“La Joya? Sure thing,” Hannibal said “It’s like Cerro Gordo, and we’re the men to take it.”
The next day’s march was another stiff climb. Cherry trees and apple trees were giving place to pines and firs. The soldiers puffed and complained that their ears throbbed. It was slow work, toiling up the long winding road. To-night there was rain, which by morning had hardened to a heavy white frost.
La Joya was not far now. The dragoons reconnoitred ahead; the gunners of the Duncan battery rode with slow matches lighted. Presently the road was about to skirt the base of a round-topped hill. The hill looked as though it had been fortified, but when the Fourth marched by it was seen that the breastworks had been abandoned.
Beyond La Joya the road continued through a gorge two miles in length. No guns were fired, no rocks were rolled, no Mexican flag was sighted. The whole Mexican army had disappeared as if broken by the defeat at Cerro Gordo. In fact, General Scott had announced in his dispatches: “Mexico no longer has an army.” But when camp was made this evening, at a deserted village, the men began to talk hopefully of Perote.
Perote, ten or twelve miles westward and down, certainly would furnish a fight. It was a town and a mountain and a fort, or castle. Everybody living in Mexico knew of that famous castle, where prisoners were confined in dungeons. And the mountain, called the Chest of Perote, was the square black peak seen from Vera Cruz. The town, upon a plain under the mountain, had a church with a very tall tower, visible for a great distance from several directions.
Jerry also banked on Perote, for he had been promised his uniform there if the division stayed long enough to have it fitted. He needed the uniform. His clothes were rather thin for use seven thousand feet up in the mountains, and besides, what was a drummer boy without a uniform? Luckily he had gained a pair of shoes from the spoils captured at Cerro Gordo; and at Perote he would be full rigged, with sword, cap and all; and Dick Sykes, the drummer of Company B, had agreed to exchange companies with him.
General Worth was in a hurry. He moved the division early in the morning. About noon they saw Perote town, near at hand on the plain; and the great castle, detached from it, guarding the road and the Chest.
The column hastened, eager for action. The castle remained grim and silent. General Worth sent forward a staff officer to demand its surrender. The Mexican flag fluttered down. The staff officer returned. Perote had yielded.
General Worth established his headquarters in the town, but the camp was ordered upon the plain, near the castle, about a mile from the town. Colonel Vasquez, of the Mexican army, had been left here by General Santa Anna to turn the castle over to the Americans—and that seemed odd, for it contained fifty-four cannon (one of which had a bore of seventeen inches across), eleven thousand balls, fourteen thousand bombs and hand grenades, and five hundred muskets. It covered two acres; and when the men were permitted to inspect it they found that the walls were eight feet thick and sixty feet high, surrounded by a moat fifteen feet deep and seventy-five feet wide.
Nevertheless, the castle sat by itself on the plains; and while it might have kept part of the army back to capture it, the rest of the army could have marched on. General Santa Anna probably had his reasons for abandoning it; he of course would make a stand somewhere else.