IV

A small expedition had landed with arms from the United States, and had

now come out of the hills and to the edge of a wood. Before them was a

long-grassed rolling prairie marked with palms. A half-mile away was

the military road, and they could see the top of a blockhouse. The

insurgent scouts were moving somewhere off in the grass. The general

sat comfortably under a tree, while his staff of three young officers

stood about him chatting. Their linen clothing was notable from being

distinctly whiter than those of the men who, one hundred and fifty in

number, lay on the ground in a long brown fringe, ragged--indeed, bare

in many places--but singularly reposeful, unworried, veteran-like.

The general, however, was thoughtful. He pulled continually at his

little thin moustache. As far as the heavily patrolled and guarded

military road was concerned, the insurgents had been in the habit of

dashing across it in small bodies whenever they pleased, but to safely

scoot over it with a valuable convoy of arms, was decidedly a more

important thing. So the general awaited the return of his practicos

with anxiety. The still pampas betrayed no sign of their existence.

The general gave some orders and an officer counted off twenty men to

go with him, and delay any attempt of the troop of cavalry to return

from the eastward. It was not an easy task, but it was a familiar

task--checking the advance of a greatly superior force by a very hard

fire from concealment. A few rifles had often bayed a strong column for

sufficient length of time for all strategic purposes. The twenty men

pulled themselves together tranquilly. They looked quite indifferent.

Indeed, they had the supremely casual manner of old soldiers, hardened

to battle as a condition of existence.

Thirty men were then told off, whose function it was to worry and rag

at the blockhouse, and check any advance from the westward. A hundred

men, carrying precious burdens--besides their own equipment--were to

pass in as much of a rush as possible between these two wings, cross

the road and skip for the hills, their retreat being covered by a

combination of the two firing parties. It was a trick that needed both

luck and neat arrangement. Spanish columns were for ever prowling

through this province in all directions and at all times. Insurgent

bands--the lightest of light infantry--were kept on the jump, even when

they were not incommoded by fifty boxes, each one large enough for the

coffin of a little man, and heavier than if the little man were in it;

and fifty small but formidable boxes of ammunition.

The carriers stood to their boxes and the firing parties leaned on

their rifles. The general arose and strolled to and fro, his hands

behind him. Two of his staff were jesting at the third, a young man

with a face less bronzed, and with very new accoutrements. On the strap

of his cartouche were a gold star and a silver star, placed in a

horizontal line, denoting that he was a second lieutenant. He seemed

very happy; he laughed at all their jests, although his eye roved

continually over the sunny grass-lands, where was going to happen his

first fight. One of his stars was bright, like his hopes, the other was

pale, like death.

Two practicos came racking out of the grass. They spoke rapidly to the

general; he turned and nodded to his officers. The two firing parties

filed out and diverged toward their positions. The general watched them

through his glasses. It was strange to note how soon they were dim to

the unaided eye. The little patches of brown in the green grass did not

look like men at all.

Practicos continually ambled up to the general. Finally he turned and

made a sign to the bearers. The first twenty men in line picked up

their boxes, and this movement rapidly spread to the tail of the line.

The weighted procession moved painfully out upon the sunny prairie. The

general, marching at the head of it, glanced continually back as if he

were compelled to drag behind him some ponderous iron chain. Besides

the obvious mental worry, his face bore an expression of intense

physical strain, and he even bent his shoulders, unconsciously tugging

at the chain to hurry it through this enemy-crowded valley.

V

The fight was opened by eight men who, snuggling in the grass, within

three hundred yards of the blockhouse, suddenly blazed away at the

bed-ticking figure in the cupola and at the open door where they could

see vague outlines. Then they laughed and yelled insulting language,

for they knew that as far as the Spaniards were concerned, the surprise

was as much as having a diamond bracelet turn to soap. It was this

volley that smote the sergeant and caused the man in the cupola to

scream and tumble from his perch.

The eight men, as well as all other insurgents within fair range, had

chosen good positions for lying close, and for a time they let the

blockhouse rage, although the soldiers therein could occasionally hear,

above the clamour of their weapons, shrill and almost wolfish calls,

coming from men whose lips were laid against the ground. But it is not

in the nature of them of Spanish blood, and armed with rifles, to long

endure the sight of anything so tangible as an enemy's blockhouse

without shooting at it--other conditions being partly favourable.

Presently the steaming soldiers in the little fort could hear the sping

and shiver of bullets striking the wood that guarded their bodies.

A perfectly white smoke floated up over each firing Cuban, the penalty

of the Remington rifle, but about the blockhouse there was only the

lightest gossamer of blue. The blockhouse stood always for some big,

clumsy and rather incompetent animal, while the insurgents, scattered

on two sides of it, were little enterprising creatures of another

species, too wise to come too near, but joyously raging at its easiest

flanks and drilling the lead into its sides in a way to make it fume,

and spit and rave like the tom-cat when the glad, free-band fox-hound

pups catch him in the lane.

The men, outlying in the grass, chuckled deliriously at the fury of the

Spanish fire. They howled opprobrium to encourage the Spaniards to fire

more ill-used, incapable bullets. Whenever an insurgent was about to

fire, he ordinarily prefixed the affair with a speech. "Do you want

something to eat? Yes? All right." Bang! "Eat that." The more common

expressions of the incredibly foul Spanish tongue were trifles light as

air in this badinage, which was shrieked out from the grass during the

spin of bullets, and the dull rattle of the shooting.

But at some time there came a series of sounds from the east that began

in a few disconnected pruts and ended as if an amateur was trying to

play the long roll upon a muffled drum. Those of the insurgents in the

blockhouse attacking party, who had neighbours in the grass, turned and

looked at them seriously. They knew what the new sound meant. It meant

that the twenty men who had gone to the eastward were now engaged. A

column of some kind was approaching from that direction, and they knew

by the clatter that it was a solemn occasion.

In the first place, they were now on the wrong side of the road. They

were obliged to cross it to rejoin the main body, provided of course

that the main body succeeded itself in crossing it. To accomplish this,

the party at the blockhouse would have to move to the eastward, until

out of sight or good range of the maddened little fort. But judging

from the heaviness of the firing, the party of twenty who protected the

east were almost sure to be driven immediately back. Hence travel in

that direction would become exceedingly hazardous. Hence a man looked

seriously at his neighbour. It might easily be that in a moment they

were to become an isolated force and woefully on the wrong side of the

road.

Any retreat to the westward was absurd, since primarily they would have

to widely circle the blockhouse, and more than that, they could hear,

even now in that direction, Spanish bugle calling to Spanish bugle, far

and near, until one would think that every man in Cuba was a trumpeter,

and had come forth to parade his talent.