Front matter (continued 4)

At Santa Clara the massed columns of the army halted and began to defile to left and right, thin lines of troops jogging out under the checkered sun and shade of the great trees, until six thousand men were spread in one long single front, to the right over fields and through ditches, beyond the last cultivated field, across the desert to the very base of the mountains; to the left over the roll of the flat world. The bugles blared faintly and near, and the army moved forward in a mighty line across the whole country. Above them lifted a five-mile-wide golden dust-glory. Flags flapped. In the center, level with them, came the cannon-car, and beside that Villa rode with his staff. At the little villages along the way the big-hatted, white-bloused pacificos stood in silent wonder, watching this strange host pass. An old man drove his goats homeward. The foaming wave of troopers broke upon him, yelling with pure mischief, and all the goats ran in different directions. A mile of army shouted with laughter,—the dust rolled up from their thousand hoofs, and they passed. At the village of Brittingham the great line halted, while Villa and his staff galloped up to the peons watching from their little mound.

"Oyez!" said Villa. "Have any troops passed through here lately?"

"Si, señor!" answered several men at once. "Some of Don Carlo Argumedo's gente went by yesterday pretty fast."

"Hum," Villa meditated. "Have you seen that bandit Pancho Villa around here?"

"No, señor!" they chorused.

"Well, he's the fellow I'm looking for. If I catch that diablo it will go hard with him!"

"We wish you all success!" cried the pacificos, politely.

"You never saw him, did you?"

"No, God forbid!" they said fervently.

"Well!" grinned Villa. "In the future when people ask if you know him you will have to admit the shameful fact! I am Pancho Villa!" And with that he spurred away, and all the army followed....

CHAPTER VI

THE COMPAÑEROS REAPPEAR

Such had been the surprise of the Federals, and they had fled in such a hurry, that for many miles the railroad was intact. But toward afternoon we began to find little bridges burned and still smoking, and telegraph poles cut down with an axe—badly and hastily done bits of destruction that were easily repaired. But the army had got far ahead, and by nightfall, about eight miles from Gomez Palacio, we reached the place where eight solid miles of torn-up track began. There was no food on our train. We had only a blanket apiece; and it was cold. In the flare of torches and fires, the repair gang fell upon their work. Shouts and hammering steel, and the thud of falling ties.... It was a black night, with a few dim stars. We had settled down around one fire, talking and drowsing, when suddenly a new sound smote the air—a sound heavier than hammers, and deeper than the wind. It shocked—and was still. Then came a steady roll, as of distant drums, and then shock! shock! The hammers fell, voices were silent, we were frozen. Somewhere ahead, out of sight, in the darkness—so still it was that the air carried every sound—Villa and the army had flung themselves upon Gomez Palacio, and the battle had begun. It deepened steadily and slowly, until the booffs of cannon fell echoing upon each other, and the rifle fire rippled like steel rain.

"Andale!" screamed a hoarse voice from the roof of the cannon-car. "What are you doing? Get at that track! Pancho Villa is waiting for the trains!"

And, with a yell, four hundred raging maniacs flung themselves upon the break....

I remember how we besought the Colonel in command to let us go to the front. He would not. Orders were strict that no one should leave the trains. We pled with him, offered him money, almost got on our knees to him. Finally he relented a little.

"At three o'clock," he said, "I'll give you the sign and countersign and let you go."

We curled miserably about a little fire of our own, trying to sleep, trying at least to get warm. Around us and ahead the flares and the men danced along the ruined track; and every hour or so the train would creep forward a hundred feet and stop again. It was not hard to repair—the rails were intact. A wrecker had been hitched to the right-hand rail and the ties twisted, splintered, torn from their bed. Always the monotonous and disturbing furious sound of battle filtered out of the blackness ahead. It was so tiresome, so much the same, that sound; and yet I could not sleep....

About midnight one of our outposts galloped from the rear of the trains to report that a large body of horsemen had been challenged coming from the north, who said they were Urbina's gente from Mapimi. The Colonel didn't know of any body of troops that were to pass at that time of night. In a minute everything was a fury of preparation. Twenty-five armed and mounted men galloped like mad to the rear, with orders to stop the newcomers for fifteen minutes,—if they were Constitutionalists, by order of the Colonel; if not, by holding them off as long as possible. The workmen were hurried back to the train and given their rifles. The fires were put out, the flares,—all but ten,—extinguished. Our guard of two hundred slipped silently into the thick brush, loading their rifles as they went. On either side of the track the Colonel and five of his men took up their posts, unarmed, with torches held high over their heads. And then, out of the thick blackness, the head of the column appeared. It was made up of different men from the well-clothed, well-equipped, well-fed soldiers of Villa's army. These were ragged, gaunt people, wrapped in faded, tattered serapes, without shoes on their feet, crowned with the heavy, picturesque sombreros of the back-country. Lasso ropes hung coiled at their saddles. Their mounts were the lean, hard, half-savage ponies of the Durango mountains. They rode sullenly, contemptuous of us. They neither knew the countersign nor cared to know it. And as they rode, whole files sang the monotonous, extemporaneous ballads that the peons compose and sing to themselves as they guard the cattle at night on the great upland plains of the north.

And, suddenly, as I stood at the head of the line of flares, a passing horse was jerked to his haunches, and a voice I knew cried: "Hey! Meester!" The enfolding serape was cast high in the air, the man fell from his horse, and in a moment I was clasped in the arms of Isidro Amaya. Behind him burst forth a chorus of shouts: "Que tal! Meester! O Juanito, how glad we are to see you! Where have you been? They said you were killed in La Cadena! Did you run fast from the colorados? Mucha susto, eh?" They threw themselves to the ground, clustering around, fifty men reaching at once to pat me on the back; all my dearest friends in Mexico—the compañeros of La Tropa and the Cadena!

The long file of men, blocked in the darkness, raised a chorus of shouts: "Move on! Vamonos! What's the matter? Hurry up! We can't stay here all night!" And the others yelled back: "Here's meester! Here's the Gringo we were telling you about who danced the jota in La Zarca! Who was in La Cadena!" And then the others crowded forward too.

There were twelve hundred of them. Silently, sullenly, eagerly, sniffing the battle ahead, they defiled between the double line of high-held torches. And every tenth man I had known before. As they passed the Colonel shouted to them: "What is the countersign? Turn your hats up in front! Do you know the countersign?" Hoarsely, exasperatedly, he bawled at them. Serenely and insolently they rode by, without paying the least attention to him. "To hell with the countersign!" they hooted, laughing at him. "We don't need any countersign! They'll know well enough which side we're on when we begin to fight!"

For hours, it seemed, they jogged past, fading into the darkness, their horses with nervous heads turned to catch the sound of the guns, the men with glowing eyes fixed on the darkness ahead—rode into battle with their ancient Springfield rifles that had seen service for three years, with their meager ten rounds of ammunition. And when they had all gone the battle seemed to brighten and quicken with new life....

CHAPTER VII

THE BLOODY DAWN

The steady noise of battle filled all the night. Ahead torches danced, rails clanged, sledges drummed on the spikes, the men of the repair gang shouted in the frenzy of their toil. It was after twelve. Since the trains had reached the beginning of the torn track we had made half a mile. Now and then a straggler from the main body came down the line of trains, shuffled into the light with his heavy Mauser awry across his shoulders, and faded into the darkness toward the debauch of sound in the direction of Gomez Palacio. The soldiers of our guard, squatting about their little fires in the fields, relaxed their tense expectancy; three of them were singing a little marching song, which began:

I don't want to be a Porfirista,

I don't want to be an Orozquista,

But I want to be a volunteer in the army Maderista!

Curious and excited, we hurried up and down the trains, asking people what they knew, what they thought. I had never heard a real killing-sound before, and it made me frantic with curiosity and nervousness. We were like dogs in a yard when a dog-fight is going on outside. Finally the spell snapped and I found myself desperately tired. I fell into a dead sleep on a little ledge under the lip of the cannon, where the laborers tossed their wrenches and sledge-hammers and crowbars when the train moved forward a hundred feet, and piled on themselves with shouts and horseplay.

In the coldness of before dawn I woke with the Colonel's hand on my shoulder.

"You can go now," he said. "The sign is 'Zaragosa' and the countersign 'Guerrero.' Our soldiers will be recognized by their hats pinned up in front. May you go well!"

It was bitter cold. We threw our blankets around us, serape fashion, and trudged down past the fury of the repair gang as they hammered at it under the leaping flares—past the five armed men slouching around their fire on the frontier of the dark.

"Are you off to the battle, compañeros?" cried one of the gang. "Look out for the bullets!" At that they all laughed. The sentries cried, "Adios! Don't kill them all! Leave a few pelones for us!"

Beyond the last torch, where the torn track was wrenched and tumbled about on the uprooted roadbed, a shadowy figure waited for us.

"Vamonos together," he said, peering at us. "In the dark three are an army." We stumbled along over the broken track, silently, just able to make him out with our eyes. He was a little dumpy soldier with a rifle and a half-empty cartridge-belt over his breast. He said that he had just brought a wounded man from the front to the hospital train and was on his way back.

"Feel this," he said, holding out his arm. It was drenched. We could see nothing.

"Blood," he continued unemotionally. "His blood. He was my compadre in the Brigada Gonzales-Ortega. We went in this night down there and so many, so many—— We were cut in half."

