In line, with rifles trailing, we moved across the unknown terrain of low, rolling hills. On our front there had been no firing. Then all at once, directly before us and not far ahead, sounded a startled "Qui vive?" and an instant's silence while the surprised outpost of the enemy waited for an answer. "Alerta! Alerta!' sounded his shrill alarm.
Hell broke open around us then. Rifles, machine-guns and cannon opened fire all at once. Bullets whined above our heads and bursting shrapnel fell around us. We had just come to an irrigation ditch, six feet wide, with a high wire fence on the farther bank of it.
"Stay here till they're all across and look for skulkers!" Trinidad Rodriguez gave himself time to order me, then leaped across the ditch and began to run towards the fence. "Come on here, boys!" he shouted.
The men were quickly across. I followed, or tried to, and just as my front foot touched the farther bank the clay crumbled. Down I went into the ditch.
When I recovered myself in that four feet of mud and water and poked my head up over the bank the fence had been demolished. Beyond it countless rifles spat tongues of fire towards me. But not a living soul was near. The night had swallowed up the very last one of our men.
Fright had not come yet. I was bewildered. I still had my rifle and began to use it. After a few discharges there came a violent wrench and the barrel parted company with the rest of the weapon. It had been shot to pieces in my hands. I threw the stock away and got out my revolver a Colt .44 single-action, of the frontier model.
Boom! There was a roar like a field-gun's and a flash that lit up the night all round me. The wet weapon was outdoing itself in pyrotechnics, and I was unnecessarily attracting attention to myself. So, half swimming, half wading, I moved down the ditch in the direction of the high hill which, looming vaguely, seemed half familiar to me.
I was lost, you understand. I had come at night into unknown terrain. I welcomed that hill, which seemed to give me back my bearings.
I reached the base of it, got out of my ditch and began to climb, with some caution, luckily for me. For just as I stole over the crest a roar and a flash obliterated the night. Two enemy fieldpieces had been discharged together, almost into my face.
Deeming it more than likely that the flash had shown the gunners one startled Teutonic face, I rolled down that hill and was once more in my ditch. But panic had full possession of me. I climbed out on the far side and ran among the scattered trees there until I realised that no racer can hope to outpace a bullet. Then I stopped.
Phut! Phut! Bullets were hissing into the soft irrigated ground all round me, for by accident I had gotten into a very dangerous zone of dropping cross-fire, while overhead shrapnel was searching out blindly for our horses.
By good luck I knew the trumpet calls. Whenever the signal to fire sounded I took what cover I could, going on again in what I decided was the direction of the Rio Conchos as soon as the bugles called "cease firing."
After a while I found a small grey horse standing dejectedly by a tree. I mounted him and eventually got among the willows on the river bank. There the horse collapsed under me without a warning quiver or groan, and when I had wriggled myself loose and groped him over I discovered the poor brute must have been shot as full of holes as a flute before I ever found him.
But I had small sympathy to spend on fallen horses just then. Cleaning my gory hands as best I could on breeches and tunic, I stumbled on through the bushes. After a long time I came, by accident, to the place where the brigade had dismounted to go into action. The mounts were mostly gone, but a few still stood there, with perhaps a score of men and one officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick), who was vastly surprised at my sudden appearance from the direction of the front.
Our brigade had been withdrawn within twenty minutes of the beginning of the action as soon as it was quite certain the surprise had failed. Patricio was waiting there because his brother had been killed, and he wanted, if possible, to take back his body.
"But," cried the colonel, suddenly warming into emotion, "you where have you been? You, valiant German, refused to come back with the others! All night, all by yourself, you have been fighting single-handed. Let me embrace you!"
He flung his arms about me, to receive a fresh surprise. "You are all sticky with something," he cried. "What is it?"
"Blood," I told him simply and truthfully. My reputation was made.
Bravado stirs a Mexican as nothing else can. Counterfeit bravado is just as effective as any so long as the substitution is not suspected. Young Captain von der Goltz, in his first real engagement, had got stupidly lost and very badly frightened. But of Captain von der Goltz Colonel Patricio and his troopers sang the praises for days thereafter to every officer and every peon soldier they met. He had fought on alone for hours after every comrade left him. He had bathed himself in the blood of his enemies, up to his hips and up to his shoulders. You could see it on his clothes.
By the time Ojinaga fell "El Diablo Aleman" "the German devil" had become a tradition of the Constitutionalist Army.
Ojinaga fell at New Year, 1914, the Federalists retreating across the Rio Grande into the United States. We pursued them. And on the bank of the river I had a little adventure. You remember that when I left Chihuahua, a released prisoner, the last person who spoke to me was Colonel Carlos Orozco, commanding the Sixth Infantry Battalion, and his farewell was a threat (see p. 117).
That Sixth Battalion had been engaged in the defence of Ojinaga and had retreated with its fellow-organisations. When I came up to the Rio Grande a small body of fugitives was in midstream. My handful of troopers rode in, surrounded them and brought them back to Mexico. Their heroic commander, who had offered no show of resistance, proved to be Orozco, with the colours of his outfit wrapped round his body, under his blouse!
The provocation was too much for me. "Don Carlos," I asked him, "is it possible you have forgotten me? When we parted last time you promised to shoot me if ever we met again. I am naturally all on fire to learn whether you are thinking of keeping your promise now."
Prominent prisoners were getting short shrift in those days, and Orozco preserved a sullen silence. But I let him ford the river to safety. He eventually got back to Mexico City and Huerta, by way of San Antonio, Galveston and Vera Cruz. The story of his exploit at Ojinaga, the sole Federal officer to come out of it alive, un wounded, and bringing his colours with him, furnished columns of copy to El Impartial and the other papers. Friends and admirers of his who heard the lion roar at that time may find some interest in this less romantic record of his adventure.
I had another account to settle with my old acquaintance, Consul Kueck of Chihuahua. During the last battle before Ojinaga an officer struck up a rifle which he saw a peon aiming at my back. The ball whistled over my head. The soldier later saw fit to confess the reason for his act. He said that a big, fat German Kueck's secretary, he thought had come to him just before we left Chihuahua on our expedition and had given him 500 pesos to attempt my life.