Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/168

 XI

IN THE WAKE OF THE FLEEING ENEMY

General Scott had lost three officers and sixty rank and file killed, thirty officers and three hundred and thirty-six men wounded, with one private missing. The Mexican killed and wounded were over one thousand; five generals and three thousand other officers and men had been taken, together with four or five thousand stands of small arms and forty-three pieces of artillery.

The surgeons thought that General Shields might get well; he had a fighting chance. Major Sumner of the dragoons was going to travel in the Santa Anna coach until he was strong enough to ride a horse again.

The First Division was to push right onward, following up the retreat of the eight thousand Mexicans who had escaped. The main part of the Second Division and the ill General Patterson, with a portion of the Volunteers, were camped farther along, up the road, but it was understood that the First would soon have the honor of the advance, because its men were fresh. And that was what the First desired: to get ahead. It was tough to have missed out in the battle of Cerro Gordo. Still, nothing could have stopped old Colonel Harney, once he was started up that hill.

Reveille had been ordered for four-thirty; and when Musicians' Call sounded for all the regimental field music to assemble at the guard tent for roll