This is not an exaggerated picture. A man could lie hidden in this brush and watch the country on every side of him, and see each of the few living objects which might pass over it in a day, as easily as he could note the approach of a three-masted schooner at sea. And even though troops came directly towards him, he had but to lie flat in the brush within twenty feet of them, and they would not know it. It would be as easy to catch Jack the Ripper with a Lord-Mayor’s procession as Garza with a detachment of cavalry, unless they stumbled upon him by luck, or unless he had with him so many men that their trail could be followed at a gallop. As a matter of fact and history, the Garza movement was broken up in the first three weeks of its inception by the cavalry and the Texas Rangers and the deputy sheriffs, who rode after the large bodies of men and scattered them. After that it was merely a chase after little bands of from three to a dozen men, who travelled by night and slept by day in their race towards the river, or, when met there by the Mexican soldiers, in their race back again. The fact that every inhabitant of the ranches and every Mexican the troops met was a secret sympathizer with Garza was another and most important difficulty in the way of his pursuers. And it was trying to know that the barking of the dogs of a ranch was not yet out of ear-shot before a vaquero was scuttling off through the chaparral to tell the hiding revolutionists that the troops were on their way, and which way they were coming. And so, while it is no credit to soldiers to do their duty, it is creditable to them when they do their duty knowing that it is futile, and that some one has blundered. If a fire company in New York City were ordered out on a false alarm every day for three months, knowing that it was not a fire to which they were going, but that some one had wanted a messenger-boy, and rung up an engine by mistake, the alertness and fidelity of those firemen would be most severely tested. That is why I admired, and why the readers in the East should admire, the discipline and the faithfulness with which the cavalry on the border of Texas did their duty the last time Trumpeter Tyler sounded “Boots and Saddles,” and went forth as carefully equipped, and as eager and hopeful that _this_ time meant fighting, as they did the first.