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."