At any rate, Roosevelt and Ayers
determined to stop the firing of our line, and suddenly, above the din
of battle, these two officers could be heard, tramping up and down the
trench in front of their men, haranguing, commanding, ridiculing their
men for shooting in the dark. Ayers told his men that they were no
better than the Cubans, upon which the burly black troopers burst into
a loud guffaw, and then stopped firing altogether. Roosevelt told his
men that he was ashamed of them. He was ashamed to see them firing
valuable ammunition into the darkness of the night, aiming at nothing;
that he thought cowboys were men who shot only when they could see the
"whites of the other fellow's eyes." They also stopped firing. The
enemy's bullets continued to whiz by for a few minutes, and they too
ceased firing, and everybody began to laugh at everybody else. Tiffany
had joined the two officers in their walk up and down, exposing
himself with the utmost coolness. He and his men now succeeded in
placing his guns in the trench, and, from that time until the end of
the fight, they could hardly be induced to leave them long enough to
eat; they didn't leave them to sleep--they slept in the trench by the
guns.
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