es overflowing with
grief and influenza.

I nobly offered to stay with her, but Mrs. Dalziel had a son as well as
a daughter. She said we must go and take a look at Tony's tent, if we
did nothing else; and perhaps it would have ended in our doing not much
more if it hadn't been for Eagle.

El Paso was one of the most deliciously exciting places in America just
then, and there were many things which I wanted far more to see than
Tony Dalziel's tent. There was the town itself, with its broad streets
and tall buildings (which made me shiver with the wildly absurd thought
of their being smashed by silly rebel guns from across the river); its
shady avenues of alluring bungalows, and its parks--all so gay and
peaceful in the warm spring sunshine that the very suggestion of war
within a thousand miles seemed fantastic melodrama, despite the shouting
newspaper boys with a fearsome "extra" coming out every fifteen minutes.
There was new Fort Bliss, the cavalry post, and old Fort Bliss, famous,
they told me, as long ago as the days of Indian warfare. There was the
concentration camp where five thousand Mexicans were guarded by
soldiers, and there were the camps of the reinforcing troops, artillery,
cavalry, and infantry. I wanted to miss nothing, but when we had motored
to old Fort Bliss down by the river and the smelting works, and seen the
faded houses in temporary occupation of visiting officers; when we had
spun out to new Fort Bliss to admire the smart quarters and barracks,
and when we had trailed about a little in "Tony's camp," Mrs. Dalziel
was tired. The sun was very hot, and she thought she ought to go home to
poor Milly. Captain March, however, was certain that what I ought to do
was to see his tent before deserting camp. He had something there which
he particularly wished to show me. Tony volunteered to take his mother
back to our hired automobile, waiting near the Zoo, and to return for
me. I hoped that he might be away a long time, and looked forward to my
few minutes alone with Eagle as to a taste of paradise, having no idea
that those moments would be long enough to decide the fate of two men.

The camp was a neat, khaki-coloured town of canvas houses, big and
little, seemingly countless rows of them, set in rough grass, and sandy
earth of the same yellow brown as the tents. How the officers and men
knew their narrow lanes and low-browed dwellings apart, I could not
imagine, for they all bore the most remarkable