pon me.

"If we get into trouble with the General for this," they shouted, "it
will be your fault. You told us Ernst was in the town with a thousand
men."

I shouted back that no one regretted the fact that he was not more keenly
than I did myself.

Titus and Breckenridge each glanced at a new, full-dress sword.

"We might as well go in," they shouted, "and take it anyway!" I decided
that Titus and Breckenridge were wasted in the Commissariat Department.

The three correspondents looked more comfortable.

"If you officers go in," they cried, "the General can't blame us," and
they dug their spurs into the ponies.

"Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. "That's all very well for
you chaps, but what protects me if the Admiralty finds out I have led a
charge on a Spanish garrison?"

But Paget's pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the
Admiralty. As successfully Paget might have tried to pull back a
row-boat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, Millard, in order that
Jimmy might be the first to reach Ponce with despatches, had mounted him
on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he already was far in the lead.
His sporting instincts, nursed in the pool-rooms of the Tenderloin and at
Guttenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good. It never would do to
have a newsboy tell in New York that he had beaten the correspondents of
the papers he sold in the streets; nor to permit commissioned officers to
take the dust of one who never before had ridden on anything but a cable
car. So we all raced forward and, bunched together, swept into the main
street of Coamo. It was gratefully empty. There were no American
soldiers, but, then, neither were there any Spanish soldiers. Across the
street stretched more rifle-pits and barricades of iron pipes, but in
sight there was neither friend nor foe. On the stones of the deserted
street the galloping hoofs sounded like the advance of a whole regiment
of cavalry. Their clatter gave us a most comfortable feeling. We almost
could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the Rough Riders
themselves and fleeing before us.

And then, the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush. We thought
hastily of sunken mines, of soldiers crouching behind the barriers,
behind the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering us from the
latticed balconies overhead. Until at last, when the silence had become
alert and menacing, a lonely man dashed into the m