At first Woodson flatly refused to run, sneeringly reminding his friends of the lack of cooperation he could expect from the very men who needed law and order and leadership most. He knew by bitter experience that the captain of a Santa Fe caravan had no real authority and that his orders were looked upon as mere requests, to be obeyed or not, as the mood suited. He was obdurate in his refusal until a split occurred in the other strong party and resulted in a disgraceful fight among its members, which was kept from having disastrous results only by the determined interposition of the more resolute members of his own party. This caused the two smaller factions to abandon their own candidates and throw themselves against Wardell, and resulted in the overwhelming election of the man best suited for the position. His first act after grudgingly accepting the thankless leadership was to ask for a list of the men, wagons, and pack animals, and he so engineered the division of them that each section had as its lieutenant a man whom he could trust and who did not lack in physical courage so much needed to get some kind of order and to keep it. The great train was divided into four divisions, at the present to join so as to march in two columns; but later to spread out and travel in divisional order of four straight columns abreast, far enough apart so that the width of the whole front roughly would equal the length of a column. Next came the arrangement of the watches, the most cordially hated of all caravan duties. In this train of nearly ninety wagons there were nearly one hundred and eighty men physically able to stand a guard, and no one who was able to stand his trick was let off. The captain preferred the regular and generally accepted system of two watches, each of four squads, which put one squad on duty for three hours each alternate night; but there were so many men for this disagreeable task that he allowed himself to be over-ruled and consented to a three watch system, six squads to the watch, which put one watch of nine men and a corporal on duty for two hours every third night. Almost any concession was worth making if it would arouse a little interest and a sense of duty in this very important matter of guarding the camp. The corporal of each squad arranged to shift up one tour each time their squad went on, which would give no one squad the same hours for its successive tours of duty. Nothing could have been fairer than this, but there were objectors in plenty. Each one of the kickers had his own, perfect plan. Some wanted smaller squads with the same number of watches so that each tour of duty would be less; some wanted two watches and smaller squads, to the same end, both of which would have caused endless changing of the guard, endless awakenings all night long, with practically continuous noise and confusion. Captain Woodson, having abandoned the regular and tried system so as to let the men feel a sense of cooperation, flatly