It was the first we had heard, or thought, of wounded men. All of a sudden we heard the battle. It had been going on steadily all the time, but we had forgotten—the sound was so monstrous, so monotonous. Far rifle fire came like the ripping of strong canvas, the cannon shocked like pile-drivers. We were only six miles away now.

Out of the darkness loomed a little knot of men—four of them—carrying something heavy and inert in a blanket slung between. Our guide threw up his rifle and challenged, and his answer was a retching groan from the blanket.

"Oiga compadre," lisped one of the bearers huskily. "Where, for the love of the Virgin, is the hospital train?"

"About a league——"

"Valgame Dios! How can we...."

"Water! Have you any water?"

They stood with the blanket taut between them, and something fell from it, drip, drip, drip, on the ties.

That awful voice within screamed once, "To drink!" and fell away to a shuddering moan. We handed our canteens to the bearers—and silently, bestially, they drained them. The wounded man they forgot. Then, sullen, they pitched on....

Others appeared, singly, or in little groups. They were simply vague shapes staggering in the night, like drunkards, like men incredibly tired. One dragged between two walkers, his arms around their shoulders. A mere boy reeled along with the limp body of his father on his back. A horse passed with his nose to the ground, two bodies flopping sideways across the saddle, and a man walking behind and beating the horse on the rump, cursing shrilly. He passed, and we could hear his falsetto fading dissonantly in the distance. Some groaned, with the ugly, deadened groan of uttermost pain; one man, slouched in the saddle of a mule, screamed mechanically every time the mule took a step. Under two tall cotton-wood trees beside an irrigation ditch a little fire glowed. Three sleepers with empty cartridge-belts sprawled snoring on the uneven ground; beside the fire sat a man holding with both hands his leg straight out to the warmth. It was a perfectly good leg as far as the ankle—there it ended in a ragged, oozing mess of trousers and shattered flesh. The man simply sat looking at it. He didn't even stir as we came near, and yet his chest rose and fell with calm breathing, and his mouth was slightly open as if he were day-dreaming. By the side of the ditch knelt another. A soft lead bullet had entered his hand between the two middle fingers and then spread until it hollowed out a bloody cave inside. He had wrapped a rag around a little piece of stick and was unconcernedly dipping it in the water and gouging out the wound.

Soon we were near the battle. In the east, across the vast level country, a faint gray light appeared. The noble alamo trees, towering thickly in massy lines along the ditches to the west, burst into showers of bird-song. It was getting warm, and there came the tranquil smell of earth and grass and growing corn—a calm summer dawn. Into this the noise of battle broke like something insane. The hysterical chatter of rifle fire, that seemed to carry a continuous undertone of screaming—although when you listened for it it was gone. The nervous, deadly stab—stab—stab—stab of the machine guns, like some gigantic woodpecker. The cannon booming like great bells, and the whistle of their shells. Boom—Pi-i-i-e-e-a-uuu! And that most terrible of all the sounds of war, shrapnel exploding. Crash—Whee-e-eaaa!!

The great hot sun swam up in the east through a faint smoke from the fertile land, and over the eastern barrens the heat-waves began to wiggle. It caught the startlingly green tops of the lofty alamos fringing the ditch that paralleled the railroad on our right. The trees ended there, and beyond, the whole rampart of bare mountains, piled range on range, grew rosy. We were now in scorched desert again, thickly covered with dusty mesquite. Except for another line of alamos straggling across from east to west, close to the city, there were no trees in all the plain but two or three scattered ones to the right. So close we were, barely two miles from Gomez Falacio, that we could look down the torn track right into the town. We could see the black round water-tank, and back of that the roundhouse, and across the track from them both the low adobe walls of the Brittingham Corra. The smokestacks and buildings and trees of La Esperanza soap factory rose clear and still, like a little city, to the left. Almost directly to the right of the railroad track, it seemed, the stark, stony peak of the Cerro de la Pila mounted steeply to the stone reservoir that crowned it, and sloped off westward in a series of smaller peaks, a spiny ridge a mile long. Most of Gomez lay behind the shoulder of the Cerro, and at its western end the villas and gardens of Lerdo made a vivid patch of green in the desert. The great brown mountains on the west made a mighty sweep around behind the two cities, and then fell away south again in folds on folds of gaunt desolation. And directly south from Gomez, stretched along the base of this range, lay Torreon, the richest city of northern Mexico.

The shooting never ceased, but it seemed to be subdued to a subordinate place in a fantastic and disordered world. Up the track in the hot morning light straggled a river of wounded men, shattered, bleeding, bound up in rotting and bloody bandages, inconceivably weary. They passed us, and one even fell and lay motionless nearby in the dust—and we didn't care. Soldiers with their cartridges gone wandered aimlessly out of the chaparral, dragging their rifles, and plunged into the brush again on the other side of the railroad, black with powder, streaked with sweat, their eyes vacantly on the ground. The thin, subtle dust rose in lazy clouds at every footstep, and hung there, parching throat and eyes. A little company of horsemen jogged out of the thicket and drew up on the track, looking toward town. One man got down from his saddle and squatted beside us.

"It was terrible," he said suddenly. "Carramba! We went in there last night on foot. They were inside the water-tank, with holes cut in the iron for rifles. We had to walk up and poke our guns through the holes and we killed them all—a death trap! And then the Corral! They had two sets of loopholes, one for the men kneeling down and the other for the men standing up. Three thousand rurales in there—and they had five machine guns to sweep the road. And the roundhouse, with three rows of trenches outside and subterranean passages so they could crawl under and shoot us in the back.... Our bombs wouldn't work, and what could we do with rifles? Madre de Dios! But we were so quick—we took them by surprise. We captured the roundhouse and the water-tank. And then this morning thousands came—thousands—reinforcements from Torreon—and their artillery—and they drove us back again. They walked up to the water-tank and poked their rifles through the holes and killed all of us—the sons of the devils!"

We could see the place as he spoke and hear the hellish roar and shriek, and yet no one moved, and there wasn't a sign of the shooting—not even smoke, except when a shrapnel shell burst yelling down in the first row of trees a mile ahead and vomited a puff of white. The cracking rip of rifle fire and the staccato machine guns and even the hammering cannon didn't reveal themselves at all. The flat, dusty plain, the trees and chimneys of Gomez, and the stony hill, lay quietly in the heat. From the alamos off to the right came the careless song of birds. One had the impression that his senses were lying. It was an incredible dream, through which the grotesque procession of wounded filtered like ghosts in the dust.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ARTILLERY COMES UP

Over to the right, along the base of the line of trees, heavy dust billowed up, men shouted, whips snapped, and there was a rumble and a jangling of chains. We plunged into a little path that wound among the chaparral and emerged upon a tiny village, lost in the brush near the ditch. It was strikingly like a Chinese or Central American village: five or six adobe huts thatched with mud and twigs. It was called San Ramon, and there a little struggling knot of men swayed about every door, clamoring for coffee and tortillas, and waving fiat money. The pacificos squatted in their tiny corrals, selling macuche at exorbitant prices; their women sweated over the fire, hammering tortillas and pouring villainous black coffee. All around, in the open spaces, lay sleepers like the dead, and men with bloody arms and heads, tossing and groaning. Presently an officer galloped up, streaked with sweat, and screamed, "Get up, you fools! Pendecos! Wake up and get back to your companies! We're going to attack!" A few stirred and stumbled, cursing, to their weary feet—the others still slept. "Hijos de la——!" snapped the officer, and spurred his horse upon them, trampling, kicking.... The ground boiled men scrambling out of the way and yelling. They yawned, stretched, still half asleep, and sifted off slowly toward the front in an aimless way.... The wounded only dragged themselves listlessly to the shade of the brush.

Along the side of the ditch went a sort of wagon track, and up this the Constitutionalist artillery were arriving. One could see the gray heads of the straining mules, and the big hats of their drivers, and the circling whips—the rest was masked in dust. Slower than the army, they had been marching all night. Past us rumbled the carriages and caissons, the long, heavy guns yellow with dust. The drivers and gunners were in fine good humor. One, an American, whose features were absolutely indistinguishable in the all-mantling mud of sweat and earth, shouted to know if they were in time, or if the town had fallen.

I answered in Spanish that there were lots of colorados yet to kill, and a cheer ran along the line.

"Now we'll show them something," cried a big Indian on a mule. "If we could get into their cursed town without guns, what can we do with them?"

The alamos ended just beyond San Ramon, and under the last trees Villa, General Angeles, and the staff sat on horseback at the bank of the ditch. Beyond that the ditch ran naked across the naked plain into the town, where it took water from the river. Villa was dressed in an old brown suit, without a collar, and an ancient felt hat. He was covered with dirt, and had been riding up and down the lines all night; but he bore no trace of fatigue.

When he saw us he called out, "Hello, muchachos! Well, how do you like it?"

"Fine, mi General!"

We were worn out and very dirty. The sight of us amused him profoundly; he never could take the correspondents seriously, anyway, and it seemed to him very droll that an American periodical would be willing to spend so much money just to get the news.

"Good," he said with a grin. "I'm glad you like it, because you're going to get all you want."

