Night fell; breathless, silent night, with a sound of frogs along the ditches. Across the front of the town the soldiers lay waiting for the word to attack. Wounded, worn out, nervously broken, they straggled to the front, keyed up to the last notch of desperation. This night they would not be repulsed. They would take the town or die where they stood. And as nine o’clock approached, the hour at which the attack had been set, the tension became dangerous. Nine o’clock came and passed—not a sound or movement. For some reason the order was withheld. Ten o’clock. Suddenly off to the right a volley burst from the town. All along our line awoke the answer, but after a few more volleys the Federal fire altogether ceased. From the town came other, more mysterious sounds. The electric lights went out and in the darkness there was a subtle stir and movement, indefinable. At length the order was given to advance, but as our men crept forward in the dark the front rank suddenly gave a yell, and the truth spread through the ranks and out into the country, in one triumphant shout. Gomez Palacio had been evacuated! With a great babble of voices the army poured into the town. A few scattered shots sounded where our troops caught some of the Federals looting—for the Federal army had gutted the whole town before it left. And then our army began to loot. Their shouts and drunken singing and the sounds of smashing doors reached us out on the plain. Little tongues of flame flickered up where the soldiers were burning some house that had been a fort of Federals. But the looting of the rebels was confined, as it almost always is, to food, and drink, and clothes to cover them. They disturbed no private house. The chiefs of the army winked at this. A specific order was issued by Villa stating that whatever any soldier picked up was his and could not be taken from him by an officer. Now up to this time there was not much of stealing in the army—at least so far as we were concerned. But the morning of the entry into Gomez a curious change had come over the psychology of the soldiers. I woke at our camp beside the ditch to find my horse gone. Bucephalus had been stolen in the night and I never saw him again. During breakfast several troopers dropped in to share our meal—when they had gone we missed a knife and a revolver. The truth was that everybody was looting from everybody else. So I, too, stole what I needed. There was a great gray mule grazing in the field near by, with a rope around his neck. I put my saddle on him and rode down toward the front. He was a noble animal—worth at least four times as much as Bucephalus, as I soon discovered. Everybody I met coveted that mule. One trooper marching along with two rifles hailed me. "_Oija, compañero_, where did you get that mule?" "I found him in a field," said I unwisely. "It is just as I thought," he exclaimed. "That is my mule! Get off and give him to me at once!"