XI
Before dawn again—everything in war begins at dawn—and the thickets around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see, or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll stripped of bushes, four 3.2 guns unlimbered and thrown into position against that fort and a certain little red-roofed town to the left of it. This was Caney.
Eastward still, three miles across an uneven expanse of green, jungle and jungle-road alive with men, bivouacing fearlessly around and under four more 3.2 guns planted on another high-stripped knoll—El Poso—and trained on a little pagoda-like block-house, which sat like a Christmas toy on top of a green little, steep little hill from the base of which curved an orchard-like valley back to sweeping curve of the jungle. This was San Juan.
Nature loves sudden effects in the tropics. While Chaffee fretted in valley-shadows around Caney and Lawton strode like a yellow lion past the guns on the hill and, eastward, gunner on the other hill at El Poso and soldier in the jungle below listened westward, a red light ran like a flame over the east, the tops of the mountains shot suddenly upward and it was day—flashing day, with dripping dew and birds singing and a freshness of light and air that gave way suddenly when the sun quickly pushed an arc of fire over the green shoulder of a hill and smote the soldiers over and under the low trees like rays from an open furnace.
It smote Reynolds as he sat by the creek under the guns before San Juan, idly watching water bubble into three canteens, and it opened his lips for an oath that he was too lazy to speak; it smote Abe Long cooking coffee on the bank some ten yards away, and made him raise from the fire and draw first one long forearm and then the other across his heat-wrinkled brow; but, unheeded, it smote Crittenden—who stood near, leaning against a palm-tree—full in his uplifted face. Perhaps that was the last sunrise on earth for him. He was watching it in Cuba, but his spirit was hovering around home. He could feel the air from the woods in front of Canewood; could hear the darkies going to work and Aunt Keziah singing in the kitchen. He could see his mother's shutter open, could see her a moment later, smiling at him from her door. And Judith—where was she, and what was she doing? Could she be thinking of him? The sound of his own name coming down through the hot air made him start, and, looking up toward the Rough Riders, who were gathered about a little stuccoed farm-house just behind the guns on the hill, he saw Blackford waving at him. At the same moment hoofs beat the dirt-road behind him—familiar hoof-beats—and he turned to see Basil and Raincrow—for Crittenden's Colonel was sick with fever and Basil had Raincrow now—on their way with a message to Chaffee at Caney. Crittenden saluted gravely, as did Basil, though the boy turned in his saddle, and with an affectionate smile waved back at him.
Crittenden's lips moved.
"God bless him."