Come Sundown (22 page)

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Authors: Mike Blakely

BOOK: Come Sundown
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Kit nodded and led his regiment into position. When we arrived on the road at a narrow place between the bluffs and the river, Kit ordered two companies to dismount, find cover, and guard the road to the north while the rest of us sat on our horses and watched the battle take shape down at the ford. It was almost ten o'clock in the morning when the artillery pieces under captains McRae and Hall rattled into place on our extreme right flank. Within minutes, the gunners had unhitched their mule teams and unlimbered their guns, and were lobbing shells over the heads of the Union soldiers and into the Texans who were still holding the far fringes of the bosque.
From the safety of our high ground on the wagon road, we
watched as Rebel artillery came trundling down from the far bluffs across the valley, the guns hastily taking up positions at intervals all along the Confederate line, the heaviest collections of guns situated on the flanks. In response, Colonel Roberts also spread his artillery out along our front line. And now the roar of shot, shell, and canister came from both sides of the Valverde Ford as metal ripped apart the timber and the earth, and occasionally a man or horse. Smoke gathered down in the Rio Grande breaks, but our Union gunners soon began to get the better of the artillery battle. Captains Hall and McRae had twenty-four-pound howitzers and twelve-pound napoleons in their batteries, while the Texans had only twelve-pound mountain howitzers and six-pound napoleons.
I knew there had to be dead and wounded on both sides down in the bosque where the worst close-range clash had occurred. Beyond that, both forces seemed to have stayed out of the range of small arms fire from one another. But the artillery continued to ravage both lines. Guns roared and shells sang through the air. Grapeshot and canister whistled. The sand ridges behind which the Texans took refuge exploded with well-placed Union fire. I began to see the pitiful sight of wounded horses limping and floundering about, and reasoned that some men were probably in the same awful fix.
Captain McRae unleashed the devastation of his big guns on the part of the bosque still held by Pyron's hard-fighting advance guard of Texans. Pyron had refused to withdraw even after repeated Union charges through the cottonwoods. Now, I watched in sheer astonishment as the trees used by Pyron's men for cover shattered under fire of shell and shot and flew limb from limb through the air.
“I don't reckon those boys will hold that bosque much longer now,” Blue Wiggins said, walking his horse up next to mine.
“No,” I agreed. “But look at the middle of their line.” I stood high in my stirrups, as if that would help me see better. “Captain Teel is getting his guns into position.” It was like watching a bloody chess game; I'm a very good chess player, and suddenly I saw the next several moves coming together, and knew I had to do something. “Kit!” I yelled.
Kit spurred his horse to me. “What is it?”
“Teel's guns. He's going to hit McRae hard and I don't think McRae can see him from where he is.”
Kit had probably never played chess in his life, but I had seen him run a game of checkers in less than a minute. He didn't take long in reading what would happen if McRae's guns fell. “Ride, Kid! Tell McRae. Hurry!”
When I spurred, my horse took off so fast that I almost went right over the cantle of the cavalry saddle. McRae's battery was at the opposite end of the Union line, and I knew I didn't have much time to cover the distance. I have made many a hard ride in my time, and felt many a joyful gallop pull at my hat brim. But that ride—with smoke stinging my eyes and nose; with cannon fire pounding my eardrums; with the tide of a battle carried on the hooves of my mount—that ride will forever last in the fiber of my heart and brain and soul.
As I dashed toward McRae's battery I could tell that he had not turned a single gun in preparation to return the fire that Teel was about to drop on him. Looking left as I charged desperately on, I could see that Teel had cleverly sneaked his artillery in place unseen by trundling down the bed of the old river channel. He had pulled two pieces out of the riverbed, but still had them hidden behind a high sand hill from McRae's vantage point. His twelve-pound mountain howitzers could lob shells over those sand hills at a high trajectory and drop them right into McRae's lap. I watched those guns disappear behind the sand hills as I galloped to McRae, and so I knew that McRae could have no inkling of what was about to happen. Moreover, I knew that I was riding directly into the path of Teel's fire. I spotted a lone mesquite on the ridge behind Teel that I would use as a mark to remember his position. I judged the distance between McRae and Teel at eight hundred twenty yards.
When I came within shouting distance, I screamed McRae's name. His ears must have been ringing from the heavy fire, for he failed to hear me until I was right on his shoulder. He looked up and saw the glare in my eyes and gave me his undivided attention.
“Teel is in place where you can't see him.” I pointed generally toward the lone mesquite on the distant bluff behind Teel. “You have ten seconds to turn that twelve-pounder.”
