 | III.—THE DEAD WOMAN OF PALO ALTO. Legends of Mexico |  |
3. III.—THE DEAD WOMAN OF PALO ALTO.
And so the night passed in that Camp of the Wilderness!
While it wears on, and ere the morning dawns, let me lead you for:
little while, from the prominent personages of history, to those quiet
characters, whose destiny is woven into the fate of battles and empires,
like threads of silver with a bloody shroud.
Let me tell you a Legend of the war, a legend of the new crusade.
Legend? What mean you by Legend? One of those heart-warm stories,
which, quivering in rude earnest language from the lips of a spectator of a
battle, or the survivor of some event of the olden time, fill up the cold outlines
of history, and clothe the skeleton with flesh and blood, give it eyes
and tongue, force it at once to look into our eyes and talk with us!
—Something like this, I mean by the word Legend. So many gentlemen
have done me the kindness, to write “Legends” since I began it, and
in certain cases, to borrow mine, without so much as a bow for common
courtesy, that I am forced to define my position. “Legend” may mean
what you please, it certainly is not a thing to be stolen from the owner,
by all the highwaymen and footpads of literature. These gentlemen meet
my Legends of the Revolution in the highway of a book, or the railroad
of a newspaper, and on the instant cry, stand! strip them of all vestiges
of the owner's name, and send them forth to the world again, as gipsies
do stolen children, with their faces marked and a new name. May I be
permitted to hope, that the Rancheros of literature will suffer to pass,
without robbing or maiming, my Legends of Mexico?—
A legend, is a history in its details and delicate tints, with the bloom
of poetry, of home!
It must be confessed that the thing which generally passes for History,
is the most impudent, swaggering bully, the most graceless braggart, the
most reckless equivocator that ever staggered forth upon the great stage of
the world.
He tells us a vast deal of Kings and blood, Revolutions and Battles,
Murderers by wholesale, but not a word does he say of that Home-life
of nations, which flows on, evermore the same, in all ages, whether Kings
cut one another's throats, or the throats of their pitiful sheep, the people.
History, for example draws you a picture of a tall man on Horseback,
with a cap and sword and feather, and calls it Washington, but what does
History say of Washington, the Man, in his home, with the arms of his
wife about his neck; or Washington, the Man, in his closet, with the
thought of his country's destiny, eating like a silent agony into his great
soul?
History, deals like a neophyte in the artist's life, in immense dashes
and vague scrawls, and splashy colors: it does not go to work like the
master painter, adding one delicate line to another, crowding one almost
imperceptible beauty on another, until the dumb thing speaks and lives!
History to speak to the heart, should not lie to us by wholesale, nor
deal in vague generalities, which are worse than robust lies, for they only
tell half the truth, and leave the imagination to fill the other half with the
infinite space of falsehood: No! It should, in narrating the records of an
event or age, make us live with the people, fight by them in battle, sit
with them at the table, make love, hate, fear and triumph with them.
While it pictures the cabinet and field, it should not forget the Home.
While it delineates the great career of ambition, it should not neglect the
quiet but still impressive walk of social life.
While it eloquently pictures Washington the General charging at the
head of his legions, it should not forget Washington the Boy, in his rude
huntsman's dress, struggling for his life, on a miserable raft, amid the
waves and ice of the wintry flood. At the same time, that it delineates
Taylor, the Conquerer of the New Conquest of Mexico, sitting on his
grey steed, amid the roar of battle, his grey eye blazing with the anger
and rapture of the fight, it should remember, Taylor the man, mingling
like a father or brother with his soldiers, sharing crust and cup with them
and weeping the heroic tears of manhood, when disease or death, rends
them from his side.
Which most touches your heart, Napoleon the Emperor, sharing the
imperial purple, with the doll of legitimacy, Maria Louisa, or Napoleon,
the Man, stealing to the chamber of his divorced wife, true-souled Josephine,
weeping at her feet and sealing his remorse with burning tears?
Let us listen to the Legend of the Dead Woman of Palo Alto.
While in the camp of the wilderness, Zachary Taylor, sleeps the
rugged sleep of warrior toil; yonder, in the almost oriental city Matamoras,
a young girl in her virgin slumber, with her voluptuous form, couched on
soft pillows, dreams a sweet wild dream, amid the war of battle, and hear
the angel voices of memory, speak out, amid the hurricane of fiery shells.
Amid all the terrors of that fearful night she slept—a strangely beautiful
woman, with her loose white robe, gleaming through the intervals of
her long flowing raven hair.
It was a luxurious chamber, paved with mosaic slabs of marble, with a
cool fountain, bubbling from a bath, sunken in the centre of the place,
while four slender pillars supported the ceiling. Toward the river a
single large window, with a balcony defended by bars—toward the garden,
a wide doorway, concealed by silken curtains, which tossed like a
banner to the impulse of the night-breeze. Through the doorway, you
pass down steps of cool marble, into garden all shade and bloom,
fountains and flowers. Around the walls, were grouped vases of alabaster,
blooming with all manner of rare and delicate plants, from the wild blossoms
of the prairie to the gaudy cactus, plucked from the steeps of dizzy
cliffs, or gathered from the green spots of desert wastes.
But the most beautiful thing in all the place, was the Woman who
slumbered there!
Behold her!
A small lamp, suspended from the pillar, flings its rays over her couch;
a small bed, covered with folds of dark cloth, edged with gold. Behold
her! One of those wild, warm natures, born of the tempests and sunshine
of the volcanic south; her cheek a rich, clear brown; her eye-lashes long
and dark; her bosom full and passionate, her hair, flowing from the forehead
to the waist, a shower of midnight tresses, gleaming and darkening
over a robe of snow.
As she slumbers there, her cheek resting upon her left arm, you may see
the dark brow, gather in a frown, the ripe warm lips compress with alternate
fear and scorn, the bosom, agitated at first with a gentle motion, and
then rushing with one wild throb into light. The loose white robe falls
aside, and you behold that young breast, beating with violent emotion.
She has passed from the cool waters of the bath, to the agitated slumbers
of the couch. A loose robe, flowing from the white shoulders to the
feet—shoulders and feet, are naked and white as marble—encircles with
its easy folds, her young and voluptuous form.
