Ned noticed the signs of bustle and expectancy about the camp.

Usually Mexicans were asleep at this hour, and he wondered why they lingered.
But he did not approach the subject directly.
"A hard march," he said, knowing that these men about him had come a vast distance.
"Aye, it was," said the man next on his right.

"Santiago, but was it not, Jose ?" Jose, the second man on the right, replied in the affirmative and with emphasis: "You speak the great truth, Carlos.

Such another march I never wish to make.

Think of the hundreds and hundreds of miles we have tramped from our warm lands far in the south across mountains, across bare and windy deserts, with the ice and the snow beating in our faces.