THE ROUGH RIDERS IN ACTION. 353 Their right wasin the bush on the other sideof the valley, holding the northern end of the spur by which the Rough Riders were advancing. All this was only gradually discovered by the Americans as the fight developed. TheSpaniards had no intention of holding ondoggedly to the veryextended line taken up by their small force. Alcaniz was fighting a rearguard action to cover the general retirement of the outlying Spanish detachments by Sevilla or Santiago. He had held the Las Guasima ridges for forty-eight hours, and would necessarily retire if attacked in force, only showing enough fight to delay the advance of the invaders from Siboney.

Two of the Hotchkiss they were trying to outflank him. The fourth troop he kept inreserveon the road.

Meanwhile the other column, composed of the Rough Riders, had also come in contact with the Spaniards, and was hotly engaged in a close fight in the dense bush that covered the long spur to the left of the road. The column had marched at five a.m., for the first part of the march wasup a steep ascent, and then the track rose and fell aloVig the ridge and was only a muddy, ill-marked footpath through dense cactus and thorn bush, tangled with tropical creepers ill the thickest parts, hut sometimes broken by a grassy clearing.

Captain Alwyn Capron, guns wereplacedin position totheleft of the road near the beginning of its curve to the west. They were carefully screened in the bush, for Young was anxious not to begin the action till he had given Wood's column a little more time to come up onhis left. The guns were ready at 7 o'clock, but itwas nottill 7.20 that thev began to shell the Spanish position on the hill. The enemy's rifles answered by a volley so accurately aimed that one of the gunner- waskilled beside his piece. Three of the 1st Cavalry commanding the troop of the RoughRiders, was in advance with the scouts, some of them Cubans of the district, the rest men of his own '.roop. At six he sent back word to Colonel Wood that the enemy was in position in the buh in front. Wood and Roosevelt sent forward a reinforcement to support Capron, who had ad-\ anced to r< connoitre the enemy, and they then halted the column and deployed five troops, partly in the grass of a clearing to the left, partly in the bush to the right ThtActvorc a.1 Las Cluxsi>tiqs were already working forward through the bush towards the hill in front, the fourth troop working up the hollow of a creek or stream to the left. They now opened fire. and were promptly answered by volleys of the fire of scattered sharpshooters in the bush and in the slopes in front, and above all rang out the rapid crackling fire of the machine gun near the hill-top. Several men and officers went down before this heavy fire, the leading troop of the 1st Cavalry losing in rapid succession its captain, lieutenant, and senior sergeant. Young had still in hand the four troops ot the loth Cavalry— negro soldiers with useful experience of Indian warfare in the Par West. He -cut one troop up the creek to strengthen his left, and pushed out two more to the right, where the close and heavy fire of the Spaniards east of the hill made him think that of the track. The three other troops were in reserve. But these arrangements had hardly been made when the Spaniards opened fire at close range in front. None of them were visible. The volleys from the unseen rifles rang out sharp and near, and the Mauser bullets ripping through the bush, sweepinglow along the ground.

The advanced troup had suffered heavily. The first man to fall shot dead beside his captain was Seigeant Hamilton Fish, a wealthy young New York man. a leader in fashionable life, who had enlistedin the ranks ot the Rough Riders and had just received his serg.ant's stripi few minuteslater Capron fell mortally wounded. Ib wa! only twenty-eight years old, a lieutenant of the 7thRegularCavalry, who had been transferred to Roosevelt's new regiment with a captain's commission, He came ol a soldier 23