Let us approach her couch, let us bend over this sleeping woman, and
listen to the words which fall quivering, as though each word was a drop
of blood, from her young lips.
Strange revelation! Even in her sleep she tells the story of her life.
Even while the lull of the fountain, is heard in the awful intervals of
of powder and blood, this beautiful child of the South, in her tempestuous
dream, beating gently her breast all the while, with her fingers, reveals to
us the history of her heart.
At first the dream bewilders us, with its light and gloom, its pictures
of loving beauty and sombre sublimity.
We stand in the shadows of the Cathedral aisle. It is the evening
hour. The setting sun flings one broad belt of light, over yonder altar
of solid silver, with the candelabra of gold above it, and the balustrade of
precious metals, extending on either side. Count the wealth of a fairy
legend, and you have it here, in this solemn cathedral. And yonder—
smiling sadly over all the display of wealth—stands the golden Image of
the Carpenter's Son of Nazareth, and by his side, beams the silver face
of his Divine Mother. It is an awful place, confounding us, by its strange,
almost gorgeously grotesque architecture, its mingling of the Aztec with
the Catholic faith, its almost blasphemous conjunction of Montezuma and
Jesus.
This Cathedral of Mexico, in which we now stand, occupies the very
spot, where stood hundreds of years ago, the temple of the bloody God
of Anahuac. Here, where Jesus smiles, once writhed the human sacrifice,
with his heart torn palpitating from his breast.
But hold! A vision breaks upon us now. Even as the shadows of
night descend, as the deep serenity of this holy place, is only broken by
the bustle of the gay plaza without, as the everlasting light, burns near
the face of Jesus—behold!
Two figures approach and bend before the altar—a Virgin in the bloom
of her southern life, dark in eyes, eyebrows and hair, luxuriant in the
fiery tinge of her clear brown cheeks, kneels beside a soldier, dressed in
the costume of the northern land, his chesnut hair, curling round a
thoughtful brow.
They kneel there, impressive types of widely contrasted races—He,
born of the land of Washington, a wanderer from the hills of Virginia—
She, a voluptuous daughter of the land of the Aztec, with the old Castilian
blood, mingling in her veins with the blood of Montezuma.
They kneel there; the awful cathedral forms their marriage canopy.
The Priest in his white robes, scatters from his withered hands, a blessing
on the strangely wedded pair. He looks into her face, his clear
hazel eye, drinking those eyes of hers, which seem at once to combine,
all that is dark and bright, in the whole world.
But at this moment—we are still in the maiden's dream, you will remember—a
footstep rings along the aisle, and a stern man, with snowy
hair, a bronzed cheek, and a white mustache, strides slowly forward, his
eye burning with the wounded pride of an old Castilian.
He tears his child from the embrace of her husband—you see a wo
borne rudely along the aisles by mortal hands, and mists and darkness
close the strange sad vision.
Yes, the maiden's dream ends here—with the stern old Castilian, standing
in triumphant scorn, alone with the affrighted Priest and the unconscious
daughter, alone in that place of religion and gold, the Cathedral
of Mexico. Even as the mists close over their forms, the light glitters
upon his uniform tinselled with stars, and the breeze gently moves the
white folds of her bridal dress.
With the dream of the past, the beautiful girl, sleeping in this perfumed
chamber of the Matamoras home, moves her round arms and uncloses her
dark eyes. She starts to her feet, with her long hair showering half-way
down her voluptuous form. She stands with bare feet on the marble floor,
and presses her hand to her forehead.
“Only six month ago”—Not in English, but in the rich, sonorous Castilian
she speaks—“And I knelt by his side, before the Altar of the grand
Cathedral. My father tore him from my grasp; this lover, this husband of
mine, rots in prison at this very hour. And I—already married, must by
to-morrow's light, wed another. Such is the decree of my father! Have
a care proud Castilian! The blood of my mother, which flows in my
veins, the blood of the Montezumas, may foil you, even yet!”
She paces along the chamber, her white robe flowing to her feet. With
one hand she dashes aside the mass of dark hair from her brow, while
that face, so passionate in its warm beauty, is softened in every outline
by a sad and tender memory.
“Even yet I remember it! Recovering from my swoon, I clung to the
arm of my father and passed from the Cathedral; on the threshold a beggar
girl started forward and clasped my arm. Even in her rags, she was
beautiful—that child of the Lepero,[1]
born in the hut, and nourished into
bloom, by hopeless misery. My father started—`She is the very image
of my daughter—of Inez!' he whispered. Meanwhile that poor girl,
still clung to my arm, gazing in my face, with her large eyes as she
whispered—`Fear not proud lady! For I do not fear, I do not despair!
I, that have nothing but rags and misery, the leper's crust and the leper's
straw, do not despair, for I am a daughter of Montezuma!”
A strange memory! The beggar girl of Mexico and the proud lady
Inez—one in rags and the other in lace and gold—and yet resembling
each other, like twin copies of some beautiful statue.
You should have seen the proud elevation of this woman's form, as
with her dark hair, streaming over her shoulders and down her back, she
exclaimed—
“I, I, too am a daughter of the race of Montezuma!”
And all the while, as she paced along in that place of fountains and
flowers, the thunder of the cannonade, mingled with the music of the
pattering fountains, and the smell of powder, choked the perfume of the
flowers.
“There is no hope!”
Terrible words, when spoken by a beautiful and helpless woman, communing
with her own heart! No hope! To-morrow, Inez at once a
Wife and Virgin, would be dragged to the altar—perchance amid the roar
of battle—and married to a man, whom her soul abhorred.
Even as she spoke, the silken curtain, which waved from the window,
leading to the balcony, was thrust aside, and a strange form stood there,
framed in the curtain folds as in a veil. It was the form of a young man,
attired in the plain blue undress of an American officer, which revealed
every outline of his slight, yet sinewy frame. His face was very pale,
yet strongly featured, the white forehead encircled by clustering curls, and
the eyes, gazing with deep and steady light, from beneath the compressed
brow!
As silent as a corse, he stood, regarding the maiden with that unvarying
gaze.
She sank on one knee, muttering a prayer, and invoking the name of
Mary, the Virgin Mother. It was a vision that she saw—a vision of the
ghost of her dead Husband.
