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Suppose those oranges had been bombs?" "The warship would have been sunk," Darrin answered. "Huerta's bird men might be able to give us a surprise like that," Trent suggested. "That may prove to be one of the new problems that we shall have to work out." "Oh, I've worked that out already," yawned Danny Grin.
"That is what I've been trying to decide for nearly an hour," replied Billie. "It looks as though they intended to make all the Americans prisoners." "But what for?" "Why, for hostages, to be sure. Don't you remember how Cæsar took a lot of the Helvetians for hostages?" "By George!" from Donald. "I believe you are right. Do you suppose it is Huerta's orders?" "I expect so. He hates Americans."
On April 20, 1914, the President asked Congress for authority to employ the armed forces of the United States in demanding redress for the arbitrary arrest of American marines at Vera Cruz, and the next day Admiral Fletcher was ordered to seize the custom house at that port. This he did after a sharp fight with Huerta's troops in which nineteen Americans were killed and seventy wounded.
Huerta's twenty pieces of field artillery, neatly posted in a straight line on the open plain, barely half a mile away from his ammunition railway train, kept firing at the supposed rebel positions all day long without any appreciable interruption, and all day long the artillery caissons and limbers kept trotting to and fro between the batteries and ammunition cars.
By this time General Huerta's Federal column had swelled to 7,500 fighting men, 20 pieces of field artillery, 30 machine guns, and some 7,500 camp-followers and women, making a total of more than 15,000 persons of all sexes and ages, who were being carried along on more than twenty railroad trains, stretching over a dozen miles of single track.
With Huerta's abdication Venustiano Carranza took hold, but the Mexican troubles were not at an end. The constant raiding expeditions of Villa across the American border were a source of great irritation and threatened every few days a conflagration. While Villa stood with Carranza as a companion in arms to depose Huerta, the "entente cordiale" was at an end as soon as Huerta passed off the stage.
But after refusing to recognize Huerta, who had gained his position of provisional president of Mexico through the murder of Madero, in which he was evidently implicated, the President had ordered the occupation of Vera Cruz by United States troops in retaliation for the arrest of an American landing party and Huerta's refusal to fire an apologetic salute.
"We're only forty or fifty miles east of Vera Cruz," Darrin went on. "Danny boy, Vera Cruz is supposed to have a garrison, at present, of only about eight hundred of General Huerta's Mexican Federals. But suppose it was rumored that the Americans intended to land at Vera Cruz. Isn't it likely that the garrison would be greatly increased?"
After a few moments he continued: "Yesterday, at Tampico, an officer and boatcrew of men went ashore in a launch from the 'dolplin. The boat flew the United States Flag, and the officer and men landed to attend to the purchase of supplies. An officer of General Huerta's Federal Army arrested our officer and his men.
Even if he had not turned traitor to his commander-in-chief, as he did in the end, Huerta's command of the loyal troops during the ten days' struggle at the capital preceding the fall of the constitutional government could not be described as anything but a dismal failure. Before considering General Huerta's qualifications as a President, one should know something of his career as a soldier.
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