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THE BATTLE OF CONTRERAS
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loose and galloped into the night. Americans with lights are creeping in behind us, reported Torrejón. The army understood. Scouts were feeling the way. The price had been paid to Santa Anna. Their blood would soon be claimed.[1]
In ignorance of all these outside events the Americans at San Gerónimo, too exhausted to eat, bore the torrents of chilling, beating rain without fires and in darkness as best they could. Some found huts, but most of them lay in the mud or stood up under trees. Smith's and Riley's men occupied the lanes, and Shields's brigade, which stumbled in at about midnight, put up in the road and an orchard. Officers fared like
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