“They’re coming!” said the sheriff’s brother. It was hard for him to speak. The defenders were all violently thirsty, and they had not had time to bring water from the well.
They came. Horses, horses, horses! Bayonets, bayonets, bayonets! They came, and passed along the road, and more came on.
They did not turn off to attack the house. They did not even turn their heads to look at it. This infuriated the defenders.
Horses, horses, horses! Bayonets, bayonets, bayonets! If the men in the stone house could have seen other roads, they would have seen each one so filled with silent, steadily moving columns of men.
A little party of men and horses turned off from the column and entered the field. Before it was within the range of the rifles, it wheeled. A shining, glossy little thing pointed at the house. It was field artillery, sleek, beautiful.
The sheriff’s brother, carried away by rage, fired and fired. He emptied his magazine at the distant men.
The War Machine Rolls On
Along the highway the column moved steadily, silently. No soldier checked his foot for so much as an instant at the sound of the shots. Bayonets, bayonets, bayonets! The machine moved on.
It moved on, eyes front, while the captain commanding the cannon snapped an order. It moved on, bayonets twinkling out of sight in front, and twinkling past, and twinkling into sight from behind, while the little gun tore the April morning.
The stone house spouted clouds of dust and powdering stone. It dissolved. It became a ruin that stared phantomlike through the cloud, as if it were looking with horribly expanding eyes at the gun.