Chapter 21

21

September 1846

Monterrey, Nuevo León

The fol owing day, Riley joined the two-hundred-plus gunners lining up in columns at the rear of General Ampudia’s 1st Brigade as they prepared to leave the city. Over the course of the next few days, a division would march out of the city to San Luis Potosí, three hundred miles distant, where they would meet their new commander—General Antonio López de Santa Anna. News had reached them that the former president of the republic had returned from exile and taken command of the army. Ampudia was to assemble what remained of his troops and join Santa Anna. Once again, Ampudia had been demoted, and this time, Riley had no doubt that he deserved it.

Riley was desperate to get away from the citadel and from the sight of the Yankee ag ying over it, from the graveyard where they’d buried Maloney rol ed up in nothing but a blanket for want of a co n, from the plains stil littered with rotting corpses of humans and animals, from the shattered homes and ruined cathedral. He walked past the columns and took his place on one of the horse-drawn caissons carrying the six cannons they were al owed to take with them. They were leaving behind twenty- ve eld pieces to the Yanks. Thinking about Ximena in the rear of the columns among the surgeons’ wagons, Riley wished she was here by his side so that he could watch over her.

As the artil ery waited for their turn to move out, Riley looked at the main plaza and the rooftops where thousands of civilians stood to see them o . They had lost their homes and possessions, their loved ones and their city. What cruel indignities would Taylor’s troops commit upon them, especial y when those

devils, the Texas Rangers, would be free to roam wild in the city and murder and plunder as they pleased? He could sense the fear of the wretched inhabitants, or perhaps it was his own fear at the thought of the Yankees lined up outside the wal s of Monterrey to watch the defeated Mexican troops withdraw from the city.The bugles sounded the advance, and the infantry and the cavalry moved out.

Then, nal y the artil ery rol ed out down the cobblestoned street to the rhythm of drums and the blaring of bugles. Riley kept his eyes looking forward and tried not to look at the people as they wept and waved goodbye. “¡Adios, Colorados!

God be with you,” they said as they waved their handkerchiefs at Riley and his men. Los Colorados, the red ones, was what the civilians had cal ed them ever since Matamoros due to the men’s hair and ruddy complexion.

As they approached the outer edge of the city, the Yanks came into view.

Riley held himself erect and kept his eyes glued on the sierras up ahead. But from the corner of his eye, he could see them. On either side of the road, the Yanks stood, watching as the artil ery columns marched past. At least half of the Mexican artil ery was composed of deserters from the US Army, and Riley heard the Yanks hissing insults at him and his countrymen. Fear gripped him. If the Yankees o ered them some violence, would he be able to protect his men?

Riley did his best to ignore their reproaches. As he took in the Yanks’

disheveled appearance, their dirty, tattered uniforms, the fatigue and shock in their eyes, he cursed General Ampudia’s rash decision to give up the city. They could have beaten the Yanks, he was sure of it. And now, here they were in ful retreat. There was nothing he could do about the insults being hurled at him as the Yanks realized that he—John Riley, a deserter—had been behind the cannons pouring grape and shel on them from the citadel.

“You goddamn traitors!”

“Damn you, turncoats!”

“Irish sons of bitches!”

He recognized some soldiers from his old unit, Captain Merril standing beside them. Riley looked away then, not wanting to make eye contact with his former commanding o cer. But he heard someone, perhaps even the captain himself, yel , “I’m gonna shoot this cowardly cur!”

He fought the impulse to lower his face and hide his eyes beneath the brim of his shako. Instead, he thought of Ximena, her soft lips, her warm breath on his face. He clung to her image even more when, on the other side of the road, Braxton Bragg, James Duncan, and the other artil ery o cers stood by. From the looks they were now giving him, and the way they gripped the hilt of their swords, Riley knew that they would gladly bury the blade into his heart if given the chance. He thought it was unfortunate that during the battle, Bragg’s crew had been ghting within the city, too far from the citadel and Riley’s guns. He would have loved to have had another shot at the pompous Yankee.

Bragg spat toward Riley, “I should have run you through when I had the chance back in Matamoros, Mick!”

And I you, Riley thought as the columns left the Yanks and their maledictions behind in a cloud of dust.

The interminable days passed, one after the other, as they toiled along through dry country to San Luis Potosí, half-dead from starvation and exhaustion, ravaged by il ness and despair. Vultures circled above them. Soldiers fainted beneath the weight of their weapons and knapsacks, fal ing out of the marching columns to be left behind on the roadside. Some tossed aside their arms and cartridge boxes, discarded their useless equipment, their clothing. Cases of ammunition and supplies were abandoned when one by one the pack mules and the oxen pul ing the carts broke down from the rigors of the miserable march.

The road was littered with dead or dying soldiers, ruined horses and mules. But the worst sight was of the women and children accompanying the men. They remained on the ground where they col apsed, and Riley could hear their wails of sorrow and despair, see their hands reaching out as the artil ery marched past them, their features distorted in a painful surrender to death. He wil ed himself not to look at their woebegone expressions, their tongues, blackened and swol en. He’d wished they’d stayed home, that they hadn’t fol owed their husbands only to su er a miserable fate. But by now he’d learned that Mexican

women—mothers, wives, daughters—accompanied their men whithersoever they went, even if it meant dying of sunstroke, hunger, or thirst alongside them.

Choking on dust and grit, he kept his mind xed on the road ahead and the city that lay beyond, as his fair skin blistered under the unforgiving sun. They trudged past dry arroyos and uncultivated land, arid landscapes lacking pasturage for the animals. With dust devils swirling around them in the hot wind, Riley searched for a patch of greenery to rest the eye upon, something to break the dreary sameness. His mind tormented him with images of raindrops sliding down blades of clover, morning dew quivering on cabbage leaves, ice glittering on yew boughs.

