"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.