The first gun had now come opposite the staff and unlimbered, the gunners ripping off the canvas covers and tilting up the heavy caisson. The captain of the battery screwed on the telescopic sight and the crank of the raising-lever spun. The brass butts of heavy shells shone in gleaming rows; two men staggered under the weight of one, and rested it on the ground while the captain regulated the shrapnel timer. The breech-lock crashed shut, and we ran far back. Cra-boom-shock! A soaring whistling Pi-i-i-e-e-eeuu! flew high after the shell, and then a tiny white smoke flowered at the foot of the Cerro de la Fila—and, minutes after, a far detonation. About a hundred yards apart, all along in front of the gun, picturesque ragged men stared motionless through their field-glasses. They burst into a chorus of yells, "Too low! Too far to the right! Their guns are all along the ridge! Time it about fifteen seconds later!" Down front the rifle fire had frittered away to ragged sputtering and the machine guns were silent. Everybody was watching the artillery duel. It was about five-thirty in the morning, and already very hot. In the fields behind sounded the parched chirp of crickets; the lofty fresh tops of the alamos rustled in a high languid breeze; birds began to sing again.

Another gun wheeled into line, and the breech-block of the first clacked again. There came the snap of the trigger, but no roar. The gunners wrenched open the breech and hurled the smoking brass projectile on the grass. Bad shell. I saw General Angeles in his faded brown sweater, hatless, peering through the sight and cranking up the range. Villa was spurring his reluctant horse up to the caisson. Cra—boom—shock! Pi-i-i-e-e-eeuu! The other gun this time. We saw the shell burst higher up the stony hill this time. And then four booms floated to us, and, simultaneously, the enemy's shells, which had been exploding desultorily over the line of trees nearest the city, marched out into the open desert and leaped toward us in four tremendous explosions, each nearer. More guns had wheeled into line; others filed off to the right along a diagonal of trees, and a long line of heavy trucks, plunging mules, and cursing, shouting men choked up the dusty road to the rear. The unlimbered mules jingled back and the drivers threw themselves, exhausted, under the nearest chaparral.

The Federal shrapnel, well fired and excellently timed, was bursting now only a few hundred yards in front of our line, and the minute boom of their guns was almost incessant. Crash—Wheeeeaa! Over our heads, snapping viciously in the leafy trees, sang the rain of lead. Our guns replied spasmodically. The home-made shells, fashioned on converted mining machinery in Chihuahua, were not reliable. Galloped past stout Captain Marinelli, the Italian soldier of fortune, steering as near the newspapermen as possible, with a serious, Napoleonic look on his face. He glanced once or twice at the camera man, smiling graciously, but the latter coldly looked away. With a workmanlike flourish he ordered the wheeling of his gun into position and sighted it himself. Just then a shell burst deafeningly about a hundred yards in front. The Federals were getting the range. Marinelli bounded away from his cannon, mounted his horse, limbered up and came galloping dramatically back with his gun rumbling along at a dead run behind. None of the other guns had retreated. Puffing up his foaming charger in front of the camera man, he flung himself to the ground and took a position.

"Now," he said, "you can take my picture!"

"Go to hell," said the camera man, and a great shout of laughter went up along the line.

The high cracked note of a bugle thrilled through the racking roar. Immediately mules dragging their jangling limbers appeared, and shouting men. The caissons snapped shut.

"Going down front," shouted Colonel Servin. "Not hitting. Too far away here...."

And the long-halted line snapped taut and wound out into the open desert, under the bursting shells.

CHAPTER IX

BATTLE

We returned along the winding path through the mesquite, crossed the torn-up track, and struck out across the dusty plain southeastward. Looking back along the railroad I could see smoke and the round front of the first train miles away; and in front of it throngs of active little dots swarming on the right of way, distorted like things seen in a wavy mirror. We strode along in a haze of thin dust. The giant mesquite dwindled until it scarcely reached to our knees. To the right the tall hill and the chimneys of the town swam tranquilly in the hot sun; rifle fire had almost ceased for the moment, and only dazzling bursts of thick white smoke marked our occasional shells along the ridge. We could see our drab guns rocking down the plain, spreading along the first line of alamos, where the searching fingers of the enemy's shrapnel probed continually. Little bodies of horsemen moved here and there over the desert, and stragglers on foot, trailing their rifles.

An old peon, stooped with age and dressed in rags, crouched in the low shrub gathering mesquite twigs.

"Say, friend," we asked him, "is there any way we can get in close to see the fighting?"

He straightened up and stared at us.

"If you had been here as long as I have," said he, "you wouldn't care about seeing the fighting. Carramba! I have seen them take Torreon seven times in three years. Sometimes they attack from Gomez Palacio and sometimes from the mountains. But it is always the same—war. There is something interesting in it for the young, but for us old people, we are tired of war." He paused and stared out over the plain. "Do you see this dry ditch? Well, if you will get down in it and follow along it will lead you into the town." And then, as an afterthought, he added incuriously, "What party do you belong to?"

"The Constitutionalists."

"So. First it was the Maderistas, and then the Orozquistas, and now the—what did you call them? I am very old, and I have not long to live; but this war—it teems to me that all it accomplishes is to let us go hungry. Go with God, señores." And he bent again to his slow task, while we descended into the arroyo. It was a disused irrigation ditch running a little south of west, its bottom covered with dusty weeds, and the end of its straight length hidden from us by a sort of mirage that looked like a glaring pool of water. Stooped a little, so as to be hidden from the outside, we walked along, it seemed, for hours, the cracked bottom and dusty sides of the ditch reflecting the fierce heat upon us until we were faint with it. Once horsemen passed quite near on our right, their big iron spurs ringing; we crouched down until they passed, for we didn't want to take any chances. Down in the ditch the artillery fire sounded very faint and far away, but once I cautiously lifted my head above the bank and discovered that we were very near the first line of trees. Shells were bursting along it, and I could even see the belch of furious haze hurling out from the mouths of our cannon, and feel the surf of sound-waves hit me like a blow when they fired. We were a good quarter of a mile in front of our artillery, and evidently making for the water-tank on the very edge of the town. As we stooped again the shells passing overhead whined sharply and suddenly across the arc of sky and were cut off abruptly until the sullen echoless booff! of their explosion. There ahead, where the railroad trestle of the main line crossed the arroyo, huddled a little pile of bodies—evidently left from the first attack. Hardly one was bloody; their heads and hearts were pierced with the clean, tiny holes of steel Mauser bullets. They lay limply, with the unearthly calm, lean faces of the dead. Someone, perhaps their own thrifty compañeros, had stripped them of arms, shoes, hats and serviceable clothing. One sleeping soldier, squatting on the edge of the heap with his rifle across his knees, snored deeply. Flies covered him—the dead hummed with them. But the sun had not yet affected them. Another soldier leaned against the townward bank of the ditch, his feet resting on a corpse, banging methodically away at something he saw. Under the shadow of the trestle four men sat playing cards. They played listlessly, without talking, their eyes red with lack of sleep. The heat was frightful. Occasionally a stray bullet came by screaming, "Where—is-s-s-z—ye!" This strange company took our appearance as a matter of course. The sharpshooter doubled up out of range and carefully put another cartridge-clip in his rifle.

"You haven't got another drop of water in that canteen, have you?" he asked. "Adio! we haven't eaten or drunk since yesterday!" He guzzled the water, furtively watching the card players lest they, too, should be thirsty. "They say that we are to attack the water-tank and the Corral again when the artillery is in position to support us. Chi-hua*hua *hombre! but it was duro in the night! They slaughtered us in the streets there...." He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and began firing again. We lay beside him and looked over. We were about two hundred yards from the deadly water-tank. Across the track and the wide street beyond lay the brown mud-walls of the Brittingham Corral, innocent looking enough now, with only black dots to show the double line of loop-holes.

"There are the machine guns," said our friend. "See them, those slim barrels peeping over the edge?" We couldn't make them out. Water-tank, Corral and town lay sleeping in the beat. Dust hovered still in the air, making a thin haze. About fifty yards in front of us was a shallow exposed ditch, evidently once a Federal trench, for the dirt had been piled on our side. Two hundred drab, dusty soldiers lay in it now, facing townward—the Constitutionalist infantry. They were sprawled on the ground, in all attitudes of weariness; some sleeping on their backs, facing up to the hot sun; others wearily transferring the dirt with their scooped hands from rear to front. Before them they had piled up irregular heaps of rocks. Now infantry, in the Constitutionalist army, is simply cavalry without horses; all Villa's soldiers are mounted except the artillery, and those for whom horses cannot be procured.

Of a sudden the artillery in our rear boomed all together, and over our heads a dozen shells screamed toward the Cerro.

"That is the signal," said the man at our side. He clambered down into the ditch and kicked the sleeper. "Come on," he yelled. "Wake up. We're going to attack the pelones." The snorer groaned and opened his eyes slowly. He yawned and picked up his rifle without a word. The card players began to squabble about their winnings. A violent dispute broke out as to who owned the pack of cards. Grumbling and still arguing, they stumbled out and followed the sharpshooter up over the edge of the ditch.

Rifle fire rang along the edge of the trench in front. The sleepers flopped over on their stomachs behind their little shelters—their elbows worked vigorously pumping the guns. The hollow steel water-tank resounded to the rain of thumping bullets; chips of adobe flew from the wall of the Corral. Instantly the wall bristled with shining barrels and the two awoke crackling with hidden vicious firing. Bullets roofed the heavens with whistling steel—drummed the smoking dust up until a yellow curtain of whirling cloud veiled us from the houses and the tank. We could see our friend running low along the ground, the sleepy man following, standing erect, still rubbing his eyes. Behind strung out the gamblers, squabbling yet. Somewhere in the rear a bugle blew. The sharpshooter running in front stopped suddenly, swaying, as if he had run against a solid wall. His left leg doubled under him and he sank crazily to one knee in the exposed flat, whipping up his rifle with a yell.

