me thought kept
beating down on their dull brains like a hammer on an anvil.

They ascended the steep hill, their heads bowed, pensive, their horses
walking at a slow gait. Stubbornly restless, Anastasio made the same
observation to other groups; the soldiers laughed at his candor. If a
man has a rifle in his hands and a beltful of cartridges, surely he
should use them. That means fighting. Against whom? For whom? That is
scarcely a matter of importance.

The endless wavering column of dust moved up the trail, a swirling ant
heap of broad straw sombreros, dirty khaki, faded blankets, and black
horses....

Not a man but was dying of thirst; no pool or stream or well anywhere
along the road. A wave of dust rose from the white, wild sides of a
small canyon, swayed mistily on the hoary crest of huizache trees and
the greenish stumps of cactus. Like a jest, the flowers in the cactus
opened out, fresh, solid, aflame, some thorny, others diaphanous.

At noon they reached a hut, clinging to the precipitous sierra, then
three more huts strewn over the margin of a river of burnt sand.
Everything was silent, desolate. As soon as they saw men on horseback,
the people in the huts scurried into the hills to hide. Demetrio grew
indignant.

"Bring me anyone you find hiding or running away," he commanded in a
loud voice.

"What? What did you say?" Valderrama cried in surprise. "The men of the
sierra? Those brave men who've not yet done what those chickens down in
Aguascalientes and Zacatecas have done all the time? Our own brothers,
who weather storms, who cling to the rocks like moss itself? I protest,
sir; I protest!"

He spurred his miserable horse forward and caught up with the General.

"The mountaineers," he said solemnly and emphatically, "are flesh of
our flesh, bone of our bone. Os ex osibus meis et caro de carne mea.
Mountaineers are made from the same timber we're made of! Of the same
sound timber from which heroes ..."

With a confidence as sudden as it was courageous, he hit the General
across the chest. The General smiled benevolently.

Valderrama, the tramp, the crazy maker of verses, did he ever know what
he said?

When the soldiers reached a small ranch, despairingly, they searched
the empty huts and small houses without finding a single stale
tortilla, a solitary rotten pepper, or one pinch of salt with which to
flavor the horrible taste of dry meat. The owners of the huts, their
peaceful brethren, were