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At the same time Wheeler's division of dismounted cavalry, including the Rough Riders and Kent's infantry division, advanced as best it could over the horrible Santiago road, ankle-deep in mud and water, to El Poso Hill, on and about which it passed a wretchedly uncomfortable night.
At half past four the camp equipage had all been packed upon the guns in such a manner as not to interfere with their instantly getting into action, and the battery started for the front. The road to El Poso was very good and the mules trotted merrily along, preceded and followed by infantry also bound for the front.
Private Hoft, with the instinct of a true soldier, continued to tramp back and forth guarding the pile of camp equipage. The battery moved to the rear at a gentle trot, and, as it turned down the hill into the first ford by the El Poso house, a Spanish shell whistled over the head of Private Shiffer, who was leading the way, and burst just beyond his off mule.
This movement would cause Lawton to execute, roughly, a left wheel, and it was intended that in executing this maneuver Kent's right should join, or nearly join, Lawton's left, after which the whole line was to move forward according to the developments of the fight. Kent's attack was to be supported by Grimes' Battery from El Poso.
With their glasses, from the commanding eminence of El Poso Hill, crowned with the ruined buildings of an abandoned plantation, the American officers could distinctly see the Spaniards at work on their intrenchments a mile and a half away, and note the ever-lengthening lines of freshly excavated earth.
The road forked about two hundred yards east of the Aguadores ford, turning sharply to the left. Down the road from El Poso crept the military balloon, it halted near this fork "Balloon Fork." Two officers were in its basket, six or eight hundred feet above the surface of the ground, observing the movements of the troops and the disposition of the enemy.
During all this time the sound of firing had been heard toward El Caney. It had been opened up there about half an hour before Grimes first spoke at El Poso. The fire in this direction sounded like ranging fire, a shot every two or three minutes, and it was supposed that Capron was trying to locate the enemy. The sharp crack of musketry was heard on our front, it swelled and became continuous.
But no artillery was sent to El Poso hill to drop a shell among the busy men at work among the trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El Caney.
A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the woods. "What am I to do then?" asked General Sumner. "You are to await further orders," the aide answered.
I moved my three pieces forward again at a gallop, and went into action on the skirmish line on top of the captured position, with two pieces to the right and one to the left of the main road from El Poso to Santiago. I was compelled to make the skirmishers give way to the right and left in order to get room for my guns on the firing-line, and to impress stragglers to carry ammunition. Capt.
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