A Sinister Splendor

by Mike Blakely

  Shoving his spent revolver under his belt, he yelled back into the room behind him. “Bring the crowbars, boys! We’re going through the wall to the next house!”

  Two young Rangers entered with pry bars and a pickax. They tore into the wall with their tools, sending dust and rock shards flying across the once neatly kept room. Walker spotted a chair lying sideways on the floor. He righted it, sat down, and removed the barrel from his Colt. He reached into his ammunition pouch for a spare cylinder already loaded with five shots. This he switched with the spent cylinder as he listened to the gunfire from the roof.

  Just as he put his reloaded Colt back together, Jake yelled down from the trapdoor.

  “Sir, Colonel Hays is signaling from the next street!”

  “What’s he want?”

  “He wants us to flank the Mexican battery on Calle de Monterrey and roust ’em out of there while he attacks from the other flank.”

  “I need five minutes to get through this wall, then we’ll flank that barricade.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll signal back.”

  The men with the pickaxes and crowbar tired and handed their tools to other Rangers who had been waiting to take over with fresh muscle. Walker watched them tear through stone and mortar as he fought off memories of men hurt or killed in the assault today.

  “We’re gettin’ close, Colonel Walker,” one of the Rangers said.

  Walker stood. He yelled through the door he had broken down. “Where’s that shell?” he demanded. “Bring the candle, too.”

  A Ranger came into the room carrying a spherical mountain howitzer shell with a paper fuse inserted into the fuse plug. The fuse had been trimmed to three seconds. Another man brought a lighted candle, his palm shielding the flame as he moved swiftly into position.

  “One more whack ought to do it, sir,” said the Ranger with the pick.

  “Against the wall!” Walker ordered.

  The men hugged the wall on either side of the hole being gouged by the tools. This maneuver had become routine, after hours of breaking into one house after another on this bloody day. This was Walker’s idea of which Hays had approved. All day his warriors had used the exploding artillery shells in their dangerous game of breaking and entering from house to house.

  Now Walker drew his Colt and took his place beside the damaged wall. He nodded to the man with the pick. “Hit it hard,” he said.

  The Ranger made a mighty swing that caused a large stone to fall away from the hole, creating the opening to the next house. A musket barrel jutted through from the other side and fired, but missed the Rangers who had wisely positioned themselves against the wall. Walker forced the barrel of his revolver through the hole, firing three times. He waited a few seconds, but no other shots came from the other side.

  He belted his Colt. “Shell!” he said, holding out his hand.

  The Ranger with the howitzer load handed it to Walker.

  “Flame!” Walker took the candle handed to him. “You boys best hunker down now.” He touched the fire to the fuse on the shell and watched it burn for a second, then dropped it through the hole in the wall and dove for the corner.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  The blast hurled large stones into the room and deafened Walker. He nonetheless sprang to his feet and leaped blindly through the gaping hole clouded by dust and smoke. Muzzle blasts appeared as orange flashes through the smoke in front of him. Walker fired his Colt, heard screams through the ringing in his ears.

  Suddenly someone was upon him, and he felt something sharp slash through his shirt and past his ribs. In the dark and choking dust, he grabbed his attacker’s wrist, prodded around with the muzzle of the Colt until he felt the body mass he sought, and pulled the trigger.

  Now the candle was in the room and men in Mexican uniforms could be seen withdrawing to the next room, slamming a door behind them. Walker looked down at the dead man he had shot through the heart. He pulled his own shirt up to see a flesh wound bleeding, one of his rib bones exposed.

  “You hurt, Colonel?” a Ranger asked.

  He shook his head. “Missed my vitals. You men clear this house. I’m going back out in the street to rush that barricade for Jack.” As he turned, he tripped over a body and found a young Ranger who had caught a musket ball upon entering the room. He knelt and found the boy conscious, a grimace on his face. He knew this kid. A hard case, and brave: Corporal John Fullerton, from Company K.

  “We’ll get you out of here,” Walker said to Fullerton.

  “I can still fight,” the corporal said. “Put me in the doorway and I’ll guard the rooftop across the street.”

