Chapter VIII: Part VI: Mexican Nights (6)

The first car of the repair train was a steel-encased flat-car, upon which was mounted the famous Constitutionalist cannon "El Nino," with an open caisson full of shells behind it. Behind that was an armored car full of soldiers, then a car of steel rails, and four loaded with railroad ties. The engine came next, the engineer and fireman hung with cartridge-belts, their rifles handy. Then followed two or three box-cars full of soldiers and their women. It was a dangerous business. A large force of Federals were known to be in Mapimi, and the country swarmed with their outposts. Our army was already far ahead, except for five hundred men who guarded the trains at Conejos. If the enemy could capture or wreck the repair train the army would be cut off without water, food or ammunition. In the darkness we moved out. I sat upon the breech of "El Nino," chatting with Captain Diaz, the commander of the gun, as he oiled the breech lock of his beloved cannon and curled his vertical mustachios. In the armored recess behind the gun, where the Captain slept, I heard a curious, subdued rustling noise.

"What's that?"

"Eh?" cried he nervously. "Oh, nothing, nothing!"

Just then there emerged a young Indian girl with a bottle in her hand. She couldn't have been more than seventeen, very lovely. The Captain shot a glance at me, and suddenly whirled around.

"What are you doing here?" he cried furiously to her. "Why are you coming out here?"

"I thought you said you wanted a drink," she began.

I perceived that I was one too many, and excused myself. They hardly noticed me. But as I was climbing over the back of the car I couldn't help stopping and listening. They had gone back to the recess, and she was weeping.

"Didn't I tell you," stormed the Captain, "not to show yourself when there are strangers here? I will not have every man in Mexico looking at you...."

I stood on the roof of the rocking steel car as we nosed slowly along. Lying on their bellies on the extreme front platform, two men with lanterns examined each foot of the track for wires that might mean mines planted under us. Beneath my feet the soldiers and their women were having dinner around fires built on the floor. Smoke and laughter poured out of the loopholes.... There were other fires aft, brown-faced, ragged people squatting at them, on the car-tops. Overhead the sky blazed stars, without a cloud. It was cold. After an hour of riding we came to a piece of broken track. The train stopped with a jar, the engine whistled, and a score of torches and lanterns jerked past. Men came running. The flares clustered bobbing together as the foremen examined the damage. A fire sprang up in the brush, and then another. Soldiers of the train guard straggled by, dragging their rifles, and formed impenetrable walls around the fires. Iron tools clanged, and the "Wai-hoy!" of men shoving rails off the flat-car. A Chinese dragon of workmen passed with a rail on their shoulders, then others with ties. Four hundred men swarmed upon the broken spot, working with extraordinary energy and good humor, until the shouts of gangs setting rails and ties, and the rattle of sledges on spikes, made a continuous roar. It was an old destruction, probably a year old, made when these same Constitutionalists were retreating north in the face of Mercado's Federal army, and we had it all fixed in an hour. Then on again. Sometimes it was a bridge burned out, sometimes a hundred yards of track twisted into grape vines by a chain and a backing engine. We advanced slowly. At one big bridge that it would take two hours to prepare, I built by myself a little fire in order to get warm. Calzado came past, and hailed me. "We've got a hand-car up ahead," he said, "and we're going along down and see the dead men. Want to come?"

"What dead men?"

"Why, this morning an outpost of eighty _rurales_ was sent scouting north from Bermejillo. We heard about it over the wire and informed Benavides on the left. He sent a troop to take them in the rear, and drove them north in a running fight for fifteen miles until they smashed up against our main body and not one got out alive. They're scattered along the whole way just where they fell."

In a moment we were speeding south on the hand-car. At our right hand and our left rode two silent, shadowy figures on horseback--cavalry guards, with rifles ready under their arms. Soon the flares and fires of the train were left behind, and we were enveloped and smothered in the vast silence of the desert.

"Yes," said Calzado, "the _rurales_ are brave. They are _muy hombres_. _Rurales_ are the best fighters Diaz and Huerta ever had. They never desert to the Revolution. They always remain loyal to the established government. Because they are police."

It was bitter cold. None of us talked much.

"We go ahead of the train at night," said the soldier at my left, "so that if there are any dynamite bombs underneath----"

"We could discover them and dig them out and put water in them, _carramba_!" said another sarcastically. The rest laughed. I began to think of that, and it made me shiver. The dead silence of the desert seemed an expectant hush. One couldn't see ten feet from the track.

