But after all I waded the river one day and went up into the town. Luckily, I did not meet General Orozco. No one seemed to object to my entrance. All the sentries I saw were taking a siesta on the shady side of adobe walls. But almost immediately I encountered a courteous officer named Hernandez, to whom I explained that I wished to see General Mercado. Without inquiring as to my identity, he scowled, folded his arms, and burst out: "I am General Orozco’s chief of staff, and I will not take you to see General Mercado!" I said nothing. In a few minutes he explained: "General Orozco hates General Mercado! He does not deign to go to General Mercado’s cuartel, and General Mercado does not dare to come to General Orozco’s cuartel! He is a coward. He ran away from Tierra Blanca, and then he ran away from Chihuahua!" "What other Generals don’t you like?" I asked. He caught himself and slanted an angry look at me, and then grinned: "_Quien sabe....?_" I saw General Mercado, a fat, pathetic, worried, undecided little man, who blubbered and blustered a long tale about how the United States army had come across the river and helped Villa to win the battle of Tierra Blanca. The white, dusty streets of the town, piled high with filth and fodder, the ancient windowless church with its three enormous Spanish bells hanging on a rack outside and a cloud of blue incense crawling out of the black doorway, where the women camp followers of the army prayed for victory day and night, lay in hot, breathless sun. Five times had Ojinaga been lost and taken. Hardly a house that had a roof, and all the walls gaped with cannon-shot. In these bare, gutted rooms lived the soldiers, their women, their horses, their chickens and pigs, raided from the surrounding country. Guns were stacked in the corners, saddles piled in the dust. The soldiers were in rags; scarcely one possessed a complete uniform. They squatted around little fires in their doorways, boiling corn-husks and dried meat. They were almost starving. Along the main street passed an unbroken procession of sick, exhausted, starving people, driven from the interior by fear of the approaching rebels, a journey of eight days over the most terrible desert in the world. They were stopped by a hundred soldiers along the street, and robbed of every possession that took the Federals’ fancy. Then they passed on to the river, and on the American side they had to run the gantlet of the United States customs and immigration officials and the Army Border Patrol, who searched them for arms. Hundreds of refugees poured across the river, some on horseback driving cattle before them, some in wagons, and others on foot. The inspectors were not very gentle. "Come down off that wagon!" one would shout to a Mexican woman with a bundle in her arm. "But, señor, for what reason?..." she would begin. "Come down there or I’ll pull you down!" he would yell.