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And so it happened that Rex had stayed behind to care for Beverly's arrow wound when Bill Banney had gone out with Jondo on the Kiowa trail to search for me this side of Pawnee Rock. So also it happened that Rex had strolled down from Fort Marcy the night before, in time to see Beverly and the girl in the Mexican dress loitering along the brown front of La Garita.
A fire of musketry from that roof would make the works untenable; and we could thus in a short time drive the enemy from the fortified Garita, and secure a good lodgement within the city, without material loss and without using the siege guns.
As soon as we got on the road leading to the city the troops serving the gun on the parapet retreated, and those on the house-tops near by followed; our men went after them in such close pursuit the troops we had left under the arches joining that a second line across the road, about half-way between the first and the garita, was carried.
SAN COSME GARITA. At 3 P. M., that day, I received orders to join the siege train, and report to General Worth whose column was to attack the city by the San Cosme route.
A terrific storm of shot, shell, and grape assailed the garita, where Captain Dunn had planted an 8-pounder. Twice the gunners were shot down, and fresh men sent to take their places. Then Dunn himself fell, and immediately afterward Lieutenant Benjamin and his first sergeant met the same fate.
There was something of the wicked old Paladin, that rattle-heads like myself cannot help admiring, in the one-armed man whose other limb slept in an honored grave in Mexico, invading the charmed circle of New York moneyed-respectability, carrying off the daughter of one of its first lawyers and an ex-Collector then submitting to a divorce, marrying the woman who had trusted all to his honor, and plunging into the fights of Magenta and Solferino with the same spirit which had led him into the thick of the conflicts at Chapultepec and the Garita de Belen.
Only Providence, not the Mexicans, can stop us. But here are the officers," as General Pillow, Brevet-General Twiggs and a number of other officers entered. The commander-in-chief proceeded to give such information as he had, touching the approaches to the city. Many of the officers favored operating against San Antonio Garita, others attacking Chapultepec.
He directed me, particularly, to have in view the question whether it would be advisable to bring the siege guns forward against the embrasured battery at the Garita.
A flank discharge from Duncan's guns completed the work; the barricade was carried; and without a moment's rest Quitman advanced in the same manner on the garita San Belen, which was held by General Torres with a strong garrison. It too was stormed, though under a fearful hail of grape and canister; and the rifles moved forward toward the citadel.
Colonel Garland, commander of the first brigade of Worth's division, on the right of the causeway, says, in his official report: "The enemy then took position at the Garita San Cosme, where they were supported by two pieces of artillery which raked the streets with grape and canister.
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