"Water!" we shouted, joyously, galloping down the hill. The coach-horses were already at the spring with Patricio. Leaping from their saddles, the Tropa threw themselves on their bellies. Men and horses indiscriminately thrust in their heads, and drank and drank.... It was the most glorious sensation I have ever felt. "Who has a cigarro?" cried somebody. For a few blessed minutes we lay on our backs smoking. The sound of music—gay music—made me sit up. And there, across my vision, moved the strangest procession in the world. First came a ragged peon carrying the flowering branch of some tree. Behind him, another bore upon his head a little box that looked like a coffin, painted in broad strips of blue, pink and silver. There followed four men, carrying a sort of canopy made of gay-colored bunting. A woman walked beneath it, though the canopy hid her down to the waist; but on top lay the body of a little girl, with bare feet and little brown hands crossed on her breast. There was a wreath of paper flowers in her hair, and her whole body was heaped with them. A harpist brought up the rear, playing a popular waltz called "_Recuerdos de Durango_." The funeral procession moved slowly and gaily along, passing the _ribota_ court, where the players never ceased their handball game, to the little Campo Santo. "Bah!" spat Julian Reyes furiously. "That is a blasphemy to the dead!" In the late sunshine the desert was a glowing thing. We rode in a silent, enchanted land, that seemed some kingdom under the sea. All around were great cactuses colored red, blue, purple, yellow, as coral is on the ocean bed. Behind us, to the west, the coach rolled along in a glory of dust like Elijah’s chariot.... Eastward, under a sky already darkening to stars, were the rumpled mountains behind which lay La Cadena, the advance post of the Maderista army. It was a land to love—this Mexico—a land to fight for. The ballad-singers suddenly began the interminable song of "The Bull-Fight," in which the Federal chiefs are the bulls, and the Maderista generals the _torreros_; and as I looked at the gay, lovable, humble _hombres_ who had given so much of their lives and of their comfort to the brave fight, I couldn’t help but think of the little speech Villa made to the foreigners who left Chihuahua in the first refugee train: "This is the latest news for you to take to your people. There shall be no more palaces in Mexico. The _tortillas_ of the poor are better than the bread of the rich. Come!..."