Directly east lay the Puerta, breaking the tremendous mountain range that blotted out half the sky and extended north and south beyond vision, wrinkled like a giant’s bed-clothes. The desert tilted up to meet the gap, and beyond was nothing but the fierce blue of stainless Mexican sky. From the Puerta you could see fifty miles across the vast arid plain that the Spaniards named _Llano de los Gigantes_, where the little mountains lie tumbled about; and four leagues away the low gray houses of Mapimi. There lay the enemy; twelve hundred _colorados_, or Federal irregulars, under the infamous Colonel Argumendo. The _colorados_ are the bandits that made Orozco’s revolution. They were so called because their flag was red, and because their hands were red with slaughter, too. They swept through Northern Mexico, burning, pillaging and robbing the poor. In Chihuahua, they cut the soles from the feet of one poor devil, and drove him a mile across the desert before he died. And I have seen a city of four thousand souls reduced to _five_ after a visit by the _colorados_. When Villa took Torreon, there was no mercy for the _colorados_; they are always shot. The first day we reached La Cadena, twelve of them rode up to reconnoiter. Twenty-five of the Tropa were on guard at the Fuerta. They captured one _colorado_. They made him get off his horse, and took away his rifle, clothes and shoes. THen they made him run naked through a hundred yards of chaparral and cactus, shooting at him. Juan Sanchez finally dropped him, screaming, and thereby won the rifle, which he brought back as a present to me. The _colorado_ they left to the great Mexican buzzards, which flap lazily above the desert all day long. When all this happened, my _compadre_, Captain Longinos Güereca, and Trooper Juan Vallejo, and I, had borrowed the Colonel’s coach for a trip to the dusty little rancho of Bruquilla,—Longinos’ home. It lay four desert leagues to the north, where a spring burst miraculously out of a little white hill. Old Güereca was a white-haired peon in sandals. He had been born a slave on one of the great haciendas; but years of toil, too appalling to realize, had made him that rare being in Mexico, the independent owner of a small property. He had ten children,—soft, dark-skinned girls, and sons that looked like New England farmhands,—and a daughter in the grave. The Güerecas were proud, ambitious, warm-hearted folk. Longinos said: "This is my dearly loved friend, Juan Reed, and my brother." And the old man and his wife put both their arms around me and patted me on the back, in the affectionate way Mexicans embrace. "My family owes nothing to the Revolucion," said ’Gino, proudly. "Others have taken money and horses and wagons. The _jefes_ of the army have become rich from the property of the great haciendas. The Güerecas have given all to the Maderistas, and have taken nothing but my rank...."