CHAPTER XV
To Thomas Strawbridge the expedition against San Geronimo was invested with a sense of unreality. Every detail of it cast a faint doubt on the credibility of the drummer's impressions—the rabble of peon cavalry, mounted on mules, donkeys, and a few horses; a motley of women—wives, mistresses, and sweethearts of the soldiers—some in carts, some riding donkeys, some on foot. The troops hauled a single three-pound field-gun with its snout in an old canvas bag and its breech wrapped in palm-leaves. Not less unbelievable was the priest, Father Benicio, in his black cassock and priest's round black hat. He was mounted on a mule, and at his pommel hung his crucifix, a little gourd of consecrated oil, and a vial of holy water. With these instruments of grace he would administer extreme unction to the unfortunate of the expedition.
The string of adventurers was sufficiently long so that when Strawbridge looked back from his place in the van the women and soldiers at the end of the column appeared hazy from the dust and shimmered with the heat-waves.
It was a breathless and wilting heat. When Strawbridge crossed the llanos in a motor-car the hot wind had depressed him, but now, without the speed of the automobile, the heat enveloped him with a greasy, pinching sensation. The warmth of his horse's body kept his legs sudsy. He tried to squirm his flesh away from his wet underclothes. Often he would ride five minutes at a time with his eyes shut against the glare of the sun reflected from the sand.
For ten or twelve kilometers the route of the army followed the left bank of the Rio Negro. The rapids set in just below the city of Canalejos, and for upward of a mile they filled the air with a vast watery rumble. But the river was so wide that Strawbridge could see from the shore nothing but a ripple in the broad yellow waters. The thunder of the rapids appeared to arise out of a placid expanse without cause. It was as if the river were in some mysterious travail.
The passage of the army flushed white egrets from along the bank, and once six flamingos arose and winged slowly away, making a crimson line against the sky. Along the sand-bars huge caymans slept in an ecstasy of heat. Their long whitish bellies fitted over stones and the curves in the sand with a kind of disgusting flexibility.
Some time later the line of march veered away from the river and lost itself in the endless, almost imperceptible undulations of the llanos. The monotony of these llanos somehow nibbled away the last shred of reality for Thomas Strawbridge. It seemed to him that everything in the world had ceased to exist except this shimmering furnace of sand.
The drummer rode at a post of honor, at the head of the column beside Coronel Saturnino. Behind him came the fighters, in a gradually thickening dust, until the end of the column traveled in a cloud. The colonel himself moved along impassively, apparently as little affected by the heat as the saddle he sat. He kept looking about as if he recognized landmarks in the endless repetition of the llanos. Presently he pointed through the glare and said:
"There is 'El Limon,' Señor Strawbridge."