Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/317

 "You helped."

"Bet you'll never be hauled on the carpet for skipping off this morning," said Tommy.

And Jerry rather thought the same. Whew! If the Mexicans had got that Fourth Infantry flag, which had been pierced with twenty-six balls at Monterey and as many more at Churubusco and the King's Mill!

The regiment and the Second Artillery company had taken the breastworks, but the drummers before were beating the recall. The Fourth numbered only two hundred and fifty men, the Second Artillery company only forty. The scant three hundred of them were here alone, fronting the garita or gate of San Cosme, not more than two hundred and fifty yards down the road.

Between the breastworks and the garita the road was lined on both sides with the stone, flat-roofed houses, defended by sandbag parapets and the Mexican infantry. Another battery at the gate commenced to pepper the road. Grape and canister whizzed by.

"Fall back, men! Fall back! We can't hold this now."

Running and dodging and pausing to fire, the Fourth and Captain Horace Brooks' artillery company withdrew by way of the arches and the last houses. Laughing and puffing, they reached the head of the main column.

General Worth had halted the column at the juncture of the road from the south and the road from the west, beside a large cemetery called the Campo Santo. The cemetery was the one used by