much good it was doing him. She did know, however, that it had been but
play thus far to what must follow. Perhaps, even now, she thought, the
deadly work was beginning, while she sat in the shrine of peace--even
now.

And it was. Almost at that hour the troops were breaking camp and
moving forward along the one narrow jungle-road--choked with wagon,
pack-mule, and soldier--through a haze of dust, and, turning to the
right at the first crossing beyond corps head-quarters--under
Chaffee--for Caney. Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes
of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of
hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at
Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan. And
through the sunset and the dusk the columns marched, and, after night
fell, the dark, silent masses of slouch hats, shoulders, and gun-muzzles
kept on marching past the smoke and flare of the deserted camp-fires
that lighted thicket and grassy plot along the trail. And after the
flames had died down to cinders--in the same black terrible silence, the
hosts were marching still.

That night a last good-by to all womankind, but wife, mother, sister,
sweetheart. The world was to be a man's world next day, and the man a
coarse, dirty, sweaty, swearing, good-natured, grimly humorous, cruel,
kindly soldier, feverish for a fight and as primitive in passion as a
cave-dweller fighting his kind for food. The great little fight was at
hand.