“Action left, boys!” McRae shouted as he rushed for the gun, leaning his own shoulder to the trail spike to swing the cannon left. He looked back at me as the men toiled with worm, sponge, shot, and ramrod. “Where, Greenwood?”
“He's below that lone mesquite on the bluff.” I will always admire Captain Trevanion T. Teel of Light Company B, Sibley's brigade, for what happened next. His first shot hit almost dead on target. I remember flying through the air. I remember heat, and a familiar taste in my mouth. I remember landing on my back on something very hard and feeling the pain of having all the wind knocked out of my lungs. I could neither hear nor see anything for an undetermined amount of time. Vacantly, I thought I was probably dying.
When finally I sucked a ragged breath in, I heard the screams of men and began to see a peculiar kind of light. I blinked and blinked and finally I saw the gray winter sky. I sat up and looked down. I found myself sitting on a case of howitzer shells, covered with blood. I felt the horror of knowing I could not survive long if all that blood was mine. I lifted both hands in front of my face to see it they were still attached. They were. I moved my feet to see if my legs still worked. They did. With terrible anticipation, I touched my face, expecting that maybe half of it was gone, but I found all my flesh in place. My hat was gone, but my skull and scalp were still on.
I sucked in another painful breath and saw what remained of my horse lying thirty feet away. The blood I wore was horse blood. Teel's first shot had exploded right in front of me and ground that poor mount to stew meat in a single blast. But the body of the poor beast had protected me.
I slid off the ammunition chest, collapsing at the wheel of the limber, still in somewhat of a daze as my vision and my hearing came back to me. I spat out the taste of horse blood.
Suddenly, I found Captain Alexander McRae in my face, shaking my shoulders. “Range? Range!”
“Eight hundred twenty yards,” I muttered, barely able to hear my own voice above the ringing in my ears.
We heard the whine of Teel's second shot, and McRae tackled me and shoved me under the limber carriage as the shell
exploded a little long this time, blowing a hole in the side of the canyon breaks behind us.
“Range, eight hundred twenty!” McRae shouted back at his gunners before dragging me out from under the limber and lifting me to my feet. “Do you
know
artillery?” he asked.
“I've read the manuals.”
McRae turned and watched a cannoneer remove the ramrod from the breech of the howitzer. “Ready!” the gunner ordered. “Fire!” The man at the right wheel yanked the lanyard attached to the primer tube in the vent hole and the big gun belched and leapt backward, smoke and fire spewing large from the muzzle and narrow from the vent hole.
“Turn that napoleon!” McRae ordered. His composure astounded me as he looked at me. “Find a point where you can see both Teel and me,” he ordered. “Do you know the signals?”
I nodded. I really had read the manuals.
“You'll have to direct my fire. I can't see the son of a bitch!”
“My horse is dead.”
“Then
run
!” he ordered, shoving me back the way I had ridden in.
Genius that I am, this had not occurred to me, but now I set to at the fastest sprint I could muster. Having just caught my breath in the first place, the run up the valley slope almost killed me, but I arrived at a point of observation in time to see McRae's second shot from the napoleon gun. It hit a bit short, but served its purpose as it blasted away much of the sand hill that was concealing Teel's battery. Teel sent a third round slamming into McRae's position, and I saw one of the gunners fly through the air and I knew he was dead before he hit the ground. It reminded me pitifully of a cottontail carcass being tossed about by a playful dog.
McRae was furious, and I could hear him shouting and driving his men faster as his artillery muzzles began to roar his epithets across the valley to his enemy, Teel. He'd fire, and look up at me, and I'd signal him with my arms, telling him how to correct his aim. His third shot actually hit a Texas artillery piece, and crippled Teel's ability to fight back. When McRae had three guns trained on Teel, he sent a soldier to relieve me
of signal duty, and I was free to get back to the First New Mexico Volunteers.
I looked around for a horse, but all I could find was a huge mule. I could tell from the rigging he wore that he had torn away from an ambulance or a supply wagon. He was spooked, and I was able to catch him only because he dragged a long rein that he kept stepping on. He didn't want to have much to do with me, caked as I was with horse blood and dirt. I caught the dragging rein and calmed the mule a little by making Comanche horse grunts at him. I drew my knife and cut away the busted leather rigging. I cut the reins down to about eight feet and led the mule up next to a boulder to facilitate my mounting him. All this while shot and shell and grape whistled and boomed and pounded.
When I rode back to the left flank, the boys looked at me in astonishment. Several of their mounts shied. Blue urged his horse near and said, “Where in the hell did you get so bloody?”
“A shell landed under me. This is horse blood, not mine.”
