Vernon Parish Democrat., 1921-05-19

house and gave the order to proceed.
They marched along the water front
for four blocks and then turned up a
side street, which happened to be the
Gale de Concordia, thus enabling
Mother jerks, who was peerIng from
the doorway of Ell Buen Amigo, to see
them coming.
'eHah!" she muttered '''Enery
they're comm The worm is turnins,
Emery; 10 years you've wyted for
vengeance, my love, but tod'y you'n
get it."
She waddled out into the street and
held up her hand in a gesture as au-
thoritative and imperious as that CT a
traffic officer. "Batter-r-ry 'altF' she
croaked. She had heard the late En-
cry give that command often enough
to have acquired the exact infection
necessary to make an impression upon
men accustomed to obeying such a
command whenever given. Instinc-
lively the column slowed up some Of
the Foreign Legion, old coast artil-
lerists, no doubt, came to a halt with
promptness and precision; all stared
at Mother jerks.
COW about iarf dozen cases O.
good brandy for the wounded?" Moth
er jerks suggested. can 'ow about a
bally old woman for Red Cross
nurse?"
'You're on, ma'am," the foreign
leader replied promptly, and translat-
ed the old lady's suggestion to DIR.
Pacheco, who accepted gracefully and
thanked Mother jerks in purest Cas-
titan. So a detail Of six men was
told off to carry the six cases Of
brandy out of Ell Buen Amigo and
load them on the ammunition carts |;
then Mother jerks crawled up into
the armored truck with the machine
gun crew, and the column once more
took up its line of rapid march.
The objective Of this unsuspected
force within the city was, as Ricardo
Ruey shrewdly suspected it might be-
poorly garrisoned. Usually force of
fully 800 men was stationed at the
national arsenal, but the sharp, saw
age attack from the west, SO sudden
and unexpected, had thrown Sarros
into a panic and left him no time to
plan his defense carefully. His first
thought had been to send all his
available forces to support the troops
bearing the brunt of the rebel attack,
and it was tremendously important
that this should be done very prompt
ly, In view of the lack of information
concerning the numerical force of the
enemy; consequently he had reduced
the arsenal force to 100 men and re-
tanned only his favorite troops Of the
guards and one company of the Fif-
teenth infantry to protect the palace.
Acting under hastily given tele-
phonic orders, the commanding Off
Ger at the cantonment barracks had
detailed few hundred men to fight
rear-guard action while the main army
fell back in good order behind a rail-
way embankment which swept in a
wide arc around the city and offered
an excellent substitute for breast
works. This position had scarcely
been attained before the furious ad-
vance of the rebels drove in the rear
guard, and pending the capture of the
arsenal, Ricardo realized his opera
tions were at an impasse. Promptly
he dug himself in, and the battle de
veloped into brisk affair of give and
take, involving meager losses to both
factions, but an appalling wastage of
ammunition.
The arsenal, a large, modern con-
crete building with tremendously
thick walls reinforced by steel, would
have offered fairly good resistance to
the average field battery. Surround
ing it on all four sides was rein
forced concrete wall 80 feet high,
with machine gun bastiohs at each
corner and a platform along the wall
inside and 25 feet from the ground,
which afforded foot room for infantry
which could use the top five feet of
the wall for protection while hring
over it. There was but one entrance,
a heavy, barred steel gate which was
always kept locked when 1t was not
necessary to have it opened for in
gress or egress. Given warning of an
attack and with sufficient time to pre-
pare for it, 100 Of the right sort of
fighting men could Withstand an in
definite siege by a force not prOvid-
ed with artillery heavier than an or
binary field gun. With a full realiza-
tion Of this, therefore, Ricardo and
his confreres had designed to accom-
plish by strategy that which could not
be done by the limited forces at their
command.
AS the column approached the
neighborhood of the arsenal, three de
tachments broke away from the main
body and disappeared down side
Streets to turn at right angles later
and march parallel with the main
command. Each Of these detachments
was accompanied by one unit Of the
motorcycle mounted machine gun bat
terry with its white crew; two blocks
beyond the arsenal square each de-
tachment leader so disposed his men
as to offer spirited resistance to any