nor did the fine dust cease to sting his face.

"What is it, Bill?" he asked. "Where does it come from, this dust?"

"It's a wind of the desert that stings us, Phil," replied Breakstone.

"It comes vast distances, and I think, too, that it brings some of the fine dust ground off the surface of the lava. Its effect is curious.

It's like burnt gunpowder in the nostrils. It seems to heat the inside, too."

"It makes me feel that way," said Phil, "and it seems to be always urging us on."

"An irritant, as it were," said Breakstone, "but I don't think we need it. The event itself is enough to keep us all on edge. Feel cold, Phil?"

"No, I've got a pair of buckskin gauntlets. Fine thing for riding on nights like this."

"So have I. But the night is cold, though. Now we're always thinking of warm weather in Mexico, but we never find a country what we expect it to be. Ah, we're leaving the road. The Captain must think there is something not far ahead."

They turned at a sharp angle from the road, and entered a thin forest.

Phil looked back toward the mouth of the pa.s.s from which they had come.

Everything there was behind an impenetrable black veil. The last point of fire had died, and the mountains themselves were hidden. But he took only a single backward look. The wind of the desert was still stinging his face, and it seemed to arouse him to uncommon fire and energy. His whole attention was concentrated upon their task, and he was eager to distinguish himself in some way. But he neither heard nor saw anything unusual.

They proceeded slowly through the forest, seeking to prevent all but the least possible noise, and came presently to a field in which Indian corn seemed to have grown. But it was bare now, save for the dead stalks that lay upon the ground, and here the troop spread out, riding almost in a single line.