"—— —— the dirty monkeys!" he screamed, firing rapidly into the dust. "I'll show the ———! The cropped heads! The jail-birds!" He shook his head impatiently, like a dog with a hurt ear. Blood drops flew from it. Bellowing with rage, he shot the rest of his clip, and then slumped to the ground and thrashed to and fro for a minute. The others passed him with scarcely a look. Now the trench was boiling with men scrambling to their feet, like worms when you turn over a log. The rifle fire rattled shrilly. From behind us came running feet, and men in sandals, with blankets over their shoulders, came falling and slipping down the ditch, and scrambling up the other side—hundreds of them, it seemed....

They almost hid from us the front, but through the dust and the spaces between running logs we could see the soldiers in the trench leap their barricade like a breaking wave. And then the impenetrable dust shut down and the fierce stabbing needle of the machine guns sewed the mighty jumble of sounds together. A glimpse through a rift in the cloud torn by a sudden hot gust of wind—we could see the first brown line of men reeling altogether like drunkards, and the machine guns over the wall spitting sharp, dull red in the sunshine. Then a man came running back out of it, the sweat streaming down his face, without a gun. He ran fast, half sliding, half falling, down into our ditch and up the other side. Other dim forms loomed up in the dust ahead.

"What is it? How is it going?" I cried.

He answered nothing, but ran on. Suddenly and terribly the monstrous crash and scream of shrapnel burst from the turmoil ahead. The enemy's artillery! Mechanically I listened for our guns. Except for an occasional boom they were silent. Our home-made shells were failing again. Two more shrapnel shells. Out of the dust-cloud men came running back—singly, in pairs, in groups, a stampeding mob. They fell over us, around us—drowned us in a human flood, shouting "To the alamos! To the trains! The Federation is coming!" We struggled up among them and ran, too, straight up the railroad track.... Behind us roared the shells searching in the dust, and the tearing musketry. And then we noticed that all the wide roadway ahead was filled with galloping horsemen, yelling shrill Indian cries and waving their rifles—the main column! We stood to one side as they whirled past, about five hundred of them—watched them stoop in their saddles and begin to shoot. The drumming of their horses' hoofs was like thunder.

"Better not go in there! It's too hot!" cried one of the infantry with a grin.

"Well, I'll bet I'm hotter," answered a horseman, and we all laughed. We walked tranquilly back along the railroad track, while the firing behind wound up to a continuous roar. A group of peons—pacificos—in tall sombreros, blankets and white cotton blouses, stood along here with folded arms, looking down the track toward town.

"Look out there, friends," joshed a soldier. "Don't stand there. You'll get hit."

The peons looked at each other and grinned feebly. "But, señor," said one, "this is where we always stand when there is a battle."

A little farther along I came upon an officer—a German—wandering along, leading his horse by the bridle. "I cannot ride him any more," he said to me earnestly. "He is quite too tired. I am afraid he will die if he does not sleep." The horse, a big chestnut stallion, stumbled and swayed as he walked. Enormous tears trickled from his half-shut eyes and rolled down his nose....

I was dead tired, reeling from lack of sleep and food and the terrible heat of the sun. About half a mile out I looked back and saw the enemy's shrapnel poking into the line of trees more frequently than ever. They seemed to have thoroughly got the range. And just then I saw the gray line of guns, limbered to their mules, begin to crawl out from the trees toward the rear at four or five different points. Our artillery had been shelled out of their positions.... I threw myself down to rest in the shade of a big mesquite bush.

Almost immediately a change seemed to come in the sound of the rifle fire, as if half of it had been suddenly cut off. At the same time twenty bugles shrilled. Rising, I noticed a line of running horsemen fleeing up the track, shouting something. More followed, galloping, at the place where the railroad passed beyond the trees on its way into town. The cavalry had been repulsed. All at once the whole plain squirmed with men, mounted and on foot, all running rearward. One man threw away his blanket, another his rifle. They thickened over the hot desert, stamping up the dust, until the flat was crowded with them. Right in front of me a horseman burst out of the brush, shouting, "The Federals are coming! To the trains! They are right behind!" The entire Constitutionalist army was routed! I caught up my blanket and took to my heels. A little way farther on I came upon a cannon abandoned in the desert, traces cut, mules gone. Underfoot were guns, cartridge-belts and dozens of serapes. It was a rout. Coming to an open space, I saw ahead a large crowd of fleeing soldiers, without rifles. Suddenly three men on horseback swept across in front of them, waving their arms and yelling. "Go back!" they cried. "They aren't coming out! Go back for the love of God!" Two I didn't recognize. The other was Villa.

CHAPTER X

BETWEEN ATTACKS

About a mile back the flight was stopped. I met the soldiers coming back, with the relieved expression of men who have feared an unknown danger and been suddenly set free from it. That was always Villa's power—he could explain things to the great mass of ordinary people in a way that they immediately understood. The Federals, as usual, had failed to take advantage of their opportunity to inflict a lasting defeat upon the Constitutionalists. Perhaps they feared an ambush like the one Villa had arranged at Mapula, when the victorious Federals sallied out to pursue Villa's fleeing army after the first attack on Chihuahua, and were repulsed with heavy slaughter. Anyway, they did not come out. The men came straggling back, hunting in the mesquite for their guns and blankets, and for other people's guns and blankets. You could hear them shouting and joking all over the plain. "Oija! Where are you going with that rifle? That's my water-bag! I dropped my serape right here by this bush, and now it's gone!"

"O Juan," cried one man to another, "I always told you I could beat you running!"

"But you didn't, compadre. I was a hundred meters ahead, flying through the air like a cannon ball!..."

The truth was that after riding twelve hours the day before, fighting all night, and all morning in the blazing sun, under the frightful strain of charging an intrenched force in the face of artillery and machine guns, without food, water or sleep, the army's nerve had suddenly given way. But from the time that they returned after the flight the ultimate result was never in doubt. The psychological crisis was past....

Now the rifle fire had altogether ceased, and even cannon shots from the enemy were few and far between. At the ditch under the first line of trees our men entrenched themselves; the artillery had withdrawn to the second line of trees—a mile back; and under the grateful shade the men threw themselves heavily down and slept. The strain had snapped. As the sun rose toward noon the desert, hill and town throbbed silently in the intense heat. Sometimes an exchange of shots far to the right or left told where the outposts were exchanging compliments. But even that soon stopped. In the cotton and cornfields to the north, among the sprouting green things, insects chirped. The birds sang no more because of the heat. It was breathless. The leaves stirred in no wind.

Here and there little fires smoked, where the soldiers rolled tortillas from the scanty flour they had brought in their saddle-bags—and those who didn't have any swarmed around, begging a crumb. Everybody simply and generously divided the food. I was hailed from a dozen fires with "Hey, compañero, have you breakfasted? Here is a piece of my tortilla. Come and eat!" Rows of men lay flat on their stomachs along the irrigation ditch, scooping up the dirty water in their palms. Three or four miles back we could see the cannon-car and the first two trains, opposite the big ranch of El Verjel, with the tireless repair gang hard at it in the hot sun. The provision train had not come up yet....

Little Colonel Servin came by, perched on an immense bay horse, still dapper and fresh after the terrible work of the night.

"I don't know what we shall do yet," he said. "Only the General knows that, and he never tells. But we shall not assault again until the Brigada Zaragosa returns. Benavides has had a hard battle over there at Sacramento—two hundred and fifty of ours killed, they say. And the General has sent for General Robles and General Contreras, who have been attacking from the south, to bring up all their men and join him here.... They say, though, that we are going to deliver a night attack next, so that their artillery won't be effective...." He galloped on.

About midday thin columns of sluggish, dirty smoke began to rise from several points in the town, and toward afternoon a slow, hot wind brought to us the faintly sickening smell of crude oil mingled with scorched human flesh. The Federals were burning piles of the dead....

We walked back to the trains and stormed General Benavides' private car in the Brigada Zaragosa train. The major in charge had them cook us something to eat in the General's kitchen. We ate ravenously, and afterward went over along the line of trees and slept for hours. Late in the afternoon we started once more for the front. Hundreds of soldiers and peons of the neighborhood, ravenously hungry, prowled around the trains, hoping to pick up discarded food, or slops, or anything at all to eat. They were ashamed of themselves, however, and affected a sauntering indolence when we passed. I remember that we sat for a while talking with some soldiers on the top of a box-car, when a boy, criss-crossed with cartridge-belts and lugging a huge rifle, came past beneath, his eyes searching the ground. A stale tortilla, half rotting, crunched into the dirt by many passing feet, caught his attention. He pounced upon it and bit a piece out. Then he looked up and saw us. "As if I were dying of hunger!" he said scornfully and tossed it away with contempt....

Down in the shade of the alamos, across the ditch from San Ramon, the Canadian Captain Treston was bivouacked with his machine gun battery. The guns and their heavy tripods were unloaded from the mules, and all around lay the unlimbered field-pieces, their animals grazing in the rich green fields, the men squatted around their fires or lying stretched out on the bank of the ditch. Treston waved an ashy tortilla he was munching and bawled, "Say, Reed! Please come here and interpret for me! I can't find my interpreters, and if we go into action I'll be in a hell of a fix! You see I don't know the damn language, and when I came down here Villa hired two interpreters to go around with me all the time. And I can't ever find the sons-of-guns; they always go off and leave me in a hole!"

