Up the road from Cerro Gordo we travelled upon the track of a routed
army.
All had not made good their retreat, as was evidenced by many a sad
spectacle that came under our eyes as we went onward.
Here lay the dead horse, sunblown to enormous dimensions, with one lag--
a hind one--stiffly projecting into the air.
Not far off might be seen the corpse of his quondam rider, in like
manner swollen--bloated to the very tips of the fingers--so that the
latter scarcely protruded from the palms, that more resembled
boxing-gloves than the hands of a human being!
Though only thirty hours had elapsed from the time that life had left
them, this curious transformation had become complete. It was owing to
the tropical sun, which for the whole of the previous day had been
fiercely glaring upon the bodies.
I noted, as we passed, that our slain enemies had not been unheeded.
All appeared, since death, to have been visited, and attended to--not
for the purpose of interment, but of plunder.
Everything of value found upon the corpses had been stripped off; in the
case of some, even to their vestments.
A few were stark naked--their swollen shining skins displaying the
gore-encircled _embouchure_ of sabre or shot-wound; and it was only
those whose torn uniforms were saturated with black blood, who had been
permitted to retain the rags that enveloped them--now stretched to such
a tight fit, that it would have been an impossibility to have completed
the process of stripping.
To the credit of the pursuing army be it told, that this ruthless
spoliation was not the work of the American soldier. A part of it may
have been performed by the stragglers of that army--in nine cases out of
ten a European hireling--French, Irish, or German. Myself an Irishman,
I can scarcely be charged with partiality in this statement. Alas! for
the land of my nativity--whose moral sense has too long suffered from
the baneful taint of monarchical tyranny! I but set forth the facts as
I saw them.
It was no great consolation to know, that much of that spoilation had
been done by Mexicans themselves--the patrolled prisoners, who had gone
up the road before us.
The same deteriorating influence had been at work upon _their_ moral
principles for a like period of time; and the intermittent glimpses they
had got of a republic, had been too evanescent to have left behind much
trace of its civilising power.
As we rode onward among the unburied dead, I was impressed by a singular
circumstance. The corpse of no Mexican appeared to have suffered
mutilation; while that of an American soldier, who had fallen by some
stray shot, was stripped of its flesh--almost to the making a skeleton
of it!
It was the work of wolves--we had no doubt about that. We several times
saw the coyotes skulking under the edge of the chapparal, and at a
greater distance the gaunt form of the large Mexican wolf. We saw great
holes eaten in the hips of horses and mules; but not a scratch upon the
corpse of a Mexican soldier!
"Why is it?" I asked of a singular personage who was riding immediately
behind me, unattached to my troop, and whose experience over Texan and
New Mexican battlefields I presumed would help me to an explanation.
"Why is it that the wolves have left _their_ bodies untouched?"
"Wagh!" exclaimed the individual thus interrogated, with an expression
of scornful _disgust_ suddenly overspreading his features. "Wolves eat
'em! No--nor coyot's neyther. A coyot won't eat skunk; an' I reck'n
thur karkidges aint less bitterer than the meat o' a skunk."
"You think there's something in their flesh that the wolves don't
relish--something different from that of other people?"
"Think! I'm sartin sure o't. I've see'd 'em die whar we killed 'em--
when the Texans made their durned foolish expedishun northart to Santa
Fe. I've seed 'em lyin' out in the open paraira, for hul weeks at a
time, till they had got dry as punk--jest like them things they bring
from somewhar way out t'other side of the world. Durn it, I
dis-remember the name o' the place, an' the things themselves. You know
what I'm trackin' up, Bill Garey? We seed 'em last time we wur at Sant
Looey--in that ere queery place, whur they'd got Ingun things, an'
stuffed bufflers, an' the like."
"Mummeries?" replied the person thus appealed to, another unattached
member of the corps of _rifle-rangers_. "Are that what you're arter,
old Rube?"
"Preezackly, Bill Mum'ries; ay, the name war that--I reccolex it. They
gits the critters out o' large stone buildin's, shaped same as the
rockly islands we seed, when we were trappin' that lake out t'ords
California."
"Pyramids!" exclaimed the old trapper's companion, in a tone indicative
of a more enlightened mind. "Pyramids o' Eegip! That's where they get
'em--so the feller sayed, as showed 'em to us."
"Wal, wherever they gets 'em. I don't care a durn whur; but as I wur
tellin' the capten, I've seed dead Mexikins as like them mum'ries as one
buffler air to another. I've seed 'em lie out thur on the dry paraira,
an' neer a coyot, nor a wolf, nor even a turkey-buzzart go near 'em, let
alone eat o' thur meat. That's what I've seed, and so've you, Bill
Garey."
"Ye're right, old hoss; I've seed what you says."
"Wagh! what, then?" interrogated the first speaker, "what do ye konklude
from thet?"
"Wal," drawlingly responded his younger compeer; "I shed say by that
thet thar meat warn't eatable, nohow."
"Ah! there you'd be right, Bill Garey. There ain't a critter on all the
paraira as will stick a tooth into the meat o' a reg'lar Mexikin. Coyot
won't touch it; painter won't go near it; or buzzart, that'll eat the
durndest gurbage as ever wur throwed out o' a tent,--even to the flesh
o' a Injun--won't dig its bill into the karkidge o' a yeller-belly.
I've seed it, an' I knows it."
"Well," I said, yielding to a belief in this curious theory--not
propounded to me for the first time--"how do you account for this
predilection, or rather _degout_, on the part of the predatory animals?"
"Digou!" replied the old trapper; "if ye mean by that 'ere a hanger agin
'em, 'taint nothin' o' the sort. It be the pure stink o' the anymal as
keeps 'em off. How ked they be other'ise, eatin' nothin' but them red
peppers, an' thur garlic, an' thur half-rotten jirk-meat? 'Taint a bit
strange, I reckin, that neyther wolf nor buzzarts'll have anythin' to do
wi' their karkidges. Is it, Billee?"
"No," replied the individual thus appealed to; "not a bit, though some
other sort o' anymal 'haint been so pertikler. If their skins hain't
been touched, somebody's been tolerable close to 'em, an' taken thar
shirts. I calclate it's been some o' thar own people as have jest gone
up the road."
"An' maybe some o' ourn as well," rejoined the old trapper, with a
significant leer upon his wrinkled features. "Some o' them don't appear
to be much better than the Mexikins 'emselves. Look'ee there, Cap'n!"
The speaker gave a slight inclination of his head, accompanied by an
equally slight wave of the hand.
I looked in the direction indicated by this double gesture; and at once
comprehended the purport of his insinuation.
Story 1, Chapter XVI.