Behind the tent, picketed in rows by short ropes, were the horses and mules. And lined up to the right of the tent were twenty big, long-bodied Studebaker wagons, each with four barrels of water. Two more wagons at the other side of the tent were piled high with boxes and bags of provisions. Truxton and Conniston unsaddled swiftly, and after staking out their horses, Conniston throwing his roll of bedding down behind the tent, they walked around to the front. Already most of the men were up, rolling blankets or hurrying to the rude tables. Several of them had gone to the aid of the cooks, and now were hurrying up and down between the parallel boards, setting out immense black pots of coffee, great lumps of butter, big pans of mush, beans, stewed "jerky," and potatoes boiled in their jackets. The men who had rolled out of their beds fully dressed, save for shoes, formed in a long line near the tent door and moved swiftly along the tables, taking up knives, forks, plates, and cups as they went, helping themselves generously to each different dish as they came to it. Many stopped at the farther ends of the boards, standing and eating from them. Many more took their plates and cups of coffee away from the tables and squatted down to eat, placing their dishes upon the sand. There was remarkably little confusion, no time lost, as the two hundred men helped themselves to their breakfast. They did not appear to have seen Truxton; they glanced swiftly at Conniston and seemed to forget his presence in their hunger. Never had Conniston seen a crowd of men like these. There were Americans there, and from the broken bits of conversation which floated to him he knew that they hailed from east, west, north, and south. There were Hungarians, Slavonians, Swedes--heavy, stolid, slow-moving men whose knowledge of the English language rose and set in "damn" and "hell." There were Chinamen and Japs--a dozen of the slant-eyed, yellow-faced Orientals--the Chinamen all big, gaunt men with their queues coiled about their heads. There were Italians, the lower class known to the West as "Dagoes." And almost to the last man of them they were the hardest-faced men he had ever seen. There was a big, loose-limbed giant of an Englishman who walked like a sailor, who carried a great white scar across his cheek and upper lip, and who wore a long unscabbarded knife swinging from his belt. There was a wiry little Frenchman who showed a deep scar at the base of his throat, from which his shirt was rolled back, and who snarled like a cat when another man accidentally trod upon his foot. Conniston saw a dozen faces scarred as though by knife-cuts; twisted, evil faces; dark, scowling faces; faces lined by unbridled passions; brutal, heavy-jawed faces.