not one of my men was scratched. Two of
the men who did conspicuously good service in this work were Troopers
Goodwin and Proffit, both of Arizona, but one by birth a Californian
and the other a North Carolinian. Goodwin was a natural shot, not only
with the rifle and revolver, but with the sling. Proffit might have
stood as a type of the mountaineers described by John Fox and Miss
Murfree. He was a tall, sinewy, handsome man of remarkable strength,
an excellent shot and a thoroughly good soldier. His father had been a
Confederate officer, rising from the ranks, and if the war had lasted
long enough the son would have risen in the same manner. As it was, I
should have been glad to have given him a commission, exactly as I
should have been glad to have given a number of others in the regiment
commissions, if I had only had them. Proffit was a saturnine, reserved
man, who afterward fell very sick with the fever, and who, as a reward
for his soldierly good conduct, was often granted unusual privileges;
but he took the fever and the privileges with the same iron
indifference, never grumbling, and never expressing satisfaction.

The sharp-shooters returned by nightfall. Soon afterward I
established my pickets and outposts well to the front in the jungle,
so as to prevent all possibility of surprise. After dark, fires
suddenly shot up on the mountain passes far to our right. They all
rose together and we could make nothing of them. After a good deal of
consultation, we decided they must be some signals to the Spaniards in
Santiago, from the troops marching to reinforce them from without--for
we were ignorant that the reinforcements had already reached the city,
the Cubans being quite unable to prevent the Spanish regulars from
marching wherever they wished. While we were thus pondering over the
watch-fires and attributing them to Spanish machinations of some sort,
it appears that the Spaniards, equally puzzled, were setting them down
as an attempt at communication between the insurgents and our army.
Both sides were accordingly on the alert, and the Spaniards must have
strengthened their outlying parties in the jungle ahead of us, for
they suddenly attacked one of our pickets, wounding Crockett
seriously. He was brought in by the other troopers. Evidently the
Spanish lines felt a little nervous, for this sputter of shooting was
immediately followed by a tremendous fire of great guns and rifles
from their trenches and batteri