Now the rifle fire had altogether ceased, and even cannon shots from the enemy were few and far between. At the ditch under the first line of trees our men entrenched themselves; the artillery had withdrawn to the second line of trees—a mile back; and under the grateful shade the men threw themselves heavily down and slept. The strain had snapped. As the sun rose toward noon the desert, hill and town throbbed silently in the intense heat. Sometimes an exchange of shots far to the right or left told where the outposts were exchanging compliments. But even that soon stopped. In the cotton and cornfields to the north, among the sprouting green things, insects chirped. The birds sang no more because of the heat. It was breathless. The leaves stirred in no wind.
Here and there little fires smoked, where the soldiers rolled tortillas from the scanty flour they had brought in their saddle-bags—and those who didn't have any swarmed around, begging a crumb. Everybody simply and generously divided the food. I was hailed from a dozen fires with "Hey, compañero, have you breakfasted? Here is a piece of my tortilla. Come and eat!" Rows of men lay flat on their stomachs along the irrigation ditch, scooping up the dirty water in their palms. Three or four miles back we could see the cannon-car and the first two trains, opposite the big ranch of El Verjel, with the tireless repair gang hard at it in the hot sun. The provision train had not come up yet....
Little Colonel Servin came by, perched on an immense bay horse, still dapper and fresh after the terrible work of the night.
"I don't know what we shall do yet," he said. "Only the General knows that, and he never tells. But we shall not assault again until the Brigada Zaragosa returns. Benavides has had a hard battle over there at Sacramento—two hundred and fifty of ours killed, they say. And the General has sent for General Robles and General Contreras, who have been attacking from the south, to bring up all their men and join him here.... They say, though, that we are going to deliver a night attack next, so that their artillery won't be effective...." He galloped on.
About midday thin columns of sluggish, dirty smoke began to rise from several points in the town, and toward afternoon a slow, hot wind brought to us the faintly sickening smell of crude oil mingled with scorched human flesh. The Federals were burning piles of the dead....
We walked back to the trains and stormed General Benavides' private car in the Brigada Zaragosa train. The major in charge had them cook us something to eat in the General's kitchen. We ate ravenously, and afterward went over along the line of trees and slept for hours. Late in the afternoon we started once more for the front. Hundreds of soldiers and peons of the neighborhood, ravenously hungry, prowled around the trains, hoping to pick up discarded food, or slops, or anything at all to eat. They were ashamed of themselves, however, and affected a sauntering indolence when we passed. I remember that we sat for a while talking with some soldiers on the top of a box-car, when a boy, criss-crossed with cartridge-belts and lugging a huge rifle, came past beneath, his eyes searching the ground. A stale tortilla, half rotting, crunched into the dirt by many passing feet, caught his attention. He pounced upon it and bit a piece out. Then he looked up and saw us. "As if I were dying of hunger!" he said scornfully and tossed it away with contempt....
Down in the shade of the alamos, across the ditch from San Ramon, the Canadian Captain Treston was bivouacked with his machine gun battery. The guns and their heavy tripods were unloaded from the mules, and all around lay the unlimbered field-pieces, their animals grazing in the rich green fields, the men squatted around their fires or lying stretched out on the bank of the ditch. Treston waved an ashy tortilla he was munching and bawled, "Say, Reed! Please come here and interpret for me! I can't find my interpreters, and if we go into action I'll be in a hell of a fix! You see I don't know the damn language, and when I came down here Villa hired two interpreters to go around with me all the time. And I can't ever find the sons-of-guns; they always go off and leave me in a hole!"
I took part of the proffered delicacy and asked him if he thought there was any chance of going into action.
"I think we'll go in to-night as soon as it's dark," he answered. "Do you want to go along with the machine guns and interpret?" I said I did.
A ragged man near the fire, whom I had never seen before, rose and came across smiling.