"Geronimo," said a Captain to one trooper, "go back to the ammunition train and fill up the gaps in your _cartouchera_. You fool, you’ve been wasting your cartridges shooting coyotes!"
Across the desert westward toward the distant mountains rode strings of cavalry, the first to the front. About a thousand went, in ten different lines, diverging like wheel spokes; the jingle of their spurs ringing, their red-white-and-green flags floating straight out, crossed bandoliers gleaming dully, rifles flopping across their saddles, heavy, high sombreros and many-colored blankets. Behind each company plodded ten or twelve women on foot, carrying cooking utensils on their heads and backs, and perhaps a pack mule loaded with sacks of corn. And as they passed the cars they shouted back to their friends on the trains.
"Oh! there’s a _colorado_ for you!" yelled another. "I’ll bet you were with Salazar in Orozco’s Revolution. Nobody ever said ’_Poco tiempo California_’ except Salazar when he was drunk!"
The other man looked sheepish. "Well, maybe I was," he admitted. "But wait till I get a shot at my old _compañeros_. I’ll show you whether I’m a Maderista or not!"
A little Indian in the rear cried: "I know how much of a Maderista you are, Luisito. At the first taking of Torreon, Villa gave you the choice of turning your coat or getting a _cabronasso_ or _balasso_ through the head!" And, joshing and singing, they jogged southwest, became small, and finally faded into the dust.
Villa himself stood leaning against a car, hands in his pockets. He wore an old slouch hat, a dirty shirt without a collar, and a badly frayed and shiny brown suit. All over the dusty plain in front of him men and horses had sprung up like magic. There was an immense confusion of saddling and bridling—a cracked blowing of tin bugles. The Brigada Zaragosa was getting ready to leave camp—a flanking column of two thousand men who were to ride southeast and attack Tlahualilo and Sacramento. Villa, it seemed, had just arrived at Yermo. He had stopped off Monday night at Camargo to attend the wedding of a _compadre_. His face was drawn into lines of fatigue.
"Carramba!" he was saying with a grin; "we started dancing Monday evening, danced all night, all the next day, and last night, too! What a _baile_! And what _muchachas_! The girls of Camargo and Santa Rosalia are the most beautiful in Mexico! I am worn out—_rendido_! It was harder work than twenty battles...."