THE QUEST OF THE FOUR (continued 6)

"Kneel and fire as they come close," shouted Middleton, "and receive them on the bayonet!"

It seemed to Phil that the lances were almost in their faces before they fired. He saw the foam on the nostrils of the horses, their great, bloodshot eyes, and their necks wet with sweat. He saw the faces of the riders wet, too, with sweat, but glowing with triumph, and he saw them, also, brandishing the long lances with the glittering steel shafts. Then the rifles crashed so close together that they were blended in one volley, and the lancers who did not fall reeled. But they quickly came on again to ride directly upon a hedge of bayonets which hurled them back. Once more the triumphant shout of the Kentuckians rose, but it was quickly followed by a groan. At different points the volunteers from another state, daunted by their great losses and the overwhelming numbers that continually pressed upon them, were giving way. Their retreat became a panic, and the helpful battery was left uncovered. The brave O'Brien was compelled to unlimber and retreat with his guns. The flying regiment ran into another that was coming up and carried it along in its panic of the moment.

Phil and his comrades had full cause for the groan that they uttered. The day seemed lost. The column of Lombardini was on the southern edge of the plateau and was pressing forward in masses that seemed irresistible. The lancers had recovered themselves and were slaying the fugitives, while the Mexican cannon also hailed shot and shell upon them.

Burning tears rose to Phil's eyes--he could not help it, he was only a boy--and he turned appealingly to the faithful Breakstone.

"Shall we, too, have to retreat?" he shouted.

"Not yet! Not yet, I hope!" Breakstone shouted back. "No, we don't retreat at all! See the brave Illinois boys turning the current!"

An entire Illinois regiment had thrown itself in the path of pursuers and pursued, and two fresh cannon began to cut through the Mexican masses. The fugitives were protected and saved from wholesale slaughter, but Bill Breakstone claimed too much. It was impossible for a single regiment and two guns to withstand so many thousands crowded at that point, and the Illinois lads did retreat. But they retreated slowly and in perfect order, sending volley after volley into the advancing masses. Nor did they go far. They halted soon in a good position and stood there, firing steadily into the Mexican columns. Yet they seemed lost. The Mexicans in vast numbers were pouring down upon the plateau, and the Illinois men were now attacked in the flank as well as in the front.

"Time for us to be doing something," said Breakstone, and at that moment the order came. The Kentuckians, also, retreated, turning, as fast as they reloaded, to fire a volley, aiming particularly at the lancers, whose weapons were so terrible at close quarters. Phil looked more than once through all the fire and smoke for de Armijo, but he didn't see him until the battle was a full hour old. Then it was only a passing glimpse, and he knew that his shot had missed--he had fired without remorse, as he now regarded de Armijo as so much venom. After the single shot the columns of smoke floated in between, and he saw him no more.

Phil knew that the battle was at a most critical stage, that it was even worse, that all the chances now favored the Mexicans. An inexperienced boy even could not doubt it. The charge of the lancers had driven back a small detachment of mounted volunteers, the American riflemen posted on the slopes of the mountain were forced out of their positions, and the great columns of infantry were still pressing on the left, cutting their way to the rear of the army.

It seemed to Phil that they were completely surrounded, and, in fact, they nearly were, but the men of Illinois and Kentucky redoubled their efforts. The barrels of their rifles grew hot with so much firing. The mingled reek of dust and sweat, of smoke and burned gunpowder, stung their nostrils and filled their eyes, half blinding them. The shell and grape and bullets of the Mexicans now reached the Kentuckians, too. Phil, as the smoke lifted now and then, saw many a comrade go down. He, Arenberg, and Breakstone were all wounded slightly, though they were not conscious then of their hurts.

Worse came. The great enclosing circle of the Mexicans drove them into a mass. The regiment that had broken in panic could not yet be rallied, although their officers strove like brave men to get them back in line, and, like brave men, died trying. Phil saw officers falling all around him, although Middleton was still erect, sword in hand, encouraging the men to fight on.

"It can't be that we are beaten! It can't be!" cried the boy in despair.

"No," said Breakstone, "it's not a beating, but it's a darned fine imitation. Come on, boys! Come on, all of you! We'll drive them back yet!"

Phil felt some one strike against him in the smoke. It was Dick Grayson, of Paris.

"Looks hot, Phil!" said that ingenuous youth. There was a tremendous discharge of artillery, and Grayson went down. But he promptly sprang up.

"It is hot," he shouted, "hotter than I thought. But I'm not hurt. It was only the wind from a cannon-ball. Look out, here come the lancers again, and our rifles are unloaded!"

The long glittering line of lancers appeared through the smoke, and Phil thought that their day was done. It seemed to him that he could not resist any more, but, at that moment a mighty crash of artillery came from the pass. The third column of Mexicans had just come within range of Washington's guns, and the gunners, restrained hitherto, were pouring shot and shell, grape and canister, as fast as they could fire, into the Mexican mass. The column was hurled back by the sudden and terrific impact, and, breaking, it fled in a panic. The Mexicans on the plateau were affected by the flight of their comrades, and they, too, lancers and all, wavered. The Illinois troops came pouring back. With them were more Kentuckians and Bragg's battery, and then Sherman's battery, too. Never were cannon better served than were the American guns on that day. When the guns began to thunder in front of them and between them and the enemy, the fugitives were rallied and were brought back into the battle.

Both batteries were now cutting down the Mexicans at the foot of the mountain, but Breakstone, cool as always, pointed to the columns of Ampudia's infantry, which were still pressing hard on the flank, seeking to reach the rear of the American army.

"If they get there we are lost," he said.

"There is dust behind us now," exclaimed Phil. "See that column of it coming fast!"

"Good God, can they have got there already!" cried Breakstone, despair breaking at last through his armor of courage.

The cloud of dust rose like a tower and came fast. Then a shout of joy burst from the Americans. Through that cloud of dust showed the red face and white hair of Old Rough and Ready, their commander, returning from Saltillo, and with him were Davis's Mississippians and May's mounted men. Wool galloped forward to meet his chief, who rode upon the plateau and looked at the whole wide curve of the battle as much as the dust and smoke would allow.

"The battle is lost," said Wool.

"That is for me to say," said Taylor.

Yet it seemed that Wool, a brave and resolute leader, was right. A great percentage of the American army was already killed or wounded. Many of its best officers had fallen, and everywhere the Mexicans continually pressed forward in columns that grew heavier and heavier. Santa Anna worthily proved that day that, whatever he may have been otherwise he possessed devouring energy, great courage, and a spark of military genius. And the generals around him, Lombardini, Pacheco, Villamil, Torrejon, Ampudia, Minon, Juvera, Andrade, and the rest were full of the Latin fire which has triumphed more than once over the cold courage and order of the North.

The crisis was visible to every one. Ampudia and his infantry passing to the rear of the American army must be stopped. Davis gathered his Mississippians and hurled them upon Ampudia's men, who outnumbered them five to one. They fired, then rushed down one slope of a ravine that separated them from the enemy, and up the other slope directly into the ranks of the Mexicans; firing another volley almost face to face. So great was their impact that the head of the Mexican column was shattered, and the whole of it was driven back. Ampudia's men, by regiments, sought shelter along the slopes of the mountain.

The battle was saved for the moment, but for the moment only. Few battles have swung in the balance oftener than this combat at Buena Vista, when it seemed as if the weight of a hair might decide it.

"We can breathe again, Phil," cried Breakstone. "They haven't flanked us there, but I don't think we'll have time for more than two breaths."