I took part of the proffered delicacy and asked him if he thought there was any chance of going into action.

"I think we'll go in to-night as soon as it's dark," he answered. "Do you want to go along with the machine guns and interpret?" I said I did.

A ragged man near the fire, whom I had never seen before, rose and came across smiling.

"I thought when I looked at you that you seemed to be an hombre who hadn't tasted tobacco for a while. Will you take half my cigarette?" Before I could protest he produced a lop-sided brown cigarette and tore it across in two pieces....

The sun went gloriously down behind the notched purple mountains in front of us, and for a minute a clear fan of quivering light poured up the high arc of stainless sky. The birds awoke in the trees; leaves rustled. The fertile land exhaled a pearly mist. A dozen ragged soldiers, lying close together, began to improvise the air and words of a song about the battle of Torreon—a new ballad was being born.... Other singing came to us through the still, cool dusk. I felt my whole feeling going out to these gentle, simple people—so lovable they were....

It was just after I had been to the ditch for a drink that Treston said casually: "By the way, one of our men found this floating in the ditch a little while ago. I can't read Spanish, so I didn't know what the word meant. You see the water from these ditches all comes from the river inside the town, so I thought it might be a Federal paper." I took it from his hand. It was a little folded white piece of wet paper, like the corner and front of a package. In large black letters was printed on the front, "ARSENICO," and in smaller type, "Cuidado! Veneno!" "Arsenic. Beware! Poison!"

"Look here," I demanded, sitting up suddenly. "Have there been any sick people around here this evening?"

"That's funny you're asking," he said. "A good many of the men have had bad cramps in the stomach, and I don't feel altogether well. Just before you came a mule suddenly keeled over and died in that next field, and a horse across the ditch. Fatigue or sunstroke, probably...."

Fortunately the ditch carried a large body of swiftly running water, so the danger was not great. I explained to him that the Federals had poisoned the ditch.

"My God," said Treston. "Perhaps that is what they were trying to tell me. About twenty people have come up to me and said something about envenenado. What does that mean?"

"That's what it means," I answered. "Where can we get about a quart of strong coffee?" We found a great can of it at the nearest fire and felt better.

"O yes, we knew," said the men. "That is why we watered the animals at the other ditch. We heard long ago. They say that ten horses are dead down in front, and that many men are rolling very sick on the ground."

An officer on horseback rode by, shouting that we were all to go back to El Verjel and camp there beside the trains for the night; that the general had said that everyone but the advance guards were to get a good night's sleep out of the zone of fire, and that the commissary train had come up and was just behind the hospital train. Bugles sounded, and the men struggled up off the ground, catching mules, fastening their harness on amid shouting and braying and jingling, saddling horses and limbering guns. Treston got on his pony and I walked along beside him. So there was to be no night attack then. It was now almost dark. Across the ditch we fell in with the shadowy forms of a company of soldiers trotting northward, all muffling blankets and big hats and ringing spurs. They hailed me. "Hey, compañero, where's your horse?" I admitted I had none. "Jump up behind me then," chimed in five or six altogether. One pulled up right beside me and I mounted with him. We jogged on through the mesquite and across a dim, lovely field. Someone began to sing and two more joined in. A round, full moon bubbled up in the clear night.

"Oiga, how do you say 'mula' in English?" asked my horseman.

"G—— d—— stubborn-fathead-mule," I told him. And for days after entire strangers would stop me and ask me, with roars of laughter, how the Americans said "mula."...

Around the ranch of El Verjel the army was encamped. We rode into a field dotted with fires, where aimless soldiers wandered around in the dark, shouting to know where the Brigada Gonzales-Ortega was, or José Rodriguez's gente, or the amitrailladoras. Townward the artillery was unlimbering in a wide, alert half-circle, guns pointing south. To the east, the camp of Benavides' Brigada Zaragosa, just arrived from Sacramento, made an immense glow in the sky. From the direction of the provision train a long ant-like file of men bore sacks of flour, coffee, and packages of cigarettes.... A hundred different singing choruses swelled up into the night....

It comes to my mind with particular vividness how I saw a poor poisoned horse suddenly double up and fall, thrashing; how we passed a man bent to the ground in the darkness, vomiting violently; how, after I had rolled up on the ground in my blankets, terrible cramps suddenly wrenched me, and I crawled out a way into the brush and didn't have the strength to crawl back. In fact, until gray dawn, I "rolled very sick on the ground."

CHAPTER XI

AN OUTPOST IN ACTION

Tuesday, early in the morning, the army was in motion again toward the front, straggling down the track and across the field. Four hundred raging demons sweated and hammered at the ruined track; the foremost train had made half a mile in the night. Horses were plenty that morning, and I bought one, saddle and all, for seventy-five pesos—about fifteen dollars in gold. Trotting down by San Ramon, I fell in with two wild-looking horsemen, in high sombreros, with little printed pictures of Our Lady of Guadelupe sewed on the crowns. They said they were going out to an outpost upon the extreme right wing, near the mountains above Lerdo, where their company was posted to hold a hill. Why should I want to come with them? Who was I, anyway? I showed them my pass, signed by Francisco Villa. They were still hostile. "Francisco Villa is nothing to us,", they said. "And how do we know whether this is his name, written by him? We are of the Brigada Juarez, Calixto Contreras' gente." But after a short consultation the taller grunted, "Come."

We left the protection of the trees, striking out diagonally across the ramparted cotton-fields, due west, straight for a steep, high hill that already quivered in the heat. Between us and the suburbs of Gomez Palacio stretched a barren, flat plain, covered with low mesquite and cut by dry irrigation ditches. The Cerro de la Pila, with its murderous concealed artillery, lay perfectly quiet, except that up one side of it, so clear was the air, we could make out a little knot of figures dragging what looked like a cannon. Just outside of the nearest houses some horsemen were riding around; we immediately struck north, making a wide detour, carefully on the watch, for this intermediate ground was overrun by pickets and scouting parties. About a mile beyond, almost along the foot of the hill, ran the high road from the north to Lerdo. We reconnoitered this carefully from the brush. A peasant passed whistling, driving a flock of goats. On the very edge of this road, under a bush, was an earthen jar full of milk. Without the least hesitation the first soldier drew his revolver and shot. The jar split into a hundred pieces—milk spurting everywhere.

"Poisoned," he said briefly. "The first company stationed over here drank some of that stuff. Four died." We rode on.

Up on the hill crest a few black figures squatted, their rifles tilted against their knees. My companions waved to them, and we turned north along the bank of a little river that unrolled a narrow strip of green grass in the midst of desolation. The outpost was camped on both sides of the water, in a sort of meadow. I asked where the colonel was, and finally found him stretched out in the shade of a tent that he had made by hanging his serape over a bush.

"Get down from your horse, friend," he said. "I am glad to welcome you here. My house" (pointing quizzically to the roof of his tent) "is at your disposal. Here are cigarettes. There is meat cooking on the fire." Upon the meadow, fully saddled, grazed the horses of the troop, about fifty of them. The men sprawled on the grass in the shade of the mesquite, chatting and playing cards. This was a different breed of men from the well-armed, well-mounted, comparatively disciplined troops of Villa's army. They were simply peons who had risen in arms, like my friends of La Tropa—a tough, happy race of mountaineers and cowboys, among whom were many who had been bandits in the old days. Unpaid, ill-clad, undisciplined—their officers merely the bravest among them—armed only with aged Springfields and a handful of cartridges apiece, they had fought almost continuously for three years. For four months they, and the irregular troops of such guerrilla chiefs as Urbina and Robles, had held the advance around Torreon, fighting almost daily with Federal outposts and suffering all the hardships of the campaign, while the main army garrisoned Chihuahua, and Juarez. These ragged men were the bravest soldiers in Villa's army.

I had lain there about fifteen minutes, watching the beef sizzle in the flames and satisfying the eager curiosity of a crowd as to my curious profession, when there was a sound of galloping, and a voice, "They're coming out of Lerdo! To horse!"

Half a hundred men reluctantly, and in a leisurely manner, made for their horses. The colonel rose, yawning. He stretched.

"—— —— the animals of Federals!" he growled. "They stay on our minds all the time. You never have time to think of more pleasant things. It's a shame they won't let us even eat our dinner!"

We were mounted soon, trotting down the bank of the stream. Far in front sounded the pin-pricking rifles. Instinctively, without order, we broke into a gallop; through the streets of a little village, where the pacificos stood on the roofs of their houses, looking off to the south, little bundles of their belongings beside them so they could flee if the battle went against us, for the Federals cruelly punish villages which have harbored the enemy. Beyond lay the stony little hill. We got off our horses, and throwing the reins over their heads, climbed on foot. About a dozen men already lay there, shooting spasmodically in the direction of the green bank of trees behind which lay Lerdo. Unseen scattering shots ripped from the blank desert between. About half a mile away small brown figures dodged around in the brush. A thin dust-cloud showed where another detachment was marching slowly north in their rear.

"We already got one sure, and another one in the leg," said a soldier, spitting.

"How many do you make them out?" asked the colonel.

"About two hundred."

