"It is yours," said I, unstrapping it and offering it to him. He looked at the watch, then at me, slowly brightening and glowing with surprised joy. Into his outstretched hand I placed it. Reverently, carefully, he adjusted the thing to his hairy wrist. Then he rose, beaming down upon me. The revolvers fell unnoticed to the floor. Lieutenant Antonio Montoya threw his arms around me. "Ah, _compadre_!" he cried emotionally. The next day I met him at Valiente Adiana’s store in the town. We sat amicably in the back room drinking native _aguardiente_, while Lieutenant Montoya, my best friend in the entire Constitutionalist army, told me of the hardships and perils of the campaign. For three weeks now Maclovio Herrera’s brigade had lain at Jimenez under arms, waiting the emergency call for the advance on Torreon. "This morning," said Antonio, "the Constitutionalist spies intercepted a telegram from the Federal commander in Zacatecas City to General Velasco in Torreon. He said that upon mature judgment he had decided that Zacatecas was an easier place to attack than to defend. Therefore he reported that his plan of campaign was this. Upon the approach of the Constitutionalist forces he intended to evacuate the city and then take it again." "Antonio," I said, "I am going a long journey across the desert to-morrow. I am going to drive to Magistral. I need a _mozo_. I will pay three dollars a week." "_’Sta bueno!_" cried Lieutenant Montoya. "Whatever you wish, so that I can go with my _amigo_!" "But you are on active service," said I. "How can you leave your regiment?" "Oh, that’s all right," answered Antonio. "I won’t say anything about it to my colonel. They don’t need me. Why, they’ve got five thousand other men here." *CHAPTER IV* *SYMBOLS OF MEXICO* In the early dawn, when yet the low gray houses and the dusty trees were stiff with cold, we laid a bull-whip on the backs of our two mules and rattled down the uneven streets of Jimenez and out into the open country. A few soldiers, wrapped to the eyes in their serapes, dozed beside their lanterns. There was a drunken officer sleeping in the gutter. We drove an ancient buggy, whose broken pole was mended with wire. The harness was made of bits of old iron, rawhide and rope. Antonio and I sat side by side upon the seat, and at our feet dozed a dark, serious-minded youth named Primitivo Aguilar. Primitivo had been hired to open and shut gates, to tie up the harness when it broke, and to keep watch over wagon and mules at night, because bandits were reported to infest the roads.