In the Rogue Blood (37 page)

Hearsay of every sort came to them, the most disturbing being that they would not be used in the defense of the city at all. One rumor had it that Santa Ana did not trust them to fight against their fellow Americans. Another, that if the defense of the capital did not succeed, he intended to turn them over to the Americans in exchange for certain concessions. Some of the Patricios said they sure enough wouldn’t put it past any damn general, Yank
or
Mex, to doublecross his men that way and wondered aloud if maybe it would be wise to slip away while the slipping was good. Riley said he would beat the shit out of the next man who said such a thing and would personally shoot any among them who attempted desertion.

The San Patricio ranks had in fact increased in recent weeks and both companies were now but a few men shy of their full strength of one hundred men each. In U.S. camps from Veracruz to the advance units now within fifteen miles of the city, Santa Ana’s English handbills called on Yankee soldiers to reject the unjust American cause and come to Mexico’s noble defense of true liberty and the Mother Church. The fliers had drawn a new influx of deserters eager to reap the promised rewards of “rich fields and large tracts of land, which being cultivated by your industry, shall crown you with happiness and convenience.”

Handsome Jack himself wrote a handbill for circulation:

Lucas Malone read a fresh copy of it over John’s shoulder and said, “Bedamn but Jack can scribble a sermon, caint he? Makes me wish I was
back on the other side just so’s I could desert all over again.”

In his fervor for recruits Handsome Jack made daily visits to the erstwhile monastery of Santiago Tlatelolco and proselytized among the captured American soldiers imprisoned there. Most cursed him for a turncoat son of a bitch and said they would see his head on a pike, but others succumbed to his suasions and the promised Mexican rewards and found themselves in a Saint Patrick uniform within the hour of accepting his offer.

On a sunny Thursday morning came the order for them to proceed at once to the village of Churubusco about five miles south of the citadel and reinforce the defense of the Rio Churubusco Bridge.

“About damn time!” Lucas Malone said. The bunch of them were grinning fiercely The order dispelled their apprehension that Santa Ana was reserving them as bargaining pawns.

“Sure now Señor Napoleon finally come to realize we got lots more to lose than any Mexie does if we get took prisoner,” remarked a Patricio named Tom Cassady. “Hell man, it’s
us
got the most good reason of anybody to see the Yanks beat back.”

“Churubusco,” said a redbeard named O’Connor as they readied to move out. “Is that be the name of some famous Spanish general or somebody?”

“No,” Colonel Moreno said. “It is Aztec, that word. It means, ah, where the war god—how do you say—the place where the birds come to their nest? In the evening?”

“A roost?”

“Sí! Churubusco. It means the roost of the war god.”

“The war god be a
bird?
”

“Like a ferocious bird—like an eagle. And also like a snake. The war god is like Mexico. He is like all the wild things of the blood.”

They crossed the Rio Churubusco that afternoon under a glaring sun veiled in thin ragged clouds. The sight of the Saint Patrick banner snapping
in the breeze drew cheers from the two infantry regiments defending the stone bridge. “Viva los Colorados! Viva los San Patricios!” The infantrymen had constructed a bridgehead marked by a high U-shaped parapet behind which were posted two battalions of riflemen and three artillery pieces. The parapet afforded an excellent field of fire and was fronted by a watery ditch some twenty feet wide. The bridgehead overlooked a causeway flanked on both sides by deep ditches and soggy marshland. The causeway ran south for nearly two miles to the pueblo of San Antonio. It was one of only two approaches the Americans could take to the bridge. The other was the Coyoacán Road. On either causeway they would be open targets.

The Patricios raised their fists in salute to the cheering Mexicans. They veered from the bridgehead and trooped onto the Coyoacán Road and followed it southwestward for two hundred yards to the imposing Convent of San Mateo. The convent consisted of several monastery buildings and a church with a high thick steeple. A half-mile southward lay a lava bed called the Pedregal, some fifteen square miles of blackly adamantine volcanic rock sharp enough to cut through bootsoles and savage even the shod hooves of horses. Together with the surrounding marshland and dense cornfields, the Pedregal blocked all approach to Churubusco except by the Coyoacán and San Antonio roads.

