After a march of about five miles, halt was ordered. Pickets were posted, and the men were told to sleep. It was a free and easy sort of a camp, with no tents and everybody rolled in blankets. Ernest and Jim lay side by side—and they lay side by side through many a night thereafter.
Jim went to sleep first. Ernest felt too excited to sleep, but sleep he did, nevertheless, although he slept cold; and the first thing that he heard, when awakened by a general stir around him, was Jim’s disgusted exclamation:
“Jiminy Christmas, what a fog! Can’t see a thing! Couldn’t hit the side of a barn if my feet were touching it!”
That might be so. At any rate, since they had camped a regular Texas fog had settled down; and now in the gray of very early morning (four o’clock was the hour) the whole landscape was a blank. Soaked were the blankets, and dripping were the grass and shrubs and exposed noses.
“Glad I put my rifle in under with me,” remarked Ernest. “Did you put yours in?”
“Sure,” said Jim, as they dressed by pulling on their boots. “Hope the cannon doesn’t miss fire on us. Touch-hole ought to’ve been covered.”
However, Lieutenant Dickinson could be depended upon to attend to that.
“Anyway,” observed Jim, “if we can’t see the Mexicans they can’t see us, and we can get right close up to ’em. We know the country better than they do.”
Without delay for coffee, the ranks were formed again by the impatient Colonel Moore. The horsemen cinched their wet, hunched horses, and climbed aboard; and once more the army moved forward, toward Ezekiel Williams’s place, in regular line of battle.