ge birds, with nothing to see that was familiar except sky,
mountain, running water, and sand; nothing home-like to hear but the
twitter of swallows and the whistle of quail.

That path was no road for a hard-drinking man to travel and, now and
then, Grafton shrank back, with a startled laugh, from the hideous
things crawling across the road and rustling into the cactus--spiders
with snail-houses over them; lizards with green bodies and yellow legs,
and green legs and yellow bodies; hairy tarantulas, scorpions, and
hideous mottled land-crabs, standing three inches from the sand, and
watching him with hideous little eyes as they shuffled sidewise into the
bushes. Moreover, he was following the trail of an army by the
uncheerful signs in its wake--the _debris_ of the last night's
camp--empty cans, bits of hardtack, crackers, bad odours, and, by and
by, odds and ends that the soldiers discarded as the sun got warm and
their packs heavy--drawers, undershirts, coats, blankets, knapsacks, an
occasional gauntlet or legging, bits of fat bacon, canned meats,
hardtack--and a swarm of buzzards in the path, in the trees, and
wheeling in the air--and smiling Cubans picking up everything they could
eat or wear.

An hour later, he met a soldier, who told him there had been a fight.
Still, an hour later, rumours came thick, but so conflicting and wild
that Grafton began to hope there had been no fight at all. Proof met
him, then, in the road--a white man, on foot, with his arm in a bloody
sling. Then, on a litter, a negro trooper with a shattered leg; then
another with a bullet through his throat; and another wounded man, and
another. On horseback rode a Sergeant with a bandage around his
brow--Grafton could see him smiling broadly fifty yards ahead--and the
furrow of a Mauser bullet across his temple, and just under his skin.

"Still nutty," said Grafton to himself.

Further on was a camp of insurgents--little, thin, brown fellows,
ragged, dirty, shoeless--each with a sugar-loaf straw hat, a Remington
rifle of the pattern of 1882, or a brand new Krag-Jorgensen donated by
Uncle Sam, and the inevitable and ever ready machete swinging in a case
of embossed leather on the left hip. Very young they were, and very old;
and wiry, quick-eyed, intelligent, for the most part and, in
countenance, vivacious and rather gentle. There was a little creek next,
and, climbing the bank of the other side, Grafton stopped short, with a
start, in the r