“Grant,” said Captain Lee, “what did Crawford say to you about that Cerro Gordo road? I want to know all I can.”

“Well, Captain Lee,” replied Grant, “here he is, to speak for himself. He says he came down that trail in midwinter. He studied it, too, because his friend, General Zuroaga, told him it was built by a Spanish fellow by the name of Cortes.”

“Good!” said Lee. “Seems to me I’ve heard of him somewhere, but who is Zuroaga? Tell me about him, Crawford. Does he know anything?”

By this time, Ned had become pretty well acquainted with Lee and a number of other officers, and with their free, open-hearted way of dealing with each other. He could tell, therefore, without any restraint or bashfulness, all that was necessary concerning his distinguished Mexican friend and benefactor.

“I see,” said the captain. “He is one of their many revolutions. All right. But I wish old man Cortes hadn’t left his road so narrow and steep as they say it is. Tell me all you saw, Crawford. I have other accounts, but I want yours. Look at this map and answer my questions.”

He held in his hand what purported to be a very rough sketch of the highway from the city of Jalapa to the city of Mexico. It also pretended to give a fair idea of the section of that road which crossed the mountain spur known as Cerro Gordo.

“From there to there,” said Lee, “how is it?”

“Crooked as a rail fence,” replied Ned. “It isn’t like that at all. It’s a zigzag, with rocks on one side and ravines on the other.”

“Just as I supposed,” said Lee. “Now, mark the zigzags on this other paper, as well as you can remember them.”

They were sitting in Grant’s tent, in the camp of the Seventh Regiment, and the entire advance-guard of the army was encamped in like manner, waiting for orders from General Scott to climb the mountains before them. Ned took the crayon handed him, and he really appeared to do pretty well with it, but he explained that the rough weather and the condition of his pony had compelled him to dismount and come part of the way down the mountain on foot, so that he had more time for making observations.

“If they put cannon on a breastwork on that road,” he said, “they can blow anything in front of them all to pieces.”

“Grant,” said Lee, “that’s just what they can do. Santa Anna has posted his artillery at Crawford’s zigzags, and that Cerro Gordo position cannot be carried in front. It is perfectly unassailable.”

“What on earth are we to do, then?” said Grant. “Our only road to Mexico seems to be shut and bolted.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Lee. “There are others, if we chose to try them. But the general has ordered me, with an engineer party, to go out and find if there is not some way for getting around Santa Anna’s obstructions. I want you to let Crawford go with me.”

“O Lieutenant Grant!” eagerly exclaimed Ned, “General Zuroaga told me there was another place as good for a road as that is.”

“Go along, of course,” said Grant. “I’d give a month’s pay to go with you. Anything but this sleepy camp.”

Ned was ready in a minute, but he found that he was not expected to carry with him any other weapon than his machete.

“Take that,” said Captain Lee. “It will do to cut bushes with. I believe I’ll carry one myself. We shall have a few riflemen, but we must be careful not to do any firing. We must scout like so many red Indians.”

Ned had formerly been on the wrong side of the army lines. During all the long months of what he sometimes thought of as his captivity among the Mexicans, he had been occasionally worried by a feeling of disgrace. He had felt it worst when he was a member of the garrison of Vera Cruz, and on such remarkably good terms with the rest of the garrison and its commander. So he had been exceedingly rejoiced when General Scott battered down his walls and compelled him to surrender. It had been a grand restoration of his self-respect when he found himself running errands for the officers of the Seventh, but now he suddenly felt that he had shot up into full-grown manhood, for, with a bush-cutting sword at his side, he was to accompany one of the best officers in the American army upon an expedition of great importance and much danger.

It was still early in the day when Captain Lee’s party, all on foot, passed through the outer lines of the American advance, at the base of the mountain. All of them were young men, as yet without any military fame, and there was no one there who could tell them that their little band of roadhunters contained one commander-in-chief and one lieutenant-general of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, and one commander-in-chief and four major-generals, or corps commanders, of the armies of the United States. It was not by such subordinates as these that General Santa Anna was assisted in his engineering or other military operations. That day, however, and for a few days more, he felt perfectly sure of his really well-chosen position among the rocks and chasms of the Cerro Gordo.

The engineering party was well aware that its movements might possibly be observed from the heights beyond, as long as it remained in the open, therefore it wheeled out into the fields as it went onward, and was soon lost to view among woodlands.

