In a word, the position consisted essentially of a tongue of land crossed near its elevated tip by the El Paso highway, with the Sacramento River and the Arroyo Seco on its edges, a series of fortifications round its tip, and an answering fortification beyond the river on a hill. It seemed to bar the way of the Americans completely. The Mexicans felt sure that it did so, and on the evening of February 27, jubilant and boastful, they even talked of recovering New Mexico. Anyhow these presumptuous and contemptible Yankees were to be cut up, and the booty would include a caravan worth a million. Yet influential Chihuahuans had a financial interest in that caravan,[15.13] and one may be sure they were not asleep.[15.14] [THE BATTLE OF SACRAMENTO] Next morning the Americans awoke early. Already the horses had been carefully inured to explosions of powder. Now swords were filed, rifles loaded afresh, straps tested, and even the linch-pins of the wagons inspected; and by daybreak the command set out. To make it compact, ready for attack from any quarter and perplexing to hostile observers, the wagons were formed in four well-separated columns of about one hundred each; the artillery and most of the troops marched between these columns, and the companies of Reid, Parsons and Hudson--regarded as proper cavalry and not simply mounted men--rode in front as advance guard and screen; and in this formation, with banners and guidons flaunting to impress the enemy, it rolled forward through a valley about four miles wide, bounded on each hand by a massive, barren cordillera,[15.15] until at about half-past one the troops, coming in sight of the Mexican works, noticed a quick, sharp flash there: the Mexican cavalry drawing their sabres.[15.17]