This beautiful woman, on her knee, the white robe falling from her
shoulders, and revealing half the beauty of her bosom—that silent figure,
standing in the window, his deep eye glaring from a face pale as death,
formed together, with the light and shadow, the fountains and flowers, a
strangely impressive picture.
Her senses fled from her, even as the cross which she clasped, glided
from her stiffening fingers.
When again she looked up from that death-like trance, she felt her
young bosom beating warmly against a manly heart, she felt the smile of
her Husband upon her face.
“Come!” said the Virginian, speaking low in the deep Castilian—
“There is no time for a long story—I have dared death to meet you, and
we must dare death again, ere we escape from this place.”
Girding her gently in his arms,—clasping the waist, which quivered in
his embrace—he bore her through the curtain, and they stood upon the
balcony, with their eyes dazzled by a picture, at once horrible and
sublime.
That mansion of Matamoras, stood but a short distance from the river,
from which it was separated by a garden, whose fountains sparkled through
arcades of flowers.
The river wound before them, a fiery track of light.
Yonder arises Fort Brown, the Banner of the Stars, waving out in red
light, from the background of the midnight sky. Around that beleagued
fort, darkens the Mexican army—you see them, Ranchero and Soldier,
spread by thousands along the river shore.
But the sky was the most fearful sight of all. It was like an immense
pall, stretched over the universe, with fearful hieroglyphics traced upon it
by the blaze of a volcano.
And the light of the blazing sky, was thrown upon the face of the beautiful
girl, who clung to the breast of her American husband. His pale
face glows with crimson; her olive cheek, as with a burning blush of
passion. Even her white robe and black hair, are tinted with fiery gleams
of scarlet.
They stand upon the balcony, while the thunder of the cannon shakes
the earth, and the hoarse murmur of the Mexican army, swells terribly in
each interval of the night battle. That river, crowded with boats, that
shore darkened by legions, whose lances glitter like torches of flame, that
fort, defended by three hundred men, its banner waving on, through the
lightning of battle, it was a sight to fire the blood, and make the heart
leap, to mingle in the hurricane.
“They are there, my countrymen—fighting on, when hope is gone!”
cried the Virginian, “Inez, you will go with me? With me, over the
river, with me, through the roar of battle, with me into the shades of the
chaparral?”
It was a terrible sight, that flashed before the maiden's eyes, and yet
with the warm blood, glowing in her cheek, she answered, “I will!”
Down, from the balcony, by the ladder that quivers beneath its burden,
down into the shadows of the garden, she girded by his arm, her snowy
robe fluttering loosely around her queenly form.
They are lost to sight, but a step resounds within the chamber, and an
old man strides madly forth upon the balcony, into the light of the cannonade.
Gaze upon that tall form, clad in the Mexican warrior costume, green
faced with gold—upon that bronzed face, wrinkled with age, the white
mustache covering the compressed lips, the eyes shooting frenzy from
the lowering brow, and pray for the young girl and her lover, her
husband!
The old man stands upon the balcony, quivering with rage, the deep
curses trembling from his lips. For there is a boat upon the river, a fragile
skiff, that glides over the glowing waves bearing two forms to the opposite
shore—the young Virginian and his Mexican bride!
“Curses! They near the opposite shore! Ha! That shell—it bursts
above their heads—it crushes them into the red waves! A cloud of smoke
—it is gone! Curses! They are there again, speeding toward the shore!
May the fiend drive the bullet to his heart! He leads forth from the
through our ranks, he flies!”
And as the old man, sent up from the bitterness of his heart, a curse
upon his child, that American on the black horse, dashed through the
Mexican ranks, while the white robe of his bride floated over the dark
skin of the steed, and wrapped their forms as in a mantle of snow.
“Huzza!” he cried in defiance, as the shot rained like hail about his
horse's feet—“Blaze on! I go to the Camp of Taylor, I go to bring
succor for the beleagued fort!”
It is a glorious thing to feel a battle steed, as black as death, bound beneath
you, like a shell hurled from a mortar, it is a glorious thing to see
the glare of battle, enfolding you like a curtain, to hear its thunder, yelling
like the earthquake from the volcano's throat, but to ride through the
fury of a battle, at dead of night, a black steed bounding beneath you,
while a beautiful woman quivers in your arms—it makes the heart swell
and the blood burn like a flame!
Long upon the balcony, stood the old Mexican Chieftain, gazing—not
upon the Fort, which stood boldly out, in the fierce light of the cannonade,
nor upon the shore thronged with the legions of Mexico, nor upon
the roof of Matamoras, black with spectators of the midnight battle—but
upon the dark chaparral, where his eye had seen the last flutter of his
daughter's snowy robe.
Did you ever read of Montezuma?
Did you ever read of that Monarch, with the olive cheek, who sate
upon the Throne of [2]
Tenochtitlan, three hundred years ago, the last of a
long line of kings, surrounded by kneeling nobles, and served at the festival
table, by groups of beautiful women, dark-eyed and passionate
daughter of the south?
Did you ever hear of the strange land of Anahuac over which he
reigned, a land magnificent with its mountains of snow and fire, its vallies
of fruitfulness and bloom, its clear, calm lakes mirroring beautiful cities,
its awful Religion, smoking on every altar, with human blood?
How this land fell beneath the Spaniard, how the bloody Prophet,
whose coming had been announced by the Aztec priests for hundreds of
years, came in the person of the stern bigot, chivalric soldier, Hernan
Cortes—you have read it all.
When the empire of Montezuma fell, and the sad emperor, who had
been conquered by Fate, not by man, yielded up the last throb of her
broken heart, his blood still beat in the veins of his daughters, who were
joined in marriage with the proudest of the Castilian nobility.
It is of some of the descendants of these marriages of the Spaniard
and the Aztec noble, that we now purpose to speak.
You remember the horrible religion of old Mexico? That creed of
blood which raised its vast altar in every city, and led its human victim,
to the place of the sacrifice, and flung his quivering heart, torn smoking
from the body, in the face of its Devil-God.
A creed in fact, which in its atrocious details, all acted, in the name of
a Devil, almost rivals some of those barbarous corruptions of the Christian
faith, whose bloody sacrifices of human hearts, have been acted in
the name of Jesus and of God.