The battle, just in front of them, paused for an instant or two, but it went on with undiminished fury elsewhere. While Phil let his heated rifle cool, he watched this terrible conflict at the mouth of the grim pass, a combat that swung to and fro and that refused to be decided in favor of either. But, as he rested, all his courage came back anew. The little army, the boy volunteers, had already achieved the impossible. For hours they had held off the best of the Mexican troops, five to their one. More than once they had been near to the verge, but nobody could say that they had been beaten.

Phil's feeling of awe came again, as he looked at the great stage picture, set with all the terrible effects of reality. The smoke rose always, banking up against the sides of the mountain, but dotted with red and pink spots, the flame from the rifles of the sharpshooters who lurked among the crags. From the mouth of the pass came a steady roaring where the cannon of Washington were fired so fast. The smoke banked up there, too, but it was split continually by the flash of the great guns. Out of the smoke came the unbroken crash of rifles, resembling, but on a much larger scale, the ripping of a heavy cloth. Now and then both sides shouted and cheered.

Bill Breakstone was a shrewd judge of a battle that day. The crisis had passed, but in a few minutes a new crisis came. For in their rear began another fierce conflict. Torrejon's splendid brigade of lancers made its way around the mountain and fell upon the small force of Arkansas and Kentucky volunteers under Yell and Marshall at the hacienda of Buena Vista. Yell was killed almost instantly, many other men went down, but the volunteers held fast. Some, their horses slain or wounded, reached the roofs of houses, and with their long rifles emptied saddle after saddle among the lancers. It was a confused and terrible struggle, but, in an instant or two, American dragoons came to the rescue. The lancers gave way and fled, bearing with them their leader, the brave Torrejon, who was wounded badly. Again the army was saved by courage and quick action. If Torrejon and his men had been able to hold Buena Vista, the American force would have been destroyed.

Phil knew nothing of the conflict at Buena Vista itself until the day was done, because he was soon in the very thickest of it again himself. He and his comrades stood among the decimated squares on the plateau, where the battle had shifted for a moment, and where the smoke was rising. Looking over the field, littered with men and horses, it seemed that half of his countrymen had fallen. Everywhere lay the dead, and the wounded crawled painfully to the rear. Yet the unhurt could give little aid to the hurt, because the Mexican battle front seemed as massive and formidable as ever.

"Load, Phil, load!" whispered Bill Breakstone. "See, they're coming again!"

Masses of lancers were gathering anew on the plateau, among them many of Torrejon's men, who had come back from the other side of the mountain, and the lifting smoke enabled Phil and his comrades to see them clearly. The defenders--they were not many now--were more closely packed. The men of the West and South were mingled together, but with desperate energy the officers soon drew them out in a line facing the lancers. Sherman with his cannon also joined them. In the shifting fortunes of the day, another critical moment came. If the charge of the lancers passed over their line, the Americans were beaten.

The battle elsewhere sank and died for the time. All looked toward the two forces on the plateau, the heavy squadrons of cavalry advancing, and the thin line of infantry silent and waiting. The Mexican bugles ceased to sound, and the firing stopped. Phil and the men with him in the front rank knelt again. Arenberg, as usual, was on one side of him, and Breakstone on the other. Middleton was not far away. Phil glanced up and down the American line and, as he saw how few they were, his heart, after a period of high courage, sank like a plummet in a pool. It did not seem possible to stop the horsemen. Then his courage rose again. They had done a half dozen wonders that day, they could do another half dozen.

It was one of the most vivid moments of Phil's life, fairly burnt into his soul. The smoke, lifting higher and higher, disclosed more and more of the field, with its dead and dying everywhere. The mountains were coming out of the mists and vapors, and showing their bare crags and peaks. There was no sound but the hoofbeats of the horsemen and an occasional cry from the wounded, but Phil did not even hear these. There was to him only an awful and ominous silence, as the heavy columns drew nearer and nearer and he saw the menacing faces and ready weapons. The blood quivered in his veins, but he did not give back. Nor did the others, most of whom were boys not much older than he.

"I think this will tell the tale," whispered Bill Breakstone. "Look how steady our lads are! Veteran regulars could not bear themselves better in the face of five to one."

Nearer and nearer came the lancers. Something in the aspect of the steady troops that awaited the shock must have daunted them, because already on that day they had shown themselves brave men more than once. The hoofbeats ceased, their line stopped and wavered, and at that instant the American rifles fired, pouring forth a stream of lead, a deadly volley.

Phil saw the blaze from a long line of muzzles, the puff of rifle smoke, and then as it lifted he tried to shut his eyes but could not. The whole front of the Mexican column was destroyed. Men and horses lay in a heap, and other riderless horses galloped wildly over the plateau. The second line of the lancers stood for a moment, but when the cannon, following up the rifles, hurled shot and shell among them, they, too, broke and fled, while the bullets from the reloaded rifles pelted them and drove them to greater speed.

A shout arose from the scanty ranks of the defense. Another critical moment had passed, and for the first time fortune shifted to the American side. Now the defenders followed up their advantage. They pressed forward, pushing the Mexicans before them, attacking them on two sides and driving them against the base of the mountain.

The whole battle now surged back toward the direction whence Santa Anna had come. The scanty division of the Americans, after so long a defense, a defense that seemed again and again to be hopeless, massed themselves anew and attacked the Mexican army with redoubled vigor. Phil felt the song of victory singing in his ears, the blood leaped in his veins, and a great new store of strength came from somewhere, as he, with Breakstone and Arenberg yet on either side of him, marched forward now, not backward.

The great division of Ampudia which had threatened to surround the American force was now penned in at the foot of the mountain. This single division alone greatly outnumbered the whole American army, but panic and terror were in its ranks. The Southern and Western riflemen were advancing on three sides, sending in showers of bullets that could not miss. Nine cannon, manned by gunners as good as the world could furnish, cut down rank after rank.

Earlier in the day Phil would have thrilled with horror at the scene before him, but in such a long and furious battle his faculties had become blunted. It was nothing to see men fall, dead or wounded. The struggle for life at the expense of another's life, the most terrible phase of war, had now come. His only conscious thought at that moment was to destroy the mass of Mexicans pressed against the mountain, and he loaded and fired with a zeal and rapidity not inferior to that of anybody.

The Mexican mass seemed to shrink and draw in upon itself. The officers encouraged the men to return the terrible fire that was cutting them down. Some did so, but it was too feeble a reply to check Taylor's advance. Santa Anna, farther down, saw the terrible emergency. Vain, bombastic, and treacherous, he was, nevertheless, a great general, and now the spark of genius hidden in such a shell blazed up. In the height of the battle, and with five thousand of his best men being cut to pieces before him, a singular expedient occurred to him. He knew the character of the general opposed to him; he knew that Taylor was merciful and humane, and suddenly he sent forward a messenger under a white flag. Taylor, amazed, nevertheless received the messenger and ordered the firing on the trapped Mexicans to cease. He was still more amazed when he read the Mexican commander's note. Santa Anna wished to know in rhetorical phraseology what General Taylor wanted. While Taylor was considering and preparing the reply to so strange a question at such a time, and the messenger was riding back with it, Ampudia's whole division escaped from the trap up the base of the mountain. Then the Mexicans at the other points instantly reopened fire. It was a singular and treacherous expedient, but it succeeded.

