The Ocala evening star. [volume] (Ocala, Fla.) 1895-1943, 1914-04-08

at the elbow of the mountains, and
was also beaten back.
And this is how it was: Confident
that the federals would fee, as they
had done at Juarez, Chihuahua. and
at Ojinaga, the rebels, old men.
boys, soldiers of fortune from for
eign lands and even ammunition
belted women, had rushed the Brit
tingham corral. The artillery BOOM
ed behind them, the machine guns,
dead ahead, clucked their cackle of
death, and the rifles spat yiciously
in the loopholes Of the corral.
From Sierra de la Pila, the noun
tain which browbeat Gomez Pala-
clio to the west, the federal cannon
dropped their bursting sharpnel
shells among the rebel troops with
a deadly hail of bullets.
A little group of outriders gained
an adobe house squatting on the
edge of the town like a great loaf of
brown sugar. A federal gunner
found the range and dropped a shell
through the thatched roof of the
house, and the dry, powdered dust
few in the air like an exploding
mine. Not a man came out of that
house alive.
A fianking attack was tried by the
rebel cavalry under Maximo Garcia
column, the hats of the vaqueros fly
ing in the wind. the riders shooting
as they galloped and the tricolor of
their flag swapping in the breeze.
Again Finds Range
Again the graduate gunner on old
Mount Pila caught their range and
dropped shell after shell at their
horses noses. Riderless ponies
went Wild and continued the charge,
The rebel infantry charged and re-
charged the great corral, when sud-
denly
Los federals!'' shouted some
panic-crazed boy in the ranks.
It was taken up and repeated
Gcwn the wavering lines of the reb-
els. Panic spread and the lines
broke
Villa. who had ridden to the rear
20 plead with dapper, little General
Angeles to bring up the artillery,
rode back to the firing line in a
break-neck gallop.
Mi dios. is this the way you
mountain men fight? Adalante.' he
screamed 'Adalante!'
! The rout was stopped, but the rat
tie of rifles continued from the cor
! raj, and charge after charge which
| left men three deep in front of the
dun-colored building failed to drive
! the federals out.
shrapnel shells would not explode
and the artillery was useless.
| General Maximo Garcia had been
killed in the cavalry charge, Gener-
al Trinidad Rodriguez had been
wounded and Raoul Madero, brother
of the martyred president, had been
| injured when his horse had been
shot from under him.
Retreat Is Ordered
! The order for retreat was blown,
and the first battlefield of the siege
was left with it's load of dead and
dying.
The next day and the next the
charges were resumed, hand gren-
AIDES being used in place of the Grip
pied artillery and men used as cata-
pults for hurling these engines OF
death into the Gibraltar of adobe
| bricks.
| Finally on Friday night, the fed
erals shot a final volley and then
trotted over the railroad bridge to
Torreon, leaving the rebels the de-
serted town of Gomez Palacio.
Human comforts had been for
gotten in a desperate effort to win.
he supply trains udu Deen leII De-
/ hind with orders to follow. The
men had been fighting for days
without food, and many dropped ex-
hausted in the irrigation bitches
and slept 70 the song of screaming
! shells.
| Water was scarce. When a lit
tie was found in the IRRIGATION dit