You remember that eternal flame, which burned on the altar of Montezuma,
bearing with its clouds of white smoke and radiant light, a silent
testimony to the immortality of the Aztec faith?
That flame, was first lighted, when the Ancestors of Montezuma,
hundreds of years before his day, came swarming from the north, upon
the fertile valley of Mexico. It burned on for ages, until the time of
Cortes, when it was supposed to be forever quenched, in the last baptism
of blood, offered by him upon its altar.
But it was never quenched, that awful fire of Montezuma! While the
Spaniard, crowded Mexico with his legions, and built his altars upon the
ruins of Aztec Teocalli, certain tribes of the old people, true to their race
and their religion, fled to the mountain and the wilderness, bearing with
them, flaming torches, which had been lighted at the eternal fire.
That fire has never once gone out, through the long course of three
hundred and twenty-six years. It burns on at the present hour, as it
burned in the days of Montezuma.
Where the ravine is dark and horrible, where the mountain threatens
you with death, if you dare approach its summit of eternal snow, where
the wilderness extends, fenced in from civilization by impenetrable thickets,
swarming with wild beasts—there, may you still discover, the eternal
fire of Montezuma.
Torches, lighted at this flame, have been brought forth, to the gaze of
the white man, on certain occasions, since the conquest of Cortes.
Whenever danger to the Spaniard, hovers in the air, those torches are
seen, flashing from the tops of the mountains, from the shadows of the
ravine!
When the Hero-Priest Hidalgo,—descended from the Aztec race,—
raised the standard of revolt, and declared the soil of Anahuac, free from
European despotism, that torch blazed in the faces of the Spaniards and
lit them to their bloody graves.
It blazed again, ere the battle of Palo Alto. We will journey into the
wilderness and behold its light. In the wilderness of Chaparral and
prairie, which extends from the shores of the Rio Grande, there are many
desert wilds, scarcely ever trodden by the foot of the white man. Stunted
by thickly grown vines, form an impenetrable barrier, between those
deserts and the step of the civilized intruder. Even the Ranchero, that
combination of the worst vices of civilization and barbarism, dare not
profane these silent solitudes.
On the morning of the Eighth of May, 1846, we will journey for miles
through these impenetrable thickets, and in the centre of the wild, behold
a scene, which but a short distance removed from the cities of the white
race, is yet stamped with all the traces of the people of Montezuma.
In the centre of the wilderness, a space some two miles square, bloomed
like a garden. Do you see its fields of tall green corn, waving yonder,
near a wilderness of fig trees, rich with their tempting fruit? Here, the
pomegranates hidden among large green leaves, meets your eye, and there,
dangling from the vines, the grapes come quivering into light. Wherever
you turn your gaze, all is bloom, verdure, fruitfulness. There are birds
of radiant plumage upon the trees, and flowers, that make you forget the
rainbow scattered everywhere along the sod.
Do you distinctly see this garden in the wilderness, hemmed in on
every side by the impassable chaparral?
Gaze in its centre, and you will behold a circle of huts, formed of reeds
woven together, like basket work, cemented with clay, and defended from
the sun and rain, by a roof of vines and blossoms.
The tall corn waves greenly about them, and the fig floats its perfume
through their narrow doors, and the meek-eyed dove of the tropics, a
gentle thing, looking like the holy spirit of home, murmurs its low music
in the vines above the roof. Altogether, the quiet picture, blooming under
the morning sun, in the wilderness, steels on us, like a dream from Heaven,
a delicious leaf, cut freshly from the book of eternal beauty.
Here dwells one of those remnants of the Aztec people, which have
been hidden in the desert, from the eye of the white man, for three hundred
years. You see the dark-faced men, with long black hair, stand
before the doors of their homes—the tawny children playing among the
flowers—the brown Women, with large lustrous eyes, gathering the rich
fruitage of tree and field.
But the object in the centre of the desert village, that mass of stone,
piled up, rock on rock, until it swells far over the roof into the serene
upper air?
Ascend those steps—toil slowly up the rugged stairway—stand upon
the summit—gaze upon the village that blooms below!
But the fire, that burns upon the summit of this mound of rocks, that
clear flame, burning beneath the shelter of a large flat stone, supported
by two masses of granite?
This mound of rocks, is one of the last altars of the Aztec race; a
old.
That fire, is the sacred flame, never once extinguished since the days
of Montezuma.
Before that fire, crouching on the rock, sits an old man, with long black
hair floating down his back, while a loose robe of coarse white cotton,
enfolds his withered form.
The last priest of Montezuma!
From early childhood he has watched that fire, fed it with fragrant
wood, and gazed upon its flames, as though it was a God. Before his
day, his father watched it; when he is gone, his son, tall and straight as
the desert palm, will assume the sacred duty. So from age to age, from
father to son, burns on the flame of Montezuma!
Does not the image of this peaceful people, dwelling alone by their rude
altar, in the wilderness, never trodden by the white man, gathering their
bread and attire, from the maize and cotton of the field, their knowledge
of God, from the traditions of their fathers, at once bewilder and enchain
you?
The day wears on—they have come from the fields to partake of their
simple meal—the old man still sits upon the mound, watching the sacred
flame!
The day wears on! Hark! From the east a sound like thunder. It
is the cannon of Palo Alto, the old man rises, listens, and thinks it thunder.
He knows nothing of the wars or battles of the white race.
The day wears on. The sun is yonder in the west. The mound of
rocks flings its shadow over the village. Still the sound of thunder to
the east, thunder, deep and blooming, from a sky, without a cloud.
The affrighted people of the Aztec village, throng to the altar, the
strong-limbed men, the brown women with the lustrous eyes, the tawny
children scattering flowers.
They seek to propitiate their God, by a sacrifice. That thunder
from a cloudless sky terrifies their souls. A dove, one of those gentle
doves of home, is the destined victim. Look! It flutters on the large
flat stone above the flame, and murmurs its sad music, even as the hand
of the priest is laid upon its glossy neck.
A prayer in the Mexican tongue, a wild and momentous hymn to the
strange deity.
It is a picture to remember. That solitary mound rising above the
hamlet in the wilderness, its huge shadow, blackening over the fields—
that erect old man, upon the summit, the centre of a crowd of darkskinned
worshippers—the bird fluttering in his hand, the sacramental
knife raised over his head.