A cry of rage rose from Phil's company, and it was uttered by others everywhere. The boy had seen the herald under the white flag, and, all the rest, too, had wondered at the nature of the message he brought. He did not yet know what was in Santa Anna's note, but he knew that a successful trick had been played. The blood in his veins seemed to turn to its hottest. His pulses were beating the double quick, and he felt relief only when Taylor, enraged at Santa Anna's ruse, ordered the Kentucky and Illinois men to pursue Ampudia's fleeing division.

Forward they went, scarcely a thousand, because very many comrades had fallen around them that day, but they had never been more eager for the charge. The smoke thinned out before them and they advanced swiftly with leveled rifles. They reached the southern edge of the plateau, and then they recoiled in horror. Santa Anna had not only saved a division by a trick, but he had used the same opportunity to draw in his columns and mass the heaviest force that had yet converged upon a single point. Ten thousand men appeared over the uneven ground and approached the single thousand. To face such numbers advancing with great guns was impossible. Again it seemed that the day, after a brilliant success, was lost.

The Americans at once turned and rushed into a gorge for shelter and defense.

The side of the gorge was so steep that Phil slipped and rolled to the bottom. But he quickly sprang up, unconscious of his bruises. Breakstone and Arenberg, with pale faces, were at his side. The gorge was not as much of a shelter and defense as it had seemed. It was instead a trap, the worst into which they had come that day. From the cliffs on both sides of the gorge the Mexicans sent down a continuous rain of bullets and shell. Santa Anna, exulting in his success, urged them on and, his seconds, Ampudia, Pacheco, Lombardini and the others, ran from point to point, encouraging their troops and crying that the battle was now won.

The Americans fired upward at their enemies, but they were pressed together in great confusion. Men and officers went down so fast that it looked to Phil like hay falling before the scythe. Here fell the brave Colonel Clay, the son of the great Henry Clay, and with him McKee and Hardin and many other gallant sons of Kentucky and Illinois.

A great horror seized Phil. Penned in that awful gorge, with that continuous shower of steel and lead from above, he felt as if he were choking. He and others rushed for the mouth of the gorge, but the wary Santa Anna had closed it with a great body of lancers, who were now advancing to assist in the complete destruction of the Americans.

The defenders reeled back, and Santa Anna, thinking the time had come to deliver the final blow, sent the Mexican infantry in thousands down the sides of the gorge, where they attacked with the bayonet the few hundreds that yet fought. Phil was quite sure that no hope was left. Before, at every critical moment there had always been a slender chance of some kind or other, but now he could see absolutely none. A million red motes danced before him, and he struck almost blindly with his clubbed rifle at a Mexican who was trying to bayonet him.

But from a point above, not yet taken by the Mexicans, the brave O'Brien and Thomas, as brave, were still firing their cannon and sending the shot and shell into the Mexican masses, where they were not mingled with the Americans. But they themselves were exposed to a deadly fire. One by one their gunners fell. They were compelled to fall back step by step. Not enough men were left to load and fire the pieces. Soon all the gunners were killed or wounded except O'Brien himself. Presently he, too, was wounded, and the guns were silent. Now, truly, it seemed that the last moment had come!

Phil, when he struck with his clubbed rifle, knew that he hit something, because the Mexican with the eager bayonet was no longer there. He saw Breakstone and Arenberg yet beside him, both wounded, but both erect and defiant. He saw Grayson a little distance away, still alive, and farther on a little group of Kentuckians and Illinoisans, fighting to the last. He had an instant's vision of the whole awful gorge, filled with men driven on by the rage of battle, the dead and wounded strewed all about, the smoke hovering above like a roof, and the masses of Mexicans who completely encircled them now closing in for the final blow.

It was all a real panorama, passing in an instant, and then from above, and at a new point, came the crash of great guns, the shot and shell striking among the Mexicans, not among the Americans. Not even at this, the last crisis, when the battle seemed lost beyond redemption, had fortune, or rather courage and energy, failed. Bragg, coming on a run with his battery, suddenly opened at short range, and with awful effect, into the Mexican masses. In another minute Sherman arrived with his guns, and close behind, coming as fast as breath would allow, were infantry with the rifle, and, to make the surprise complete, Washington's guns suddenly appeared on the right and began to sweep away the lancers who held the mouth of the gorge.

Never had fortune made a quicker and more complete change. The Mexicans who had suddenly trapped the Kentuckians and Illinoisans had been entrapped themselves with equal suddenness.

The fire now rose to the greatest height of the day. They had been fighting on the plateau, in the ravines, on the slopes, and through the pass for hours. Vast quantities of smoke still hung about and lay like a blanket against the side of the mountain. The sun was far down the western slope.

The Kentucky and Illinois men drew themselves into a close body near the upper end of the gorge. There they fired as fast as exhaustion would allow, but salvation was coming from above, and now they knew it. Closer and closer crept the American artillery. Heavier and heavier grew its fire. The riflemen, also, sent in the bullets like hail. Taylor himself, a half dozen bullets through his clothing, stood on the brink directing the attack. The gorge where the Mexicans stood was swept by a storm of death. Santa Anna, from the other side, watched in dismay. Lancers and infantry alike, unable to stand such a sleet, rushed for the mouth of the gorge. Few of the lancers, who made the larger target, escaped, and the infantry suffered almost as much.

The gorge was cleared, and the Americans held the plateau. Everywhere the Mexicans fell back, leaving the whole field in possession of the little force that had fought so long and so fiercely to hold it. The Mexican bugle sounded again, but now it was the command to retire. The sun dipped down behind the mountains, and the shadows began to gather in the Pass of Angostura. The impossible had happened. Mexico's finest army, five to one, led by her greatest general, had broken in vain against the farmer lads of the South and West, and the little band of regulars. The victory was won over the greatest odds ever faced by Americans in a pitched battle.

CHAPTER XV

THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

Phil was still in a daze. He and those around him, exhausted by such long and desperate efforts, such a continuous roar in their ears, and such a variation of intense emotions from the highest to the lowest, were scarcely conscious that the battle was over. They knew, indeed, that night was falling on the mountains and the pass, that the Mexicans had withdrawn from the field, that their flags and lances were fading in the twilight, but it was all, for a little while, dim and vague to them. The night and the silence coming together contained a great awe. Phil felt the blood pounding in his ears, and he looked around with wonder. It was Breakstone who first came to himself.

"We've won! We've won!" he cried. "As sure as there is a sun behind those mountains, we've beat all Mexico!"

Then Phil, too, saw, and he had to believe.

"The victory is ours!" he cried.

"It is ours, but harm has been done," said Arenberg in a low voice. Then he sank forward softly on his face. Phil and Breakstone quickly raised him up. He had fainted from loss of blood, but as his wounds were only of the flesh he was soon revived. Breakstone had three slight wounds of his own, and these were bound up, also. Phil, meanwhile, was hunting in the gorge for other friends. Grayson was alive and well, but some that he had known were gone. He was weak, mind and body alike, with the relaxation from the long battle and all those terrible emotions, but he helped with the wounded. Below them lay the army of Santa Anna, its lights shining again in the darkness, and, for all Phil knew, it might attack again on the morrow, but he gave little attention to it now. His whole concern was for his comrades. The victory had been won, but they had been compelled to purchase it at a great price. The losses were heavy. Twenty-eight officers of rank were among the killed, regiments were decimated, and even the unhurt were so exhausted that they could scarcely stand.

Phil sat down at the edge of the gorge. He was yet faint and dizzy. It seemed to him that he would never be able to exert himself again. Everything swam before him in a sort of confused glare. He was conscious that his clothing was stained red in two or three places, but when he looked, in a mechanical way, at the wounds, he saw they were scratches, closed already by the processes of nature. Then his attention wandered again to the field. He was full of the joy of victory, but it was a vague, uncertain feeling, not attaching itself to any particular thing.