They filed through the huge front gates to the stirring music of an army band and the resounding vivas of the two battalions already there under the command of General Manuel Rincón. The convent was enclosed by twelve-foot-high stone walls containing rifle loopholes and a wide scaffolding on which were positioned a quartet of eight-pounder guns. In the center of the cobbled courtyard was a large fountain bordered by a brick walkway lined with cypress trees and flowering shrubs. Along the base of the eastern wall bloomed a vivid red rose garden. Rincón bade the Saint Patricks welcome and made a brief but eloquent speech about their nobility and heroism. More vivas and march music followed and then the general took Moreno aside and conferred with him briefly, pointing here and there around the convent as he spoke, leaning close to him to be heard above the din of the band. The two men exchanged salutes and Moreno returned to his men and apprised them of their specific duties.

The convent walls would be manned by Rincón’s infantry but the four big guns would be crewed by San Patricios. Two of the guns were trained on the San Antonio Road and two on the southern stretch of the Coyoacán Road by which the Yankees would have to come in order to attack
the convent. The road was flanked on one side by marsh and on the other by a muddy field of ripe corn and was visible all the way to a small rise almost a half-mile to the south where stood the tiny village of Coyoacán and a squad of lookouts posted there. Beyond the rise, the road ran west to San Angel, a mile farther on.

The flat roofs of the monastery buildings were edged by low protective walls and made excellent ramparts. Saturnino O’Leary’s company was assigned to them. The core of the convent’s defense was the church itself. Its huge steeple was girt by a wide stonewalled walkway that commanded a clear view of the surrounding countryside. The position was ideal for riflemen as well as for the six-pounder gun and the pair of four-pounders Rincón had already placed there. Its defense was given to Handsome Jack Riley’s company and a platoon of Mexican riflemen.

The order from Santa Ana, Moreno told his battalion, was that the convent must be held at any cost. “If the Yankees should break through our southern positions and advance this far, only the téte du pont and this convent will stand between the barbarians and the capital. We cannot fall, compadres. We cannot.”

“You aint lying,” Lucas Malone murmured.

Not an hour after they’d settled into their assigned positions the booming of artillery came to them from the far south side of the Pedregal, some three or four miles away. The convent defenders gathered at the south walls and gazed out to the Pedregal as the big guns resounded in the distance beyond. General Rincón and Colonel Moreno joined Riley’s Saint Patricks in the steeple but even from that vantage point all they could see of the faraway battle were vague billows of dust and smoke. The lookouts at Coyoacán were gathered on the crest of the rise and all of them peering to southward.

“General Valencia ya emprendió la lucha,” Rincón said. Moreno told Riley and John that General Valencia had been charged with blocking any Yankee attempt to go around the south end of the Pedregal and then advance on the convent by way of the San Angel Road.

The distant artillery battle continued through the afternoon and seemed to be advancing slowly toward San Angel. Now the sun set in a crimson riot behind a swelling rise of thunderheads dark as slate. Sheet lightning
flashed ghostly pale in the mountains. The camp women prepared a supper of spicy kid stew, beans and tortillas, and the San Patricios fell to it. They had just done eating when the sounds of artillery abruptly ceased. The army band had earlier let off its blaring and now a soft strumming of guitars began to carry through the convent. Many of the Mexican soldiers were accompanied by their women and huddled close with them in the shadows.

And now the night rose fully. The sky was densely dark with rushing clouds and the wind picked up and smelled heavily of a coming storm. Thunder rolled over the valley in long rippling cracks and every clap came louder than the one before. The wind gusted and shook the trees and shrubs. The convent was suddenly illuminated in pale blue light followed on the instant by a shuddering blast of thunder that made John flinch and Lucas whoop and then the sky broke open and the rain came slashing down.

Past midnight the wind at last fell off and the rain eased to a drizzle but did not quit altogether until just before sunrise. The morning was wet and cool, ripe with the fecund smells of the marshland. The sky reddened over the eastern mountains. As the sun broke above the peaks the sounds of battle renewed in the southwest distance.

John and Lucas stood at the stone rail of the steeple walkway and sipped coffee as they scanned the far rise of the Coyoacán Road where the Mexican lookouts were posted. The lookouts were tiny figures once again bunched on the road and looking south. Now several of them began to gesticulate excitedly. The sounds of artillery and small arms grew more distinct. Riley came up beside John and trained his field scope on the Coyoacán rise. The lookouts mounted up hurriedly and reined their horses about and spurred them toward the convent. A moment later Moreno came running up the steeple steps and out to the walkway and peered out on the dozen horsemen galloping up to the gates and clattering into the courtyard yelling, “Hay vienen! Hay vienen!”