At the moment a cry quivers from every lip, and every eye is turned
toward the east.
There, stealing from the forest, comes the form of a woman, her dark
hair floating over her snowy robes, while her large eyes roll from side to
side, with a look of fear.
Her dress is torn by the briers; her hair tangled by the perfumed blossom
rent from the wild vine; she totters on toward the altar—
It is the Lady Inez, daughter of the stern Mexican General, wife of
the gallant Virginian.
Within the same hour, a scene of deep interest took place on the field
of Palo Alto.
It was in the last hour of that fight—when the battle, which we will
shortly look upon in all its details, was about to close—that a solitary
Mexican officer, flying from the field, spurred his bay horse through the
devious path of the chaparral.
Look yonder, and by the light of the solitary sun, you may behold his
pursuer, a young American, mounted on a dark steed. With the uniform
torn in ribands from his right arm, he brandishes his sword—it drops
blood upon his broad chest—and dashes on.
He nears the Mexican, he is within twenty paces, when the flying soldier
is about to leave the path, and seek the shadows of the chaparral.
The American raises his pistol—fires! The bay-horse totters to and fro,
and falls on his forefeet, precipitating his rider on the sod.
Beside his dying horse—whose life-blood wells from the fatal wound
—that rider stands and confronts the enemy. The American starts in
his saddle, and pulls his bridle-rein, throwing his dark horse, back on his
haunches, as he beholds him.
For in that American officer stained from head to foot with blood, you
recognize the pale face and full deep eyes of the Virginian, husband of
the Lady Inez. Look upon that Mexican, his green uniform rent with
sword thrusts, his white moustache, dyed with crimson drops, his bronzed
face traversed by a fearful wound, and you behold her father.
Words of deep meaning were spoken there in that lonely chaparral.
“Yield, General!” cried the Virginian in Spanish. “You are faint
with wounds. I will not fight with the father of my wife.”
There was something terrible in the silent malignity which shone from
the old man's eyes.
“You are mounted,” he quietly said—“My horse is dying—” and then
wiping the blood from his sword blade with his left hand, grasped the
hilt with his right, and stood prepared for a deadly fight—“Come!” he cried
in the settled tone of a mortal hatred—“You escaped from the prison of
Mexico, but cannot escape me!”
It was interesting to notice the conduct of that young Virginian, whose
blue uniform was in many places turned to red, by the blood of his foes.
He quietly dismounted, flung the rein on the neck of his dark steed, wiped
the sod.
He then calmly advanced along the path, with the wall of the chaparral
on either side. Stern and unrelenting, the old General awaited him.
“General you see me, unarmed, defenceless before you!” said the
Virginian advancing—“Let me ask you once for all—why do you pursue
me with this unrelenting hatred? I came to your Mexican home, a stranger
from the far north, and was grateful for your generous hospitality. I
met your daughter—we loved—were joined in marriage before the altar
of your solemn cathedral. Why hurl me from your daughter's arms, into
a prison, only reserved for the vilest outcast? Why, even as I rotted in
the dungeon, did you drag my wife from the city, force her to accompany
you in your march, and last night bid her prepare, for the miserable nuptials
which were to take place to day? Come—be friends with me—in
this hour, when you are forced to leave the field, a fugitive, I will aid
your flight!”
There was an earnestness in the young man's tone, that would have
touched the hardest heart. Frankness was written on his pale face, and
honor spoke in the gleam of his large hazel eye.
“Where is my daughter?” said the Mexican General, in a low voice,
but still keeping his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Last night, when I bore the message of Fort Brown, to our General
—that message which called for help, in direst extremity—I left Inez in a
ranche (farm house) some few hundred yards to the west of this place.
When the battle is over,—I will join her again.”
“Coward! You will never join her again! After I have laid you
dead upon the sod, I myself will go and bear your message to my
daughter.”
With a ferocious look in his eye, the General dashed upon the unarmed
man, making a thrust, with all the vigor of his right arm. To say the
least, there was something cowardly in this movement, indeed, it looked
very much like Assassination.
The Virginian darted aside, but the sword passed between his side
and his left arm, transfixing a piece of his coat.
As quick as thought he turned, darted on the Mexican—who had been
almost thrown on his face by the impetus of his ineffectual thrust—and
clutched his throat with a grasp of iron.
“This your Mexican chivalry! To stab an unarmed man!”
He shook him fiercely in that tightening grasp—the General made an
effort to shorten his grasp of the sword, and use it as a dagger, but the
blade fell from his hand—he sank backward on the sod, with the knee of
the Virginian on his breast.
He uttered an incoherent groan—his eyes began to start from their
sockets.
The Virginian, touched with pity released his grasp, but seized the
fallen sword.
“I hate you”—slowly said the Mexican General, raising himself on
one hand, while his face grew deathly pale—“Not so much because you
stole my daughter, as that you are one of the accursed race, whose destiny
it is, to despoil our land, extinguish our name, annihilate our flag!”
He tore open the breast of his coat, and disclosed a mortal wound,
which had been killing him, slowly, for hours.—
“If there is one word, that may express the hatred of a dying man,
better than another, I fling it in your face and curse you with that breath,
whose passing, leaves my lips cold forever!”
There was something so terrible in these last words of a dying man,
uttered with rattling breath and a pale face, deformed by hideous contortions,
that the American soldier shrunk from his touch, and gazed upon
him in silent horror.
He never spoke again, save to murmur, in his Spanish tongue—
“Water! Water!”
Reaching forth his arms, he grasped the blade of his sword which the
Virginian held—kissed the hilt, and fell back, with a torrent of blood,
streaming from his mouth.
The Virginian turned to search for water; the murmuring of a brooklet
reached his ears; he left the dying man and rushed along the path.
Turning to the east, he saw the lakelet, spreading calm and beautiful in
the depths of the chaparral. Scarce a ray of sunlight, streamed over its
dark and tranquil bosom.
Our young soldier bent down, with his helmet in his hand, its horse-hair
plume sweeping to the ground, and filled it with the cool water, when
another sight palsied his hand, and turned his face to the color of ashes
and clay.
Before him, in a nook formed by the foliage, on the soft, short grass,
lay the dead body of a human being.
