The Quest of the Four: A Story of the Comanches and Buena Vista

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Phil heard it almost without noticing, although it was a reply to his own question. Yet it was a name that he was destined soon to recall and never to forget. How often for years and years afterward that name came back to him at night, syllable by syllable and letter by letter! Now he rode on, taking no thought of it, and the little village and hacienda lay behind him, sleeping peacefully in the sun. His attention was for the mountains, because they were now entering the defile, the pass of Angostura, which cuts through the spur thrown out by the Sierra Madre. This is lofty, and the way narrowed fast. Nor did the sunlight fall so plentifully there, and the winds grew colder as they whistled through the pass. After the brilliant opalescent air of the plain, they seemed to be riding in a sort of twilight, and Phil felt his spirits droop. Deeper and deeper they went into the cut. Above him loomed the mountains, dark and menacing. Shrub and dwarfed plants clung here and there in the crannies, but the range was bare, and often it was distorted into strange shapes, sometimes like that of the human countenance. The sky showed in a ribbon above, but it had turned gray, and was somber and depressing. Behind came the long line of the army, the wheels of the artillery clanking over the stones.

Once or twice Phil thought he saw figures in sombreros and serapes far up the mountainside, watching them. Mexicans, no doubt, ready to report to Santa Anna the advance of the American army. He expected that some stray shots might be fired down into the pass by these spies or guerillas, but evidently they had other business than merely to annoy, and no bullets came.

Phil's horse stumbled, and the boy saved him from a fall with a quick pull. Arenberg's horse stumbled, also, and Phil noticed that his own was now walking gingerly over a path of solid but dark stone, corrugated and broken into sharp edges. Well might a horse, even one steel-shod, be careful here! Phil knew it was volcanic rock, lava that had flowed down ages ago from the crests of the peaks about them, once volcanoes but extinct long since.

His horse stumbled again, but recovered himself quickly. It certainly was dangerous rock, sometimes sharp almost like a knifeblade, and the shoes of the infantry would be cut badly. Cut badly! A sudden thought sprang up in his brain and refused to be dislodged. It was one of those lightning ideas, based on little things, that carry conviction with them through their very force and swiftness. His free hand went up to the breast of his coat and clutched the spot beneath which his brother's letter lay. He had read a hundred times the words of the captive, telling how his feet had beer cut by the sharp stone. Lava might be found at many places in Mexico, but it was along these trails in Northern Mexico that the fighting bands of Mexicans and Texans passed. He reasoned with himself for a few moments, saying that he was foolish, and hoping that he was not, but the idea remained in his head, and he knew that it was fixed there. He leaned over and said, in a husky whisper to Bill Breakstone:

"Bill, have you noticed it! The rock! The lava! How it cuts! How it would quickly slice the sole from the shoe of a captive who had marched far! Bill! Bill, I say, have you noticed it?"

Bill Breakstone looked in astonishment at his young comrade, but he was a man of uncommonly quick perceptions, and in a moment he comprehended.

"I understand," he said. "Your brother's letter and the passage in which he tells of his shoes being cut by the sharp stone while he was led along blindfolded. He may have passed along this very road, Phil. It may be. It may be. I won't say you are wrong."

"What if we are near him now!" continued Phil. "I've often heard you quote those lines, Bill, saying there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy. I told you before that if the letter could reach me so far away in Kentucky it could also bring mo to the place where it was written! I believed it then, Bill, and I believe it now. What if John is here in these mountains, within forty or fifty miles of us, or maybe twenty!"

"Steady, boy, steady!" said Bill Breakstone soothingly. "Your guess may be right. God knows I'm not the one to deny it, but we've got to fight a battle first. At least, I think so, and for the present we must put our minds on it."

Phil was silent, but his idea possessed him. Often we dwell upon things so long and we seek so hard to have them happen in a certain way that the slightest indication becomes proof. He could not think now of Taylor or Santa Anna, or of a coming battle, but only of his brother between four narrow stone walls, sitting at a narrow window that looked out upon a bleak mountainside. His horse no longer felt the guiding hand upon the bridle rein, but guided himself. Breakstone noticed that the boy's mind was far away, and, his heart full of sympathy, he said nothing for a long time.