Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [336]
Toussaint did not hide his anger then, and all at once everything seemed clear. Before an hour had passed all of our men were hurrying north on the way Hardy had taken, except for a very few he left to guard Vincindière. Even without Bel Argent, Toussaint rode faster and harder than any of the men he was leading, but he and Bel Argent were like one animal when they were together, and we saw he would do anything to get him back. Another thing was that Hardy had been the man who captured Saint-Jean on the road out of Ennery, so maybe Toussaint had two points to take to him that day.
It was better to be moving than to wait and think. General Hardy was moving fast, for a general with a lot of prisoners and baggage, but Toussaint was following even faster. At Saint Michel, on the Central Plateau, the people told us the French blanc soldiers had passed through that day and they were marching for Dondon. It was already night when we reached Saint Michel, and so we rested a few hours there.
When they saw us come into the town, a few dozen men of Saint Michel came in from the woods where they had been hiding since Hardy came. They had muskets, but they had been afraid to fight, and the man who led them was shaking his head, saying that these men were not like any other blanc soldiers he had ever seen. They could run through the bush and climb the mountains as fast as any man among us, and the leader of Saint Michel even said he had seen some of them pull down wild horses by their ears and ride them without a bridle.
Guiaou and Guerrier looked sideways at each other when they heard that part, but Toussaint only laughed and said, “I have already told you, Bonaparte has sent his very best men to fight us. They have done wonderful things in Europe and they may work wonders here for a short time, but the fire of our sun will weaken them quickly and you will outlast them all at the end.”
We slept a few hours with these words of Toussaint, but before the light of the next morning we were going after Hardy’s soldiers again. When we had passed the quarter of Bassaut, Toussaint found a morne to climb, and from the top he could see where Hardy had stopped his men on the outside of Dondon.
Then it was noon, and Hardy would let his soldiers rest through the heat, we thought, but we were not resting. Toussaint sent Riau and Guiaou to look for General Christophe, who had been fighting in these mountains with what was left of the Second Demibrigade, and also a few hundred men of the hoe who had taken up the guns Toussaint had hidden in the mountains. By good luck we found Christophe before too long, on the slopes of Morne La Ferrière, which was not so very far above the town of Dondon. Christophe knew already that Hardy was there, but he did not have men enough to fight him by himself.
Toussaint’s order was that Christophe should attack Hardy from one side while Toussaint himself attacked from the other. Christophe was ready enough to try this plan, now he knew Toussaint had come, and he began to move his soldiers down the mountain toward Dondon, but Hardy had put his men on the march again before we knew about it, and they struck us before we were ready for them, on the road coming out of Dondon.
Christophe had not many regular soldiers left in the Second Demibrigade, and the men of the hoe who carried guns for him would not stand when the French blanc soldiers made a wall of bullets by firing on them all at once and then ran at them with their bayonets shining like steel teeth. Christophe could not make them stand. They scattered into a grove of palms, and Christophe had to run away himself, with the French blanc soldiers running after him hard, so that for a little while it seemed like he would be captured.