  Walker nodded. The dust was settling, and light from the trapdoor revealed a large pool of blood spreading around Fullerton’s resting place. “I’ll get somebody to help you out there. Till then, you just rest, and know you did one hell of a job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll mention you to the generals. You’re liable to get a medal or somethin’.”

  Fullerton grinned through his pain. “I don’t need no goddamn medal, sir. I served with Sam Walker.”

  Walker squeezed the young man’s shoulder and nodded. He rose. Coughing up some dust, he passed back through the hole blasted by the shell and returned to the doorway on Iturbide Street.

  That kid’s probably already dead, he thought. That’s what serving with Sam Walker will get you.

  He remembered that Jack Hays was expecting him to flank an artillery barricade about now. “Buck!” he shouted, spotting Sergeant Buck Barry guarding the street. “Get a dozen men and come with me!”

  “Yes, sir! Where we goin’?”

  The enemy twelve-pounder around the next corner hurled another round.

  Walker pointed toward the source of the blast. “We’re gonna flank that piece and get some revenge for John Fullerton!”

  Colonel

  JOHN COFFEE HAYS

  West Monterrey, Mexico

  September 23, 1846

  Hays removed his hat to peek around the corner with one eye. The Mexican gunners were still unaware of his presence, two blocks away, busy reloading their twelve-pounder following the last shot.

  This would have been the perfect moment to attack. Where the devil is Walker?

  “Mike!” he hissed in a hoarse whisper.

  Major Mike Chevaille, his third-in-command, looked down from the rooftop. He had taken up a well-sandbagged position recently abandoned by Mexican sharpshooters.

  Hays made a demanding shrug with his shoulders.

  “Still no sign of them, Jack.”

  “We can’t stay here forever without being spotted. I’m of a mind to charge without Walker!”

  A barrage of rifle fire drew Hays back to the corner for another peek.

  “That’s them!” Chevaille said. “I see Walker and Buck Barry with a herd of Texans!”

  “Fire!” Hays cried, showing his vitals now around the corner as he took aim with a rifle. He saw a Mexican gunner drop as the white smoke cleared. Some half dozen Rangers fired from rooftops, having stealthily slipped around the left flank of the Mexican barricade. Now Sam Walker and his men were attacking the right flank.

  “Give ’em hell, boys!”

  Hays left his rifle and led his men down the street at a sprint, as others on the rooftops rose into view to cover the ground assault. He felt the familiar rush of danger charge his legs with power as he pulled two Colt five-shooters from his belt. Hugging the right side of the street so that his bullets wouldn’t fly straight down the middle, toward Walker’s men, he aimed at a slant at the defenders of the barricade. A brave gunner trying to ram a shell down the muzzle of the cannon caught his first round. His following nine bullets, and the storm of lead from the other Rangers, killed seven gunners and sent the survivors running for their last refuge at the main plaza.

  He heard U.S. soldiers cheering, down Calle de Monterrey, as the Texans captured the cannon and began to turn it toward the plaza. Hays waved the regulars on
from the barricade, urging them forward to hold the position. Throughout the day, the army troops had gotten more aggressive about following close behind the Texans’ advances.

  “Guard these streets!” Hays shouted to his men as he watched Walker trot his way from Iturbide Street. “These buildings may still be occupied by shooters.”

  Walker arrived, a toughened sneer on his powder-burned face. A cake of bloody dust covered his clothes and flesh.

  “Sam, if you had any more soil on you, you’d be real estate.”

  Walker did not reply.

  Hays now felt that old creeping sense of someone staring—probably across the irons of a rifle. He looked upward and toward the plaza and saw the belfry of the central cathedral, visible over the rooftops. A silhouette moved in the open top of the old stone bell tower.

  Pulling Walker by his elbow, around the corner to safety, he said, “Watch that bell tower, Sam. There’s a sharpshooter up there.”

  Walker had his hand up and yanked his arm free of Hays’s grasp. “This is a hell of a time to worry about Mexican marksmanship.”

  “I didn’t say I was worried.”