It was a woman, naked as Eve before she fell, with the blood streaming
from her white bosom. As she lay there, her hair—so intensely
dark, with a glossy richness almost every wave and curl—fell over her
arms and clotted in some places with her blood, streamed in masses over
the sod.
Not a vestage of apparel was there, upon her form, to denote her rank,
or enable the living to identify the beautiful dead.
For she was very beautiful. Had you seen the matchless outline of
her young limbs, chaste yet voluptuous, her bosom, just blossoming into
bloom, her olive cheek, which pillowed the dark eyelashes, her lips,
which death had not despoiled of their vermillion—you would have knelt
by her, and gazed for hours upon the silent beauty of the murdered girl.
Murdered? By whom? Where the weapon? Where the traces of
the wrong?
The leaves were above her, the lakelet stretched away from her feet,
and the blood welled slowly from the wound in her heart.
The Virginian forgot the dying man, dashed his helmet away, and sank
beside the dead girl.
“Inez!” and bending down, he earnestly perused those features, sealed
forever in the sleep of death.
Meanwhile but a few paces distant, the Mexican General started into a
sitting posture, with the blood pouring from his mouth, he rushed along
the path, beheld for a moment the form of the dead woman—knew it, for
a horrible agony writhed over his face—and then fell forward on his face
—dead.
While his ashy face, was stamped with a despair that fast fevered into
madness, the Virginian looked from the naked form to the dead soldier,
and murmured—
“The Murderer and the Murdered!”
It was night in the wilderness; the groans of a thousand hearts, quivering
in mental agony, palpitated through the chaparral, from the shores
of the Rio Grande, to the bloody rivulet of Palo Alto.
It was night and through the wall of woven thorns, a solitary horse,
dashed like a shell, hurled from the blazing mortar—a solitary horse, his
nostrils quivering as though they shot forth, jets of flame, his dark hide
flecked with shots of foam, his bloody mane, waving over his eyes and
about his arching neck. Those eyes seem to burn in the darkness, like
the meteors of a swamp.
The Rider! Throat bare, brow uncovered, hair damp with sweat and
clotted with blood, he shook his clenched hands on high, sank his spurs
into the flanks of the horse and whirled away. Ha! Ha! how he shouted
in horrible laughter, while the thorns tore his flesh, as though they were
living things, poisonous with venom, and the gnarled boughs struck his
breast, as though they were the arms of warriors fired with battle rage.
The chaparral darkened round him, a wall of prickly pear—the sod
beneath was broken into pits and ravines—wherever he turned his burning
eyes, was nothing but that impassible desert, upon whose wilderness
of stunted trees, cold and dimly fell the night of the midnight stars.
He was Mad, the brave Virginian. You may talk of hearts, if you
please, and of minds, steeled against the fiercest sorrow, however vulturelike
the beak, with which it may drink our heart's blood, but show me
the soul, that can gaze without madness, upon this horrible vision! A
young, a virgin wife,—whose kiss was warm upon her husband's lips this
morning—found at the setting of the sun, in the lonely chaparral, the
blood oozing slowly from her mangled breast, found a naked and dishonored
her death more horrible to look upon!
For hours the young soldier, has thundered madly through the wild,
not caring whither his horse's footsteps turned, only so that the bore him
farther from the face of man, farther into the desert, the darkness and the
night. Madly he dashed along, and yet all the while, with a consciousness
of his horrible calamity pervading his whole being, like the forked
lightning, quivering through the blackness of the thunder cloud.
At last after hours of mad wandering, he suffered the rein to fall on the
neck of his steed, his hands sank listlessly by his side, his head drooped
on his breast. The stupor had succeeded the frenzy of despair.
Slowly the horse wandered along, the Rider knew not, cared not
whither, while the moments of that night of agony, throbbed slowly away.
Hark! The Virginian roused from his stupor, lifts his head in wonder.
A low, deep monotonous chaunt breaks on the night. Look! The
impenetrable wall of chaparral, gives place to a field of corn, whose broad
green leaves wave above the horse's head.
At once, the vision of a quiet group of homes in the wilderness, and the
delicious perfume of fruits and flowers, rush on the senses of the bewildered
man. By the light of the stars he gazes wildly around, and suffers
the wounded, the bleeding steed to take his way.
Through the field of maize, by the wilderness of fig trees, among the
vines that trail luxuriantly over the ground, the horse wanders on.
At last—what new wonder is this?
Far above the roofs of that desert-girdled home, a light shines like a
star, and sheds a radiance, at once serene and vivid upon the air.
Is it a star, shining from the midnight sky? Or, one of those wild
lights, which born of the atmosphere of the swamp, bewilder travellers
on their way, and lead them on to death?
His eye grows accustomed to the darkness. That light shines from
the summit of a huge mound of rocks, and the forms of human things,
intervene between the eye and its steady blaze.
Again that deep chaunt, swelling through the night, like a requiem over
the dead!
The bewildered traveller rushes forward, springs from his steed and
darts up the rocky steps of the mound, his eye glaring madly all the
while, his chesnut hair, hanging in bloody flakes, about his feverish brow.
A strange fancy has taken firm hold of his brain. He imagines himself
in one of the last retreats of the Aztec people, in that rude mound,
he sees a Teocalli, a bloody altar of the far gone time; that flame is the
fire of Montezuma; those forms, grouped between him and the light, the
figures of the sacrificial priests gloating over their victim's writhing form.
That victim—oh! the horrible frenzy made his blood run cold, hot as
it was with the fever of madness—his own wife, the lady Inez, whom he
chaparral.
He ascended the mound of rocks, and stood with gasping breath upon
the Summit. A sight too wondrous for belief or words, met his silent
gaze.
They were Indian forms grouped upon the summit of the rock, men, with
stout arms and broad chests, women with olive cheeks and deeply lustrous
eyes, children with long black hair, about their tawny faces. Indians
did we say? No! To the bewildered traveller's eye, they looked
more like the Aztec people of three hundred and twenty six years ago.
They stood in a circle, their backs to his face, their visages bathed in the
red light, which sheltered by a huge flat stone, shone through the night
afar.
Slowly, on tip-toe the traveller drew nigh.
In the midst of the silent group, stood an old man, attired in a loose
robe of coarse cotton, gazing upon the object which held every eye
enchained.
