For an instant by the lighted end of a cigar.
Greenway was shot through this shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt
was so close to one bullet, when it struck a tree, that it filled his
eyes and ears with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant
Thomas were both wounded within a few feet of Colonel Wood, and his
color-sergeant, Wright, who followed close at his heels, was clipped
three times in the head and neck, and four bullets passed through the
folds of the flag he carried. One trooper, Rowland, of Deming, was
shot through the lower ribs; he was ordered by Roosevelt to fall back
to the dressing station, but there Church told him there was nothing
he could do for him then, and directed him to sit down until he could
be taken to the hospital at Siboney. Rowland sat still for a short
time, and then remarked restlessly, "I don't seem to be doing much
good here," and picking up his carbine, returned to the firing-line.
There Roosevelt found him.
"I thought I ordered you to the rear," he demanded.
"Yes, sir, you did," Rowland said, "but there didn't seem to be much
doing back there."
After the fight he was sent to Siboney with the rest of the wounded,
but two days later he appeared in camp. He had marched from Siboney,
a distance of six miles, and uphill all the way, carrying his
carbine, canteen, and cartridge-belt.
"I thought you were in hospital," Wood said. "I was," Rowland
answered sheepishly, "but I didn't seem to be doing any good there."
They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went
into the fight of the San Juan hills with the hole still through his
ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body,
asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-
belt beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he was seated
alone grimly firing over their heads in the direction of the enemy.
Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy,
who was shot through the chest. The entrance to his wound was so
small that Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to
stop the flow of blood.
"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger, he said to the boy,
"or you'll bleed to death."
"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business."
The boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly quiet while
Church, with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the
wound. His patient neither whimpered nor swore, but stared up at the
sun in silence. The bullets were falling on every side, and the
operation was a hasty one, but the trooper made no comment until
Church said, "We'd better get out of this; can you stand being
carried?"
"Do you think you can carry me?" the trooper asked.
"Yes."
"Well," exclaimed the boy admiringly, "you certainly know your
business!"
Another of the Rough Riders was brought to the dressing station with
a shattered ankle, and Church, after bandaging it, gave him his
choice of riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being carried, a
day later, on a litter.
"If you think you can manage to ride the mule with that broken foot,"
he said, "you can start at once, but if you wait until to-morrow,
when I can spare the men, you can be carried all the way."
The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six hospital stewards
lifted him and dropped him on the mule, and into a huge Mexican
saddle.
He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup, and his untouched one
into the other, and gathered up the reins.
"Does it pain you? Can you stand it?" Church asked anxiously. The
cowboy turned and smiled down upon him with amused disdain.
"Stand THIS?" he cried. "Why, this is just like getting money from
home."
Toward the last, the firing from the enemy sounded less near, and the
bullets passed much higher. Roosevelt, who had picked up a carbine
and was firing to give the direction to the others, determined upon a
charge. Wood, at the other end of the line, decided at the same time
upon the same manoeuvre. It was called "Wood's bluff" afterward, for
he had nothing to back it with; while to the enemy it looked as
though his whole force was but the skirmish-line in advance of a
regiment. The Spaniards naturally could not believe that this thin
line which suddenly broke out of the bushes and from behind trees and
came cheering out into the hot sunlight was the entire fighting force
against it. They supposed the regiment was coming close on its
heels, and as Spanish troops hate being rushed as a cat hates water,
they fired a few parting volleys and broke and ran. The cheering had
the same invigorating effect on our own side as a cold shower; it was
what first told half the men where the other half were, and it made
every individual man feel better. As we knew it was only a bluff,
the first cheer was wavering, but the sound of our own voices was so
comforting that the second cheer was a howl of triumph.
As it was, the Spaniards thought the Rough Riders had already
disregarded all the rules of war.
"When we fired a volley," one of the prisoners said later, "instead
of falling back they came forward. That is not the way to fight, to
come closer at every volley." And so, when instead of retreating on
each volley, the Rough Riders rushed at them, cheering and filling
the hot air with wild cowboy yells, the dismayed enemy retreated upon
Santiago, where he announced he had been attacked by the entire
American army.