The Colonel stood bolt upright, carelessly looking out over the sunny plain. Immediately a roll of shots swept along their front. A bullet chirped overhead. Already the men had gone to work, unordered. Each soldier picked out a smooth place to lie and piled up a little heap of stones in front to shield him. They lay down grunting, loosening their belts and taking off their coats to be perfectly comfortable; then they began slowly and methodically to shoot.

"There goes another," announced the Colonel. "Yours, Pedro."

"Not Pedro's at all," interrupted another man fretfully. "I got him."

"O the devil you did," snapped Pedro. They quarreled....

The firing from the desert was now pretty general, and we could see the Federals slipping toward us under the protection of every bush and arroyo. Our men fired slowly and carefully, aiming a long time before they pulled the trigger, for the months with scanty ammunition around Torreon had made them economical. But now every hill and bush along our line held a little knot of sharpshooters, and looking back on the wide flats and fields between the hill and the railroad, I saw innumerable single horsemen and squads of them spurring through the brush. In ten minutes we would have five hundred men with us.

The rifle fire along the line swelled and deepened until there was a solid mile of it. The Federals had stopped; now the dust-clouds began slowly to move backward in the direction of Lerdo. The fire from the desert slackened. And then, from nowhere, we suddenly saw the broad-winged vultures sailing, serene and motionless, in the blue....

The Colonel, his men and I democratically ate lunch in the shade of the village houses. Our meat was, of course, scorched, so we had to do the best we could with jerked beef and piñole, which seems to be cinnamon and bran, ground fine. I never enjoyed a meal so.... And when I left the men made up a double handful of cigarettes as a present.

Said the Colonel: "Amigo, I am sorry that we had not time for a talk together. There are many things I want to ask you about your country—whether it is true, for example, that in your cities men have entirely lost the use of their legs and don't ride horseback in the streets, but are borne about in automobiles. I had a brother once who worked on the railroad track near Kansas City, and he told me wonderful things. But a man called him 'greaser' one day and shot him without that my brother did anything to him. Why is it your people don't like Mexicans? I like many Americans. I like you. Here is a gift for you." He unbuckled one of his huge iron spurs, inlaid with silver, and gave it to me. "But we never had any time here for talk. These —— always annoy us, and then we have to get up and kill a few of them before we can have a moment's peace...."

Under the alamo trees I found one of the photographers and a moving-picture man. They were lying flat on their backs near a fire, around which squatted twenty soldiers, gorging ravenously flour tortillas, meat and coffee. One proudly displayed a silver wrist-watch.

"That used to be my watch," explained the photographer. "You see we hadn't had anything to eat for two days, and when we came past here these boys called us and gave us the most magnificent feed I have ever tasted. After that I just couldn't help giving them a present!"

The soldiers had accepted the gift communally and were agreeing that each should wear it for two hours; from then on until the end of life....

CHAPTER XII

CONTRERAS' MEN ASSAULT

Wednesday my friend the photographer and I were wandering across a field when Villa came by on his horse. He looked tired, dirty, but happy. Reining up in front of us, the motions of his body as easy and graceful as a wolf's, he grinned and said, "Well, boys, how is it going now?"

We answered that we were perfectly contented.

"I haven't time to worry about you, so you must be careful not to go into danger. It is bad—the wounded. Hundreds. They are brave, those muchachos; the bravest people in the world. But," he continued delightedly, "you must go and see the hospital train. There is something fine for you to write your papers about...."

And truly it was a magnificent thing to see. The hospital train lay right behind the work train now. Forty box-cars, enameled inside, stenciled on the side with a big blue cross and the legend, "Servicio Sanitario," handled the wounded as they came from the front. They were fitted inside with the latest surgical appliances and manned by sixty competent American and Mexican doctors. Every night shuttle trains carried the seriously hurt back to the base hospitals at Chihuahua and Parral.

We went down through San Ramon and beyond the end of the line of trees out across the desert. It was already stinging hot. In front a snake of rifle fire unfolded along the line, and then a machine gun, "spat—spat—spat!" As we emerged into the open a lone Mauser began cracking down to the right somewhere. We paid no attention to it at first, but pretty soon we noticed that there was a little plumping sound on the ground around us—puffs of dust flew up every few minutes.

"By God," said the photographer. "Some beggar's sniping at us."

Instinctively we both sprinted. The rifle shots came faster. It was a long distance across the plain. After a little we reduced it to a jog-trot. Finally we walked along, with the dust spurting up as before, and a feeling that, after all, it wouldn't do any good to run. Then we forgot it....

Half an hour later we crept through the brush a quarter of a mile from the outskirts of Gomez and came upon a tiny ranch of six or eight adobe huts, with a street running between. In the lee of one of the houses lounged and sprawled about sixty of Contreras' ragged fighters. They were playing cards and talking lazily. Down the street, just around the corner, which pointed straight as a die toward the Federal positions, a storm of bullets swept continually, whipping up the dust. These men had been on duty at the front all night. The countersign had been "no hats," and they were bare-headed in the broiling sun. They had had no sleep and no food, and there wasn't any water for half a mile.

"There is a Federal cuartel up ahead there that is firing," explained a boy about twelve years old. "We've got orders to attack when the artillery comes."

An old man squatting against the wall asked me where I came from. I said New York.

"Well," he said, "I don't know anything about New York, but I'll bet you don't see such fine cattle going through the streets as you see in the streets of Jiminez."

"You don't see any cattle in the streets of New York," I said.

He looked at me incredulously. "What, no cattle? You mean to tell me that they don't drive cattle through the streets up there? Or sheep?"

I said they didn't. He looked at me as if he thought I was a great liar; then he cast his eyes on the ground and thought deeply.

"Well," he pronounced finally, "then I don't want to go there!..."

Two skylarking boys started a game of tag; in a minute twenty full-grown men were chasing each other around in great glee. The card players had one short deck of torn cards, and at least eight people were trying to play some game and arguing about the rules at the top of their voices, or perhaps there weren't enough cards to go around. Four or five had crawled into the shade of the house, singing satirical love songs. All this time the steady infernal din up ahead never relented, and the bullets spattered in the dust like rain drops. Occasionally one of the men would slouch over, poke his rifle around the corner and fire....

We stayed there about half an hour. Then two gray cannons came rocketing out of the brush behind and wheeled into position in a dry ditch seventy-five yards away on the left.

"I guess we're going in a minute," said the boy.

At that moment three men galloped up from the rear, evidently officers. They were entirely exposed to rifle fire over the roofs of the huts, but jerked up their horses with the shots yelling all around, contemptuous of them. The first to speak was Fierro, the superb great animal of a man who had murdered Benton.

He sneered down at the ragged soldiers from his saddle. "Well, this is a fine-looking crowd to take a city with," he said. "But we've got nobody else down here. Go in when you hear the bugle." Pulling cruelly on the bit, so that his big horse reared straight up and whirled on his hind legs, Fierro galloped off rearward, saying as he went, "Useless, those simple fools of Contreras——"

"Death to the Butcher!" said a man furiously. "That murderer killed my compadre in the streets of Durango—for no crime or insult! My compadre was very drunk, walking in front of the theater. He asked Fierro what time it was, and Fierro said, You ——! How dare you speak to me before I speak to you first——"

But the bugle was blowing, and up they got, grabbing their guns. The tag game tried to stop, but couldn't. Furious card players were accusing each other of stealing the deck.

"Oiga, Fidencio!" cried one soldier. "I'll bet you my saddle I come back and you don't! This morning I won a nice bridle from Juan——"

"All right! Muy bien! My new pinto horse...."

Laughing, joking, rollicking, they swept out of the shelter of the houses into the rain of steel. They scuttled awkwardly up the street, like little brown animals unused to running. Billowing dust veiled them and a hell of noise....

CHAPTER XIII

A NIGHT ATTACK

Two or three of us had a sort of camp beside the ditch far up along the alamos. Our car, with its food supply, clothes and blankets, was still twenty miles back. Most of the time we went without meals. When we could manage to beg a few cans of sardines or some flour from the commissary train we were lucky. Wednesday one of the crowd had managed to get hold of tinned salmon, coffee, crackers and a big package of cigarettes; and as we cooked dinner Mexican after Mexican, passing on his way to the front, dismounted and joined us. After the most elaborate exchange of courtesies, in which we had to persuade our guest to eat hugely of the dinner we had painfully foraged for ourselves, and he had to comply out of politeness, he would mount and ride away without gratitude, though full of friendliness.

We stretched out on the bank in the golden twilight, smoking. The first train, headed by a flat-car upon which was mounted the cannon "El Niño," had now reached a point opposite the end of the second line of trees—scarcely a mile from town. As far as you could see ahead of her, the repair gang toiled on the track. All at once there came a terrific boom, and a little puff of smoke lifted from the front of the train. Far cheering scattered among the trees and fields. "El Niño," the darling of the army, had got within range at last. Now the Federals would sit up and take notice. She was a three-inch gun—the largest we had.... Later we found out that an exploratory engine had sallied forth from the Gomez roundhouse, and that a shot from "El Niño" had hit her square in the middle of the boiler and blown her up....

We were to attack that night, they said, and long after dark I got on my horse, Bucephalus, and rode down front. The sign was "Herrera" and the countersign "Chihuahua number four." So as to be sure of recognition as one of "ours," the command was to pin your hat up behind. Everywhere the strictest orders had been sent out that no fires should be lit in the "zone of fire," and that anyone striking a match until the battle began should be shot by the sentries.

