The Training Ground by Martin Dugard Page B

McCall had other plans. “There, Grant,” he yelled, pointing to an unbroken mustang, “is a horse for you.”
    Grant studied the animal. It was a spirited three-year-old colt, one of the thousands that roamed the Texas prairie in herds so great that Grant thought it would take a land the size of Delaware to contain them. Though wild, they were exceptional horses, with a bloodline running back to the Arabians brought to North America by Spanish soldiers centuries earlier. Traders frequently rode out to capture the animals and sell them to the army — or in this case, to McCall, who had used his own money to purchase the mustang for the unhorsed lieutenant.
    Grant was deeply touched. He thanked the captain and quickly threw a saddle on his new mount. “I saw the captain’s earnestness in the matter, and accepted the horse for the trip. The day we started was the first time the horse had been under saddle. I had, however, but little difficulty in breaking him, though for the first day there were frequent disagreements with us over which way we should go, or whether we should go at all,” wrote Grant. “At no time during the day could I choose exactly the part of the column I wanted to ride with; but, after that, I had as tractable a horse as any with the army, and none that stood the trip better.”
    And so it came to pass that when Sam Grant rode off to war for the very first time, he sat astride a headstrong, unpredictable, slightly aimless young horse — an animal, in fact, with a spirit much like his own.
    TWO
    Rio Grande
    M ARCH 20, 1847
    T hanks to McCall’s act of kindness, Grant’s journey south was actually somewhat pleasant. A carpet of wildflowers covered the land, their vivid yellows and purples framed by budding shoots of green prairie grass, all set against the backdrop of a vast blue sky. “I observed in great abundance the spiderwort, phlox, lupin, fireplant, lobelia inflata, primrose, etc,” one officer wrote in great detail. Grant was amazed by a horizon so vast and empty that he thought he could see the curve of the earth. A few days out of Corpus Christi, Grant and a band of officers left the boredom of the march during a rest break, spurring their mounts out toward a series of low hills to gaze in awe at a great herd of wild horses. “As far as the eye could reach to our right, the herd extended,” Grant wrote. “To the left it extended equally. There was no estimating the number of animals in it.”
    For soldiers on foot, the journey was far less idyllic. Their boots, those army-issue leather brogans, were designed to fit interchangeably on the right or left foot, making for great discomfort over such a long distance. Game was hard to come by, so they lived on rations of bacon, salted pork, and crumbling, barely edible, maggot-infested biscuits. Water was even scarcer than predicted. The troops’ thirst was made worse when Mexican scouts, seeking to harass the American advance, set fire to the prairie on March 14. The flames quickly raced inland and away from the army, driven by winds blowing in off the Gulf, but the damage was done. All that remained of the grass and wildflowers was a thick layer of soot. The Fourth Infantry’s footsteps sent the black gray dust flying up into their mouths and nostrils, forcing many of them to march with handkerchiefs tied over their faces. Their blue uniforms were coated in ash, with no cool stream nor even a muddy lake in which to wash it off. “The men,” Grant noted with understatement, “suffered.”
    Nine days after setting out, filthy and exhausted, Grant and the Fourth caught up with the rest of Taylor’s army on the banks of a tidal river known as the Arroyo Colorado. Mexican soldiers had been spotted on the far shore. Taylor had no way of knowing how many enemy troops were hiding there, but from the scores of Mexican bugles blowing up and down the river, it certainly sounded as if the enemy had him outnumbered.
    The Arroyo Colorado seemed