And it was.  Almost at that hour the troops were breaking camp and moving forward along the one narrow jungle-road—­choked with wagon, pack-mule, and soldier—­through a haze of dust, and, turning to the right at the first crossing beyond corps head-quarters—­under Chaffee—­for Caney.  Now and then a piece of artillery, with its flashes of crimson, would pass through the advancing columns amid the waving of hats and a great cheering to take position against the stone fort at Caney or at El Poso, to be trained on the block-house at San Juan.  And through the sunset and the dusk the columns marched, and, after night fell, the dark, silent masses of slouch hats, shoulders, and gun-muzzles kept on marching past the smoke and flare of the deserted camp-fires that lighted thicket and grassy plot along the trail.  And after the flames had died down to cinders—­in the same black terrible silence, the hosts were marching still.

That night a last good-by to all womankind, but wife, mother, sister, sweetheart.  The world was to be a man’s world next day, and the man a coarse, dirty, sweaty, swearing, good-natured, grimly humorous, cruel, kindly soldier, feverish for a fight and as primitive in passion as a cave-dweller fighting his kind for food.  The great little fight was at hand.

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 soldiers over and under the low trees like rays from an open furnace.