“Well, go wash it off,” Kit ordered. “You're spookin' the men
and
the horses. And get yourself another mount from one of the boys afoot. You might just as well paint a bull's-eye on yourself up there on that beast.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I rode the mule down the slope to the river, I heard Kit say, “You done good. Teel pulled back to the old river channel.”
I lay down in the cold river and let the gore wash away from me and my clothing. Refreshed by the frigid bath, I rode back up the slope and traded the giant mule for a good-looking horse tied at the picket line. One of the volunteers guarding the road shouted at me in Spanish, saying to get away from his horse. I shouted back that I had orders from Colonel Kit Carson to pick a fast horse, and if he didn't like it, he could take it up with Kit. The volunteer cussed me soundly in Spanish, but I took the horse.
I
spent the next hour carrying dispatches from one officer to the next as the battle continued. My horse exhausted, I returned to the fort to report to Colonel Canby, and to pick fresh mounts. I found him on his front porch, buttoning an overcoat. The governor was still at his side, but had pulled a chair out on the porch to listen to the distant cannon fire.
I jumped from my saddle, stood to horse, and saluted. “Colonel Carson scouted the road to the north and found no sign of the Texans trying to flank us on the left,” I said. “Pino's Second New Mexico Volunteers are on their way to take Kit's position now.”
“Where's Kit going?”
“Colonel Roberts has just ordered him to the front line to take command of Duncan's men. Most of them are Mexican, and Kit speaks Spanish well. Duncan doesn't. That's why he's had trouble advancing.”
“Very well,” Canby said as he buttoned his overcoat. “Kit should be an inspiration on the front. Tell Colonel Roberts that I am on my way to assume command.”
I rode hard, made my report to Colonel Roberts, and watched the progress down below for a minute while my saddle pony blew. The men in the middle of the Union line, with their rifles outreaching the scatter guns and revolvers of the Texans, had pushed the Texas middle back from sand hill to sand hill, and forced the Rebels almost all the way to their last line of defense—the old dry river channel. Here, eventually, the Texans would either die in a horrible slaughter or strike out like two thousand diamondbacks in a rattler's den. There would be no retreat.
“Have you caught a glimpse of General Sibley all day?” Colonel Roberts asked me, speaking loudly above the continual rumble of the cannon.
“No, sir. I think he's commanding from the rear. I've seen many a courier ride up the trail to the bluffs.”
Roberts turned his field glasses to the right to watch a skirmish between some Union snipers on the top of Mesa de la Contadera, and some shotgun-wielding Texans sent to force the snipers off the high ground.
Roberts chuckled. “If Tom Green takes command, we will have a proper scrape on our hands.”
“Yes, sir, I agree.”
“Carry on, Greenwood. Tell Kit his boys had better be ready for it.”
“Yes, sir.”
I loped back to the far Union left. The first thing I did when I returned to my unit was to replace the horse I had taken and set that big mule free. The man whose mount I had commandeered smiled and saluted me with relief. What fool would want to ride into battle with his head and shoulders sticking up above everything else in the entire command?
Finally, I rejoined Kit and Blue as they sat their saddles and watched the battle below. I reported to Kit, and he nodded his agreement to the orders to the front. His face showed neither fear nor foreboding.
“We'll watch here a spell, yet,” he said. “When we see Pino coming to relieve us, I'll give the order. I don't want the boys thinking about it too long.”
Looking beyond the middle ground between the two armies, I sensed the Confederates preparing to make a move in the deadly chess game below. I saw couriers scrambling everywhere behind the Texas lines. It seemed the entire Texas brigade was in confusion. Then I saw a particular rider, and pointed him out to Kit. “Look, there's Colonel Green himself. Look at him ride!”
“He's taken command, then,” Kit said. “Somethin'
will
happen.”
We watched Colonel Thomas Green, the old veteran of San Jacinto and Monterrey, as he galloped his steed behind the sand hills almost a mile away, often in the line of Union rifle fire.
“My God,” Blue said. “What are they aimin' to do?”
He pointed, and I saw the red pennants rise aflutter in the air as steel points poked skyward on long wooden poles. Captain Willis L. Lang's Company of Confederate Lancers was poised to attack.
“You don't reckon they'll really charge with them spears?” Blue wondered.
“Maybe it's just a diversion,” I commented. “Surely they won't charge rifles with lances.”
The moment the words left my mouth, a yell rose from Lang's gallant horsemen, and they charged over the sand, among the scattered cottonwoods, their pennons wiggling like little red minnows in a sea of smoke. They angled to the Confederate right, gaining speed.
“They're gonna strike the Pikes Peakers!” Blue said. “The boys from Colorado!”
