Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West (33 page)

Carson was charging right behind when his horse lost its footing and threw him to the ground. Although he was not seriously injured, Carson’s rifle was broken clean in half. Somehow he was able to pick himself up and scurry crabwise from the path of the oncoming animals. “I came very near being trodden to death,” he later said, “and finally saved myself by crawling from under them.”

The dragoons kept on coming. As they galloped into range of the Mexicans, they snapped off their carbines, but most of the weapons were so damp and corroded, the ammunition so soggy, that their shots had no effect. As Kearny had predicted, they would have to fight “close-in”; they unsheathed their swords and brandished them menacingly as they drove toward the enemy.

In the face of this furious charge, the Californians scuttled their line and executed what at first looked like a retreat. They turned and took off toward the west, following the meandering course of a shallow stream. With Captain Johnston dead, Capt. Ben Moore took charge and ordered the dragoons to follow Pico’s fleeing horsemen, and for some distance gave chase. The pursuit was ill advised, however, for it thinned the dragoons out even more, leaving just a few of the men with the strongest animals far out in the lead, left to fight on their own, hopelessly separated from their comrades. (General Kearny and Lieutenant Emory were lagging even farther behind.)

When Pico’s
caballeros
got a glimpse of this vulnerable vanguard and saw how diffuse their formations were and how miserable their mounts looked, they made an immediate halt. Smelling weakness, their confidence swelled. With the dexterity of lifelong equestrians, the Californians wheeled their horses and galloped straight at Moore. This time, however, they rode with lances—hefty spears nine feet long and set with sharp metal points.

What is this?
the dragoons wondered. It looked like some medieval exercise, with anachronistic weaponry from the days of Cervantes. At first the well-trained cavalrymen scoffed at these oncoming jousters.

But in seconds the Californians expertly surrounded Moore and several of his comrades—“much as they might encircle a herd of cattle,” as one historian put it. Recognizing that he was dangerously exposed, Captain Moore charged at Captain Pico himself, ineffectually popping off his pistol and then reaching for his saber. Pico, an excellent swordsman, managed to fend off the attack and slash Moore with his blade. As this was happening, a pair of lancers rushed to the aid of their leader; they made separate charges at Moore and ran him through with their long spears. The captain was knocked from his horse, still alive, blood gouting from numerous gashes and punctures. Moore still clutched his sword in his hand, but in the fall it had broken close to the hilt. He had nothing left to fight with. As Moore lay helpless on the ground near a willow tree, another Californian hurried over with a pistol and finished him off.

Other dragoons arrived and joined the fight. Realizing that their sodden guns were useless, they instead wielded them like clubs, but they found these brutish instruments were no match for the supple Mexican horsemen and their supposedly antiquated fighting technology. The Californians were wickedly precise with their lances, and they deftly stabbed and slashed the dragoons while the absurdly long reach of their weapons kept them unscathed. The sharp staves left deep “slots” in the flesh, as the American doctor later described the wounds. Nearly every dragoon received multiple punctures.

Pico’s men were similarly adroit with
reatas
—leather lassos—which they used to yank an unsuspecting dragoon from his saddle while a comrade surged forward to lance the dismounted American as he lay entangled in the twined leather thongs. Wielding the
reata
was said to be a uniquely Californian skill. Throughout Mexico there was an old expression: “A Californian can throw the lasso as well with his foot as any other Mexican can with his hand.” A Western historian would write that, to Californians, “the saddle was home, the horse a second self, and the lance and
reata
their manly exercise.” On this gray morning, the Americans were discovering the mean truth of such aphorisms.

One of the dragoons who entered the fray was Lt. Tom Hammond, who happened to be the brother-in-law of the fallen Captain Moore. Wondering what had happened to the other dragoons, he screamed, “For God’s sake, men, come up!” He spotted Moore’s prone body and darted over to it. Just then a lancer came at him from an unseen angle and thrust a spear into the lieutenant’s side. Hammond tumbled off his mount and lay gravely wounded next to his brother-in-law. He would join Moore in death within a few hours.

By this point Kit Carson had managed to sprint ahead from the place where he’d tumbled off his horse. He took a carbine and ammunition from a dead dragoon—probably Johnston—and then he caught a loose horse and took off in the direction of the fight. When he came to the bend in the valley where the dragoons were clashing in full fury and confusion, he instantly assessed the situation and realized it was pointless to try to fight the Californians from the saddle—they were tearing the dragoons to shreds. Every American who’d joined the fight was either dead or seriously wounded. Their swords were no match for the long lances, and their mules and tired horses could not keep pace with the agile Mexican mounts.

And so, perceiving the futility of close-in fighting, Carson did something quite characteristic of him. Quietly, calmly, he dismounted at the edge of the fray and camouflaged himself behind some boulders. From this hiding place, he checked his rifle and cartridges and found that they were not too wet. Then he took careful aim and, one by one, began picking off the Californians as they rode within his range. It was vintage Carson—to sidestep the tumult and romance of a conventional clash and find the cleanest path to efficient fighting.

Now General Kearny and Lieutenant Emory arrived on the scene astride their huffing mules. Kearny immediately joined the action. He was amazed by the skill of the Californian horsemen. “They are the very best riders in the world,” he later said. “There is hardly one not fit for the circus.” Kearny fought his way through the confusion, parrying with the lancers, yelling commands, displaying admirable swordsmanship. One of the Marines who watched him fight said, “The old general defended himself valiantly, and was as calm as a clock.”

