At last an opening was effected. Straddling the gaping ruts, with wheels twisted to the full limit of the springs, Waldon drove the car out of the mess. Leaving behind a great babel of unintelligible tongues, we went on our way toward Placetas. Sliding down embankments, crossing pools, digging trenches to obtain a footing for the wheels in the roughest ravines, we reached the bed of a dried river, whose hard bottom held only occasional pools of water made by the recent rains. We followed this to a hill, from whose brow a level path led to Placetas. Here was a post of the United States Army and the entire force, commissioned and enlisted, turned out to welcome us and get what home news we had to offer. For seventeen months these regulars had been in the little interior town and were glad to talk with Americans. They told us about themselves and about their duties. They told us how they had put down insurrections without ever firing a cartridge. The Cuban is not a coward. Naturally he is a fighter, but he knows there is an awful wallop in the sinewy fist of Uncle Sam. The soldier boys directed us to a trail, among four, at the other edge of town. We took the wrong one. After many miles of driving over the damp lowlands, with all sense of direction lost in the dark, sunless day, we learned from a passing farmer that we were going straight backward toward Santa Clara. Also, we found that we were on the trail which we should have taken before we had been sent up among the hills around Camajuani. Retracing six or seven miles, we found an old, unused trail through the grass and mud, which looked like a short cut in the right direction. There was no variety and no town. We just plugged along in the mud, sweated under the hard work of crossing washouts, or worried through the tall, damp grass. We knew by our watches that the little daylight was about to depart, and, so, when we found a used trail, we took to it, although we had no idea where it went. At least, the trail meant a country store or a farmhouse. Now it was raining again and we did our best to hurry toward a hut, just visible in the waning light. Almost in front of it, the front tire exploded, while warping the car over the jagged rocks of a washout. As we replaced it the interpreter negotiated with the storekeeper for shelter and food. It proved that the whole family was sick, and that we could not come in. However, we were informed that a tobacco grower lived a mile farther on. We took the tobacco grower for granted, drove through his fences and across his fields, and lost not one minute of time making the last of our twenty-seven miles for the day. When we got to his rather pretentious hut, which had two rooms and several lesser buildings surrounding it, we told Rogelio to inform him that he was our host, was very glad to see us, and that we could have everything there was in the place to eat. We got it.