“Probably think they won't fight because they're not in regular uniform,” Kit said. “That's a mistake. Those boys from the mountains are tough.”
Not only were the Colorado volunteers tough, but they had drilled enough to know how to meet a cavalry charge. They formed a skirmish line in two ranks as the lancers charged on through lead and smoke, half of the Pikes Peakers taking a knee while the others stood behind the kneeling men and waited, their rifles ready. I could only imagine how fearsome those galloping lancers looked to the Colorado volunteers—and how ominous that line of armed infantry must have looked to Lang's charging company.
In the middle of that raging battle, a hush fell over the valley. Cannon and rifle fire ceased as every soldier in the battle turned to watch the spectacle of fifty primitive weapons riding down upon the muzzles of a hundred rifles. I've seen my share of charges and attacks and counterattacks. This one beat anything I had ever imagined for sheer bravery and disregard for danger. Those horsemen wielding the ancient weapons would neither slow nor falter. If anything, they charged ever harder at the Coloradans.
I held my breath. Blue groaned.
Under his breath, Kit said, “Hold your fire, boys,” as if the Colorado volunteers might hear him.
The gap between the two forces closed and the valley got so quiet that I thought I could hear the flapping of the pennons. The lancers fanned out and their steel blades began to dip. A ragged line of smoky white muzzle blasts appeared; horses fell as if tripped, and men tumbled from the charging mounts. The sound of the rifles hit us like a drumroll as lances jabbed sand and snapped. Yet the surviving lancers charged on—horse-borne pikes into Pikes Peakers.
The second rifle volley hit men and horses almost point-blank and the clash became a close-quarters bloodbath. The Coloradans used their bayonets while the Texans—many of them wounded—drew revolvers. The lances were scattered like splinters. Only one had drawn blood, plunged into the thigh of a Colorado scout—an old mountain voyageur called “Cheyenne Dutch.” Captain Lang himself was wounded too badly to fight, as was his second in command, Lieutenant Demetrius M. Bass.
Half of Lang's company of lancers were already killed or disabled by wounds. None had managed to stay in the saddle and most of the horses were dead. The lancers who survived fought afoot now, blasting at bayonet points with their Colts. The Texans who had carried two pistols in their belts stood a chance of fighting their way out of the ranks of the Coloradans. Others drew their bowie knives and hacked away in desperation.
Somehow, the surviving lancers regrouped and fell back together, dragging some of their dead and wounded. The Coloradans pursued them, some having found the time to reload. It was the saddest, most spectacular charge I could envision and it made my blood boil with rage that General Sibley, the drunken tent inventor, would send men to their deaths in such a foolish way.
As the few surviving dismounted lancers fought their way back, they were joined by reinforcements from the old river channel—comrades who had watched their courageous charge and now came to cover their retreat with shotguns and pistols. The pursuit of the Colorado volunteers faltered, and at that moment, Captain Trevanion T. Teel loosed a round of cannon fire from one of his field guns. Captain Teel, who had already
blown a good horse right out from under me, exhibited his artillery skills again as a round of canister cut through the Pikes Peakers and shattered their counterattack.
The tide changed once again, and the chess pieces shifted. The right Texas flank, inspired by the gallantry of the lancers, and now encouraged by the artillery support, advanced at a determined trot and drove the Coloradans back toward the river. Teel kept his fire directed ahead of the advance and our Union left crumbled just across the river from our position.
“Where the hell is Pino?” Kit muttered. He wanted us in on the fighting now, but he could not move until Pino came to take our position.
As the Union left reeled backward, the Union right advanced, aided by blazing artillery of Hall's battery. The beleaguered Texans who had held the fringes of the bosque for hours, turning back charge upon charge, could now hold out no longer, and I could see them even across the mile of smoke, pouring out of the timber and falling back to the old river channel. It was as if two separate battles were going on within this one battle. The Rebel right was gaining ground, as was the Union right. The entire line of battle shifted counterclockwise from a hawk's-eye view.
And here, things sulled as dozens of wounded men pumped their last pints of blood into Rio Grande Valley sand. The occasional artillery blast tested one line or the other, and a few sporadic rifle shots cracked, but the battle had fallen into a lull by unarranged mutual consent. Men were exhausted. Ammunition was scarce along both fronts. Supply wagons with reloads, food, water, and medical supplies began to advance from the fort on our side, and from the Texas supply train across the valley.
We had some time to rest and consider what we had seen. We ate some hardtack and jerked beef and washed it down with water from our canteens. No one in the First New Mexico Volunteers seemed too hungry. The hardest part was yet to come, and we knew that. We dreaded that. Yet we ached to get on with it and get it done. Nothing was worse than sitting here waiting.

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