“Now, Crawford,” said Captain Lee, “recall and tell me, as well as you can, all that Zuroaga told you about his proposed new road.”

Ned proceeded to do so, but, at the end of his recollections, he added:

“Well, the general said it would cost a pot of money to do it, now, and that Cortes had no gunpowder to throw away. He could not have done any rock-blasting.”

“Our difficulty about that is as bad as his was,” replied the captain. “We can have all the gunpowder we need, but we can’t use any of it, for fear of letting his Excellency, General Santa Anna, know what we are up to. As for the cost of a new road, there is no government in Mexico that will think of undertaking it. It would cost as much, almost, as a brand-new revolution.”

There was a great deal of hard work done after that, searching, climbing, and bush-cutting, and Ned wondered at the ready decisions made here and there, by the engineers. It seemed to him, too, that Captain Lee and other officers paid a great deal of deference to a young lieutenant by the name of McClellan. A small force of riflemen was with them and a party of sappers and miners, but there had not been a sign of military opposition to the work which they were trying to do. Nevertheless, it began to dawn upon Ned’s mind that sometimes picks and spades and crowbars may be as important war weapons as even cannon. That is, there may be circumstances in which guns of any kind are of little use until after the other tools have been made to clear the way for them.

Night came, and the entire reconnoitring party camped among the cliffs of Cerro Gordo, but at about the middle of the next forenoon all the officers gathered for a kind of council. They were not yet ready to send in a full and final report, but they had formed important conclusions, and at the end of the council Ned was called for.

“Crawford,” said Captain Lee, “take that despatch to Captain Schuyler Hamilton, or whoever else is on duty at General Scott’s headquarters. In my opinion, this Zuroaga road will do, after we shall have made it, and we can climb around into the rear of the Mexican army. If so, all their batteries in the old road are but so many cannon thrown away.”

Ned’s heart gave a great thump of pride as he took that carefully folded and sealed up paper. To carry it was a tremendous honor, and he was not half sure that it did not make him, for the time being, a regular member of General Scott’s corps of military engineers. He hastened back to the Jalapa highway, and the first advanced post that he came to furnished him with a pony. Then he galloped on to the camps and to the general’s headquarters, as if he had been undergoing no fatigue whatever. He seemed to himself, however, to have seen hardly anything or anybody until he stood before Captain Hamilton, and held out that vitally important despatch. Even then he did not quite understand that it was almost as important as had been the surrender of Vera Cruz. But for that surrender, the American expedition would have been stopped at the seashore. But for this feat of the engineers, it would have been disastrously halted at the foot of the Cerro Gordo pass. One minute later, Ned’s heart jumped again, for he heard the deep voice of the general himself commanding:

“Hamilton, bring Crawford in. He seems to know something.”

Whether he did or not, he could answer questions quite bravely, and he could tell a great many things which had not been set forth in the brief report of the engineers. Probably they had not felt ready to say or assert too much until they had done and learned more, but Ned was under no such restriction, and he thoroughly believed in what he still regarded as General Zuroaga’s road. That is, if somebody like Cortes, for instance, could and would afford the necessary amount of gunpowder to blast away the rocks which he had seen were in the way.

“That will do,” said the general, at last. “You may go, Crawford. Captain Hamilton, we have beaten Santa Anna!”

There may have been a slightly arrogant sound in that confident assertion, but it was altogether in accord with the positive and self-reliant character of General Winfield Scott. He had unbounded faith in his own mental resources, and, at the same time, he had perfect confidence in the men and officers of his army. It was, therefore, less to be wondered at that they on their part entertained an almost absurd respect for their martinet commander.

Orders went out immediately for putting all the force which could be employed upon the construction of the mountain road. Much of the work would have to be performed at night, to keep it secret, and the Mexicans, behind their impassable entrenchments on the old Cerro Gordo pass, had no idea of the hidden plans of their enemies. Santa Anna himself may have believed that his antagonist had given up the hope of ever reaching the city of Mexico by that route. The new one, by which he did intend to reach it, grew rapidly to completion, and Ned Crawford obtained from his friend Grant repeated permissions to go and see if Captain Lee wanted him, and then to come back and report progress to his own camp.