Bucephalus and I jogged slowly along in the moonless and absolutely silent night. Nowhere was there a light or a stir all over the vast plain before Gomez, except the far hammering of the tireless repair gang working on the track. In the town itself the electric lights shone brightly, and even a street car bound for Lerdo lost itself behind the Cerro de la Fila.

Then I heard a tiny murmuring of human voices in the darkness near the ditch ahead—evidently an outpost.

"Quien vive?" came a shout. And before I had a chance to answer, BANG! He fired. The bullet went past my head. Biou!

"No, no, you fool," drawled an exasperated voice. "Don't shoot as soon as you challenge! Wait until he gives the wrong answer! Listen to me, now." This time the formality was satisfactory to both sides and the officer said, "Pase Usted!" But I could hear the original sentry growling, "Well, I don't see what difference it makes. I never hit anybody when I shoot...."

Feeling my way carefully through the darkness, I stumbled into the rancho of San Ramon. I knew that the pacificos had all fled, so it surprised me to see light shining around the chinks of a door. I was thirsty and didn't care to trust the ditch. I called. A woman appeared, with a little brood of four babies clinging to her skirts. She brought water, and all of a sudden burst out with, "O señor, do you know where the guns of the Brigada Zaragosa are? My man is there, and I haven't seen him for seven days."

"Then you are not a pacifico?"

"Truly I am not," she returned indignantly, pointing to her children. "We belong to the artillery."

Down front the army lay stretched along the ditch at the foot of the first line of trees. In absolute darkness they whispered to each other, waiting until the word of Villa to the advance guard a quarter of a mile ahead should precipitate the first rifle shots.

"Where are your rifles?" I asked.

"This brigade is to use no rifles to-night," answered a voice. "Over on the left, where they are to attack the intrenchments, there are rifles. But we must capture the Brittingham Corral to-night, and rifles are no good. We are Contreras' men, the Brigada Juarez. See, we have orders to walk up to the walls and throw these bombs inside!" He held out the bomb. It was made of a short stick of dynamite sewed in a strip of cowhide, with a fuse stuck in one end. He went on: "General Robles' gente are over there on the right. They, too, have granados, but rifles also. They are going to assault the Cerro de la Pila...."

And now down the warm, still night came suddenly the sound of heavy firing from the direction of Lerdo, where Maclovio Herrera was going in with his brigade. Almost simultaneously from dead ahead rifle fire awoke sputtering. A man came down the line with a lighted cigar glowing like a firefly in the hollow of his hands.

"Light your cigarettes from this," he said, "and don't set fire to your fuses until you're right up under the wall."

"Captain, carramba! It's going to be very, very duro! How shall we know the right time?"

Another voice, deep, rough, spoke up in the dark.

"I'll tell you. Just come along with me."

A whispered, smothered shout of "Viva Villa!" burst from them. On foot, holding a lighted cigar in one hand—for he never smoked—and a bomb in the other, the General climbed the bank of the ditch and plunged into the brush, the others pouring after him....

All along the line now the rifle fire roared, though down behind the trees I could see nothing of the attack. The artillery was silent, the troops being too close together in the dark to permit the use of shrapnel by either side. I rode back and over to the right, where I climbed my horse up the steep ditch bank. From there I could see the dancing tiny fires of the guns at Lerdo, and scattered spurts like a string of jewels all along our front. Over to the extreme left a new and deeper noise told where Benavides was making a demonstration against Torreon proper with quick-firing guns. I stood tensely awaiting the attack.

It came with the force of an explosion. In the direction of the Brittingham Corral, which I could not see, the syncopated rhythm of four machine guns and a continuous inhuman blast of volleying rifles made the previous noise seem like the deepest silence. A quick glare reddened the heaven above, and then the shocking detonations of dynamite. I could imagine the yelling savages sweeping up the street against that withering flame, wavering, pausing, struggling on again, with Villa just in front, talking to them back over his shoulder, as he always did. Now more furious firing over to the right indicated that the attack against the Cerro de la Pila had reached the foot of the hill. And all at once on the far end of the ridge toward Lerdo, there were flashes. Maclovio must have taken Lerdo! Lo! All at once appeared a magical sight. Up the steep slope of the Cerro, around three sides of it, slowly rose a ring of fierce light. It was the steady flame of rifle fire from the attackers. The summit, too, streamed fire, which intensified as the ring converged toward it, raggeder now. A bright glare burst from the top—then another. A second later arrived the dreadful reports of cannon. They were opening upon the little line of climbing men with artillery! But still they rose upon the black hill. The ring of flame was broken now in many places, but it never faltered. So until it seemed to merge with the venomous spitting blaze at the summit. Then all at once it seemed to wither completely, and little single fireflies kept dropping down the slope—all that were left. And when I thought that all was lost, and marveled at the useless heroism of these peons who walked up a hill in the face of artillery, behold! The ring of flame was creeping slowly upward again.... That night they attacked the Cerro seven times on foot, and at every attack seven-eighths of them were killed.... All this time the infernal roaring and the play of red light over the Corral did not stop. Occasionally there seemed to come a lull, but it recommenced only more terribly. They assaulted the Corral eight times.... The morning that I entered Gomez, although the Federals had been steadily burning bodies for three days, they were so thick in the wide space before the Brittingham Corral that I could hardly ride through on horseback, and around the Cerro were seven distinct ridges of rebel dead....

The wounded began creeping through the plain obscurely in the dense darkness. Their cries and groans could be distinctly heard, though the battle noise drowned every other sound—you could even hear the rustle of the bushes as they crept through, and their dragging feet on the sand. A horseman passed along the path below me, cursing furiously that he must leave the battle because his arm was broken, and weeping between curses. Then came a footman, who sat at the foot of my bank and nursed a hand, talking without cessation about all sorts of things to keep from a nervous breakdown.

"How brave we Mexicans are," he said drolly. "Killing each other like this!..."

I soon went back to camp, sick with boredom. A battle is the most boring thing in the world if it lasts any length of time. It is all the same.... And in the morning I went to get the news at headquarters. We had captured Lerdo, but the Cerro, the Corral and the cuartel were still the enemy's. All that slaughter for nothing!

CHAPTER XIV

THE FALL OF GOMEZ PALACIO

"El Niño" was now within half a mile of the town, and the workmen of the repair gang labored on the last stretch of track under heavy shrapnel fire. The two cannon on the front of the trains bore all the brunt of their artillery, and bravely did they return the fire—so well, in fact, that after one Federal shell had killed ten workmen, "El Niño's" captain put two guns on the Cerro out of action. So the Federals left the trains alone and turned their attention to shelling Herrera out of Lerdo.

The Constitutionalist army was terribly shattered. In the four days' fighting about a thousand men had been killed and almost two thousand more wounded. Even the excellent hospital train was inadequate to handle the wounded. Out on the wide plain where we were the faint smell of dead bodies pervaded everything. In Gomez it must have been horrible. Thursday the smoke from twenty funeral pyres stained the sky. But Villa was more determined than ever. Gomez must be taken, and quickly. He didn't have ammunition or supplies enough for a siege, and, moreover, his name was a legend already with the enemy—wherever Pancho Villa appeared in battle, they had begun to believe it lost. And the effect on his own troops was most important, too. So he scheduled another night attack.

"The track is all repaired," reported Calzado, Superintendent of the Railways.

"Good," said Villa. "Bring up all the trains from the rear to-night, because we're going into Gomez in the morning!"

Night fell; breathless, silent night, with a sound of frogs along the ditches. Across the front of the town the soldiers lay waiting for the word to attack. Wounded, worn out, nervously broken, they straggled to the front, keyed up to the last notch of desperation. This night they would not be repulsed. They would take the town or die where they stood. And as nine o'clock approached, the hour at which the attack had been set, the tension became dangerous.

Nine o'clock came and passed—not a sound or movement. For some reason the order was withheld. Ten o'clock. Suddenly off to the right a volley burst from the town. All along our line awoke the answer, but after a few more volleys the Federal fire altogether ceased. From the town came other, more mysterious sounds. The electric lights went out and in the darkness there was a subtle stir and movement, indefinable. At length the order was given to advance, but as our men crept forward in the dark the front rank suddenly gave a yell, and the truth spread through the ranks and out into the country, in one triumphant shout. Gomez Palacio had been evacuated! With a great babble of voices the army poured into the town. A few scattered shots sounded where our troops caught some of the Federals looting—for the Federal army had gutted the whole town before it left. And then our army began to loot. Their shouts and drunken singing and the sounds of smashing doors reached us out on the plain. Little tongues of flame flickered up where the soldiers were burning some house that had been a fort of Federals. But the looting of the rebels was confined, as it almost always is, to food, and drink, and clothes to cover them. They disturbed no private house.

The chiefs of the army winked at this. A specific order was issued by Villa stating that whatever any soldier picked up was his and could not be taken from him by an officer. Now up to this time there was not much of stealing in the army—at least so far as we were concerned. But the morning of the entry into Gomez a curious change had come over the psychology of the soldiers. I woke at our camp beside the ditch to find my horse gone. Bucephalus had been stolen in the night and I never saw him again. During breakfast several troopers dropped in to share our meal—when they had gone we missed a knife and a revolver. The truth was that everybody was looting from everybody else. So I, too, stole what I needed. There was a great gray mule grazing in the field near by, with a rope around his neck. I put my saddle on him and rode down toward the front. He was a noble animal—worth at least four times as much as Bucephalus, as I soon discovered. Everybody I met coveted that mule. One trooper marching along with two rifles hailed me. "Oija, compañero, where did you get that mule?"

