Ahead of the Army

by William O. Stoddard

“Take that,” said Captain Lee. “It will do to cut bushes with. I believe I’ll carry one myself. We shall have a few riflemen, but we must be careful not to do any firing. We must scout like so many red Indians.”

Ned had formerly been on the wrong side of the army lines. During all the long months of what he sometimes thought of as his captivity among the Mexicans, he had been occasionally worried by a feeling of disgrace. He had felt it worst when he was a member of the garrison of Vera Cruz, and on such remarkably good terms with the rest of the garrison and its commander. So he had been exceedingly rejoiced when General Scott battered down his walls and compelled him to surrender. It had been a grand restoration of his self-respect when he found himself running errands for the officers of the Seventh, but now he suddenly felt that he had shot up into full-grown manhood, for, with a bush-cutting sword at his side, he was to accompany one of the best officers in the American army upon an expedition of great importance and much danger.

It was still early in the day when Captain Lee’s party, all on foot, passed through the outer lines of the American advance, at the base of the mountain. All of them were young men, as yet without any military fame, and there was no one there who could tell them that their little band of roadhunters contained one commander-in-chief and one lieutenant-general of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, and one commander-in-chief and four major-generals, or corps commanders, of the armies of the United States. It was not by such subordinates as these that General Santa Anna was assisted in his engineering or other military operations. That day, however, and for a few days more, he felt perfectly sure of his really well-chosen position among the rocks and chasms of the Cerro Gordo.

The engineering party was well aware that its movements might possibly be observed from the heights beyond, as long as it remained in the open, therefore it wheeled out into the fields as it went onward, and was soon lost to view among woodlands.

“Now, Crawford,” said Captain Lee, “recall and tell me, as well as you can, all that Zuroaga told you about his proposed new road.”

Ned proceeded to do so, but, at the end of his recollections, he added:

“Well, the general said it would cost a pot of money to do it, now, and that Cortes had no gunpowder to throw away. He could not have done any rock-blasting.”

“Our difficulty about that is as bad as his was,” replied the captain. “We can have all the gunpowder we need, but we can’t use any of it, for fear of letting his Excellency, General Santa Anna, know what we are up to. As for the cost of a new road, there is no government in Mexico that will think of undertaking it. It would cost as much, almost, as a brand-new revolution.”

There was a great deal of hard work done after that, searching, climbing, and bush-cutting, and Ned wondered at the ready decisions made here and there, by the engineers. It seemed to him, too, that Captain Lee and other officers paid a great deal of deference to a young lieutenant by the name of McClellan. A small force of riflemen was with them and a party of sappers and miners, but there had not been a sign of military opposition to the work which they were trying to do. Nevertheless, it began to dawn upon Ned’s mind that sometimes picks and spades and crowbars may be as important war weapons as even cannon. That is, there may be circumstances in which guns of any kind are of little use until after the other tools have been made to clear the way for them.

Night came, and the entire reconnoitring party camped among the cliffs of Cerro Gordo, but at about the middle of the next forenoon all the officers gathered for a kind of council. They were not yet ready to send in a full and final report, but they had formed important conclusions, and at the end of the council Ned was called for.