“Lieutenant Grant’s a man that hardly ever says anything,” said Ned to himself, “but he’s a prime good fellow, and I like him. He says he isn’t much of an engineer, though, and he couldn’t build that road.”

Such a road it was, too, with bridges over chasms, where the builders had to climb up and down like so many cats. Even after it was said to be complete, it was fit for men only, for not even the most sure-footed mule could have passed over it. It was finished on the 17th of April, and on the following day General Scott issued his orders for all the various parts of the coming battle of Cerro Gordo. Strong bodies of infantry were to engage the Mexican front, and keep Santa Anna’s army occupied, while the engineers piloted another and stronger column to the real war business of the day. Ned had managed to get himself tangled up with this climbing force, if only to see what use was to be made of his and Zuroaga’s new road. The morning came, and even before the sun was up some of the troops were moving.

“I guess it’ll be an all-day’s job,” thought Ned, as he and one of the engineer officers reached the first steep declivity. “Hullo! they are unhitching those artillery horses. What’s that for?”

He was soon to know, for strong men took the places of the animals, and the guns were hauled up and over the mountain by human hands. It was severe work, but it was done with eager enthusiasm, and a few hours later Ned was able to shout:

“Hurrah! Here we are, right in behind them. Hurrah for General Scott!”

Anything else that he might have felt like saying was drowned in the wild cheering which arose from thousands of soldiers, for there was no longer any need for silence or secrecy. That part of the Mexican army which had been posted beyond the head of the pass was taken utterly by surprise. Its commanders were for the moment unable to imagine whence had come this numerous body of United States infantry, which appeared so suddenly upon their unprotected flank. They therefore retreated, and the Mexican army was cut in two, so that all of it which had been stationed in the pass itself was caught as in a trap, and compelled to surrender. These trapped prisoners were about three thousand in number, and Ned kindly remarked concerning them:

“Oh, but ain’t I glad we didn’t have to kill ’em! We didn’t catch old Santa Anna himself, though. They say the Mexicans made him President for the battle of Angostura. I guess they wouldn’t have done it if they had waited till now.”

Whether or not he was correct in that calculation, the road to the city of Mexico seemed now to be open, unless the unfortunate republic could provide its President with another army. As for the American commander, his troops had more faith in him than ever, and with better reasons for it. It was afterward said that General Scott’s written orders for the battle of Cerro Gordo, and for others which followed, would answer very well for full reports of them after they were won.

The whole American army, except the garrison of Vera Cruz and small parties posted here and there along the road, had now escaped from the tierra caliente and the yellow fever. Immediately after the battle of Cerro Gordo, it marched on to the old city of Jalapa, among the mountains, where its quarters were cool and comfortable. Not many miles beyond Jalapa begins the great central tableland of Anahuac, and it was needful that the road leading into it should be taken possession of before the remnant of Santa Anna’s army should rally and construct barriers at positions from which it might prove difficult to drive them.

“If they do,” thought Ned, when he heard that matter under discussion by the soldiers, “I hope General Scott’ll send for me and the other engineers. I’d like to trap some more prisoners.”

He was not to have any such chance as that, but he was not to be idle altogether,—he and his engineers and his army. The division to which he and the Seventh Regiment belonged, under the command of General Worth, was shortly ordered on in the advance, to take and hold a strong position, known as the town and castle of Perote, and here there was indeed a long delay which was not engineered by the military forces of Mexico. The politicians and particularly the Congress of the United States had interfered very effectively on behalf of President Santa Anna. They had spent so much time in debates upon the legislation required for the gathering of fresh troops that the terms of enlistment of about half of the soldiers under Scott were expiring. It was of no use for him to move forward with a steadily vanishing army, and he was compelled to wait for months at and about Perote, until the new men could arrive and take the places of those who were going home.

“I guess I won’t enlist,” thought Ned, as that idea came again and again into his mind. “Neither mother nor father would wish me to do so. But I’m getting to be an old soldier, after all, and I won’t leave the Seventh till it gets into the city of Mexico.”

Whether it ever was to accomplish that feat was only to be determined by hard fighting, and there came a day, the 7th of August, 1847, when the division of General Worth, then encamped at Puebla, received orders to go forward. The entire army was to move, and General Scott had about as many soldiers with him as when he had landed at Vera Cruz in the spring.

“Hurrah for the city!” shouted Ned, when the news reached him. “I want to make a morning call at the Paez house.”