Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/229

 "Mind you, then, nothin' of this to the men," Corporal Finerty warned. "Go on, Murray."

The center of the group was Corporal Murray, of Company A, who had been orderly at headquarters.

"Well, as I was saying," proceeded Corporal Murray, "the story of the battle is like this—just as I got it with my two ears when the orderly from Old Fuss and Feathers rode in with dispatches to division headquarters and I listened through the door. General Valencia, who ranks next to Santy Annie himself, is over on Contreras hill, with twenty-two pieces of artillery, mainly heavy guns, and with six thousand infantry and lancers, blocking the way around by the west the same as those fellows at San Antonio are blocking our way north'ard. So this morning the general-in-chief sent Pillow's division of new regulars, with Cap'n Magruder's light battery of the First Artillery from the Second Division and Left'nant Callender's howitzers, to open the trail discovered by the engineers; and the Second Division under Twiggs was ordered to support.

"Well, and a time they all had, sure enough. The engineers hadn't been able by reason of the nature of the ground to get clost enough to count the batteries, or quite figger their positions, but they'd took a scattering of prisoners before being driven back, and Old Fuss and Feathers examined these. Now the trail was fierce, in the open, like, all heaved up into sharp rocks and broken by holes, and never a bit of shelter once our men had climbed atop the lava field. And at two thousand yards the Mexican eighteens had a fair sweep, whilst Magruder and Callender couldn't reply at all.