The twilight had already sunk into the night, and the black wind, heavy with chill, moaned in the Pass of Angostura. It was a veritable dirge for the dead. Phil felt it all through his relaxed frame, and shivered both with cold and with awe. Smoke and vapor from so much firing still floated about the plateau, the pass, and the slopes, but there was a burning touch on his face which he knew did not come from any of them. It was the dust of the desert again stinging him after the battle as it had done before it. He obeyed its call, summoned anew all his strength, both of body and mind, and climbed out of the gorge, where friend and foe still lay in hundreds, mingled and peaceful in death.

He found more light and cheer on the plateau and in the pass. Here the unhurt and those hurt slightly were building fires, and they had begun to cook food and boil coffee. Phil suddenly perceived that he was hungry. He had not tasted food since morning. He joined one of the groups, ate and drank, and more vigor returned. Then he thought of the horse which he had left tethered in an alcove, and which he had not used at all that day. The horse was there unharmed, although a large cannon-ball lay near his feet. It was evidently a spent ball which had rolled down the side of the mountain, as it was not buried at all.

The horse recognized Phil and neighed. Phil put his hand upon his mane and stroked it. He was very glad that this comrade of his had escaped unhurt. He wondered in a dim way what his terror must have been tied in one place, while the battle raged all day about him. "Poor old horse," he said, stroking his mane again. Then he led him away, gave him food and water, and returned to his comrades and the field. He knew that his duty lay there, as the Mexican army was still at hand. Many thought that it would attack again in the morning, and disposition for defense must be made. He did not see either Breakstone or Arenberg, but he met Middleton, to whom he reported.

"Scout down at the mouth of the pass and along the mountain slopes, Phil," he said, and the boy, replenishing his ammunition, obeyed. It was not quite dark, and the wind was exceedingly cold. The mercury that night went below the freezing point, and the sufferings of the wounded were intense. Phil kept well among the ravines and crags. He believed that the Mexican lancers would be prowling in front of their camp, and he would not have much chance if he were attacked by a group of them. Moreover, he was tired of fighting. He did not wish to hurt anybody. Never had his soul inclined more fervently to peace.

He passed again into the gorge which had witnessed the climax and deadliest part of the battle. Here he saw dark-robed figures passing back and forth among the wounded. He looked more closely and saw that they were Mexican nuns from a convent near Buena Vista, helping the wounded, Americans and Mexicans alike. Something rose in his throat, but he went on, crossing the pass and climbing the slopes of the Sierra Madre. Here there was yet smoke lingering in the nooks and crannies, but all the riflemen seemed to have gone.

He climbed higher. The wind there was very cold, but the moonlight was brighter. He saw the peaks and ridges of the Sierra Madre, like a confused sea, and he looked down upon the two camps, the small American one on the plateau and in the pass and the larger, still far larger, Mexican one below. He could trace it by the lights in the Mexican camp, forming a great half circle, and he would have given much to know what was going on there. If Santa Anna and his men possessed the courage and tenacity of the defenders, they would attack again on the morrow.

He moved forward a little to get a better view, and then sank down behind an outcropping of rock. A Mexican, a tall man, rifle on shoulder, was passing. He, too, was looking down at the two camps, and Phil believed that he was a scout like himself. The Mexican, not suspecting the presence of an enemy, was only a dozen feet away, and Phil could easily have shot him without danger to himself, but every impulse was against the deed. He could not fire from ambush, and he had seen enough of death. The Mexican was going toward his own camp, and presently, he went on, disappearing behind a curve of the mountain, and leaving Phil without a shadow of remorse. But he soon followed, creeping on down the mountainside toward the camp of Santa Anna.

The rocks and gullies enabled him to come so near that he could see within the range of light. He beheld figures as they passed now and then, dark shadows before the blaze, but the camp of Santa Anna did not show the life and animation that he had witnessed in it when he spied upon it once before. No bugles were blowing, no bodies of lancers, with the firelight shining on glittering steel, rode forth to prepare for the morrow and victory. Everything was slack and relaxed. He even saw men lying in hundreds upon the ground, fast asleep from exhaustion. As far as he could determine, no scouting parties of large size were abroad, and he inferred from what he saw that the Mexican army was worn out.

He could not go among those men, but the general effect produced upon him at the distance was of gloom and despair among them. An army preparing for battle in the morning would be awake and active. The longer he looked, the greater became his own hope and confidence, and then he slowly made his way back to his own camp with his report. Lights still burned there, but it was very silent. After he passed the ring of sentinels he saw nothing but men stretched out, almost as still as the dead around them. They slept deeply, heavily, a sleep so intense that a blow would not arouse. Many had lain down where they were standing when the battle ceased, and would lie there in dreamless slumber until the next morning. Phil stepped over them, and near one of the fires he saw Breakstone and Arenberg, each with his head on his arm, deep in slumber.

He made his report to Middleton, describing with vivid detail everything that he had seen.

"It agrees with the reports of the other scouts," said Middleton. "I think the enemy is so shattered that he cannot move upon us again, and now, Phil, you must rest. It will be midnight in an hour, and you have passed through much."

"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 Pass 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 pass, 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 Pass 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 Pass 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 passed 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 Pass 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 Pass 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 pass, 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 circumstances may bring us together a second time when this war is over."

"It rests upon the knees of the gods," 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 pass.

"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 passed 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 horsemen 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 señors taste it? They would, and they passed 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 passed through there on their way to strong prisons in the south. Such men had passed 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 passed 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 noble and good.

Phil and his comrades drew near. He saw the women glance at them, and he saw the youngest of them look at him several times. She stared with a vague sort of wonder in her eyes, and Phil's heart suddenly began to pound so hard that he grew dizzy. Since the letter, coming out of the unknown and traveling such a vast distance, had found him in the little town of Paris, Kentucky, he had felt at times the power of intuition. Truths burst suddenly upon him, and for the moment he had the conviction that this was the woman. Moreover, she was still looking at him.

"Speak to her, Bill! Speak to her!" he exclaimed. "Don't let her go until you ask her."

But Breakstone had already noticed the curious glances the woman was casting at Phil, and in the Spanish patois of the region he bade them a light and courteous good morning. Here all the charm of Breakstone's manner showed at its very best. No one could take offense at it, and the three women, smiling, replied in a similar vein. Breakstone understood Phil's agitation. The boy might be right, but he did not intend to be too headlong. He must fence and approach the subject gradually. So he spoke of the little things that make conversation, but presently he said to the youngest of the women:

"I see that you notice my comrade, the one who is not yet a man in years, though a man in size. Does it chance that you have seen some one like him?"

"I do not know," replied the woman. "I am looking into my memory that I may see."

"Perhaps," said Breakstone smoothly, "it was one of the Texan prisoners whom they brought through here two or three years ago. A boy, tall and fair like this boy, but dusty with the march, bent with weariness, his feet cut and bleeding by the lava over which he had been forced to march, stood here at this well. He was blindfolded that he might not see which way he had come, but you, the Holy Virgin filling your heart with pity, took the cup of cool water and gave it to him to drink."

Comprehension filled the eyes of the woman, and she gazed at Breakstone with growing wonder.

"It is so!" she exclaimed. "I remember now. It was three years ago. There was a band of prisoners, twelve or fifteen, maybe, but he was the youngest of them all, and so worn, so weak! I could not see his eyes, but he had the figure and manner of the youth who stands there! It was why I looked, and then looked again, the resemblance that I could not remember."