"I found him in a field," said I unwisely.

"It is just as I thought," he exclaimed. "That is my mule! Get off and give him to me at once!"

"And is this your saddle?" I asked.

"By the Mother of God, it is!"

"Then you lie about the mule, for the saddle is my own." I rode on, leaving him yelling in the road. A short distance farther on an old peon walking along suddenly ran up and threw his arms around the animal's neck.

"Ah, at last! My beautiful mule which I lost! My Juanito!" I shook him off in spite of his entreaties that at least I should pay him fifty pesos as compensation for his mule. In town a cavalryman rode across in front of me, demanding his mule at once. He was rather ugly and had a revolver. I got away by saying that I was a captain of artillery and that the mule belonged to my battery. Every few feet some owner of that mule sprang up and asked me how dared I ride his own dear Panchito, or Pedrito, or Tomasito! At last one came out of a cuartel with a written order from his Colonel, who had seen the mule from his window. I showed them my pass signed by Francisco Villa. That was enough....

Across the wide desert, where the Constitutionalists had fought so long, the army was winding in from every direction, in long snake-like columns, dust hanging over them. And along the track, as far as the eye could reach, came the trains, one after another, blowing triumphant whistles, crowded with thousands of women and soldiers cheering. Within the city, dawn had brought absolute quiet and order. With the entrance of Villa and his staff the looting had absolutely ceased and the soldiers again respected other people's property. A thousand were hard at work gathering up the bodies and carrying them to the edge of the city, where they were set on fire. Five hundred more policed the town. The first order issued was that any soldier caught drinking should be shot.

In the third train was our car—the private box-car fitted up for the correspondents, photographers and moving-picture men. At last we had our bunks, our blankets, and Fong, our beloved Chinese cook. The car was switched up near in the railway station—in the very front rank of trains. And as we gathered in its grateful interior, hot, dusty and worn out, the Federals in Torreon dropped a few shrapnel shells right close beside us. I was standing in the door of the car at the time and heard the boom of cannon, but paid no particular attention to it. Suddenly I noticed a small object in the air like an exaggerated beetle, trailing a little spiral of black smoke behind it. It passed the door of the car with a zzzzzing noise and about forty feet beyond burst with a frightful Crash—Whee-e-e-eeaa!! among the trees of a park where a company of cavalry and their women were camping. A hundred men leaped for their plunging horses in a panic and galloped frantically toward the rear, the women streaming after them. Two women had been killed, it seemed, and a horse. Blankets, food, rifles—all were discarded in the panic. Pow! Another burst on the other side of the car. They were very close. Behind us on the track twenty long trains, laden with shrilly screaming women, were trying to back out of the yards all at once, with a mighty hysterical tooting of whistles. Two or three more shells followed, then we could hear "El Niño" replying.

But the effect on the correspondents and newspaper men was peculiar. No sooner had the first shell exploded than someone produced the whisky jug, entirely of his own impulse, and we passed it around. No one said a word, but everybody drank a stiff swig as it came his way. Every time a shell would explode nearby we would all wince and jump, but after a while we did not mind it. Then we began to congratulate each other and ourselves for being so brave as to stay by the car under artillery fire. Our courage increased as the firing grew far between and finally quit altogether, and as the whisky grew low. Everybody forgot dinner.

I remember that in the darkness two belligerent Anglo-Saxons stood at the door of the car, challenging the soldiers who passed and abusing them in the most discourteous language. We fell out among ourselves, too, and one man almost choked a driveling old fool who was with the moving-picture outfit. Late that night we were still trying earnestly to persuade two of the boys not to sally forth without the pass-word and reconnoiter the Federal lines at Torreon.

"Aw, what's there to be afraid of?" cried they. "A Mexican greaser hasn't any guts! One American can lick fifty Mexicans! Why, did you see how they ran this afternoon when the shells hit that grove? And how we—hic—we stayed by the car?"

PART FIVE

CARRANZA—AN IMPRESSION

CARRANZA—AN IMPRESSION

When the Treaty of Peace was signed in Juarez which ended the Revolution of 1910, Francisco Madero proceeded south toward Mexico City. Everywhere he spoke to enthusiastic and triumphant throngs of peons, who acclaimed him The Liberator.

In Chihuahua he addressed the people from the balcony of the Governor's palace. As he told of the hardships endured and the sacrifices made by the little band of men who had overthrown the dictatorship of Diaz forever, he was overcome with emotion. Reaching inside the room he pulled out a tall, bearded man of commanding presence, and, throwing his arm about his shoulder, he said, in a voice choked with tears:

"This is a good man! Love and honor him always."

It was Venustiano Carranza, a man of upright life and high ideals; an aristocrat, descended from the dominant Spanish race; a great land-owner, as his family had always been great land-owners; and one of those Mexican nobles who, like a few French nobles such as Lafayette in the French Revolution, threw themselves heart and soul into the struggle for liberty. When the Madero Revolution broke out Carranza took the field in truly medieval fashion. He armed the peons who worked upon his great estates, and led them to war like any feudal overlord; and, when the Revolution was done, Madero made him Governor of Coahuila.

There he was when Madero was murdered at the Capital, and Huerta, seizing the Presidency, sent a circular letter to the Governors of the different States, ordering them to acknowledge the new dictatorship. Carranza refused even to answer the letter, declaring that he would have no dealings with a murderer and a usurper. He issued a proclamation calling the Mexican people to arms, proclaiming himself First Chief of the Revolution, and inviting the friends of liberty to rally around him. Then he marched out from his capital and took the field, where he assisted in the early fighting around Torreon.

After a short time Carranza marched his force from Coahuila, where things were happening, straight across the Republic into the State of Sonora, where nothing was happening. Villa had begun heavy fighting in Chihuahua State, Urbina and Herrera in Durango, Blanco and others in Coahuila, and Gonzales near Tampico. In times of upheaval like these it is inevitable that there shall be some preliminary squabbling over the ultimate spoils of war. Among the military leaders, however, there was no such dissension; Villa having just been unanimously elected General Chief of the Constitutionalist Army by a remarkable gathering of all the independent guerrilla leaders before Torreon,—an unheard-of event in Mexican history. But over in Sonora, Maytorena and Pesquiera were already squabbling over who should be Governor of the State, and threatening revolutions against each other. Carranza's reported purpose in crossing to the West with his army was to settle this dispute. But that doesn't seem possible.

Other explanations are that he desired to secure a seaport for the Constitutionalists on the West; that he wanted to settle the Yaqui land question; and that in the quiet of a comparatively peaceful State he could better organize the provisional government of the new Republic. He remained there six months, apparently doing nothing whatever, keeping a force of more than 6,000 good fighters practically inoperative, attending banquets and bull-fights, establishing and celebrating innumerable new national holidays, and issuing proclamations. His army, twice or three times as big as the disheartened garrisons of Guaymas and Mazatlan, kept up a lazy siege of those places. Mazatlan fell only a short time ago, I think; as did Guaymas. Only a few weeks ago Provisional-Governor Maytorena was threatening counter-revolutions against General Alvardo, Chief of Arms of Sonora, because he would not guarantee the Governor's safety, and evidently proposing to upset the Revolution because Maytorena was uncomfortable in the palace at Hermosillo. During all that time not a word was said about any aspect of the land question, as far as I could learn. The Yaqui Indians, the expropriation of whose lands is the blackest spot in the whole black history of the Diaz regime, got nothing but a vague promise. Upon that the whole tribe joined the Revolution. But a few months later most of them went back to their homes and began again their hopeless campaign against the white man.

Carranza hibernated until early in the spring of this year, when, the purpose of his Sonora sojourn evidently having been accomplished, he turned his face toward the territory where the real Revolution was being fought.

Within that six months the aspect of things had entirely changed. Except for the northern part of Nueva Leon, and most of Coahuila, northern Mexico was Constitutionalist territory almost from sea to sea, and Villa, with a well-armed, well-disciplined force of 10,000 men, was entering on the Torreon campaign. All this was accomplished almost single-handed by Villa; Carranza seems to have contributed nothing but congratulations. He had, indeed, formed a provisional government. An immense throng of opportunist politicians surrounded the First Chief, loud in their protestations of devotion to the Cause, liberal with proclamations, and extremely jealous of each other and of Villa. Little by little Carranza's personality seemed to be engulfed in the personality of his Cabinet, although his name remained as prominent as ever.

It was a curious situation. Correspondents who were with him during these months have told me how secluded the First Chief finally became. They almost never saw him. Very rarely did they speak with him. Various secretaries, officials, Cabinet members, stood between them and him—polite, diplomatic, devious gentlemen, who transmitted their questions to Carranza on paper and brought them back his answers written out; so that there would be no mistake.

But, whatever he did, Carranza left Villa strictly alone, to undergo defeats if he must, or make mistakes; so much so that Villa himself was forced to deal with foreign powers as if he were the head of the government.

There is no doubt that the politicians at Hermosillo sought in every way to make Carranza jealous of Villa's growing power in the north. In February the First Chief began a leisurely journey northward, accompanied by 3,000 troops, with the ostensible object of sending reinforcements to Villa and of making his provisional capital in Juarez when Villa left for Torreon. Two correspondents, however, who had been in Sonora, told me that the officers of this immense bodyguard believed that they were to be sent against Villa himself.