"How brave we Mexicans are," he said drolly. "Killing each other like this!..."
I soon went back to camp, sick with boredom. A battle is the most boring thing in the world if it lasts any length of time. It is all the same.... And in the morning I went to get the news at headquarters. We had captured Lerdo, but the Cerro, the Corral and the cuartel were still the enemy's. All that slaughter for nothing!
CHAPTER XIV
THE FALL OF GOMEZ PALACIO
"El Niño" was now within half a mile of the town, and the workmen of the repair gang labored on the last stretch of track under heavy shrapnel fire. The two cannon on the front of the trains bore all the brunt of their artillery, and bravely did they return the fire—so well, in fact, that after one Federal shell had killed ten workmen, "El Niño's" captain put two guns on the Cerro out of action. So the Federals left the trains alone and turned their attention to shelling Herrera out of Lerdo.
The Constitutionalist army was terribly shattered. In the four days' fighting about a thousand men had been killed and almost two thousand more wounded. Even the excellent hospital train was inadequate to handle the wounded. Out on the wide plain where we were the faint smell of dead bodies pervaded everything. In Gomez it must have been horrible. Thursday the smoke from twenty funeral pyres stained the sky. But Villa was more determined than ever. Gomez must be taken, and quickly. He didn't have ammunition or supplies enough for a siege, and, moreover, his name was a legend already with the enemy—wherever Pancho Villa appeared in battle, they had begun to believe it lost. And the effect on his own troops was most important, too. So he scheduled another night attack.
"The track is all repaired," reported Calzado, Superintendent of the Railways.
"Good," said Villa. "Bring up all the trains from the rear to-night, because we're going into Gomez in the morning!"
Night fell; breathless, silent night, with a sound of frogs along the ditches. Across the front of the town the soldiers lay waiting for the word to attack. Wounded, worn out, nervously broken, they straggled to the front, keyed up to the last notch of desperation. This night they would not be repulsed. They would take the town or die where they stood. And as nine o'clock approached, the hour at which the attack had been set, the tension became dangerous.
Nine o'clock came and passed—not a sound or movement. For some reason the order was withheld. Ten o'clock. Suddenly off to the right a volley burst from the town. All along our line awoke the answer, but after a few more volleys the Federal fire altogether ceased. From the town came other, more mysterious sounds. The electric lights went out and in the darkness there was a subtle stir and movement, indefinable. At length the order was given to advance, but as our men crept forward in the dark the front rank suddenly gave a yell, and the truth spread through the ranks and out into the country, in one triumphant shout. Gomez Palacio had been evacuated! With a great babble of voices the army poured into the town. A few scattered shots sounded where our troops caught some of the Federals looting—for the Federal army had gutted the whole town before it left. And then our army began to loot. Their shouts and drunken singing and the sounds of smashing doors reached us out on the plain. Little tongues of flame flickered up where the soldiers were burning some house that had been a fort of Federals. But the looting of the rebels was confined, as it almost always is, to food, and drink, and clothes to cover them. They disturbed no private house.