They were indeed coming but they were not Yankees, not yet. The men riding hard over the rise and followed by soldiers afoot and running headlong were Valencia’s troops retreating from San Angel. As they passed by on the road they did not even look toward the comrades calling
to them from the walls and the open gates of the convent but pressed on all the way to the bridgehead and there took their refuge.

The crackling of American rifles grew louder. Still more soldiers came up the road at a gallop and on the run. And now there were cries of “Mira! Mira!” from the east wall of the convent and the Patricios on the walkway dashed to that side and saw that the San Antonio Road too was now athrong with Mexican troops in full flight for the bridge.

John and Lucas looked at each other and John thought he saw in the old man’s eyes a tiredness he had never seen before. His own mouth had gone dry. He could not have said how much of his excitement was fear, how much anticipation.

Mexican soldiers continued retreating north along both roads for nearly an hour more, the last of them shooting behind them as they came. As these rear-guard infantry made it to the bridgehead, the first Yankee soldiers hove into view, a company of dragoons. They rode onto the causeway and there they halted. They were reconnoitering the road ahead when all three guns at the bridgehead opened fire on them.

The Yankees reined hastily about on the narrow causeway and all started galloping back the way they came and some were forced off either side of the road and into the watery muck and two of the cannonballs were solid rounds and landed with high splashes in the marshwater off the road but the other round was explosive and blasted against the causeway embankment and cut down two horses and their riders. A great cheer went up from the téte du pont and the walls of the watching convent. One of the fallen Yankees jumped to his feet and limped to a comrade who pulled him up to ride double but the other downed trooper was pinned under his dying and weakly kicking horse in the shallow water off the road. The men at the convent could see him beckoning frantically for his comrades to help him, could hear dimly his shrill cries as the last of the dragoons spurred away before the big guns could fire on them again.

“Lookit em leave him,” Lucas Malone said. “Sorry sons a bitches.”

“Finish him, Johnny,” Riley said.

John looked at him. “Hell, Jack, he
is
finished.”

Riley scowled. “He gets loose of that horse and gets back in the fight and he might be the very one to shoot
you
an hour from now. Worse than that, he might be the one to shoot
mei
Now do it!”

“I got a dollar says Johnny’11 do for him with one shot in the head,”
Lucas Malone quickly called out. “No matter the fella’s wiggling like a snake and it’s two hundred yards if it’s a damn foot.”

“You’re covered, Malone!” somebody said. “The lad’s a deadeye, sure enough, but he aint
that
good!” Immediately there was a clamor of bets. As money changed hands Lucas gave John a broad wink.

John braced his rifle on the walkway wall and cocked the piece and took careful aim. The trooper was sitting up in the water with pistol in hand and had almost managed to free his leg from under the horse. John squeezed off the shot and in that instant thought he could see the ball flying out of the muzzle in a flare of smoke and cutting through the still noon air and traversing the distance to its target in less time than a heartbeat and in John’s inner eye the Yankee’s head loomed from hardly more than a speck to its full size as the ball crunched into it just above the left ear and bore through bone and brain and burst out the other side of the skull and took the right ear with it in a red spray. The man’s head abruptly tilted to the right and he fell over dead with his face in the water.

The Mexicans raised another great cheer and Lucas Malone laughed and collected bets and clapped John on the shoulder.

John felt no joy in the shot. The man had been no more threat to him than a bottle on a fence. Lucas caught a look at his face and leaned close and said, “Jack was right, what he said. And the son of a bitch was anyway one a
theirs
, goddamnit, and it aint never nothin but right to shoot one a theirs no matter he’s standin or sittin or sleepin or takin a shit or gettin laid or sayin his goddamn prayers. You hear me, boy? You done right. And
you
done it cause you the best of us at it.”

John shrugged. And thought that whoever it was that said a man was no more than what he did best was right for damn sure.

A half-hour later American troops hove in view once again, this time on both the Coyoacán and the San Antonio causeways—and this time in numbers. The bridgehead guns opened fire and took down another horse. And now the wall guns at the convent fired—and mingled with the round shot was a high explosive shell whose blast put down a pair of dragoons and several foot soldiers and the Mexican cheers overwhelmed the screams of the animals and the fallen men.

And then, along both causeways, the Americans attacked.