"_Oiga_!" shouted one of the horsemen. "It was just here that one lay." The brakes ground and we tumbled off and down the steep embankment, our lanterns jerking ahead. Something lay huddled around the foot of a telegraph pole--something infinitely small and shabby, like a pile of old clothes. The _rurale_ was upon his back, twisted sideways from his hips. He had been stripped of everything of value by the thrifty rebels--shoes, hat, underclothing. They had left him his ragged jacket with the tarnished silver braid, because there were seven bullet holes in it; and his trousers, soaked with blood. He had evidently been much bigger when alive--the dead shrink so. A wild red beard made the pallor of his face grotesque, until you noticed that under it and the dirt, and the long lines of sweat of his terrible fight and hard riding, his mouth was gently and serenely open as if he slept. His brains had been blown out.

"_Corrai!_" said one guard. "There was a shot for the dirty goat! Right through the head!"

The others laughed. "Why, you don't think they shot him there in the fight, do you, _pendeco_?" cried his companion. "No, they _always_ go around and make sure afterward----"

"Hurry up! I've found the other," shouted a voice off in the darkness.

We could reconstruct this man's last struggle. He had dropped off his horse, wounded--for there was blood on the ground--into a little dry arroyo. We could even see where his horse had stood while he pumped shells into his Mauser with feverish hands, and blazed away, first to the rear, where the pursuers came running with Indian yells, and then at the hundreds and hundreds of bloodthirsty horsemen pouring down from the north, with the Demon Pancho Villa at their head. He must have fought a long time, perhaps until they ringed him round with living flame--for we found hundreds of empty cartridges. And then, when the last shot was spent, he made a dash eastward, hit at every step; hid for a moment under the little railroad bridge, and ran out upon the open desert, where he fell. There were twenty bullet holes in him. They had stripped him of all save his underclothes. He lay sprawled in an attitude of desperate action, muscles tense, one fist clenched and spread across the dust as if he were dealing a blow; the fiercest exultant grin on his face. Strong, savage, until one looked closer and saw the subtle touch of weakness that death stamps on life--the delicate expression of idiocy over it all. They had shot him through the head three times--how exasperated they must have been!

Crawling south through the cold night once more.... A few miles and then a bridge dynamited, or a strip of track wrecked. The stop, the dancing torches, the great bonfires leaping up from the desert, and the four hundred wild men pouring furiously out and falling upon their work.... Villa had given orders to hurry....

About two o'clock in the morning I came upon two _soldaderas_ squatting around a fire, and asked them if they could give me _tortillas_ and coffee. One was an old, gray-haired Indian woman with a perpetual grin, the other a slight girl not more than twenty years old, who was nursing a four-months baby at her breast. They were perched at the extreme tip of a flat-car, their fire built upon a pile of sand, as the train jolted and swayed along. Around them, backed against them, feet sticking out between them, was a great, inconglomerate mass of sleeping, snoring humans. The rest of the train was by this time dark; this was the only patch of light and warmth in the night. As I munched my _tortilla_ and the old woman lifted a burning coal in her fingers to light her corn-husk cigarette, wondering where her Pablo's brigade was this night; and the girl nursed her child, crooning to it, her blue-enameled ear-rings twinkling,--we talked.

"Ah! it is a life for us _viejas_," said the girl. "_Adio_, but we follow our men out in the campaign, and then do not know from hour to hour whether they live or die. I remember well when Filadelfo called to me one morning in the little morning before it was light--we lived in Pachuca--and said: 'Come! we are going out to fight because the good Pancho Madero has been murdered this day!' We had only been loving each other eight months, too, and the first baby was not born.... We had all believed that peace was in Mexico for good. Filadelfo saddled the burro, and we rode out through the streets just as light was coming, and into the fields where the farmers were not yet at work. And I said: 'Why must I come?' And he answered: 'Shall I starve, then? Who shall make my _tortillas_ for me but my woman?' It took us three months to get north, and I was sick and the baby was born in a desert just like this place, and died there because we could not get water. That was when Villa was going north after he had taken Torreon."

The old woman broke in: "Yes, and all that is true. When we go so far and suffer so much for our men, we are cruelly treated by the stupid animals of Generals. I am from San Luis Potosi, and my man was in the artillery of the Federacion when Mercado came north. All the way to Chihuahua we traveled, the old fool of a Mercado grumbling about transporting the _viejas_. And then he ordered his army to go north and attack Villa in Juarez, and he forbade the women to go. Is that the way you are going to do, _desgraciado_? I said to myself. And when he evacuated Chihuahua and ran away with my man to Ojinaga, I just stayed right in Chihuahua and got a man in the Maderista army when it came in. A nice handsome young fellow, too,--much better than Juan. I'm not a woman to stand being put upon."

"How much are the _tortillas_ and coffee?" I asked.

They looked at each other, startled. Evidently they had thought me one of the penniless soldiers crowded on the train.

"What you would like," said the young woman faintly. I gave them a peso.

The old woman exploded in a torrent of prayer. "God, his sainted Mother, the Blessed Nino and Our Lady of Guadelupe have sent this stranger to us tonight! Here we had not a centavo to buy coffee and flour with...."

