Before dawn again--everything in war begins at dawn--and the thickets
around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue
blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no
fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see,
or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to
try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous
enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll stripped of
bushes, four 3.2 guns unlimbered and thrown into position against that
fort and a certain little red-roofed town to the left of it. This was
Caney.
Eastward still, three miles across an uneven expanse of green, jungle
and jungle-road alive with men, bivouacing fearlessly around and under
four more 3.2 guns planted on another high-stripped knoll--El Poso--and
trained on a little pagoda-like block-house, which sat like a Christmas
toy on top of a green little, steep little hill from the base of which
curved an orchard-like valley back to sweeping curve of the jungle. This
was San Juan.
Nature loves sudden effects in the tropics. While Chaffee fretted in
valley-shadows around Caney and Lawton strode like a yellow lion past
the guns on the hill and, eastward, gunner on the other hill at El Poso
and soldier in the jungle below listened westward, a red light ran like
a flame over the east, the tops of the mountains shot suddenly upward
and it was day--flashing day, with dripping dew and birds singing and a
freshness of light and air that gave way suddenly when the sun quickly
pushed an arc of fire over the green shoulder of a hill and smote the
soldiers over and under the low trees like rays from an open furnace.
It smote Reynolds as he sat by the creek under the guns before San Juan,
idly watching water bubble into three canteens, and it opened his lips
for an oath that he was too lazy to speak; it smote Abe Long cooking
coffee on the bank some ten yards away, and made him raise from the fire
and draw first one long forearm and then the other across his
heat-wrinkled brow; but, unheeded, it smote Crittenden--who stood near,
leaning against a palm-tree--full in his uplifted face. Perhaps that was
the last sunrise on earth for him. He was watching it in Cuba, but his
spirit was hovering around home. He could feel the air from the woods in
front of Canewood; could hear the darkies going to work and Aunt Keziah
singing in the kitchen. He could see his mother's shutter open, could
see her a moment later, smiling at him from her door. And Judith--where
was she, and what was she doing? Could she be thinking of him? The sound
of his own name coming down through the hot air made him start, and,
looking up toward the Rough Riders, who were gathered about a little
stuccoed farm-house just behind the guns on the hill, he saw Blackford
waving at him. At the same moment hoofs beat the dirt-road behind
him--familiar hoof-beats--and he turned to see Basil and Raincrow--for
Crittenden's Colonel was sick with fever and Basil had Raincrow now--on
their way with a message to Chaffee at Caney. Crittenden saluted
gravely, as did Basil, though the boy turned in his saddle, and with an
affectionate smile waved back at him.