all appearance. Old jests already worn to shreds before we left the transport at Guanica were once more revived, and capered with new life. Good-natured irony flew from lip to lip in fantastic speculation as to probable promotions in case all the officers should be killed at the first go-off. The horses were told, individually and with great tenderness, just what every man expected of them in the approaching crisis. And no comrade gave another any instructions regarding mother or the girl at home, if he were to bite the dust. For my own part, I found my mind so busy in going over the cadences of a waltz I had danced with Somebody months before that I could not bring myself to consider anything else but the beauty of its refrain — or was it Her eyes? — try as I might. And, besides, it is not profitable to shake hands with the devil until you are within reach of his claw.
The wagon-road leading from San German, over which we were now marching, follows the valley of the Rio Grande, whose flats, varying in width from a few hundred
