"Ah! it is a life for us _viejas_," said the girl. "_Adio_, but we follow our men out in the campaign, and then do not know from hour to hour whether they live or die. I remember well when Filadelfo called to me one morning in the little morning before it was light—we lived in Pachuca—and said: ’Come! we are going out to fight because the good Pancho Madero has been murdered this day!’ We had only been loving each other eight months, too, and the first baby was not born.... We had all believed that peace was in Mexico for good. Filadelfo saddled the burro, and we rode out through the streets just as light was coming, and into the fields where the farmers were not yet at work. And I said: ’Why must I come?’ And he answered: ’Shall I starve, then? Who shall make my _tortillas_ for me but my woman?’ It took us three months to get north, and I was sick and the baby was born in a desert just like this place, and died there because we could not get water. That was when Villa was going north after he had taken Torreon." The old woman broke in: "Yes, and all that is true. When we go so far and suffer so much for our men, we are cruelly treated by the stupid animals of Generals. I am from San Luis Potosi, and my man was in the artillery of the Federacion when Mercado came north. All the way to Chihuahua we traveled, the old fool of a Mercado grumbling about transporting the _viejas_. And then he ordered his army to go north and attack Villa in Juarez, and he forbade the women to go. Is that the way you are going to do, _desgraciado_? I said to myself. And when he evacuated Chihuahua and ran away with my man to Ojinaga, I just stayed right in Chihuahua and got a man in the Maderista army when it came in. A nice handsome young fellow, too,—much better than Juan. I’m not a woman to stand being put upon." "How much are the _tortillas_ and coffee?" I asked. They looked at each other, startled. Evidently they had thought me one of the penniless soldiers crowded on the train. "What you would like," said the young woman faintly. I gave them a peso. The old woman exploded in a torrent of prayer. "God, his sainted Mother, the Blessed Niño and Our Lady of Guadelupe have sent this stranger to us tonight! Here we had not a centavo to buy coffee and flour with...." I suddenly noticed that the light of our fire had paled, and looked up in amazement to find it was dawn. Just then a man came running along the train from up front, shouting something unintelligible, while laughter and shouts burst out in his wake. The sleepers raised their curious heads and wanted to know what was the matter. In a moment our inanimate car was alive. The man passed, still yelling something about "_padre_," his face exultant with some tremendous joke. "What is it?" I asked. "Oh!" cried the old woman. "His woman on the car ahead has just had a baby!"