The Major raised his hard little face and cruel eyes. "I got out of a reform school in Wisconsin," he said, "and I guess there’s some cops waiting for me in El Paso. I always wanted to kill somebody with a gun, and I done it at Ojinaga, and I ain’t got a bellyful yet. They told us we could stay if we signed Mex citizenship papers; I guess I’ll sign to-morrow morning."
"The hell you will," cried the others. "That’s a rotten thing to do. Suppose we get Intervention and you have to shoot against your own people. You won’t catch me signing myself away to be a greaser."
"That’s easy fixed," said the Major. "When I go back to the States I leave my name here. I’m going to stay down here till I get enough of a stake to go back to Georgia and start a child-labor factory."
The other boy had suddenly burst into tears. "I got my arm shot through in Ojinaga," he sobbed, "and now they’re turning me loose without any money, and I can’t work. When I get to El Paso the cops ’ll jail me and I’ll have to write my dad to come and take me home to California. I run away from there last year," he explained.
"Look here, Major," I advised, "you’d better not stay down here if Villa wants Americans out of the ranks. Being a Mexican citizen won’t help you if Intervention comes."
"Perhaps you’re right," agreed the Major thoughtfully. "Aw, quit your bawling, Jack! I guess I’ll beat it over to Galveston and get on a South American boat. They say there’s a revolution started in Peru."
The soldier was about thirty, the Irishman twenty-five, and the three others somewhere between sixteen and eighteen.
"What did you fellows come down here for?" I asked.
"Excitement!" answered the soldier and the Irishman, grinning. The three boys looked at me with eager, earnest faces, drawn with hunger and hardship.
"Loot!" they said simultaneously. I cast an eye at their dilapidated garments, at the throngs of tattered volunteers parading around the plaza, who hadn’t been paid for three months, and restrained a violent impulse to shout with mirth. Soon I left them, hard, cold misfits in a passionate country, despising the cause for which they were fighting, sneering at the gaiety of the irrepressible Mexicans. And as I went away I said, "By the way; what company did you fellows belong to? What did you call yourselves?"