meet Greenock according to arrangements and take the stage on to the
railroad. Then next month I shall be in San Antonio and report at
headquarters. Of course, all this is to be, of course; and this business
of to-day will make a good story to tell. It's an experience--good
'material.' Very naturally I cannot now see how I am going to get out of
this" [_the word "alive" has here been erased_], "but of course I
_will_. Why 'of course'? I don't know. Maybe I am trying to deceive
myself. Frankly, it looks like a situation insoluble; but the solution
will surely come right enough in good time.

"Eleven o'clock.--No change.

"Two-thirty P. M.--We are halted to tighten girths and to take a single
swallow of the canteens. One of them rode in a wide circle from the rear
to the flank, about ten minutes ago, conferred a moment with his fellow,
then fell back to his old position. He wears some sort of red cloth or
blanket. We reach no more water till day after to-morrow. But we have
sufficient. Estorijo has been telling funny stories en route.

"Four o'clock P. M.--They have closed up perceptibly, and we have been
debating about trying one of them with Idaho's Winchester. No use;
better save the ammunition. It looks...." [_the next words are
undecipherable, but from the context they would appear to be_ "_as if
they would attack to-night_"]"...we have come to know certain of them
now by nicknames. We speak of the Red One, or the Little One, or the One
with the Feather, and Idaho has named a short thickset fellow on our
right 'Little Willie.' By God, I wish something would turn up--relief or
fight. I don't care which. How Estorijo can cackle on, reeling off his
senseless, pointless funny stories, is beyond me. Bunt is almost as bad.
They understand the fix we are in, I _know_, but how they can take it so