Nearer drew the traveller, his heart choking his utterance, or he would
have groaned.
What struck him with surprise, was the universal expression which
reigned upon every face. Whether old man, or stout-armed Son of the
forest, or round limbed woman, or dark haired child, all wore one look.
It was pity, it was sympathy, it was love, yes, as the angels love! It was
religion!
Upon their rude faces, that look sat enthroned like a gem in the dust,
like one serene ray, in a night of universal cloud.
Hush every breath, as the maddened traveller, worried into a fiercer
agony, draws near, looks over their shoulders, feels the flame upon his
face, beholds the object which enchains every eye.
That chaunt, swelling low and deep from every lip, drowned the echo
of his step.
The sight that he saw—a bleeding victim, disfigured by the knife! No!
A sleeping Woman, wrapped in a white robe, with her smiling face—
warm cheeks, red lips, large lashes, and all—framed in her darkly flowing
hair!
And the sleeping Woman, smiling in her calm repose, while the tawny
people, bent over her, as though she had dropped among them, from God,
was the Lady Inez, the wife whom we left a murdered thing in the darkness
of the chaparral.
Softly she slumbered, the light of the eternal fire upon her face, the
blossoms gathered by little children's hands, wound among the tresses of
her beautiful hair.
It was a dream. Choking down the agony of his soul, he darted forward,
knelt and gazed upon her.
With one cry, the Indians shrank back, from that contrast—his frenzied
face, her smiling countenance!
It was her Ghost. He knew it. Afraid to touch the hand, which lay
with its white fingers unclosed, upon the rock, he gazed in the stern
silence of despair, upon that image of slumbering womanhood.
At last those lids were unclosed, those dark eyes met the light of his
own, the white robe, falling back, revealed the white shoulders and the
bosom of snow. The traveller darted forward—there was a form palpitating
upon his breast, a hand pillowed on his shoulder, masses of dark
hair waving about his face.
“My Husband!”
Was it a Ghost?
That throb from the virgin bosom, kindling a heaven in his veins—ah!
such electric fire, never quivered from the breast of spirit or Ghost
before!
And while the fire of Montezuma burned through the dark night, the
chaunt swelled on the air once more, and the Aztec people—I see them, now,
upon the lonely mound, their faces bathed in red light, while all beyond
is darkness—grouped wandering round the central figures, the Husband
on his knees, with his beautiful wife upon his breast, her dark hair,
waving over his shoulder.
Where is the thread to this mystery of the wilderness?
At the setting of the sun, you show us the dead body of the Lady
Inez, laid naked and dishonored in the chaparral of Palo Alto, and at
midnight, we behold the Lady Inez, calmly slumbering, on the mound
of the wilderness, her smiling face, lighted by the eternal fire of Montezuma?
—Here is all that ever was known of the dark history.
It was in the last hour of Palo Alto, when the cannon of Taylor, flamed
their lightning into the Mexican camp, that the beams of the declining
sun, stealing through the battle clouds, shone on the trappings and tinsel
of a gorgeous canopy, which towered in the heart of the dark chaparral.
Around this tent, the banquet fires were blazing, you see them smoking
and flaming beneath the luscious viands, intended for the feast of victory.
When Arista has conquered Taylor, and bound him in chains, he
will come hither in royal state, and drink his iced wine, and feast on his
luxurious banquet, while the tri-colored flag of Mexico waves in triumph
over his head.
But unfortunately old Zachary is hard to conquer. Even as we look
upon the gaudy tents, with its ornaments glittering like diamonds in the
light, we hear the rush of Taylor's legions to the north, and the tramp
of the flying Mexicans to the south.
The lacqueys have left their banquet fire; the sentinels their place by
look! how the smoke rolls yonder, up against the setting sun—the camp
of Arista is silent as the grave.
In a moment the thunder of battle will envelope this place, in smoke
and flames, but ere that moment comes, we will behold a sad, a touching
scene.
Enter the tent of Arista. Pass through the gilded curtains, and behold
the scene which speads before you.
On the rich carpet, amid piles of scattered trunks, masses of charts
and papers, heaps of plate, solid silver and gold, behold the kneeling form
of a young, a beautiful girl. Attired in a garment of richest dyes, which
half-revealing the warm bosom, girdles her slender waist, and terminates
at her knees, displaying the sculptured proportions of her voluptuous
limbs, she kneels amid the scene of splendid havoc, clasps her hands and
raises her large dark eyes!
While her bosom beats tumultuously into view, she prays, yes, in the
Spanish and the Mexican tongue, prays to the God of the Christian and
the God of Montezuma.
There is one portion of her costume, which imparts to her face and
form, a beauty almost divine.
A veil of fine lace, like a wreath of transparent mist, as white as snow,
flows from her forehead to her feet, with her long dark hair, and her bare
arms, gleaming through its bewitching folds. Jewels worth many a solid
piece of gold, sink and swell upon her breast, pearls which remind you
of a pure virgin's tears, gleam in circlets from her brow.
While the battle rages afar, she prays, not for herself but for her lover!
Is it the Lady Inez, whom we behold?
The same form: the same red ripeness on the lip, and voluptuous
swell in the outline of the form; dark flowing hair, and large full eyes,
all the same; it is the Lady Inez! And yet we know, that at this very
moment, the Lady Inez, is far away, in the tangled mazes of the wilderness!
Listen! Amid the roar of the battle, thundering afar, we hear a footstep,
and presently the form of a young soldier, remarkable for his manly
beauty, appears at the doorway of the tent. Scarce twenty years old, a
dark mustache on lip, his bold features, relieved by long curls of jet-black
hair, he silently advances, while we behold his handsome uniform, torn
in fragments and spotted with blood.
He stands behind her, contemplating her form with a mingled look—
pity and passion! Silently he unsheaths his dagger, poises it above her
head, turning his face away, prepares to strike—
“The Battle,” he cries in Spanish, “Is lost and I will not leave you,
to the mercy of the foe!”
She lifts her eyes, and beholds at once her lover and the trembling dagger.
pulseless quietude.
“Kill, for I am thine, Francisco!” she says, raising her eyes, so lustrously
beautiful to his face. “Who lifted the beggar girl from the hut
of the Lepero to the couch of the lord? Who wound these pearls upon
her forehead, and bade these jewels gleam upon her bosom? Who
shared with her, the love of her noble heart? Francisco! And to who
should the life of Mahitili belong, but to Francisco?”
