LEAVING THE HACIENDA
It was near the close of a bright summer day, and a deeply interested
company had gathered in the dining-room of the Crawford home in New
York. Dinner was on the table, but nobody had yet sat down. The number
of young persons present suggested that Ned must have older brothers and
sisters.
"Father Crawford," exclaimed one of the grown-up young men, "what is
this about another letter from Edward? I came over to hear the news."
"Letter?" said Mr. Crawford. "I should say so! I guess I'd better read
it aloud. It was a long time getting out and coming around by way of
England. There are all sorts of delays in war-time. It is the last of
three that he wrote before escaping into the interior of Mexico with his
new friends. I am glad that he did go with them, though, and there must
be other letters on the way. We shall hear from him again pretty soon."
They all were silent then, and he read the letter through, with now and
then a few words of explanation, but Mrs. Crawford had evidently read it
before, and all she could say now was:
"Oh, dear! I don't like it! I wish he had come home!"
"It's all right, mother," said Mr. Crawford, "for I have something more
to tell. Captain Kemp is here, and, from what he says, it is plain that
it would not have done for Ned to have remained anywhere on the coast.
He will be safe where he is, and he will learn a great deal. I would not
have him miss it for anything. What's pretty good, too, we have been
paid all our insurance money for the loss of the _Goshhawk_, and our firm
has been given a contract to furnish supplies for the army. I shall be
down on the gulf before long myself, in charge of a supply ship, and I
can make inquiries about Ned. He will turn up all right."
Everybody appeared to be encouraged except Ned's mother, and it was a
pity she could not have seen how well he was looking at that very time.
If, for instance, she had possessed a telescope which would have
reached so far, she might have seen a fine, large bay horse reined in to
a standstill in front of a modern-appearing country-house, well built of
a nearly white kind of limestone. Around this residence was a
wide-spreading lawn, with vines, shrubbery, flowers, and other evidences
of wealth and refinement. The rider of the horse appeared to sit him
easily, and he was a picture of health and high spirits, but for an
expression of discontent that was upon his sunburned face.
"This is all very beautiful," he said, as he glanced around him, "but I
wish I were out of it. I want to hear from home. They must have my
letters by this time, but they couldn't guess where I am now."
He was silent for a moment, and the horse curveted gracefully under him,
as if in doubt whether to gallop away again, or to ask his rider to get
off.
"Well!" said Ned, with a pull on the rein. "It seems like a long,
wonderful dream since I saw General Zuroaga ride away from us at the
cross-roads. What a skirmish that was! Then we made our way through the
mountains, and came here, and hasn't it been a curious kind of life ever
since? I've learned how to ride like a Mexican. I've seen all there is
to see for miles and miles around this place. I've seen lots of old
ruins, all that's left of ancient houses and temples and altars. I
believe the senora likes nothing better than to tell me yarns about the
Montezuma times and about her ancestors in Spain. That's a great
country. I think I'll go over there, some day, and see Granada and the
Alhambra and the old castles and the Spanish people. I like the Mexicans
first-rate, all that I have seen of them. They will be a splendid nation
one of these days, but they're awfully ignorant now. Why, every one in
these parts believes that our army is all the while being whipped all to
pieces by theirs, and I can't exactly swallow that. I'd like to know
just what is really going on. I'm all in the dark."
"Senor Carfora!" called out a clear, ringing voice.
He turned in the saddle, from seeming to gaze at the distant forest, and
there, in the piazza which ran all along the front of the house, stood
Senorita Felicia, her usually pale face flushed with excitement.
"We have a letter from father!" she shouted. "He has completed his
regiment, and he is to command it. President Paredes is going north, to
drive the gringos out of Mexico, and father may have to go with him. He
says it is time for us to move to the city of Mexico. We are to live
with my aunt, Mercedes Paez, and you are to come with us. Is it not
grand?"
"It is just what I was wishing for!" exclaimed Ned. "I'd give almost
anything to see that city, after what your mother has told me."
"Oh," said Felicia, "she was born there, and she'll make you see all
there is of it. But we were all ready, you know, and we are to set out
early to-morrow morning."
"Hurrah!" responded Ned. "But I'd like to hear from General Zuroaga. I
wish I knew whether or not he was much hurt in that fight in the road."
"Father does not believe he was," said Felicia. "Sometimes I almost
think he knows all about it. But there are some things he won't speak
of, and General Zuroaga is one of them."
