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The subsequent advance of the federals from Rellano to the town of Jimenez, Orozco's old headquarters, which had been evacuated by him without firing a shot, lasted another week. Here Huerta's army camped for another week. At Jimenez the long-brewing unpleasantness between Huerta's regular officers and some of Madero's bandit friends, commanding forces of irregular cavalry, came to a head.

General Salas, after organizing a fairly formidable-looking force of 3,500 regulars and three batteries of field artillery at Torreon, rushed into the fray, only to suffer a disgraceful defeat in his first battle at Rellano, in Chihuahua, not far from Torreon. General Salas took his defeat so much to heart that he committed suicide on his way back to Torreon.

As at Rellano, at Conejos, and at other places in the campaign where the railroad swept in big bends around the hills, no attempt was made on the Federal side to cut off the rebels' retreat by short-cut flanking movements of cavalry, of which Huerta had more than he could conveniently use, or chose to use.

Several weeks more passed before Huerta again struck Orozco's forces at Rellano, in Chihuahua, close to the former battlefield, along the railway, where his predecessor, General Gonzalez Salas, had come to grief. This was in June.

Had Orozco been an intelligent and competent leader he probably could have marched straight through to Mexico City at that time, as the only governmental troops that were available to fight him were only about sixteen hundred, which he defeated and nearly annihilated at Rellano in Chihuahua. Their commander, General Gonzalez Salas, Madero's war minister, committed suicide after the defeat.