"It is his brother who is with me," said Breakstone. "Can you tell where these prisoners were taken?"

"I do not know, but I have heard that they were carried into the mountains to the south and west, where they were to be held until Texas was brought back to Mexico, or to be put to death as outlaws."

"What prisons lie in these mountains to the south and west?"

"I do not know how many, but we have heard most of the Castle of Montevideo. Some of our own people have gone there, never to come back."

She and her companions shuddered at the name of the Castle of Montevideo. It seemed to have some vague, mysterious terror for them. It was now Bill Breakstone who had the intuition. The Castle of Montevideo was the place. It was there that they had taken John Bedford. He translated clearly for Phil, who became very pale.

"It is the place, Phil," he said. "We must go to the Castle of Montevideo to find him."

He drew from his pocket a large octagonal gold piece, worth fifty dollars, then coined by the United States.

"Give this to her, Bill," he said, "and tell her it is for the drink of water that she gave to the blindfolded boy three years ago."

Bill Breakstone translated literally, and he added:

"You must take it. It comes from his heart. It is not only worth much money, but it will be a bringer of luck to you."

She took it, hesitated a moment, then hid it under her red reboso, and, the jars being filled, she and her two companions walked away, balancing the great weights beautifully on their heads.

"To-night," said Phil, "we ride for the Castle of Montevideo."

CHAPTER XVI

THE CASTLE OF MONTEVIDEO

The Castle of Montevideo, as its name indicates, commanded a magnificent view. Set in a niche of a mountain which towered far above, it looked down upon and commanded one of the great roads that led to the heart of Mexico, the city that stood in the vale of Tenochtitlan, the capital, in turn, of the Toltecs, the Aztecs, the Spaniards, and the Mexicans, and, for all that men yet knew, of races older than the Toltecs. But the Spaniards had built it, completing it nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, when their hold upon the greater part of the New World seemed secure, and the name of Spain was filled with the suggestion of power.

It was a gloomy and tremendous fortress, standing seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and having about it, despite its latitude, no indication of the tropics.

Spain had lavished here enormous sums of money dug for her by the slaves of Mexico and Peru. It was built of volcanic pumice stone, very hard, and of the color of dark honey. Its main walls formed an equilateral triangle, eight hundred feet square on the inside, and sixty feet from the top of the wall to the bottom of the enclosing moat. There was a bastion at each corner of the main rampart, and the moat that enveloped the main walls and bastions was two hundred feet wide and twenty feet deep. Fifty feet beyond the outside wall of the moat rose a chevaux de frise built of squared cedar logs twelve feet long, set in the ground and fastened together by longitudinal timbers. Beyond the chevaux de frise was another ditch, fourteen feet wide, of which the outer bank was a high earthwork. The whole square enclosed by the outermost work was twenty-six acres, and on the principal rampart were mounted eighty cannon, commanding the road to the Valley of Tenochtitlan.

Few fortresses, even in the Old World, were more powerful or complete. It enclosed armories, magazines, workshops, and cells; cells in rows, all of which were duly numbered when Montevideo was completed in the eighteenth century. And, to give it the last and happiest touch, the picture of Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, Lord of the Indies and the New World, was painted over the doorway of every cell, and they were many.

Nor is this the full tale of Montevideo. On the inner side of each angle, broad wooden stairways ascended to the top, the stairways themselves being enclosed at intervals by wooden gates twelve feet high. The real fortifications enclosed a square of nearly five hundred feet, and inside this square were the buildings of the officers and the barracks of the soldiers. The floor of the square was paved with thick cement, and deep down under the cement were immense water tanks, holding millions of gallons, fed by subterranean springs of pure cold water. By means of underground tunnels the moats could be flooded with water from the tanks or springs.

It has been said that the Spaniards are massive builders, the most massive since the Romans, and they have left their mark with many a huge stone structure in the southern part of the New World. What Montevideo cost the kings of Spain no one has ever known, and, although they probably paid twice for every stick and stone in it, Peru and Mexico were still pouring forth their floods of treasure, and there was the fortress, honey colored, lofty, undeniably majestic and powerful.

When Mexico displaced Spain, she added to the defenses of Montevideo, and now, on this spring day in 1847, it lowered, dark and sinister, over the road. It was occupied by a strong garrison under that alert and valiant soldier, Captain Pedro de Armijo, raised recently to that rank, but still stinging with the memories of Buena Vista, he was anxious that the Americans should come and attack him in Montevideo. He stood on the rampart at a point where it was seventy feet wide, and he looked with pride and satisfaction at the row of eighty guns. Pedro de Armijo, swelling with pride, felt that he could hold the castle of Montevideo against twenty thousand men. Time had made no impression upon those massive walls, and the moat was filled with water. The castle, mediæval, but grim and formidable, sat in its narrow mountain valley with the Cofre de Montevideo (Trunk of Montevideo) behind it on the north. This peak was frequently covered with snow and at all times was gloomy and forbidding. Even on bright days the sun reached it for only a few hours.

While Pedro de Armijo walked on the parapet, looking out at the range of mountain and valley and enjoying the sunlight, which would soon be gone, a young man stood at the window of cell No. 87, also looking out at the mountain, although no sunlight reached him there. He gazed through a slit four inches wide and twelve inches high, and the solid wall of masonry through which this slit was cut was twelve feet thick. The young man's ankles were tied together with a chain which, although long enough to allow him to walk, weighed twenty-five pounds. Once he had been chained with another man. Formerly the prisoners who had been brought with him to the Castle of Montevideo had been chained in pairs, the chain in no case weighing less than twenty pounds, but, since only John Bedford was left, Pedro de Armijo concluded that it was his duty to carry the chain alone.

John Bedford was white with prison pallor. Although as tall, he weighed many pounds less than his younger brother, Philip. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were set in deep hollows. The careless observer would have taken him for ten years more than his real age. He had shuffled painfully to the slit in the wall, where he wished to see the last rays of the daylight falling on the mountainside. The depth of the slit made the section of the mountain that he could see very narrow, and he knew every inch of it. There was the big projection of volcanic rock, the tall, malformed cactus that put out a white flower, the little bunch of stunted cedars or pines--he could never tell which--in the shelter of the rock, and the yard or two of gully down which he had seen the water roaring after the big rains or at the melting of the snows on the Cofre de Montevideo.

How often he had looked upon these things! What a little slice of the world it was! Only a few yards long and fewer yards broad, but what a mighty thing it was to him! Even with the slit closed, he could have drawn all of it upon a map to the last twig and pebble. He would have suffered intensely had that little view been withdrawn, but it tantalized him, too, with the sight of the freedom that was denied him. Three years, they told him, he had been gazing out at that narrow slit at the mountainside, and he only at the beginning of life, strong of mind and body--or at least he was. Never in that time had he been outside the inner walls or even in the court yard. He knew nothing of what had happened in the world. Sometimes they told him that Texas had been overrun and retaken by the Mexicans, and he feared that it was true.

They did not always put the chains upon him, but lately he had been refractory. He was easily caught in an attempt to escape, and a new governor of the castle, lately come, a young man extremely arrogant, had demanded his promise that he make no other such attempt. He had refused, and so the chains were ordered. He had worn them many times before, and now they oppressed him far less than his loneliness. He alone of that expedition was left a prisoner in the castle. How all the others had gone he did not know, but he knew that some had escaped. Both he and his comrade of the chains were too ill to walk when the escape was made, and there was nothing to do but leave them behind. His comrade died, and he recovered after weeks, mainly through the efforts of old Catarina, the Indian woman who sometimes brought him his food.