I suddenly noticed that the light of our fire had paled, and looked up in amazement to find it was dawn. Just then a man came running along the train from up front, shouting something unintelligible, while laughter and shouts burst out in his wake. The sleepers raised their curious heads and wanted to know what was the matter. In a moment our inanimate car was alive. The man passed, still yelling something about "_padre_," his face exultant with some tremendous joke.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Oh!" cried the old woman. "His woman on the car ahead has just had a baby!"

Just in front of us lay Bermejillo, its pink and blue and white plastered adobe houses as delicate and ethereal as a village of porcelain. To the east, across a still, dustless desert, a little file of sharp-cut horsemen, with a red-white-and-green flag over them, were riding into town....

*CHAPTER V*

*AT THE GATES OF GOMEZ*

We had taken Bermejillo the afternoon before,--the army breaking into a furious gallop five kilometers north of the town and pouring through it at top speed, driving the unprepared garrison in a rout southward,--a running fight that lasted five miles, as far as the Hacienda of Santa Clara,--and killing a hundred and six _colorados_. Within a few hours afterward Urbina came in sight above Mapimi, and the eight hundred _colorados_ there, informed of the astonishing news that the entire Constitutionalist army was flanking them on their right, evacuated the place, and fled hotly to Torreon. All over the country the astounded Federals were falling back in a panic upon the city.

Late in the afternoon a dumpy little train came down the narrow-gauge track from the direction of Mapimi, and from it proceeded the loud strains of a string orchestra of ten pieces playing "_Recuerdos_ of Durango,"--to which I had so often _baile_'d with the Tropa. The roofs, doors and windows were packed with Mexicans, singing and beating time with their heels, as they fired their rifles in a sort of salute upon entering the town. At the station this curious equipage drew up, and from it proceeded--who but Patricio, General Urbina's fighting stage-driver at whose side I had so often ridden and danced! He threw his arms around me, yelling: "Juanito! Here is Juanito, _mi General_!" In a minute we were asking and answering each other a million questions. Did I have the photographs I took of him? Was I going to the battle of Torreon? Did he know where Don Petronilo was? And Pablo Seanes? And Raphaelito? And right in the midst of it somebody shouted "Viva Urbina!" and the old General himself stood at the top of the steps,--the lion-hearted hero of Durango. He was lame, and leaned upon two soldiers. He held a rifle in his hand,--an old, discarded Springfield, with the sights filed down,--and wore a double cartridge-belt around his waist. For a moment he remained there, absolutely expressionless, his small, hard eyes boring into me. I thought he did not recognize me, when all at once his harsh, sudden voice shot out: "That's not the camera you had! Where's the other one?"

I was about to reply when he interrupted: "I know. You left it behind you in La Cadena. Did you run very fast?"

"Yes, _mi General_."

"And you've come down to Torreon to run again?"

"When I began to run from La Cadena," I remarked, nettled, "Don Petronilo and the troops were already a mile away."

He didn't answer, but came haltingly down the steps of the car, while a roar of laughter went up from the soldiers. Coming up to me he put a hand over my shoulder and gave me a little tap on the back. "I'm glad to see you, _companero_," he said....

Across the desert the wounded had begun to straggle in from the battle of Tlahualilo to the hospital train, which lay far up near the front of the line of trains. On the flat barren plain, as far as I could see, there were only three living things in sight: a limping, hatless man, with his head tied up in a bloody cloth; another staggering beside his staggering horse; and a mule mounted by two bandaged figures far behind them. And in the still hot night we could hear from our car groans and screams....

Late Sunday morning we were again on "El Nino" at the head of the repair train, moving slowly down the track abreast of the army. "El Chavalito," another cannon mounted on a flat-car, was coupled behind, then came two armored cars, and the work-cars. This time there were no women. The army wore a different air, winding along in two immense serpents each side of us--there was little laughter or shouting. We were close now, only eighteen miles from Gomez Palacio, and no one knew what the Federals planned to do. It seemed incredible that they would let us get so close without making one stand. Immediately south of Bermejillo we entered a new land. To the desert succeeded fields bordered with irrigation ditches, along which grew immense green alamos, towering pillars of freshness after the baked desolation we had just passed through. Here were cotton-fields, the white tufts unpicked and rotting on their stalks; corn-fields with sparse green blades just showing. Along the big ditches flowed swift, deep water in the shade. Birds sang, and the barren western mountains marched steadily nearer as we went south. It was summer--hot, moist summer, such as we have at home. A deserted cotton-gin lay on our left, hundreds of white bales tumbled in the sun, and dazzling heaps of cotton-seed left just as the workmen had piled it months before....

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_, senor!" 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, senor!" 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 COMPANEROS 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 _companeros_ 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, _companeros_?" 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, senores." 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 _companeros_, 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.