“Oh, I just wanted to look around. The brigade halted below for orders; and after a scrimmage I ran up the steps.”
“Will we take the city, now, you think?”
“It’s the time,” said Sergeant Reeves, who was a quiet man, enlisted from Ohio. “You’ll see the First Division go in by the San Cosme gate before sundown.”
“Have you had much fighting, sergeant?”
“Considerable with what force was left us. We managed to get along after you quit us. One drummer more or less—what does that amount to? I hear that a general court-martial is going to sit on you.” And Sergeant Reeves laughed. “Well, we were ordered to turn Chapultepec by the north and cut off the enemy in that quarter. Magruder’s battery section got in a tight place in the advance. Lieutenant Jackson lost all his horses and half his men by grape. The Fourteenth Infantry supported, and Trousdale, its colonel, was shot twice. But the road’s open to the next turn for the city.”
The reinforcements from the hill of Chapultepec caught up with the main column. The stormers rejoined their companies. Drum Major Brown scowled at Jerry as he fell in with the field music of the Fourth, but had no time to say anything, for there were orders.
With the First Brigade leading, and the Fourth Infantry as honor regiment at its head, the column marched by platoons on up the wide San Cosme road, divided through the middle by the stone arches of the aqueduct. Six companies of Second Dragoons, under Major Sumner, closed the rear, behind Duncan’s battery.
Mexican breastworks had been erected across the road before. They reached from ditch to ditch. The Fourth Infantry was deployed on right and left as skirmishers, and stealing from arch to arch the men advanced.
But the battery had been abandoned. In the final rush there were only a few scattered shots from skulkers. The Fourth deployed again, Company B first, and presently was fronted by a second battery, located where the San Cosme road and aqueduct entered a road from the west and turned with it straight east for the city.
The battery parapet had a single embrasure for one gun. But at the juncture of the two roads houses began, facing the south and then soon extending thicker and thicker on both sides of the road clear to the San Cosme gateway, five hundred yards. The flat roofs were protected by sandbags and fringed with the red caps of Mexican sharp-shooters. The battery and the fortified roofs looked like an ugly obstacle, especially as the Fourth Regiment skirmishers were working along swiftly and leaving the column behind.