John Bedford's spirits were at the bottom of the depths that afternoon. How could human beings be so cruel as to shut up one of their kind in such a manner, one who was no criminal? It seemed to him that lately the watch in the castle had become more vigilant than ever. More soldiers were about, and he heard vaguely of comings and goings. His mind ran back for the thousandth time over the capture of himself and his comrades.

When taken by an overwhelming force they were one hundred and seventy in number, and there were great rejoicings in Mexico when they were brought southward. They had been blindfolded at some points, once when he walked for a long time on sharp volcanic rock, and once, when, as he was fainting from heat and thirst, a woman with a kind voice had given him a cup of water at a well. He remembered these things very vividly, and he remembered with equal vividness how, when they were not blindfolded, they were led in triumph through the Mexican towns, exactly as prisoners were led to celebrate the glory of a general through the streets of old Rome. They, the "Terrible Texans," as they were called, had passed through triumphal arches decorated with the bright garments of women. Boys and girls, brilliant handkerchiefs bound around their heads, and shaking decorated gourds with pebbles in them, had danced before the captives to the great delight of the spectators. Sometimes women themselves in these triumphal processions had done the zopilote or buzzard dance. At night the prisoners had been forced to sleep in foul cattle sheds.

Then had come the Day of the Beans. One hundred and fifty-three white beans and seventeen black beans were placed in a bowl, and every prisoner, blindfolded, was forced to draw one. The seventeen who drew the black beans were promptly shot, and the others were compelled to march on. He remembered how lightly they had taken it, even when it was known who had drawn the black beans. These men, mostly young like himself, had jested about their bad luck, and had gone to their death smiling. He did not know how they could do it, but it was so, because he had seen it with his own eyes.

Then they had marched on until they came to the Castle of Montevideo. There the world ended. There was nothing but time, divided into alternations of night and day. He had seen nobody but soldiers, except the old woman Catarina, who seemed to be a sort of scullion. After he recovered from the prison fever of which his comrade of the chains died, the old woman had shown a sort of pity for him; perhaps she liked him as one often likes those upon whom one has conferred benefits. She yielded to his entreaties for a pencil for an hour or so, and some paper, just a sheet or two. She smuggled them to him, and she smuggled away the letter that he wrote. She did not know what would happen, but she would give it to her son Porfirio, who was a vaquero. Porfirio would give it to his friend Antonio Vaquez, who was leading a burro train north to Monterey. After that was the unknown, but who could tell? Antonio Vaquez was a kind man, and the Holy Virgin sometimes worked miracles for the good. As for the poor lad, the prisoner, he must rest now. He had been muy malo (very sick), and it was not good to worry.

John tried not to worry. It was such easy advice to give and so very hard for one to take who had been buried alive through a time that seemed eternity, and who had been forgotten by all the world, except his jailers. That letter had gone more than a year ago, and, of course, it had not reached its destination. He ought never to have thought such a thing possible. Very likely it had been destroyed by Porfirio, the vaquero, old Catarina's son. He had not seen old Catarina herself in a long time. Doubtless they had sent her away because she had been kind to him, or they may have found out about the letter. He was very sorry. She was far from young, and she was far from beautiful, but her brief presence at intervals had been cheering.

He watched the last rays of the sun fade on the volcanic slope. A single beam, livid and splendid, lingered for a moment, and then was gone. After it came the dark, with all the chilling power of great elevation. The cold even penetrated the deep slit that led through twelve feet of solid masonry, and John Bedford shivered. It was partly the dark that made him shiver. He rose from the stool and made his way slowly and painfully to his cot against the wall, his chains rattling heavily over the floor.

He heard a key turning in the lock and the door opening, but he did not look around. They usually came with his food at this hour, and the food was always the same. There was no cause for curiosity. But when he heard the steps of two men instead of one he did look around. There was the same soldier bringing his supper of frijoles and tortillas on a tin plate, and a cup of very bad coffee, but he was accompanied by the new governor of the castle, Captain Pedro de Armijo, whom John did not like at all. The soldier drew up the stool, put the food on it, and also a candle that he carried.

John began to eat and drink, taking not the slightest notice of de Armijo. The man from the first had given him the impression of cold, malignant cruelty. John Bedford had often thought that his own spirit was crushed, but it was far from being so. Pride was strong within him, and he resolved that de Armijo should speak first.

De Armijo stood in silence for some time, looking down at the prisoner. He was not in a good humor, he had seldom been so since that fatal day when the whole army of Santa Anna was hurled back by the little force from the North. He knew many things of which the prisoner did not dream, and he had no thought of giving him even the slightest hint of them. In him was the venomous disposition of the cat that likes to play with the rat it has caught. A curious piece of mockery, or perhaps it was not wholly mockery, had occurred to him.

"Bedford," he said, speaking good English, "you have been a prisoner here a long time, and no one loves captivity."

"I have not heard that any one does," replied John, taking another drink of the bad coffee.

"You cannot escape. You see the impossibility of any such attempt."

"It does not look probable, I admit. Still, few things are impossible."

De Armijo smiled, showing even white teeth. He rather liked this game of playing with the rat in the trap. So much was in favor of the cat.

"It is not a possibility with which one can reckon," he said, "and I should think that the desire to be free would be overpowering in one so young as you."

"Have you come here to make sport of me?" said John, with ominous inflection. "Because if you have I shall not answer another question."

"Not at all," said de Armijo. "I come on business. You have been here, as I said, a long time, and in that time many changes have occurred in the world."

"What changes?" asked John sharply.

"The most important of them is the growth in power of Mexico," said de Armijo smoothly. "We triumph over all our enemies."

"Do you mean that you have really retaken Texas?" asked John, with a sudden falling of the heart.

De Armijo smiled again, then lighted a cigarette and took a puff or two before he gave an answer which was really no answer at all, so far as the words themselves were concerned.

"I said that Mexico had triumphed over her enemies everywhere," he replied, "and so she has, but I give you no details. It has been the order that you know nothing. You have been contumacious and obstinate, and, free, you would be dangerous. So the world was to be closed to you, and it has been done. You know nothing of it except these four walls and the little strip of a mountain that you can see from the window there. You are as one dead."

John Bedford winced. What the Mexican said was true, and he had long known it to be true, but he did not like for de Armijo to say it to him now. His lonesomeness in his long imprisonment had been awful, but not more so than his absolute ignorance of everything beyond his four walls. This policy with him had been pursued persistently. Old Catarina, before her departure, had not dared to tell him anything, and now the soldier who served him would not answer any question at all. He had felt at times that this would reduce him to mental incompetency, to childishness, but he had fought against it, and he had felt at other times that the isolation, instead of weakening his faculties, had sharpened them. But he replied without any show of emotion in his voice:

"What you say is true in the main, but why do you say it."

"In order to lay before you both sides of a proposition. You are practically forgotten here. You can spend the rest of your life in this cell, perish, perhaps, on the very bed where you are now sitting, but you can also release yourself. Take the oath of fealty to Mexico, become a Mexican citizen, join her army and fight her enemies. You might have a career there, you might rise."

It was a fiendish suggestion to one who knew nothing of what was passing, and de Armijo prided himself upon his finesse. To compel brother to fight against brother would indeed be a master stroke. He did not notice the rising blood in the face before him, that had so long borne the prison pallor.

