Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/587

Rh from saplings sharpened to a point with machetes. Some thrust the poles into the ground to turn it up and soften it, and others scooped out the loosened earth with their hands. The equipments of the dead were removed before burial, and portioned among those who needed them most. A man tried on the hat, leggings, and shoes of his late comrade as he lay on the ground, and kept them if a fit, or, if not, passed them to his neighbor; for in the field it is so difficult to get clothing of any kind, that the Mambis cannot afford to lose through sentiment

Once Gomez paused as he saw a farmer plowing by the roadside. "Why do you work?" he cried; "don't you know that you are working for Spain, who will seize your crops? Don't you know that you make the land richer for Spain, and that for your work she will be less ready to abandon it? To support your family? It would be better if you fed them on roots in the forest, or left them to starve, as my men have left their wives and children and parents to starve, for the sake of the fatherland. You work when you should destroy. When the war is over, there will be need and time for plowing. Until then only the machete should be lifted."

The security of the country encouraged majaces [skulkers], and Gomez despatched parties in all directions to "round them up." Every evening a silent, abashed line was drawn up before headquarters, while officers, soldiers, and asistentes crowded in anticipation of the lecture to come. Finally Gomez would come out from under his piece of canvas, with a towel in one hand, that served for a handkerchief, and look them through, from under his bushy gray eyebrows, with his hawk's eye.

"Ah-h-h, ma-ja-ces, neat, well-fed ma-ja-ces, living in hous-es, on fresh pork and chicken and milk, the food of the women and children, swindling the republic, what do you do for the fatherland?

"Do you wear the weapons of the republic for ornaments, and ride her horses for pleasure?

"You, you say your father was dying, and you left your force to be with him in December, and it is now May; and he is still dying? And you over there, you with the face of a guerrillero, you say you were wounded. Look at my men. Every one of them is wounded. I am wounded. I will have the surgeon examine us and see which is the sicker man, you or I.

"You deceive the republic, but you do not deceive me. I will make you serve your country, if only as examples for others. I will keep my eye on every single one of you.

"Officer of the day, take these men to the impedimenta; make them walk with the infantry."

So each day the active forces were swelled with men who had long waited for arms, and the impedimenta filled with those on whom the hardships of war had hitherto fallen lightly.

In camp, no breach of discipline was too slight to escape correction from the commander-in-chief; and when at rare intervals a grave offense was committed, a formal court-martial was called, and its findings were read aloud to the forces assembled. One court found a stripling of barely eighteen years old guilty of sleeping on his post at sentry duty, a crime punishable with death. But Gomez, who rarely condones a fault, pardoned the culprit on account of extreme youth, after giving him a fright and a public lecture on the seriousness of his offense, and sent him to the impedimenta "until he should grow up."

The appearance of the company of infantry that now marched as our rear guard was unique and pathetic. Somebody called them the "hundred heroes;" and they certainly bore out the Frenchman's saying that the infantry proves its valor less in fighting than in walking so much. Ragged to the skin,