Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/283

 The trenches connecting with the Casa-Mata had been seized; their cannon were being used to quicken the rout hastening into the wooded west slope of Chapultepec. All the Casa-Mata, however, was aflame with rapid discharges, and the Second Brigade was recoiling in confusion from before it. The Casa-Mata turned out to be a solid stone structure, built like a fort, housing cannon and infantry, and surrounded by ditches and breastworks.

Lieutenant Grant chanced to mark Jerry, standing behind him.

"They're being cut to pieces," he exclaimed. "General Worth, and Scott, too, have been deceived. We should have attacked in greater force."

The Second Brigade was in the open—could not penetrate past the ditches and to the Casa-Mata walls. The field was blue with bodies. Where was Duncan's battery? Then a sharp word from the lieutenant, who had leveled his spy-glass, drew Jerry's eyes also to the northwest at very end of line.

A dense body of lancers had sallied from the Mexican right, and sweeping around was forming to charge and turn the American left. The Duncan battery section, with the Voltigeurs running to keep up, was galloping to head the lancers off. And the Sumner dragoons and Rifles were changing front to meet the charge.

The battery was there first—unlimbered in a twinkling—the lancers, a mass of red and yellow, their lances set, tore in for it. Colonel Duncan waited—waited—and when his guns at last burst into canister and grape, with gunners working like mad, the close ranks of the Mexican cavalry melted