The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

General Kearney and Lieutenant Beale walked rapidly up and down before the tents of the wretched remnant of United States troops with which the former had arrived overland in California.  It was bitterly cold in spite of the fine drizzling rain.  Lonely buttes studded the desert, whose palms and cacti seemed to spring from the rocks; high on one of them was the American camp.  On the other side of a river flowing at the foot of the butte, the white tents of the Californians were scattered among the dark huts of the little pueblo of San Pasqual.

“Let me implore you, General,” said Beale, “not to think of meeting Andres Pico.  Why, your men are half starved; your few horses are broken-winded; your mules are no match for the fresh trained mustangs of the enemy.  I am afraid you do not appreciate the Californians.  They are numerous, brave, and desperate.  If you avoid them now, as Commodore Stockton wishes, and join him at San Diego, we stand a fair chance of defeating them.  But now Pico’s cavalry and foot are fresh and enthusiastic—­in painful contrast to yours.  And, moreover, they know every inch of the ground.”

Kearney impatiently knocked the ashes out of his pipe.  He had little regard for Stockton, and no intention of being dictated to by a truculent young lieutenant who spoke his mind upon all occasions.

“I shall attack them at daybreak,” he said curtly.  “I have one hundred and thirty good men; and has not Captain Gillespie joined me with his battalion?  Never shall it be said that I turned aside to avoid a handful of boasting Californians.  Now go and get an hour’s sleep before we start.”

The young officer shrugged his shoulders, saluted, and walked down the line of tents.  A man emerged from one of them, and he recognized Russell.

“Hello, Ned,” he said.  “How’s the arm?”

“’Twas only a scratch.  Is Altimira down there with Pico, do you know?  He is a brave fellow!  I respect that man; but we have an account to settle, and I hope it will be done on the battle-field.”

“He is with Pico, and he has done some good fighting.  Most of the Californians have.  They know how to fight and they are perfectly fearless.  Kearney will find it out to-morrow.  He is mad to attack them.  Why, his men are actually cadaverous.  Bueno! as they say here; Stockton sent me to guide him to San Diego.  If he prefers to go through the enemy’s lines, there is nothing for me to do but take him.”

“Yes, but we may surprise them.  I wish to God this imitation war were over!”

“It will be real enough before you get through.  Don’t worry.  Well, good night.  Luck to your skin.”

At daybreak the little army marched down the butte, shivering with cold, wet to the skin.  Those on horseback naturally proceeded more rapidly than those mounted upon the clumsy stubborn mules; and Captain Johnson, who led the advance guard of twelve dragoons, found himself, when he came in sight of the enemy’s camp, some distance ahead of the main body of Kearney’s small army.  To his surprise he saw that the Californians were not only awake, but horsed and apparently awaiting him.  Whether he was fired by valour or desperation at the sight is a disputed point; but he made a sudden dash down the hill and across the river, almost flinging himself upon the lances of the Californians.

Captain Moore, who was ambling down the hill on an old white horse at the head of fifty dragoons mounted on mules, spurred his beast as he witnessed the foolish charge of the advance, and arrived upon the field in time to see Johnson fall dead and to take his place.  Pico, seeing that reënforcements were coming, began to retreat, followed hotly by Moore and the horsed dragoons.  Suddenly, however, Fernando Altimira raised himself in his stirrups, looked back, laughed and galloped across the field to General Pico.

“Look!” he said.  “Only a few men on horses are after us.  The mules are stumbling half a mile behind.”

Pico wheeled about, gave the word of command, and bore down upon the Americans.  Then followed a hand-to-hand conflict, the Californians lancing and using their pistols with great dexterity, the Americans doing the best they could with their rusty sabres and clubbed guns.

They were soon reënforced by Moore’s dragoons and Gillespie’s battalion, despite the unwilling mules; but the brutes kicked and bucked at every pistol shot and fresh cloud of smoke.  The poor old horses wheezed and panted, but stood their ground when not flung out of position by the frantic mules.  The officers and soldiers of the United States army were a sorry sight, and in pointed contrast to the graceful Californians on their groomed steeds, handsomely trapped, curvetting and rearing and prancing as lightly as if on the floor of a circus.  Kearney cursed his own stupidity, and Pico laughed in his face.  Beale felt satisfaction and compunction in saturating the silk and silver of one fine saddle with the blood of its owner.  The point of the dying man’s lance pierced his face, but he noted the bleaching of Kearney’s, as one dragoon after another was flung upon the sharp rocks over which his bewildered brute stumbled, or was caught and held aloft in the torturing arms of the cacti.

On the edge of the battle two men had forgotten the Aztec Eagle and the Stars and Stripes; they fought for love of a woman.  Neither had had time to draw his pistol; they fought with lance and sabre, thrusting and parrying.  Both were skilful swordsmen, but Altimira’s horse was far superior to Russell’s, and he had the advantage of weapons.

“One or the other die on the rocks,” said the Californian, “and si I kill you, I marry Benicia.”

Russell made no reply.  He struck aside the man’s lance and wounded his wrist.  But Altimira was too excited to feel pain.  His face was quivering with passion.

It is not easy to parry a lance with a sabre, and still more difficult to get close enough to wound the man who wields it.  Russell rose suddenly in his stirrups, described a rapid half-circle with his weapon, brought it down midway upon the longer blade, and snapped the latter in two.  Altimira gave a cry of rage, and spurring his horse sought to ride his opponent down; but Russell wheeled, and the two men simultaneously snatched their pistols from the holsters.  Altimira fired first, but his hand was unsteady and his ball went through a cactus.  Russell raised his pistol with firm wrist, and discharged it full in the face of the Californian.

Then he looked over the field.  Moore, fatally lanced, lay under a palm, and many of his men were about him.  Gillespie was wounded, Kearney had received an ugly thrust.  The Californians, upon the arrival of the main body of the enemy’s troops, had retreated unpursued; the mules attached to one of the American howitzers were scampering over to the opposite ranks, much to the consternation of Kearney.  The sun, looking over the mountain, dissipated the gray smoke, and cast a theatrical light on the faces of the dead.  Russell bent over Altimira.  His head was shattered, but his death was avenged.  Never had an American troop suffered a more humiliating defeat.  Only six Californians lay on the field; and when the American surgeon, after attending to his own wounded, offered his services to Pico’s, that indomitable general haughtily replied that he had none.

“By Jove!” said Russell to Beale that night, “you know your Californians!  I am prouder than ever of having married one!  That army is of the stuff of which my mother-in-law is made!”