I could not help thinking of those little brown-skinned, half-naked natives, with their bags of cartridges and their rusty rifles, gliding from tree to tree, through the thick undergrowth, and never giving the regulars a moment's rest, day or night. At night-time too! I shuddered to think of it, and began to have a most wholesome respect for those tattered ragamuffins of his.
'How many have you?' I asked him.
'I don't know,' he said. 'We have something like five thousand rifles, but whenever there is a spare rifle there are hundreds to claim it. Here come some who would be soldiers—that is, riflemen; they are taking food to the front.'
A long train of heavily laden mules came past us, ambling wearily down towards the stream, each mule led by a little native. As each passed he doffed his hat to Wilson, who stopped one of them and made him show me the machete he carried in his waistband—a long curved knife something like a bill-hook, only heavier, and not so curved and the blade broad at the end. I felt the edge; it was very keen.
'They can cut an arm clean through at a stroke,' he said; 'these machetes are better than rifles—at night,' and I shuddered again as the little man, with a grin of pride on his face, ran after his mule. It wasn't the kind of warfare I'd been brought up to. We watched them all splashing across the ford, forcing their mules through it as they tried to stop and drink. Before the last mule had entered the forest, the head of another train began to emerge from it.
'Those aren't mules,' I sang out, as they came towards us.
'They're horses,' he said, and walked down towards them.
There were thirty or more thin, hungry-looking beasts, with military saddles and equipment, each led by a little native, whose eyes sparkled with pleasure as he saluted Wilson.
'That's good news,' he said, after speaking to one of them; 'we cut off a whole squadron of Zorilla's cavalry early this morning. These are some of the horses. Look at the boots the men are wearing!'
I hadn't noticed them before, but now I couldn't help smiling, for the little half-naked men were shambling along with big cavalry boots on their feet, the soft leather 'uppers' half-way up to their knees.