"Have you reconquered Texas?" asked John sharply.

"What has that to do with it?"

"Do you think I would join you and fight against the Texans? Do you think I would join you anyhow, after I've been fighting against you? I'd rather rot here than do such a thing, and it seems strange that you, an officer and the governor of this castle, should make such an offer. It's dishonest!"

Blood flashed through de Armijo's dark face, and he raised his hand in menace. John Bedford instantly struck at him with all his might, which was not great, wasted as he was by prison confinement. De Armijo stepped back a little, drew his sword, and, with the flat of it, struck the prisoner a severe blow across the forehead. John had attempted to spring forward, but twenty-five pounds of iron chain confining his ankles held him. He could not ward off the blow, and he dropped back against the cot, bleeding and unconscious.

When John Bedford recovered his senses he was lying on the cot, and it was pitch dark, save for a slender shaft of moonlight that entered at the slit, and that lay like a sword-blade across the floor. His head throbbed, and when he put his hand to it he found that it was swathed in bandages. He remembered the blow perfectly, and he moved his feet, but the chains had been taken off. They had had the grace to do that much. He strove to rise, but he was very weak, and the throbbing in his head increased. Then he lay still for a long time, watching the moonbeam that fell across the floor. He was in a state of mind far from pleasant. To be shut up so long is inevitably to grow bitter, and to be struck down thus by de Armijo, while he was chained and helpless, was an injury to both body and mind that he could never forgive. He had nothing to do in his cell to distract his mind from grievous wrongs, and there was no chance for them to fade from his memory. His very soul rose in wrath against de Armijo.

He judged that it was far in the night, and, after lying perfectly still for about an hour, he rose from the bed. His strength had increased, and the throbbing in his head was not so painful. He staggered across the floor and put his face to the slit in the wall. The cold air, as it rushed against his eyes and cheeks, felt very good. It was spring in the lowlands, but there was snow yet on the peak behind the Castle of Montevideo, and winter had not yet wholly left the valley in which the castle itself stood. But the air was not too cold for John, whose brain at this moment was hotter than his blood.

The night was uncommonly clear. One could see almost as well as by day, and he began to look over, one by one, the little objects that his view commanded on the mountainside. He looked at every intimate friend, the various rocks, the cactus, the gully, and the dwarfed shrubs--he still wished to know whether they were pines or cedars, the problem had long annoyed him greatly. He surveyed his little landscape with great care. It seemed to him that he saw touches of spring there, and then he was quite sure that he saw the figure of a man, dark and shadowy, but, nevertheless, a human figure, pass across the little space. It was followed in a moment by a second, and then by a third. It caused him surprise and interest. His tiny landscape was steep, and he had never before seen men cross it. Hunters, or perhaps goat herders, but it was strange that they should be traveling along such a steep mountainside at such an hour.

A person under ordinary conditions would have forgotten the incident in five minutes, but this was an event in the life of the lonely captive. Save his encounter with de Armijo, he could not recall another of so much importance in many months. He stayed at the loophole a long time, but he did not see the figures again nor anything else living. Once, about a month before, he had caught a glimpse of a deer there, and it had filled him with excitement, because to see even a deer was a great thing, but this was a greater. He remained at the loophole until the rocks began to redden with the morning sun, but his little landscape remained as it had ever been, the same rocks, the same pines or cedars--which, in Heaven's name, were they?--and the same cactus.

Then he walked slowly back to his cot. The chains were lying on the floor beside it, and he knew that, in time, they would be put on him again, but he was resolved not to abate his independence a particle. Nor would he defer in any way to de Armijo. If he came again he would speak his opinion of him to his face, let him do what he would.

There was proud and stubborn blood in every vein of the Bedfords. John Bedford's grandfather had been one of the most noted of Kentucky's pioneers and Indian fighters, and on his mother's side, too, there was a strain of tenacious New England. By some possible chance he might be able to return de Armijo's blow. He drew the cover over his body and fell into a sleep from which he was awakened by the slovenly soldier with his breakfast. The man did not speak while John ate, and John was glad of it. He, too, had nothing to say, and he wished to be left to himself. When the man left he lay down on the cot again and slept until nearly noon. Then de Armijo came a second time. He had no apologies whatever for the manner in which he had struck down an unarmed prisoner, but was hard and sneering.

"I merely tell you," he said, "that you lost your last chance yesterday. The offer will not be repeated."

John said not a word, but gazed at him so steadily that the Mexican's swarthy face flushed a little. He hesitated, as if he would say something, but evidently thought better of it, and went out. That night he had a fever from his wounded head and the exertion that he had made in standing so long at the loophole. He became delirious, and when he emerged from his delirium a little weazened old Indian woman was sitting by the side of his cot. She had kindly and pitying eyes, and John exclaimed, in a weak but joyous voice:

"Catarina!"

"Poor boy," she said, "I have watched you one day and one night."

"Where have you been all the time before?" he asked in the Mexican dialect that he had learned.

"I have been one of the cooks," she said. "The officers, they eat so much, tortillas, frijoles, everything, and they drink so much, mescal, pulque, wine, everything. Many busy months for Catarina, and I ask for you, but I cannot see you. They say you bad, very bad. Then they say you try to kill the governor, Captain de Armijo, but he strike you on the head with the flat of his sword to save his own life. You have fever, and at last they send me to nurse you as I did that other time."

"Do you believe, Catarina, that I tried to kill de Armijo?" asked John.

She looked about her fearfully, drew the reboso closely across her shrunken shoulders, and answered in a frightened tone as if the thick walls themselves could hear:

"How should I know? It is what they say. If I should say otherwise they would lash me with the whip, even me, old Catarina."

The captive sighed. Nothing could break the awful wall of mystery that enveloped him. Catarina even did not dare to speak, although no one but himself could possibly hear.

"You mind I smoke?" said Catarina.

"No," replied John with a wan smile. "Any lady can smoke in my presence."

She whipped out a cigarrito, lighted it with a match, held it for a moment between the middle and fore finger, then inserted it between her aged lips. She took two or three long, easy whiffs, letting the smoke come out through her nose. John had never learned to smoke, but he said to her:

"Does it do you good, Catarina?"

"Whether it does me good, I know not," replied the Indian woman, "but it gives me pleasure, so I do it. I have to tell you, Señor John, that my son, Porfirio, has returned from the north. He has been at Monterey and the country about it."

John at once was all eagerness.

"And Antonio Vaquez, the leader of the burro train?" he exclaimed. "Has he heard from him? Does he know if the letter went on beyond the Rio Grande?"

"My son Porfirio has not seen Antonio Vaquez," replied Catarina, "and so he does not know from Antonio Vaquez whether the letter has crossed the Rio Grande or not. But it is a time of change."

"De Armijo told me that."

The old woman looked at him very keenly, and drove more smoke of the cigarrito through her nose. Her next words made no reference to de Armijo, but they startled John:

"You look through the loophole to-night, about midnight," she said, "You see something on the mountain side, fire, a torch, it may mean much. Who can tell?"

Excitement flamed up again in John's veins.

"What do you mean, Catarina?" he exclaimed.

"Last night I crawled to the loophole for air. It was bright moonlight, and while I was standing there I thought three human beings passed on the little patch of the mountainside that I can see."

"It is all I know," said Catarina. "I can tell you no more. Now I am concinero (cook) again. Now I go. But watch. There have been many changes. Diego, the soldier, will bring you your food as before. Watch that, too."

"Poison!" exclaimed John aghast.

