The Battle of San Pasqual
The column tried to stay motionless to surprise Pico at Mule Hill. But Duvall, the Portsmouth's surgeon, found the camp “rather a bad place to escape observation, on the top of a high mountain destitute of trees.”
Kearny looked at Beale’s head wound, bandaged with a torn army shirt, and said no. Too dangerous. Beale argued that Kit Carson could be his guide. Kearny vetoed Carson. Carson was far too important to let go.
“Forty balls struck him, I was told,” says Griffin, “yet he did not fall.” Soldiers drove the mule up the hill and butchered it, along with two others killed in the rush. Three fat mules were a “godsend.”
General Kearny’s “Army of the West” had straggled 2000 miles from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The day before in the Ballena Valley, 101 “wet to the skin” dragoons joined with 39 mountain men from San Diego.