She spake in the strange Mexican tongue, which, the same as fell
from the lips of Montezuma, may be heard at this day in the mountains
of Mexico.
“But the battle is lost, Mahitili,” shrieked her lover, quivering in
agony—
“For myself I care not; I will not fly; to die upon the lost field is
all that is left for me. But you Mahitili—you my own love, whom I
gathered from the huts of poverty, and wound to my heart—you, who
have not hesitated to watch by my side, in the peril of pestilence,
nor to follow my footsteps into the crash of battle! When I am dead
what will be your fate?”
Calmly she rose, and placed her small fingers on the blade of his
dagger.
“We will die together!” she said, enfolding him in her arms, until her
snowy veil, was stained with the blood which dyed his uniform.
“To die, at this hour, of all other hours! To die, when I have just
discovered that you are no child of poverty and shame, but the lost
daughter of our brave General * * * *! The twin-sister of his proud
and lovely child, with the blood of Montezuma, coursing through your
veins! Nay stare not so wildly—it is true as the Virgin's purity! From
a dying soldier on the battle field, I heard the truth, and received from
his hands, the undeniable proofs! Kill you now—I cannot—we will fly!”
He seized her to his arms, but the robber form of a Ranchero, with his
wide sombrero, and tawny face occupied the doorway of the tent. His
dark eyes shone with the lust of plunder; one hand upon his rifle, one
upon his knife, he silently confronted the youthful pair.
“Here is gold—” cries Francisco—“Secure for me, one of those riderless
steeds, now running wild in the smoke of battle.”
The Ranchero clutches the purse, hurries it in his bosom and disappears.
They wait there, in Arista's tent, trembling with suspense and
watching for the return of the Ranchero, Mahitili nestling close to Francisco's
heart, like a bird to its nest, in the hour of storm, her white veil
and raven hair, encircling his form, as with a robe of strange texture and
beauty.
He does not return, the tawny Ranchero; the battle swells nearer the
not an inch above their heads.
“Kneel, Mahitili! Kneel and pray to the Virgin until I return! I will
secure a horse or die!”
He is gone, but scarcely has his form passed through the curtain folds,
when the Ranchero stands before the tent, holding a noble black horse by
the bridle rein. On his glossy hide smokes the blood and foam of
battle.
“Come!” exclaims the Ranchero, in barbarous Spanish. “He waits
for you, yonder in the chaparral!”
Without a suspicion, she bounds to the saddle, while the Ranchero
huddles the goblet and other vessels of silver and gold scattered along the
carpet, into a capacious sack, tied to his girdle. Mahitili does not behold
this movement. Her eyes have no gaze but for yonder cloud, which gathering
volume, every moment, comes darkening over the chaparral, near and
nearer the tent of Arista.
The Ranchero, that half-savage, with the stalwart form, and bronzed
face, leaps in the saddle, and girding the trembling girl to his breast, bounds
away.
Away, into the narrow path, leading far up the darkness of the chaparral.
Deeper the shadows gather them in, fainter and more faint, the sunbeams
tremble over the dark horse, the Ranchero, and his voluptuous
burden.
“Francisco?” she cried at last, quivering with an unknown fear. They
had turned a bend of the path, and a dark lakelet, scare enlivened by a
ray, spread before them. “My Lover?”
The Ranchero surveyed with one gloating look, the warm beauty of her
face, and the luxuriant swell of her bosom—
“He is here!” he said, and Mahitili felt the blood grow cold, from her
heart to her fingers.
Not fifteen minutes passed, and on that sod, beside the dark lakelet, the
Mexican General, with the blood pouring from his mouth, the Virginian
with his heart turning to ice in his bosom, beheld the naked body of a
murdered and dishonored woman.
There was the print of horse's hoofs toward the lakelet, and a goblet
of sculptured gold, gleamed from the mire by its waters.
Francisco? Look yonder by the light of the moon, and behold a young
form, stretched stifly on the prairie, his face buried in the sod, his arms
extended, the fingers clutching the bloody grass, while the head of a dead
steed rests upon his back!
He found the horse for which he sought, it seems, and—died with him.
Perchance in the very act of mounting, for the same cannon ball, which
mangled flesh and bones.
And as we look upon them, the jackal crawls from the bushes, and
snuffs the air, turning from the dead warrior to the dead steed, and from
dead steed to the warrior, as if hesitating where to commence his horrible
meal.
How came the Bride of the Virginian, the guest of the rude Aztec
people?
Alarmed by the thunder of the battle, she had strayed from the Ranche
where her husband left her, lost her way, and wandered deeper into the
chaparral until the hidden village bloomed upon her eyes. The old priest,
the hardy people, the brown women, all hailed her, with her white attire,
and beautiful form, as a good spirit sent from God; even the little children
clung to her robe, and looked up fearfully into her large eyes.
Now, at the dead of night behold her, standing on that mound of rocks,
her husbands arm about her form, while the sacred flame bathes their faces,
and reveals the group of wondering Indians.
As we gaze, the old Priest—who received from his father the tradition
and prophecy, and who will leave both to his son, as a holy heritage—
bends down and lights a torch at the flame of Montezuma—
“There is doom for the Spaniard in the air!” he chaunts as he waves
the torch—“Even as he crushed the children of Anahuac in the days of
the old, so will a new race from the north, crush his people, in the dust
and blood of battle!
“The Murder done by the Spaniard, returns to him again; and the
blood that he once shed, rises from the ground, which will not hide it,
and becomes a torrent to overflow his rule, his people, and his altars!
“Montezuma, from the shadows of ages, hear the cry of thy children!
Arise! Gaze from the unclosed Halls of Death, upon the Spaniard's,
ruin, and tell the ghosts to shout, as he dashes to darkness in a whirlpool
of blood:
“Montezuma, and all ye ghosts, sing your song of gladness now, and
let the days of your sorrow be past! Even, above the ocean of blood,
which flows from thy mouth, over the land of Anahuac, behold the Dove
of Peace, bearing her green leaves and white blossoms to the children of
the soil!”
| III.—THE DEAD WOMAN OF PALO ALTO. Legends of Mexico | |