at short range, but on account of the thick underbrush it was not very effective; “comparatively few of our men were injured.”  Captain Capron at this time received his mortal wound and the firing became so terrific that the last remaining troop of the reserve was absorbed by the firing line, and the whole regiment ordered to advance very slowly.  The Spanish line yielded and the advance soon showed that in falling back the enemy had taken a new position, about three hundred yards in front of the advancing regiment.  Their lines extended from 800 to 1,000 yards, and the firing from their front was “exceedingly heavy” and effective.  A “good many men” were wounded, “and several officers,” says Colonel Wood’s report.  Still the advance was kept up, and the Spanish line was steadily forced back.  “We now began,” says Colonel Wood, “to get a heavy fire from a ridge on our right, which enfiladed our line.”  The reader can at once see that although the Rough Riders were advancing heroically, they were now in a very serious situation, with an exceedingly heavy and effective fire striking them in front, and a heavy, enfilading fire raking them from the right.  Their whole strength was on the line, and these two fires must have reduced their effectiveness with great rapidity had it kept up, the Spaniards having their range and firing by well-directed volleys.  It was for the regiment a moment of the utmost peril.  Had they been alone they must have perished.

It was from this perilous situation of Colonel Wood’s command that one of the most popular stories of the war originated, a story that contained some truth, but which was often told in such a way as to cause irritation, and in some instances it was so exaggerated or mutilated in the telling as to be simply ridiculous.  On the day after the battle the story was told in Lawton’s camp according to the testimony of an intelligent soldier of the Twenty-fifth Infantry.  His words are:  “The next day about noon we heard that the Tenth Cavalry had met the enemy and that the Tenth Cavalry had rescued the Rough Riders.  We congratulated ourselves that although not of the same branch of service, we were of the same color, and that to the eye of the enemy we, troopers and footmen, all looked alike.”  According to artists and cheap newspaper stories this rescuing occurred again and again.  A picture is extensively advertized as “an actual and authoritative presentation of this regiment (the Tenth Cavalry) as it participated in that great struggle, and their heroic rescue of the Rough Riders on that memorable July day.”  This especial rescuing took place on San Juan Hill.  The editor of a religious paper declares that it was the Twenty-fifth Infantry that rescued the Rough Riders and that it was done at El Caney![16]