At about sundown, bugles sounded the halt and the exhausted columns dispersed and settled in for the night o the side of the road. Riley went in search of Ximena at the rear, where the wounded and the weak struggled to keep up. He wished he could have spared her the march through this parched desolation. He found her wrapping cactus pads sliced in half on the wounds of those being carried in the wagons, but they were too numerous, dying by the dozen each day from lack of medicine and from other privations. Some, driven by desperation, had committed suicide, but most were succumbing to hunger and thirst. She had neither food nor water to give them. None of them did. And his canteen was empty by now.

When he saw Ximena, his concern grew. Despite her large straw hat, her face was dusty and begrimed, her eyes red and sunken, her lips parched and blistered.

He could see the remnants of a trail of dried tears on both cheeks.

“ ’Tis no point in cryin’,” he said as he untied the buckskin strings and removed her hat. Then he gently wiped her face with his handkerchief. “Water is a precious commodity at the moment, and you shouldn’t give your tears to the desert.”

She wrapped her rebozo around her, and the anger and de ance he usual y saw in her eyes had been replaced with resignation. He careful y folded her into his arms. She was so thin now, he was afraid he might break her. He wished he had something to give her that would erase the haunted look in her eyes.

“It is a terrible way to die, John,” she said. “This hunger, I feel like a… a zopilote is eating me inside.”

“Zopilote?”

She pointed in the distance, where the sky was thick with buzzards circling over the dead they had left behind.

“Hang in there, lass. We wil soon arrive in the city.”

“Ampudia gave up Monterrey to protect the people and the soldiers. But this is hel . Too much death. Here on this road. Not in battle, with honor.”

“Aye, it would’ve been better. No soldier ever wants to die in a humiliatin’

retreat. I had always hoped that when my time came, I’d die ghtin’ for my country, in the glory of death on a battle eld. Not like this, fatigued beyond conception and on the verge of starvin’, so close to despair. No, not like this.”

They looked at the setting sun, the silhouettes of the shrubs and cacti stark against the crimson sky. Up and down the dirt road, he could see the ickering camp res of each corps, a short distance from one another. The res were smal , for there was not much rewood to be found except for clumps of scraggly sagebrush. The cavalry had been forced to burn their lance handles and the infantry the butts of their muskets.

“Walk with me?” he asked her.

They made their way beyond the camps, deeper into the vastness of the land.

A colony of bats ew across the sky looking for food. Riley wondered if they would have better luck nding nourishment from the arid brushland than the troops would. Ximena took a deep breath and sighed. She turned to him, caressed his face, and he winced at her touch, his scorched skin not able to bear it. “The sun has no mercy for you,” she said.

“ ’Tis a hard place for us Irish to be sure. I’ve never seen so much of the sun.”

“Come.” She led him to a nearby spiky plant and took out her knife. He’d seen her use this aloe to treat the burns of the wounded. She cut o a leaf and sliced it open, revealing a clear gel inside, which she rubbed on his face and neck.

Instantly, the burning on his skin was soothed. He licked a drop of the gel by his mouth and quickly spit it out. It was so bitter.

“You can eat it,” she said. “But I need to wash.”

She cut more of it and put them inside her bag. She turned to look back at the wagons ful of sick soldiers, at the unsheltered troops sleeping o the side of

the road. “If my Nana was here, she know how to save them.”

“Nay, she wouldn’t have attended to them better than you are under the circumstances. Those men are in want of nourishment and drink.” He thought about the smal parties that had been dispatched to search for water. “Word is tomorrow we wil nal y reach a wel . We can satisfy our thirst. Water our horses.

You can wash wounds and make your remedies.”

“I hope we get there,” she said. “So many men give up and die. This is like Matamoros?”

“Aye. ’Twas a dreadful march. But this one is worse—we’re carryin’ the heavy burden of a second defeat and humiliation. ’Tis twice as hard. And what distresses me more is the heavy sorrow of havin’ lost yet another friend, of havin’

buried him—unco ned, poor fel a!—in a place I’l never return to and where he’l remain forever in a forgotten grave. Who wil say a prayer for him? Who wil brin’ him owers?”

She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “He watches over us. His spirit is here with us. His body is in Monterrey, not his soul.”

He contemplated her words for a moment. He looked into her eyes, and they sought each other’s lips. Their kiss was tender at rst, soft, and cautious, but then, Ximena gripped him closer to her with a strength he thought she no longer possessed. Her breasts pressed against his thick uniform. He growled under his breath as his mouth matched her hunger for hunger, want for want.

She tasted as if she’d been drenched in seawater, her lips parting for him like the shel of an oyster, beckoning him inside. He wanted to take her, right here, in the middle of nowhere. Instead, he tore away.

“Ximena, listen to—”

“Shhh.” She put a nger on his lips to silence him. “When the war is over, you be with your wife and son, and I go to my rancho. I promise. But now, there is a war, and I am alone. And you are alone, too, no?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, lass.”

She spread out her shawl on the ground, and then pul ed her blouse down beyond her shoulders, her breasts luminous from the silver glow of the stars above. Sweet Jesus. His knees weakened, from desire or hunger or both. He groaned and pul ed her blouse back up and held her. That was al he would al ow

himself to do. The noises from the camp faded away, and al that remained was the two of them under the bril iance of the night sky. If only he could love her as she ought to be loved, but he was not free to do so.