  Hays looked up at Major Chevaille, who had run across the rooftops to reach the corner over the barricade. “Mike, watch that belfry on the plaza for snipers!”

  “I’ve got my sights on it, Jack.”

  A lull in the gunfire allowed human sounds to be heard. A man screamed in pain somewhere. A Mexican officer shouted an order. Then …

  “Did you hear that, Sam?”

  “Can’t hear much over the ringing.” Walker pointed at his ears.

  “There it is again! An order to reload. In English! I can hear Americans on the east side of the plaza. We’ve got them all but corralled, Colonel!”

  One side of Walker’s scowl curled up to form a half grin. “I aim to sleep in the post office on the plaza tonight.”

  Hays felt his eyebrows gather. “The post office?”

  “That’s where they chained us Mier prisoners four years ago. And there I will return, with shootin’ irons instead of leg irons.”

  Colonel Hays nodded and flashed a smile at Walker.

  A shot from Major Chevaille’s rifle made a chime ring from the cathedral tower.

  From the roof, Chevaille laughed. “Ha! Blood on the church bell, boys!”

  Major General

  ZACHARY TAYLOR

  Walnut Springs

  September 24, 1846

  Old Rough and Ready stood over his map of Monterrey, peering down at it. Pebbles marked the locations of various U.S. units closing in on the main plaza of the capital city. Worth and the Rangers were clawing closer, inch by inch, to the west. Elements of Quitman’s brigade had pushed equally close to the cathedral, on the east side of the plaza.

  Pebbles on a map.

  With his next breath, Taylor somehow found himself soaring over real terra firma adorned with beleaguered buildings and bloody streets. He could hear men shouting, screaming, crying. Gunfire rattled and cannon roared. He glided through the rising smoke, hawk-like, to gaze down upon the enemy troops crammed into the plaza. They stood ready to die, rank upon rank, file upon file, their bayonets fixed, their swords sharpened. He knew his men could whip them in a final bloodbath at close quarters, but he feared hundreds would perish on both sides.

  Far away, he heard the tapping of Major Bliss’s West Point ring on his tent pole. Like lightning, General Zachary Taylor came flashing back into his bodily vessel, back into his headquarters tent.

  “Sir, there are new dispatches from Worth and Quitman,” Bliss said.

  Taylor blinked away the impossible sights, sounds, and smells he had just witnessed. “Come in and tell me what they say, Bill. My eyes have grown weary from staring at this damned map.”

  “Sir, an officer waved a white flag on the west side and handed over a letter from Pablo Morales, the governor of Nuevo León, who is trapped in the city. He requests that the noncombatants be allowed to leave the town.”

  Taylor frowned. He didn’t like to think of civilians getting caught up in battles. This was his first taste of leading an assault in an urban environment, and the idea of families getting trapped in their own homes did not sit well with him. On the other hand, they had had weeks to vacate the city and should have done so if they were not prepared to risk their own lives.

  “Bill, what would you do?” Taylor asked.

  “I would deny the request,” Bliss said.

  “Why?”

  “We would have to suspend our attack. They are trying to buy time, that’s all. Also, with the civilians gone, the Mexican Army would have more rations and they could hold out longer.”

  Taylor nodded. “I agree. We will deny the request. What else?”

  Bliss shuffled through some papers. “Generals Quitman and Worth both request a coordinated attack on the plaza before dark. They believe the Mexican Army of the North can be crushed by nightfall.”

  Taylor stared at the map without really seeing it. He knew President Polk would favor the final attack. If it succeeded, Polk could take credit. If it failed, he could blame the field commander. Oh, how James K. Polk would love to see Old Rough and Ready dash his own chances to become the Whig candidate for the presidency.

  “Sir?” Bliss said. “What are your orders, sir? Do you authorize the coordinated attack?”

  “No.”

  “No? Sir?”

  He glared at Bliss and raised his voice a notch. “No, I do not authorize the attack. On the contrary, I order all units engaged to withdraw for the night.”

  Bliss, looking stunned, held the dispatches in his hand, offered them up to Taylor. “Sir, the Texas Rangers are begging for orders to attack the plaza. The Mexicans are all but whipped.”

