XI


Before dawn again--everything in war begins at dawn--and the thickets
around a certain little gray stone fort alive with slouch hat, blue
blouse, and Krag-Jorgensen, slipping through the brush, building no
fires, and talking in low tones for fear the timorous enemy would see,
or hear, and run before the American sharpshooter could get a chance to
try his marksmanship; wondering, eight hours later, if the timorous
enemy were ever going to run. Eastward and on a high knoll stripped of
bushes, four 3.2 guns unlimbered and thrown into position against that
fort and a certain little red-roofed town to the left of it. This was
Caney.

Eastward still, three miles across an uneven expanse of green, jungle
and jungle-road alive with men, bivouacing fearlessly around and under
four more 3.2 guns planted on another high-stripped knoll--El Poso--and
trained on a little pagoda-like block-house, which sat like a Christmas
toy on top of a green little, steep little hill from the base of which
curved an orchard-like valley back to sweeping curve of the jungle. This
was San Juan.

Nature loves sudden effects in the tropics. While Chaffee fretted in
valley-shadows around Caney and Lawton strode like a yellow lion past
the guns on the hill and, eastward, gunner on the other hill at El Poso
and soldier in the jungle below listened westward, a red light ran like
a flame over the east, the tops of the mountains shot suddenly upward
and it was day--flashing day, with dripping dew and birds singing and a
freshness of light and air that gave way suddenly when the sun quickly
pushed an arc of fire over the green shoulder of a hill and smote the