"No! No! No! Hai Dios (my God), no! But do as I say!"

She snuffed out the end of the cigarrito, picked up the dishes, and promptly left the cell. She also left the captive much excited and wondering. De Armijo had said there were changes! Truly there had been changes, said Catarina, but she had not told what they were. He made many surmises, and one was as good as another, even to himself. Let a man cut three years out of his life and see if he can span the gulf between. But he was sure, despite his ignorance of their nature, that Catarina's words were full of meaning, and, perhaps among all the great changes that had come, one was coming for him, too.

He slept that afternoon in order that he might be sure to keep awake at night, and long before midnight he was on watch at the loophole. There was still soreness in his head, where the flat of the heavy steel blade had struck, but it was passing away, and his strength was returning. It is hard to crush youth. It was now easier for him, too, as the chains had not been put back upon his ankles.

He waited with great impatience, and, as his impatience increased, time became slower. He began to feel that he was foolish. But Catarina had been good to him. She would not make him keep an idle quest in the long cold hours of the night. And he had seen the three shadows pass the night before. He was sure now from what Catarina had said that they were the shadows of human beings, and their presence there had been significant.

The night was not so bright as the one before, but, by long looking, he could trace the details of his landscape, all the well known objects, every one in its proper place, with the dusky moonlight falling upon them. He stared so long that his eyes ached. Surely Catarina had been talking foolish talk! No, she had not! His heart stopped beating for a few moments, because, as certainly as he was at that loophole, a light had appeared on his bit of landscape. It was but a spark. A spark only at first, but in a moment or two it blazed up like a torch. It showed a vivid red streak against the mountainside, and the heart of the captive, that had stood still for a few moments, now bounded rapidly. The words of Catarina had come true, and he had had a sign. But what did the sign mean? It must be connected in some way with him, and nothing could be worse than that which he now endured. It must mean good.

It was a veritable flame of hope to John Bedford, the prisoner of the Castle of Montevideo. New strength suffused his whole body. Courage came back to him in a full tide. A sign had been promised to him, and it had come.

The light burned for about half an hour, and then went out suddenly. John Bedford returned to his cot, a new hope in his heart.

CHAPTER XVII

THE THREAD, THE KEY, AND THE DAGGER

When John Bedford rose the next morning he was several years younger. He held himself erect, as became his youth, a little color had crept into the pallid face, and his heart was still full of hope. He had seen the light that Catarina had promised. Surely the world was making a great change for him, and he reasoned again that, his present state being so low, any possible change must be for the better.

But the day passed and nothing happened. Diego, the slouching soldier, brought him his food, and, bearing in mind the vague words of Catarina, he noticed it carefully while he ate. There was nothing unusual. It was the same at his supper. The rosy cloud in which his hopes swam faded somewhat, but he was still hopeful. No light had been promised for the second night, but he watched for long hours, nevertheless, and he could not restrain a sense of disappointment when he turned away.

A second day passed without event, and a third, and then a fourth. John Bedford was overcome by a terrible depression. Catarina was old and foolish, or perhaps she, too, had shown at last the cunning and trickery that he began to ascribe to all these people. He would stay in that cell all his life, fairly buried alive. A fierce, unreasoning anger took hold of him. He would have flared out at stolid Diego who brought the food, but he did not want those heavy chains put back on his ankles. His head was now healed enough for the removal of the bandage, but a red streak would remain for some time under the hair. Doubtless the hair had saved him from a fracture of the skull. Every time he put his hand to the wound, which was often, his anger against de Armijo rose. It was that cold, silent anger which is the most terrible and lasting of all.

Although he was back in the depths, John felt that the brief spell of hope had been of help to him. His wound had healed more rapidly, and he was sure that he was physically stronger. Yet the black depression remained. It was even painful for him to look through the slit at his piece of the slope, which he sometimes called his mountain garden. He avoided it, as a place of hope that had failed. On the sixth day, Diego brought him his dinner a little after the dinner hour. He was sitting on the edge of his cot and he bit into a tamale. His teeth encountered something tough and fibrous, and he was about to throw it down in disgust. Then the words of Catarina, those words which he had begun to despise, came suddenly back to him. He put the tamale down and began to eat a tortilla, keeping his eye on Diego, who slouched by the wall in the attitude of a Mexican of the lower classes, that lazy, dreaming attitude that they can maintain, for hours.

Presently Diego glanced at the loophole, and in an instant John whipped the tamale off the plate and thrust it under the cover of the cot. Then he went on calmly with his eating, and drank the usual amount of bad coffee. Diego, who had noticed nothing, took the empty tray and went out, carefully locking the heavy door behind him. Then John Bedford did something that showed his wonderful power of self-restraint. He did not rush to the bed, eager to read what the tamale might contain, but strolled to the loophole and looked out for at least a quarter of an hour. He did not wish any trick to be played upon him by a sudden return of Diego. Yet he was quivering in every nerve with impatience.

When he felt that he was safe, he returned to the cot and took out the tamale. He carefully pulled it open, and in the middle he found the tough, fibrous substance that his teeth had met. He had half expected a paper of some kind, rolled closely together, that the writing might not perish, and what he really did find caused a disappointment so keen that he uttered a low cry of pain.

He held it up in his hand. It was nothing more than a small package of thread, such as might have been put in a thimble. What could it mean? Of what possible use was a coil of fifty yards or so of thread that would not sustain the weight of half a pound? Was he to escape through the loophole on that as a rope? He looked at the loophole four inches broad, and then at the tiny thread, and it seemed to him such a pitiful joke that he sat down on the cot and laughed, not at the joke itself, but at any one who was foolish enough to perpetrate such a thing.

He tested the thread. It was stronger than he had thought. Then he put it on his knee, took his head in his two hands, and sat staring at the thread for a long time, concentrating his thoughts and trying to evolve something from this riddle. It did mean something. No one would go to so much trouble to play a miserable joke on a helpless captive like himself. Catarina certainly would not do it, and she had given him the hint about the food, a hint that had come true. He kept his mind upon the one point so steadily and with so much force that his brain grew hot, and the wound, so nearly cured, began to ache again. Yet he kept at it, studying out every possible twist and turn of the riddle. At last he tested the thread again. It was undeniably strong, and then he looked at the loophole. Only one guess savored of possibility. He must hang the thread out of the loophole.

He ate the rest of the tamale, hid the little package under his clothing, and at night, after supper, when the darkness was heavy, he threw the end of the thread through the long slot, a cast in which he did not succeed until about the twelfth attempt. Then he let the thread drop down. He knew about how many feet it was to the pavement below, and he let out enough with three or four yards for good count. Then he found that he had several yards left, which he tied around one of the iron bars at the edge of the loophole. It was a black thread, and, although some one might see it by daylight, there was not one chance in a thousand that any one would see it at night.

"Fishing," he said to himself, as he lay down on his cot, intending to sleep awhile, but to draw in the thread before the day came. It might be an idle guess, he could not even know that the thread was not clinging to the stone wall, instead of reaching the ground, but there was relief in action, in trying something. He fell asleep finally, and when he awoke he sprang in an instant to the floor. The fear came with his waking senses that he might have slept too long, and that it was broad daylight. The fear was false. It was still night, with only the moon shining at the loophole. But he judged that most of the night had passed, and his impatience told him that if anything was going to happen it had happened already. He went to the window. His thread was there, tied to the bar and, like a fisherman, he began to pull it in. He felt this simile himself. "Drawing in the line," he murmured. "Now I wonder if I have got a bite."