Ned sprang to the ground, and a barefooted "peon" servant took charge of
his horse. It was not at all the kind of dismounting he had performed at
the camp in the woods on the road from Vera Cruz. Neither did he now
have any machete dangling from his belt, to entangle himself with, and
there were no pistol holsters in front of the saddle. He went on into
the house with the senorita, and in a moment more he was hearing
additional news from her mother. Senora Tassara was as stately as ever,
but it was apparent that she had taken a liking to her young American
guest, whether it was on account of his deep interest in her old
stories, or otherwise. It may have been, in part, that company was a
good thing to have in a somewhat lonely country-house, for she could not
have thought of associating with Mexican neighbors of a social rank
lower than her own. Was she not descended from Spanish grandees, and
were they not, for the greater part, representatives of the mere Aztecs
and Toltecs, whom her forefathers had conquered? It was that very
feeling, however, which in the minds of such men as Paredes and similar
leaders was standing in the way of every effort to construct a genuine
republic out of the people of the half-civilized States of Mexico.
Ned's next questions related to the war, and he inquired how many more
great battles Colonel Tassara had reported.
"Battles?" exclaimed Senora Tassara. "Why, there has not been one fought
since Resaca de la Palma. But he says that General Ampudia sends word
that the American army is about to advance upon him. They will attack
him at the city of Monterey, and they never can take so strong a place
as that is. He is ready for them, but President Paredes believes that it
is time for him to take command of the army in person."
It certainly was so. The Mexican President was a cunning politician, and
he had been by no means an unsuccessful general. He was well aware that
it would not be wise for him to now allow too many victories to be won
by any other Mexican. It might interfere with his own popularity. On the
other hand, if General Ampudia should be defeated, as he was quite
likely to be, then it was good policy for the commander-in-chief, the
President, to be promptly on hand with a larger force, to overwhelm the
invaders who had ruined Ampudia. Therefore, it might be said that the
Americans had the tangled factions and corrupt politics of Mexico
working for them very effectively.
Ned Crawford already knew much about the condition of military and
political affairs, but he was not thinking of them that evening. It was
a great deal pleasanter to sit and talk with Senorita Felicia about the
city of Mexico and others of the historical places of the ancient land
of Anahuac. She still could remind him, now and then, that she hated all
kinds of gringos, but at all events she was willing to treat one of them
fairly well. He, on his part, had formed a favorable opinion of some
Mexicans, but he was as firm as ever in his belief that their army could
never drive the Americans out of Texas.
There was one place which was even busier and more full of the
excitement of getting ready for a new movement than was the Tassara
hacienda. It was among the scattered camps of General Taylor's army,
near Matamoras, at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Reinforcements had made
the army more than double its former size, but it was understood that it
was still of only half the numbers of the force it was soon to meet,
under General Ampudia. It was a curious fact, however, that all of
General Taylor's military scholars were entirely satisfied with that
computation, and considered that any other arrangement would have been
unfair, as they really outnumbered their opponents when these were only
two to one. What was more, they were willing to give them the advantage
of fighting behind strong fortifications, for they knew that they were
soon to attack the mountain city of Monterey. Part of what was now
genuinely an invading army was to go up the river in boats for some
distance. The other part was to go overland, and it was an open question
which of them would suffer the more from the hot summer sun. It was to
be anything but a picnic, for here were nearly seven thousand Americans
of all sorts, who were obtaining their first experiences of what war
might really be, if made in any manner whatever in the sultriest kind of
southern weather. Much more agreeable for them might have been a march
across the central table-lands beyond, at an elevation of four thousand
feet above the sea level and the _tierra caliente_.
That was precisely the kind of pleasant journey that was performed by
Ned Crawford and the imposing Tassara cavalcade on the morrow and during
a couple of wonderful days which followed. There being no railway,
whatever the senora wished to take with her had to be conveyed in wagons
or on pack-mules, and the ladies themselves now preferred the saddle to
any kind of carriage. In fact, Ned shortly discovered that Senorita
Felicia was more at home on horseback than he was, and he more than once
congratulated himself that she had never witnessed his first
performances in mounting his fat pony.
"How she would have laughed at me!" he thought. "But at that time there
wasn't another spare saddle-horse, and she and her mother didn't care a
cent whether I could ride or not. They were thinking of Guerra's
lancers."
The scenery was exceedingly beautiful as well as peaceful. There was
nothing whatever to suggest that a dreadful war was going on. There were
houses of friends to stop at, instead of hotels. There were towns and
villages of some importance to be rapidly investigated by a tourist like
Ned, from New York by way of England, and now a good young Mexican for
the time being. Then there was an exciting evening, when all who were on
horseback rode ahead of the wagons and on into the city, which occupies
the site of the wonderful Tenochtitlan, which was captured by Hernando
Cortes and his daring adventurers ever so long ago. From that time
onward, during a number of busy days, Ned became better and better
satisfied with the fact that his father had sent him across the sea to
learn all that he could of Mexico and the Mexicans.