Just at this crisis there came a chance of distraction. I hailed it with a feeling of gladness.
The stray troops of the enemy had forsaken the roads that surrounded the capital—as had also their guerilleros. But still the ways were not safe. Partisans had disappeared, to be succeeded by salteadores!
From all sides came rumours of robbers—from Puebla on the east, Toluca on the west, Cuernavaca on the south, and the Llanos de Apam, that extend northward from the Valley of Tenochtitlan. Scarce passed a day without “novedades” of the bandits, and their devilish audacity: stage-coaches stopped; travellers commanded to lie flat along the earth, while their pockets were being turned inside out; and some stretched upon the ground never more to stand in an erect attitude!
An escort of our dragoons could have prevented this—that is, upon any particular occasion. But to have sent an escort with every traveller, who had need to go forth out of the capital, would have required a score of squadrons of well-appointed cavalry. At the time we chanced to be short in this arm; and the distribution of our troops to Cuernavaca and Toluca, the strong force necessary to garrison Puebla—and the numerous detachments required to accompany the commissariat trains, left no cavalry disposable for eccentric service.
Till we should receive from Uncle Sam a reinforcement of dragoons, the robbers must be allowed to stop travellers and capture stage-coaches at discretion.
This was the condition of things, six months after the second conquest of Mexico.
I, for one, did not like it. It was but a Christian instinct to hate robbers, wherever found; but in the town of Puebla I had imbibed for this class of mankind a peculiar antipathy.
Experience and suspicion both formed its basis. I remembered Captain Carrasco, and I could not help remembering Captain Moreno!
A young artist who had accompanied our army throughout the campaign—and whose life-like pictures were the admiration of all who looked upon them—had been imprudent enough to risk travelling by diligencia from Mexico to La Puebla. It was not his destiny to arrive at the City of the Angels—on earth; though it is to be hoped he has reached the abode of truer angels in heaven! He was murdered among the mountains of the mal pais—between the “venta” of Rio Frio and that of Cordova.
I had formed a strong attachment to this unfortunate youth. He had oft partaken of the hospitality of my tent; and, in return I suppose for such slight acts of kindness, in his great picture of the storming of Chapultepec, he had fixed my face upon the canvas, foremost—far foremost—of those who on that day dared to look over the well-defended walls.