"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.
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.
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