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Page 63
In their baptism of fire eight of the Riders had been killed outright,
thirty-four more were seriously wounded, and fully half of the
remainder could show the scars of grazing bullets or tiny clean-cut
holes through their clothing, telling of escapes from death by the
fraction of an inch. Ridge Norris, for instance, found a livid welt
across his chest, looking as though traced by a live coal, and marking
the course of a bullet that, with a hair's deflection, would have ended
his life, while Rollo Van Kyp's hat seemed to have been an especial
target for Spanish rifles.
After regaining their breath, and receiving assurance that the enemy
had retreated beyond their present reach, these two, in company with
many others, went back over the battle-field to look up the wounded,
and bring forward the packs flung aside at the beginning of the fight.
At sunset that evening the Riders buried their dead, in a long single
grave lined with palm-leaves, on a breezy hill-side overlooking the
scene of their victory. The laying to rest of these comrades, who only
a few hours before, had been so full of life with all its hopes and
ambitions, was the most impressive ceremony in which any of the
survivors had ever engaged. It strengthened their loyalty and devotion
to each other and to their cause as nothing else could have done, and
as the entire command gathered close about the open grave to sing
"Nearer my God to Thee," many a voice was choked with feelings too
solemn for expression, and many a sun-tanned cheek was wet with tears.
The camp of the Rough Riders was very quiet that night, and the events
of the day just closed were discussed in low tones, as though in fear
of awakening the sleepers on the near-by hill-side.
After the fight of Las Guasimas, its heroes rested and waited for six
days, while the remainder of the army effected its landing and made its
slow way to the position they had won over the narrow trails they had
cleared. These days of waiting were also days of vast discomfort, and
the patient endurance of drenching tropical rains and steaming heat,
the wearing of the same battle-soiled clothing day after day and night
after night, and, above all, of an ever-present hunger, that sapped
both strength and spirits. They had started out with but three days'
rations, and four days passed before a scanty supply of hard-tack,
bacon, and coffee began to dribble into camp. The road to Siboney,
flooded by constant rains, bowlder-strewn, and inches deep in mud, was
for a long time impassable to wagons; and during those six days such
supplies of food and ammunition as reached the idle army were brought
to it by three trains of pack-mules that toiled ceaselessly back and
forth between the coast and the front, bringing the barest necessities
of life, but nothing more.
So the American army suffered and prayed to be led forward, while the
Spaniards between them and Santiago strengthened their own position
with every hour, and confidently awaited their coming. The invaders
now occupied the Sevilla plateau, and were within five miles of the
city they sought to capture. In their front lay a broad wooded valley,
to them an unknown region, and on its farther side rose a range of
hills, that Ridge Norris told them were the San Juan Heights, strongly
protected by block-houses, rifle-pits, and bewildering entanglements of
barbed wire, a feature of modern warfare now appearing for the first
time in history. With their glasses, from the commanding eminence of
El Poso Hill, crowned with the ruined buildings of an abandoned
plantation, the American officers could distinctly see the Spaniards at
work on their intrenchments a mile and a half away, and note the
ever-lengthening lines of freshly excavated earth.
But for six days the army waited, and its artillery, which was expected
to seriously impair, if not utterly destroy the effectiveness of those
ever-growing earthworks, still reposed peacefully on board the ships
that had brought it to Cuba. Only two light batteries had been landed,
and on the sixth day after Las Guasimas these reached the front. At
the same time came word that General Pando with 5000 Spanish
reinforcements was nearing the besieged city from the north. In that
direction, and only three miles from Santiago, lay the fortified
village of Caney, held by a strong force of Spanish troops. If it were
captured, Pando's advance might be cut off. So General Shafter, coming
ashore for the first time a week after the landing of his troops,
planned a forward movement with this object in view. Lawton's division
was to capture Caney, and then swing round so as to sever all outside
communication with Santiago. While he was doing this, demonstrations
that should deter the Spaniards from sending an additional force in
that direction were to be made against San Juan and Aguadores. These
movements were to occupy one day, and on the next the reunited army was
to attack the entire line of the San Juan ridge. In the mean time no
one knew anything of the valley lying between this strongly protected
ridge and those who proposed to capture it.
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