Crittenden

Twanged just then a bow-string in the direction of San Juan hill, and

the twang seemed to be getting louder and to be coming toward the little

blue farm-house. No cannon was in sight; there was no smoke visible, and

many, with an upward look, wondered what the queer sound could be.

Suddenly there was a screeching, crackling answer in the air; the

atmosphere was rent apart as by a lightning stroke directly overhead.

The man and the horse by the blue wall dropped noiselessly to the earth.

A Rough Rider paled and limped down the hill and Blackford shook his

hand--a piece of shrapnel had fallen harmlessly on his wrist. On the

hill--Crittenden laughed as he looked--on the hill, nobody

ran--everybody tumbled. Besides the men at the guns, only two others

were left--civilians.

"You're a fool," said one.

"You're another."

"What'd you stay here for?"

"Because you did. What'd you stay for?"

"Because you did."

Then they went down together--rapidly--and just in time. Another shell

shrieked. Two artillerymen and two sergeants dropped dead at their guns,

and a corporal fell, mortally wounded. A third burst in a group of

Cubans. Several of them flew out, killed or wounded, into the air; the

rest ran shrieking for the woods. Below, those woods began to move.

Under those shells started the impatient soldiers down that narrow lane

through the jungle, and with Reynolds and Abe Long on the "point" was

Crittenden, his Krag-Jorgensen across his breast--thrilled, for all the

world, as though he were on a hunt for big game.

* * * * *

And all the time the sound of ripping cloth was rolling over from Caney,

the far-away rumble of wagons over cobble-stones, or softened stage hail

and stage thunder around the block-house, stone fort, and town. At first

it was a desultory fire, like the popping of a bunch of fire-crackers

that have to be relighted several times, and Basil and Grafton,

galloping toward it, could hear the hiss of bullets that far away. But,

now and then, the fire was as steady as a Gatling-gun. Behind them the

artillery had turned on the stone fort, and Grafton saw one shot tear a

hole through the wall, then another, and another. He could see Spaniards

darting from the fort and taking refuge in the encircling stone-cut

trenches; and then nothing else--for their powder was smokeless--except

the straw hats of the little devils in blue, who blazed away from their

trenches around the fort and minded the shells bursting over and around

them as little as though they had been bursting snowballs. If the boy

ahead noted anything, Grafton could not tell. Basil turned his head

neither to right nor left, and at the foot of the muddy hill, the black

horse that he rode, without touch of spur, seemed suddenly to leave the

earth and pass on out of sight with the swift silence of a shadow. At

the foot of a hill walked the first wounded man--a Colonel limping

between two soldiers. The Colonel looked up smiling--he had a terrible

wound in the groin.