Across this desert came slowly Trumpeter Tyler, of Troop G, Third Cavalry, mounted on the white horse which only trumpeters affect, and as white as the horse itself from the dust of the trail. He did not look like the soldiers I had seen at San Antonio. His blue shirt was wide open at the breast, his riding-breeches were bare at the knee, and the cactus and chaparral had torn his blouse into rags and ribbons. He pushed his wide-brimmed hat back from his forehead and breathed heavily with the heat. Captain Hardie’s camp, he panted, lay twenty-five miles to the west. He had come from there to see if the field tents and extra rations were ever going to arrive from the post, and as he had left, the captain had departed also with a detachment in search of Garza on a fresh trail. “And he means to follow it,” said Trumpeter Tyler, “if it takes him into Mexico.” So it was doubtful whether the visitor from the East would see the troop commander for several days; but if he nevertheless wished to push on to the camp, Trumpeter Tyler would be glad to show him the way. Not only would he show him the way, but he would look over his kit for him, and select such things as the visitor would need in the brush. Not such things as the visitor might want, but such things as the visitor would need. For in the brush necessities become luxuries, and luxuries are relics of an effete past and of places where tradition tells of pure water and changes of raiment, and, some say, even beds. Neither Trumpeter Tyler, nor Captain Francis H. Hardie, nor any of the officers or men of the eight troops of cavalry on field service in south-west Texas had seen such things for three long months of heat by day and cold by night, besides a blizzard of sleet and rain, that kept them trembling with cold for a fortnight. And it was for this reason that the visitor from the East chose to see the United States troops as they were in the field, and to tell about the way they performed their duty there, rather than as he found them at the posts, where there is at least a canteen and papers not more than a week old. [Illustration: TRUMPETER TYLER] Trumpeter Tyler ran his hand haughtily through what I considered a very sensibly-chosen assortment of indispensable things, and selected a handful which he placed on one side. “You think I had better not take those?” I suggested. “That’s all you can take,” said the trooper, mercilessly. “You must think of the horse.”