But a lancer found him. Kearny was fencing with one of the Californians when another gored him from behind, driving a spear deep into the flesh of his lower back and into his buttock. Another lance slashed through his arm. The general was thrown from his mule and surely would have been killed on the spot had Lieutenant Emory not turned and glimpsed what was happening. Emory dashed over and beat back the attacker with his sword. The general lay seriously wounded on the cold, wet ground, copiously bleeding from multiple punctures.

Capt. Archibald Gillespie was next in line to face the lancers. “Rally, men! For God’s sake, rally!” the Marine screamed, and as he did so a lancer slashed the back of his neck and knocked him off his horse. Then came another spear, ripping open his upper lip and bashing out a tooth. And finally a third, stabbing the captain in the sternum and puncturing a lung.

Somehow Gillespie got up and, with shallow, raspy breath, fought his way over to the place where Kearny had fallen—and where the dragoons in larger numbers were now finally flooding in and organizing themselves. They unlimbered a howitzer and succeeded in firing a round or two that set off what appeared to be wholesale retreat of the enemy. Before they fell back, however, a small group of Californians captured the second army fieldpiece. They snagged the howitzer with their
reatas
and hauled it from the battlefield.

The Californians had not actually retreated. They were massing on the surrounding hills, digesting their delicious victory, contemplating how and when to attack next. Captain Pico was enormously pleased with his men. He would later report to his authorities that the Battle of San Pasqual was a fight that had been decided
a pura arma blanca
—entirely by cold steel. The Americans could take comfort only in a slender technicality: They still held the field of battle, which in some West Point textbooks was the definition of a victory.

In the momentary lull, Dr. Griffin, the dragoon surgeon, rushed over to Kearny’s side and tried to staunch the bleeding. Kearny told Dr. Griffin, “First, go and dress the wounds of the soldiers who require more attention. When you have done that, come to me.”

The general rose up on an elbow and looked around the battlefield. The sun was coming up and the fog had dissipated. He could see bodies strewn in all directions. In fifteen minutes of fighting, twenty-one Americans had died, and many more lay critically wounded. The valley was splattered with gore. Everywhere men moaned in agony.

Kearny looked pale, and the hemorrhaging would not stop. As Dr. Griffin attended to other patients, the general fainted.

For the rest of the day—December 6, 1846—Kearny’s forces hardly budged. They concentrated themselves as best they could in a defensive posture, with artillery pieces unlimbered and at the ready. Their situation was looking more and more like a siege. The Americans could see Pico’s horsemen pacing in the hills just beyond range, plainly contemplating another attack.

In this tense environment, Dr. Griffin dressed wounds and did his best to comfort the dying. Working with what Emory called “great skill and assiduity,” Dr. Griffin was able to revive Kearny, but the general had lost a dangerous amount of blood—so much, in fact, that the doctor feared he would die. Unable to make decisions, Kearny temporarily surrendered command to Capt. Henry Turner.

The immediate task at hand was disposing of the dead. Turner feared that if the dragoons buried the corpses now in plain view of the enemy, the Californians or the local Indians might return later and desecrate the graves. So the captain decided to wait until dark and then secretly bury the dead en masse. At dawn the living would have to break out of their present predicament and bludgeon their way toward San Diego. They had no other choice.

And so the hours ticked away, and the dragoons, bleeding and starving, stayed exposed in the open chaparral country. They readied themselves for battle—drying out their ammunition, cleaning their weapons, sharpening their swords—but the Californians did not mount another sortie.

Finally dusk arrived. Under the stars, the solemn dragoons quietly dug a pit beneath a large willow tree and buried the dead. There were some twenty bodies in all and, according to one account, several corpses of the enemy. Emory noted the “howling of myriads of wolves, attracted by the smell.” It was an especially somber occasion, Emory said, because after so many miles of marching, these men had become unusually close. Theirs was a “community of hardships,” and it was only fitting that this “band of brave men” should be “put to rest, together and forever.” The dragoons led their horses over the site to tamp down the soil, and the men scattered large rocks.

By the next morning Kearny had gained enough strength to resume command from Captain Turner. He looked sallow and gaunt, but somehow Dr. Griffin had patched him up and propped him on a horse. The general cursed through the pain—the big rent in his rump was embarrassing and smarted terribly—but he was determined to move on. As Carson later put it, “Kearny concluded to march on, let the consequences be what they would.”

It was decided that other patients who were in worse condition would have to be moved by litters. With the help of the mountain men, the dragoons improvised some sledges—buffalo hides tautly slung between two long willow staves and strapped to the back of the saddles.

Kearny gave the signal and the men began the march in a large procession, with the fieldpieces up front, and riflemen on healthier horses ringing the rear and the flanks. The pack animals moved forward in the safety of the middle—as did the wounded, who bounced uncomfortably on their crude ambulances, with the long travois poles dragging in the dirt. For these unfortunates the ride was agonizing—the sharp jerks and vibrations pulled at their bandages and tore open their wounds. “The ambulances grated on the ground,” Emory wrote, “and the sufferings of the wounded were very distressing.”

As they inched slowly forward through the dusty scrub, they realized the Californians were following them, watching and hovering in the surrounding hills, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Sure enough, after a few miles of this slow, cautious advance, the Americans were fired upon. A group of Californians had concealed themselves behind boulders on a nearby hill. Immediately Kearny ordered a charge. A party of dragoons led by Lieutenant Emory succeeded in dislodging the enemy and occupying this higher ground. In the skirmish, five Californians were killed or wounded, but as Emory later described the action: “Strange to say, not one of our men fell…. The capture of the hill was but the work of a moment, and when we reached the crest, the Californians had mounted their horses and were in full flight.”