Chapter IX: Part VI: Mexican Nights (7)

"---- ---- 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, senor," 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, _companero_, 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, _companero_, 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 Jose 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 _pinole_, 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 Nino," 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 Nino," 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 Nino" 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 senor, 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 Nino" 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 Nino'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, companero_, 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 Nino" 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*