Salomon (Part One)
Page 8
Under this second loss the US Army of the West under Captain Kearny retreated further to Mule Hill and did not attack again until weeks later, when they were rested and reinforced with new soldiers, dry ammunition, and fresh livestock.
Andrés Pico walked the fading battlefield mist and turned the bodies of wounded and dead men alike, seeking out one groan that would not cease. He found him laying with is hands clutching an open gash at his chest and staring skyward with eyes that did not gather the commander’s stooping figure but seemed to see into another world entirely. He was an American. Pico knelt above him and gathered the man’s hands in his own, and Salomon watched on as they both prayed in their respective tongues, the victor and the dying sharing what man does not and cannot possess on earth, but what crosses the borders of different men’s understandings without question. The young soldier bubbled and coughed his prayer until he held no wind to carry it. His eyes did not close, staying focused on whatever it was he saw in that new world that carried him across from life to death through his eyes in that San Pasqual Valley.
They rode out of the valley to the Mission San Jacinto where the disbanded US cavalry force of fifteen stood the walls awaiting the reinforcements that would never come. The lancers fell in alongside each other and advanced the gates at a distance, a sketching of figures in the lifting fog. A guard atop the walls knelt shielded at the wall and raised his rifle to his shoulder, only his head and shoulders exposed. A second guard on the wall knelt and sighted along his rifle.
The lieutenant spoke. “Capitán.”
“I see him,” Andrés Pico said.
They continued to march forward, and the unflinching guards kept their rifles trained on Pico. The lancers halted at a hundred yards with their strength of numbers in full display. Their horses nodded and shook and clicked in wait. The second guard pulled his rifle and retreated from sight. Andrés Pico pulled his pistola and aimed it at the first rifleman. They sat locked on each other, and moments later the rifleman retreated the same.
The lieutenant spoke softly from the side of his mouth, still watching the adobe walls. “Can you hit with that thing this far?”
Andrés Pico holstered the pistola. “He believed so.”
The mission gates opened wide yet nothing came from them. The lancers sat watching the stillness and looked to each other. Then the cavalry came from the gates at a run that made the lancers flinch. Andrés Pico sat up in his saddle. The cavalry went around the sidewalls and the lancers watched as they showed their backsides.
Pico gave chase. They were gaining ground when the cavalrymen scattered by twos in every direction. Andrés Pico put a hand up and reined in. He watched the cavalry disband across the grassy sands and he turned to his men and shrugged and shook his head.