The chiefs of the army winked at this. A specific order was issued by Villa stating that whatever any soldier picked up was his and could not be taken from him by an officer. Now up to this time there was not much of stealing in the army—at least so far as we were concerned. But the morning of the entry into Gomez a curious change had come over the psychology of the soldiers. I woke at our camp beside the ditch to find my horse gone. Bucephalus had been stolen in the night and I never saw him again. During breakfast several troopers dropped in to share our meal—when they had gone we missed a knife and a revolver. The truth was that everybody was looting from everybody else. So I, too, stole what I needed. There was a great gray mule grazing in the field near by, with a rope around his neck. I put my saddle on him and rode down toward the front. He was a noble animal—worth at least four times as much as Bucephalus, as I soon discovered. Everybody I met coveted that mule. One trooper marching along with two rifles hailed me. "Oija, compañero, where did you get that mule?"
"I found him in a field," said I unwisely.
"It is just as I thought," he exclaimed. "That is my mule! Get off and give him to me at once!"
"And is this your saddle?" I asked.
"By the Mother of God, it is!"
"Then you lie about the mule, for the saddle is my own." I rode on, leaving him yelling in the road. A short distance farther on an old peon walking along suddenly ran up and threw his arms around the animal's neck.
"Ah, at last! My beautiful mule which I lost! My Juanito!" I shook him off in spite of his entreaties that at least I should pay him fifty pesos as compensation for his mule. In town a cavalryman rode across in front of me, demanding his mule at once. He was rather ugly and had a revolver. I got away by saying that I was a captain of artillery and that the mule belonged to my battery. Every few feet some owner of that mule sprang up and asked me how dared I ride his own dear Panchito, or Pedrito, or Tomasito! At last one came out of a cuartel with a written order from his Colonel, who had seen the mule from his window. I showed them my pass signed by Francisco Villa. That was enough....
Across the wide desert, where the Constitutionalists had fought so long, the army was winding in from every direction, in long snake-like columns, dust hanging over them. And along the track, as far as the eye could reach, came the trains, one after another, blowing triumphant whistles, crowded with thousands of women and soldiers cheering. Within the city, dawn had brought absolute quiet and order. With the entrance of Villa and his staff the looting had absolutely ceased and the soldiers again respected other people's property. A thousand were hard at work gathering up the bodies and carrying them to the edge of the city, where they were set on fire. Five hundred more policed the town. The first order issued was that any soldier caught drinking should be shot.
In the third train was our car—the private box-car fitted up for the correspondents, photographers and moving-picture men. At last we had our bunks, our blankets, and Fong, our beloved Chinese cook. The car was switched up near in the railway station—in the very front rank of trains. And as we gathered in its grateful interior, hot, dusty and worn out, the Federals in Torreon dropped a few shrapnel shells right close beside us. I was standing in the door of the car at the time and heard the boom of cannon, but paid no particular attention to it. Suddenly I noticed a small object in the air like an exaggerated beetle, trailing a little spiral of black smoke behind it. It passed the door of the car with a zzzzzing noise and about forty feet beyond burst with a frightful Crash—Whee-e-e-eeaa!! among the trees of a park where a company of cavalry and their women were camping. A hundred men leaped for their plunging horses in a panic and galloped frantically toward the rear, the women streaming after them. Two women had been killed, it seemed, and a horse. Blankets, food, rifles—all were discarded in the panic. Pow! Another burst on the other side of the car. They were very close. Behind us on the track twenty long trains, laden with shrilly screaming women, were trying to back out of the yards all at once, with a mighty hysterical tooting of whistles. Two or three more shells followed, then we could hear "El Niño" replying.
But the effect on the correspondents and newspaper men was peculiar. No sooner had the first shell exploded than someone produced the whisky jug, entirely of his own impulse, and we passed it around. No one said a word, but everybody drank a stiff swig as it came his way. Every time a shell would explode nearby we would all wince and jump, but after a while we did not mind it. Then we began to congratulate each other and ourselves for being so brave as to stay by the car under artillery fire. Our courage increased as the firing grew far between and finally quit altogether, and as the whisky grew low. Everybody forgot dinner.