A Ballad of Love and Glory(41)

But as Riley feared, news arrived that a shipment of supplies and new recruits had arrived at Point Isabel. Taylor finally had the numbers he needed to feel confident about emerging from his shelter. On May 8, when they received word that Taylor was on his way to Fort Texas with his troops and supply trains, General Ampudia abandoned his post and took his infantry, sappers, and two cannons to offer Arista support in intercepting Taylor along the road.

The battle was soon underway on the prairie of Palo Alto. Riley and the cannoneers, on their end, continued the bombardment of Fort Texas, making as much noise as possible. When there was a break in their fire to let the cannons cool down, the deep booming of large guns eight miles distant could be heard plainly, like the roar of an approaching thunderstorm. Judging from Arista’s gloomy reports to General Mejía and his request that they send more ammunition, Riley knew the odds were not in their favor. If Arista had led the attack with his infantry and cavalry, there would have been a chance. As long as the battle was dominated by artillery, there was little the Mexicans could do against Taylor’s deadly cannonade, especially out in the open prairie where the flying artillery had all the space it needed to maneuver and fire its grape and canister on the Mexicans. Unless Arista could find a way to silence the Yankee cannons, the enemy would continue to blast their way through the Mexican ranks. Hand-to-hand conflict would have evened the odds.

The next day, the battle between Arista’s and Taylor’s forces had changed location to Resaca de la Palma, four miles distant. By the afternoon, the command “Hold your fire!” rang out from the Mexican redoubts. Riley knew the outcome of the second battle when he and his crew watched from their batteries as Arista’s troops appeared on the other side of the river, running as if the very devil were chasing them. So desperate were they to retreat, they tried to escape one danger by facing another—defying the dangerous currents of the Río Grande to reach the safety of Matamoros. They threw themselves into the water, whether or not they could swim. Others tried to cross on horseback, and Riley watched in horror as both men and horses succumbed to the voracity of the river.

Behind them, Taylor’s dragoons were in hot pursuit. Riley and his men stood by their cannons, not pulling the lanyards lest they kill both friend and foe. They watched as Arista’s disordered, panic-stricken soldiers attempted to cross the river. General Mejía ordered those closest to the water to help the retreating troops, but with insufficient boats to ferry all the men, hundreds dove into the river with their weapons, drowning in the attempt to get away from the mounted riders. Local ranchers appeared with their own boats to help, but there weren’t enough, and the weight of too many men and horses pulled some of them under. Then fights erupted on the riverbank as the disorderly masses attempted to board the boats. The last words of the drowning men were either a plea to God or a curse for their enemies. As the miserable fugitives were swept up by the current, Riley could hear the Yankees’ shouts of merriment as they waved their flag from the ramparts.

“Merciful Father…” Maloney said, looking at the frightful whirl of dismay and confusion. Riley could see in his eyes the terror of the night he almost drowned. He needed to get Maloney away from the hubbub in the river.

“Go to the barracks!” Riley commanded him. Knowing the day was lost, he ordered his crew to abandon their batteries, and they all rushed down to the river to save as many as they could from a watery grave.





15


May 1846

Matamoros, Río Bravo

Ximena had never seen so much blood. It covered the ground and splattered her legs as she rushed from one cot to another tending to the wounded being brought from the battlefield in supply wagons. They supplicated for water, for mercy, they asked for the priest, la Virgen de Guadalupe, their mothers. As blood oozed from their wounds, they cried in her arms, clutching her so tightly she had to bite her lip. But it was her ears that hurt the most—for the shrieks of the wounded were as terrible as those of the cannons bombarding the fort across from Matamoros. It was through these men that she learned the outcome of the battles. Their shattered limbs, disfigured faces, and charred skin told stories the soldiers later confirmed. Among their cries and groans, the mutilated men revealed their woeful two days of fighting in the prairie of Palo Alto and in the chaparral of Resaca de la Palma. Again and again, it was the enemy’s artillery they spoke of—the shower of exploding shells that dismembered and killed with impunity. They told of finding body parts in the thorny bushes, burying their dead in the dark, being unable to drink from the water hole tainted red with the blood of their fallen comrades, and vomiting at the smell of burned human flesh as the prairie grass fires spread, consuming the dead and the wounded lying helpless on the ground.

After the hasty retreat of the second battle, she tended to those nearly drowned but fished out of the river just in time. Yet the soldiers’ delirium and fevers, their nightmares, were as difficult to cure as their battle wounds. The makeshift hospitals were so overcrowded, the injured came to die, not to heal. She and Nana Hortencia did as much as they could to teach their female aides how to make and administer poultices and ointments, soothing washes, and healing salves. She organized the women into rotating shifts so the men were looked after properly. But they soon resigned themselves to the indisputable reality that not enough could be done to alleviate the suffering of all their patients, and what the men needed most from them, beyond their infusions and soporific teas, were the words of comfort they could offer to a mangled soldier as he took his last breath.