  Taylor felt his temper flare, and he dashed the dispatches from his adjutant’s grasp with a swipe of his meaty palm. “I will not provide the Mexicans with their own version of the Alamo to avenge!” he shouted.

  Bliss staggered back a step.

  Taylor took a deep breath. “I know we could crush them tonight, Bill. But the toll on our own ranks would be insupportable. They are superior to us in number. Our men—especially the Texas Rangers—are exhausted and near starved. If our men must fight again tomorrow, they will fight rested and with food in their bellies. General Ampudia can ponder his own fate overnight. Order the men to withdraw a safe distance from the plaza.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bliss stooped to pick up the papers from the ground.

  Taylor dropped to one knee to gather a few himself. “I lost my temper, Bill.”

  “It’s understandable, sir.”

  Taylor struggled to rise, his knees stiff and aching. As he handed over the sheaves, he placed a hand on Bliss’s shoulder. “We are deep inside a foreign and hostile nation, Bill. Our supply line is tenuous. Ampudia may counterattack in the dark on streets he knows infinitely better than we do. That old war dog, General Santa Anna, is raising a new army down south. We cannot afford to lose two or three hundred of our best soldiers, and I fear that would be the toll for storming the plaza tonight.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Has the ten-inch mortar been moved into place at the cemetery in Monterrey?”

  “Yes, sir. The gunners await your orders to fire upon the plaza.”

  “They must not fire until the infantry units withdraw. I don’t want an errant mortar falling on our own men that close to the plaza.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Once our men are clear, we will bomb the hell out of them overnight. General Ampudia can ponder his chances with shells falling about that cathedral full of ammunition.”

  “I will prepare the written orders for your approval, sir.”

  “Very well. Do it quick, before those Texas Rangers lose their patience and attack on their own accord.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bliss said, hustling out of the commander’s tent.

  Taylor decided he should try to rest while Bliss executed the orders. He lay o
n his cot and listened to the distant cannon fire. He closed his eyes, but thoughts of supply lines, troop movements, and battle strategies swam in his head like schools of fish. He tried to conjure a vision of his plantation in Louisiana but could not for the life of him visualize it for more than a few seconds before the war dragged his worries back to Mexico. He could not even remember what his own wife’s face looked like.

  So he decided to direct his thoughts elsewhere. Lately, he had found that he could escape his burdens for a while by losing himself in a new form of reverie. Years ago, such musings would never have occurred to him. Only recently had he begun to picture himself in a new and lofty role.

  Though he rarely wore a uniform, in this new fantasy he imagined himself in full dress plumage, with sashes, epaulets, and medals. He stood in front of a great crowd outside the President’s Mansion in Washington. A judge—probably a Supreme Court justice—presented a Bible. In his fantasy, he solemnly placed his old soldier’s hand on the Good Book, to be sworn in as president of the United States of America.

  Captain

  JOHN RILEY

  The Citadel

  September 26, 1846

  It was a darling little bomb. Embroidered in golden thread, the insignia on the lapel of his tunic depicted a bursting sphere with a sparkling fuse. The soldaderas had done an impossible job of cleaning the soot and grime of the three-day battle from his artillery uniform—right down to the bomb-burst insignia that identified him as an artillerist. Captain John Riley was a gunnery officer, by God. In this he took great pride.

  Standing alone in the makeshift tent the soldaderas had fashioned for him from a square of canvas, he donned the jacket, the seams straining about his muscular shoulders. He had washed his face and hands in a bucket of water but had not had a proper bath in a week. No matter. If he survived this day he would find a clear mountain stream and cleanse his body, if not his soul.

  The battle for Monterrey was over. The Americans had not dared to attack the Citadel—which he now knew they called the Black Fort—but they had managed to capture every other fortification manned by Mexican defenders. General Ampudia had not had the stomach for mortar fire falling upon the plaza so near the crates of ammunition stacked in the main cathedral in town. Ampudia had waved the white flag and asked General Taylor for terms of surrender.