riggled their hips against the
butting force of the stream. It all became very business-like. The
battalion first across, set out to flank the native works; a rapid-fire
gun started to boom from an opposite eminence, and the infantry took to
firing at the emptying trenches. The Tagals were poked out of their
positions, and in a sure leisurely way that held the essence of
attraction.

After all, it was less the actual bits of fighting that cleared into
memories of permanence, than certain subtleties of the campaign: a
particular instant of one swift twilight, as in the plaza at Alphonso;
a certain moment of a furious mid-day, when the sun was a python
pressure, so that the scalp prickled with the congested blood in the
brain, and men lifted their hats an inch or two as they rode,
preserving the shade, but permitting the air to circulate; some
guttural curse from a packer who could not lift his voice in the heat,
nor think, but only curse, and grin in sickly fashion....

There were moments, reminders of which awoke Cairns in a sweat for many
nights afterward: One day when he was badly in need of a fresh mount,
he saw just ahead of the Train--a perfect little sorrel stallion
fastened to the edge of the trail. He dismounted to change saddles. The
Train was straggling along under an occasional fire. Cairns found that
the pony was held by a tough wire, that led into the jungle. Such was
the braiding at the throat, that only a sapper could have handled it.
The correspondent started to follow the wire into the thicket--when
Bedient caught him by the shoulder and half-lifted him from the ground.
There was strength in that slim tanned hand that had nothing to do with
the ordinary force of men. The cook smiled, but disdained explanation.
It all dawned upon Cairns a second later. He would have followed the
wire to the end in the jungle--where the trap of knives would
spring.... The bolo-men need but a moment.... It was only two or three
days later that one of the packers dropped behind the Train to tighten
a cinch. No one had noticed, and Thirteen filed on.

"For Christ's sake--don't!" they heard from behind.

Wheeling, they found that the man had seen the end--as he had called
out in that horrible echoing voice. He was not more than fifty yards
behind the rear packer--and pinned to the trail. A bolo had been
hammered with a stone--through the upper lip and the base of the brain,
two or three inches into the earth.... He had be