ien-Tsin. Along the Peiho river lay a sandy plain with scant
tillage and great stretches of barren lands. Here and there were squalid
villages with now and then a few more pretentious structures with adobe
brick walls and tiled roofs. Everywhere was the desolation of ignorance
and fear, saddening enough, without the Boxer rebellion to intensify it
with months of dreadful warfare.

As Thaine fell into his place he thought of the Aydelot wheatfields and of
the alfalfa that Leigh Shirley's patient judgment had helped to spread
over the Cloverdale Ranch. And even in the face of such big things as he
was on his way to meet the conquest of the prairie soil seemed wonderful.

Big things were waiting him now, and his heart throbbed with their bigness
as his regiment took its place. It was a wonderful company that fell into
line and swung up the Peiho river that August afternoon. The world never
saw its like before, and may never see it again. Not wonderful in numbers,
for there were only sixteen thousand of the allied armies, all told, to
pit themselves against an armed force able to line up one hundred and
sixteen thousand against them. Not numbers, but varying nationalities,
varying races, strange confusion of tongues, with one common purpose
binding all into one body, made the company forming on the banks of the
Peiho a wonderful one.

Thaine's regiment was drawn up at an angle with the line, ready to fall
into its place among the reserves, and the young Kansan watched the flower
of the world's soldiery file along the way.

In the front were the little brown Japanese Cavalry, Artillery, and
Infantry--men who in battle make dying as much their business as living.
Beside these were the English forces, the Scotch Highlanders, the Welsh
Fusiliers, the Royal Artillery, all in best array. Behind them the Indian
Empire troops, the Sikh Infantry with a sprinkling of Sepoys and the
Mounted Bengalese Lancers. Then followed, each in its place, the Italian
marines and foot soldiery, the well-groomed French troops from all
branches of the military; the stalwart, fair-haired Germans, soldiers to a
finish in weight and training; the Siberian Cossacks and the Russian
Infantry and Cavalry, big, brutal looking men whom women of any nation
might fear. In reserve at the last of the line were the American forces,
the Ninth and Fourteenth Regiments of Infantry, the Sixth Cavalry, and F
Battery of the Fifth Artillery.

So marched the host from