"_Que desea, amigo_? What do you want?" said Villa, sitting on the end of the bunk in blue underclothes. The troopers who lounged around the place lazily made way for me.
"_Ca-r-r-r-ai-i_, our friend here wants a horse!" grinned Villa sarcastically amid a burst of laughter from the others. "Why, you correspondents will be wanting an automobile next! _Oiga_, señor reporter, do you know that about a thousand men in my army have no horses? Here’s the train. What do you want a horse for?"
"No," he smiled. "There are too many _ballasos_—too many bullets flying in the advance...."
He was hurrying into his clothes as he talked, and gulping coffee from the side of a dirty tin coffee-pot. Somebody handed him his gold-handled sword.
"No!" he said contemptuously. "This is to be a fight, not a parade. Give me my rifle!"
He stood at the door of his caboose for a moment, thoughtfully looking at the long lines of mounted men, picturesque in their crossed cartridge-belts and varied equipment. Then he gave a few quick orders and mounted his big stallion.
"_Vamonos!_" cried Villa. The bugles brayed and a subdued silver clicking ringing sounded as the companies wheeled and trotted southward in the dust....
And so the army disappeared. During the day we thought we heard cannonading from the southwest, where Urbina was reported to be coming down from the mountains to attack Mapimi. And late in the afternoon news came of the capture of Bermejillo, and a courier from Benavides said that he had taken Tlahualilo.
We were in a fever of impatience to be off. About sundown Señor Calzado remarked that the repair train would leave in an hour, so I grabbed a blanket and walked a mile up the line of trains to it.
The first car of the repair train was a steel-encased flat-car, upon which was mounted the famous Constitutionalist cannon "El Niño," with an open caisson full of shells behind it. Behind that was an armored car full of soldiers, then a car of steel rails, and four loaded with railroad ties. The engine came next, the engineer and fireman hung with cartridge-belts, their rifles handy. Then followed two or three box-cars full of soldiers and their women. It was a dangerous business. A large force of Federals were known to be in Mapimi, and the country swarmed with their outposts. Our army was already far ahead, except for five hundred men who guarded the trains at Conejos. If the enemy could capture or wreck the repair train the army would be cut off without water, food or ammunition. In the darkness we moved out. I sat upon the breech of "El Niño," chatting with Captain Diaz, the commander of the gun, as he oiled the breech lock of his beloved cannon and curled his vertical mustachios. In the armored recess behind the gun, where the Captain slept, I heard a curious, subdued rustling noise.