Ahead of the Army Part 10

"Lancers, general. Officer and four men. They have been running their horses, and they won't travel far to-morrow. I was in the bushes."

"All right, Pablo," said Zuroaga. "It was kind of Colonel Guerra to order them to use up their horses. We shall not hear of that squad again. Put Andrea on watch, and go to sleep. Our first danger is over."

Pablo bowed and turned away without another word, and Zuroaga resumed his conference with Ta.s.sara, for those two were brave men, and were well-accustomed to the peril-haunted lives they were leading.

"Colonel," he said, "it is evident that my young friend Carfora must go with you. He is not fit for a swift ride of three hundred miles.

Besides, he must have any chance which may happen to turn up for getting home. Will you take care of him? He is a fine young fellow, but he cannot ride."

Therefore the pony and that saddle had done something good for Ned, and Colonel Ta.s.sara cheerfully responded:

"With great pleasure, my dear general. I shall be glad to make American friends. I may need them. He will be safe enough with me, but I fear it will be a long time before he can get out of Mexico. As for me, I shall meet more than a hundred of my own men at Orizaba, ready to escort me across the sierra into my own State of Puebla. After that, my reputation for loyalty will soon be reestablished by raising my new regiment. I think, however, that it will not march into the city of Mexico until his Excellency President Paredes has set out for the Rio Grande, or as far north as the luck of this war will permit him to travel. Very possibly, he may be hindered by the gringos before he reaches the border. Carfora will remain with me until then. You are right. He would not be safe anywhere else. As for yourself, you must push on."

"I think," said Zuroaga, "that I shall be almost safe after I am a few miles beyond Teot.i.tlan. I may have a fight or two on the way. Carfora must not be killed in any skirmish of that kind. You will not see me again, dead or alive, until a week or two after the Americans have taken the city of Mexico, as in my opinion they surely will. I shall be there then, with five hundred lancers, to uphold the new government which will take the place of the b.l.o.o.d.y dictators.h.i.+p of Paredes, unless the new affair is to be Santa Anna. In any event, I shall be able to help you, and I will."

"You are a gloomy prophet," responded Ta.s.sara, "but you are an old student of military operations. Do you really think the Americans will capture our capital? It will be well defended."

"Bravely enough, but not well," replied Zuroaga. "We have not one scientific, thoroughly educated engineer officer fit to take charge of the defences against, for instance, General Scott. Not even Santa Anna himself, with all his ability, is a general capable of checking the invaders after they have taken Vera Cruz, and that they will do. He is a scheming politician rather than a military genius. He and Paredes and some others whom you and I could name must be whipped out of power before we can put up an entirely new government, better than any we have ever had yet. What do you think about it?"

"Think?" exclaimed Ta.s.sara, angrily. "I think it will be after you and I are dead and buried before this miserable half-republic, half-oligarchy, will be blessed with a solid government like that of the United States."

"And that, too, might get into hot water," muttered his friend, but neither of the two political prophets appeared to have much more to say.

They separated, as if each might have something else to employ him, and shortly all the night camp in the grand old forest seemed to be asleep.

The remaining hours of darkness pa.s.sed silently, and the sun arose with a promise of another hot day. Small fires were kindled for coffee-making, but the preparations for breakfast were hurried. Before six o'clock the mules were harnessed, the horses were saddled, and all things were made ready for a diligent push southward. It had been a difficult business to get Ned Crawford out of his tent, but here he was, trying his best to move his legs as if they belonged to him. His coffee and corn-cakes did a great deal for him, and he made out to pretend to help Pablo in getting the fat pony ready for the road. Then, however, he was willing to see Pablo walk away, and he bravely led the pony to the side of what may have been an old and apparently abandoned ant-hill.

"I can get on board," he said, as if his patient quadruped had been the _Goshhawk_. "I saw how some of them mounted. You put your left foot into the stirrup, and then you make a kind of spring into the saddle. If my knees will bend for me, I can do it without anybody's help."

It was the ant-hill that helped him, for he did not make any spring.

After his foot was in the stirrup, he made a tremendous effort, and he arose slowly, painfully to the level of the pony's back. Then his right leg went over, and he was actually there, hunting a little nervously for the other stirrup, with his machete away around behind him.

"Glad you have done it!" exclaimed a decidedly humorous voice near the pony's head. "We are all ready to be off now. Before long, you will be able to mount as the rancheros do, without touching the stirrup. But then, I believe that most of them were born on horseback."

They also appeared to be able to do pretty well without much sleep, for Ned could not see that they showed any signs of fatigue. The camping-place was speedily left behind them, but it was no longer a night journey. Ned was almost astonished, now that the darkness was gone, to discover that this was by no means a wild, unsettled country.

Not only were there many farms, with more or less well-built houses, but the cavalcade began to meet other wayfarers,--men and women,--on foot and on horseback, and hardly any of them were willing to be pa.s.sed without obtaining the latest news from Vera Cruz and from the war.

"I guess they need it," thought Ned. "The general says there are no newspapers taken down here, and that, if there were, not one person in five could read them. They seem a real good-natured lot, though."

