Page:Into Mexico with General Scott (1920).djvu/91

 They ran back, toward the camp. Cheers could be heard—beginning at the beach edge of the dunes and traveling inward. The soldiers were running, and gathering. An officer on horseback attended by other mounted officers was riding slowly on, among the dunes and occasionally stopping. Whenever he had paused, fresh cheers arose.

"That's General Worth, and Captain Mackall, division adjutant," Hannibal informed. "Golly! Wonder what's up. Something special."

They hastened until they had joined a crowd of the men, all waiting expectant, for General Worth and party were coming on.

"Mind your eye, now," Hannibal whispered. "If you know how to salute you'd better do it. You're with the Regulars."

The soldiers stiffened to attention—Hannibal like the rest, and Jerry trying to imitate. Every hand went to a salute. General Worth was as fine a looking man as one might ever see—tall and straight in the saddle, with handsome face, dark complexion, flashing black eyes, and side-whiskers of graying black. Rode perfectly.

He halted again, returning the salute.

"By direction of General Scott you will listen to good news, men," he said.

Whereupon another officer, who evidently was the division adjutant, unfolded a paper, and read:

"The commanding general of the Army of Invasion takes prompt occasion to announce to his fellow soldiers that by battle of February Twenty-second and Twenty-third, at Buena Vista, northeastern Mexico, Major-General Zachary Taylor, with a force of less than forty-five hundred, decisively de