He didn’t answer, but came haltingly down the steps of the car, while a roar of laughter went up from the soldiers. Coming up to me he put a hand over my shoulder and gave me a little tap on the back. "I’m glad to see you, _compañero_," he said.... Across the desert the wounded had begun to straggle in from the battle of Tlahualilo to the hospital train, which lay far up near the front of the line of trains. On the flat barren plain, as far as I could see, there were only three living things in sight: a limping, hatless man, with his head tied up in a bloody cloth; another staggering beside his staggering horse; and a mule mounted by two bandaged figures far behind them. And in the still hot night we could hear from our car groans and screams.... Late Sunday morning we were again on "El Niño" at the head of the repair train, moving slowly down the track abreast of the army. "El Chavalito," another cannon mounted on a flat-car, was coupled behind, then came two armored cars, and the work-cars. This time there were no women. The army wore a different air, winding along in two immense serpents each side of us—there was little laughter or shouting. We were close now, only eighteen miles from Gomez Palacio, and no one knew what the Federals planned to do. It seemed incredible that they would let us get so close without making one stand. Immediately south of Bermejillo we entered a new land. To the desert succeeded fields bordered with irrigation ditches, along which grew immense green alamos, towering pillars of freshness after the baked desolation we had just passed through. Here were cotton-fields, the white tufts unpicked and rotting on their stalks; corn-fields with sparse green blades just showing. Along the big ditches flowed swift, deep water in the shade. Birds sang, and the barren western mountains marched steadily nearer as we went south. It was summer—hot, moist summer, such as we have at home. A deserted cotton-gin lay on our left, hundreds of white bales tumbled in the sun, and dazzling heaps of cotton-seed left just as the workmen had piled it months before....