So they were, as much so as any other people in the world, and they were as capable of being developed and educated to better things. As to this being a new country, it came slowly back into Ned's mind that there had been a great and populous empire here at a time when the island upon which the city of New York was afterward built was a bushy wilderness, occupied by half-naked savages, who were ready to sell it for a few dollars' worth of kettles and beads.

"I guess I'm beginning to wake up," thought Ned. "When the _Goshhawk_ was lying in the Bay of Vera Cruz, I was too busy to see anything. No, I wasn't. I did stare at the Orizaba mountain peak, and they told me it is over seventeen thousand feet high. First mountain I ever saw that could keep on snow and ice in such weather as this. I don't want to live up there in winter. Well! Now I've seen some of the biggest trees I ever did see. I wonder if any of them were here when the Spaniards came in. I guess they were, some of them."

He was really beginning to see something of Mexico, and it almost made him forget the hardness of that unpleasant saddle. At the end of another mile, he was saying to himself:

"That field yonder is tobacco, is it? The one we just pa.s.sed was sugar-cane, and Pablo said the plantation across the road was almost all coffee. He says that further on he will show me orange groves, bananas, and that sort of thing. But what on earth are grenaditas and mangoes?

They'll be something new to me, and I want to find out how they taste."

Nothing at all of a military or otherwise of an apparently dangerous character had been encountered by the fugitive travellers when, at about the middle of the forenoon, they came to a parting of the ways. A seemingly well-travelled road went off to the left, or southward, while the one they were on turned more to the right and climbed a hill, as if it were making a further effort to get out of the _tierra caliente_. A great many things had been explained to Ned, as they rode along, and he was not surprised, therefore, when Senor Zuroaga said to him:

"My young friend, this is the place I told you of. We must part here.

You and your pony will go on with Colonel Ta.s.sara, and I will take my chances for reaching my place of refuge in Oaxaca. It is not a very good chance, but I must make the best of it that I can. Take good care of yourself. I have already said good-by to the senora and the senorita. I think they will soon be out of danger."

Ned was really grateful, and he tried to say so, but all he could think of just then was:

"General Zuroaga, I do hope you'll get through all right. I hope I shall see you again safe and sound."

"You never will," said Zuroaga, as he wheeled his horse, "unless I get out of this Cordoba road. It is a kind of military highway, and I might meet my enemies at any minute--too many of them."

"Good-by!" shouted Ned, and the general, who was still a great mystery to him, dashed away at a gallop, followed by Pablo and the wild riders from the Oaxaca ranches.

The cavalcade had hardly paused, and it now went on up the long, steep slope to the right. Not many minutes later, it was on high enough ground to look down upon the road which had been taken by Zuroaga. Ned was not looking in that direction, but at some snow-capped mountains in the distance, northward, and he was saying to himself:

"So that is the Sierra Madre, is it? This country has more and higher mountains in it-- Hullo! What's that? Is she hurt?"

His change of utterance into an anxious exclamation was produced by a piercing scream from the carriage, and that was followed by the excited voice of Senora Ta.s.sara calling out:

"Husband! The general is attacked! Look! Hear the firing!"

"O father! Can we not help him?" gasped Senorita Felicia.

Her mother was holding to her eyes with trembling hands what Ned took for an opera-gla.s.s, and he wished that he had one, although he could make out that something like a skirmish was taking place on the other road. It was too far to more than barely catch the dull reports of what seemed to be a number of rapidly fired pistol-shots.

"They are fighting!" he exclaimed. "I wish I was there to help him! He may need more men. I could shoot!"

Whether he could or not, he was almost unconsciously unbuckling the holster of one of his horse-pistols, when the senora spoke again.

"Santa Maria!" she exclaimed. "The dear general! They are too many for him. Madre de Dios! Our good friend will be killed!"

"Give me the gla.s.s, my dear," said her husband. "Your hands are not steady enough. I will tell you how it is."

"Oh, do!" she whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, as she handed it to him. "They are lancers in uniform. Oh, me! This is dreadful! And they may follow us, too."

Colonel Ta.s.sara took the gla.s.s with apparently perfect coolness, and Ned took note that it did not tremble at all, as he aimed it at the distant skirmish. It was a number of seconds, however, before he reported:

"Hurrah! The general rides on, and he rides well. I feel sure that he is not badly wounded, if at all. He has now but three men with him. There are riderless horses. There are men on the ground. There are four only that are riding back toward the Cordoba road. Thank G.o.d! The general has made good his escape from that party of unlucky lancers. He is a fighter!"

Then he lowered the gla.s.s to turn and shout fiercely to his own men:

"Forward! We must reach Orizaba before the news of this skirmish gets there, if we kill all our horses doing it. Push on!"

CHAPTER IX.

LEAVING THE HACIENDA

It was near the close of a bright summer day, and a deeply interested company had gathered in the dining-room of the Crawford home in New York. Dinner was on the table, but n.o.body had yet sat down. The number of young persons present suggested that Ned must have older brothers and sisters.