e.
"Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. "The other men can't withdraw,
and so you mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out of that!" What made
it more amusing was that, although Wood had, like every one else,
discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of gray shirt, white
riding-breeches, and a cowboy Stetson, with no insignia of rank, not even
straps pinned to his shirt, still the men instantly accepted his
authority. They looked at him on the crest of the hill, waving his stick
persuasively at the grave-like trench at his feet, and then with a shout
scampered back to it.

[Picture: Rough Riders in the trenches]

[Picture: The same spot as it appears to-day. The figure in the picture
is standing in what remains of the trench]

After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep and
nothing to eat, I accepted Crane's offer of a blanket and coffee at his
bivouac near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was not able to walk
fast, and, although for over a mile of the way the trail was under fire,
Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an arm, and kept step with my
stumblings. Whenever I protested and refused their sacrifice and pointed
out the risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings of a naughty
child, and when I lay down in the road and refused to budge unless they
left me, Crane called the attention of Hare to the effect of the setting
sun behind the palm-trees. To the reader all these little things that
one remembers seem very little indeed, but they were vivid at the moment,
and I have always thought of them as stretching over a long extent of
time and territory. Before I revisited San Juan I would have said that
the distance along the road from the point where I left the artillery to
where I joined Wood was three-quarters of a mile. When I paced it later
I found the distance was about seventy-five yards. I do not urge my
stupidity or my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as greatly
confused, but, if only for the sake of the stupid ones, it seems a pity
that the landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued from the jungle, and
a few sign-posts placed upon the hills. It is true that the great
battles of the Civil War and those of the one in Manchuria, where the men
killed and wounded in a day outnumber all those who fought on both sides
at San Juan, make that battle read like a skirmish. But the Spanish War
had its resul