“Did you know that Old Fuss and Feathers hasn’t more than six thousand men all told?” Hannibal demanded, after first greetings.
“No!”
“That’s right. We’ve lost five thousand Mohawks since you left Perote. Got only the First and Second Pennsylvania, the Palmettos and the New Yorkers. The others were twelve-months men and their time is out soon. The Alabamans and Georgians are still at Vera Cruz; and at Jalapa General Scott let the Third and Fourth Illinois and the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians go. They said they’d stay till the last day, but then they wouldn’t re-enlist; they wanted to get home. So he thought they’d better start right away, before the yellow fever got bad at Vera Cruz. We’re garrisoning Jalapa and Perote, and that’s all. Have a big sick list and a lot of desertions, too, but not as many as in Texas and northeast Mexico. Up there the Mexicans kept tolling the men over by promising high pay and officers’ jobs. Some of ’em are fighting under Santa Anna now, I bet, because they’re afraid to come back. If they’re captured they’ll be shot or hanged.”
“Where’s General Scott?”
“He’s coming from Jalapa with the Second Division. General Pillow’s gone to Vera Cruz to look after reinforcements, and General Patterson has gone home because he hasn’t men enough for a division. I suppose Quitman or Pillow will command the Mohawks now. So you fellows didn’t have much of brush with those lancers, you say?”
“No. They ran off.”
“Well, you did your best, boy. You gave the alarm. I guess those smart officers will quit calling us ‘rascally drummer boys.’ Anyhow, hope we beat the Second Division into Puebla. There’s no use in this whole division sitting here, only ten miles out. We don’t need the Second.”
The restless General Worth decided the same thing. The scouts who reconnoitred reported that all Santa Anna’s forces in Puebla had vanished on the road to the City of Mexico; the mayor of Puebla sent the same word. Before noon the First Division and the Quitman two regiments of Mohawks marched for Puebla. The day was May 15.
A short distance out of Puebla the mayor and city council met General Worth to escort him in. There was to be no fight. The road changed to a magnificent paved highway leading between pillars of shining stone like colored marble.