THERE had been no warning of the war. The Pacific cables had ceased to work and the Atlantic fleet voyaged southward. Then, the lifting fog-curtain across Monterey Bay disclosed the Japanese transports riding at anchor in the offing. The puny flower of the American army was destroyed at a blow, and the great, half-trained colossus that now lay sprawled along the edge of the last green strip of California, with the desert behind it, and a new Japanese Empire in front, was the remaining hope of the Union on the Coast.

      For the country had settled earnestly to the bitter business of war. It had strengthened the remnant of that early-destroyed army of laymen, in every way that six months' time can strengthen an army. There were sent to it thousands of eager but untrained volunteers, hundreds of guns, and mountains of supplies. Eagerness and guns and supplies do not make armies and of this fact the invaders at least were confidently aware.

      Japan had been very busy, organizing to remain, taking toll for the cost of war, and converting the mountain passes into miniature Port Arthurs. Up to this time they had paid scant heed to the huddled and defeated remnant that still held the gate of the last feasible avenue of attack from the states beyond the mountains. The time had come to seal that gap and render themselves as securely in possession as hills and desert could make them.

      Perhaps they had waited a month too long. The American general, Eblee, was a theoretical soldier, but he was, first of all, an organizer — and he had done good work. It was true, that at his back, were only the desert and the shimmering rails of the Southern Pacific leading across it to safety. But his right flank rested firmly in the mountains, his left in a strong position on the Mexican frontier, and his center was manned by his best troops.

      "They will strike our left and try to crumple it back on the center, and then push us from our railroad and into the mountains," the General predicted. "If they succeed, we're lost — but they wont succeed."

      The American extreme right consisted of two regiments of cavalry, posted at the great dam of the Santa Symprosa Irrigation Project.

      "Where that wild Indian, Bolles," the General said, "won't have any chance to go cavorting around with his 'splendid survivals,' getting in the way of good infantry, and spoiling what little strategy there is in this war."

      Eblee did not believe in cavalry. He had even decried the rear-guard work of Bolles' regiments, which same work had saved the remnant of the First Army in its long flight down the length of California. The general was a soldier of the new Germanic school, with which nothing could have been more at outs than that same hard-riding, irreverent, chance-taking Bolles who, with his admiring and sympathetic troopers, was enduring his banishment from the supposed seat of war with the worst of grace. To Bolles, Eblee sent a bespectacled and well-crammed Lieutenant, fresh from a service school.

      "To instill a little modem science into your command," the tactless order said. Considering that Bolles had been chasing White Mountain Apaches across the Arizona alkali, when the Lieutenant was still kicking on a counterpane, he, Bolles, was not vastly pleased.

      "Look here, Napoleon," was his greeting, "I have no doubt at all of your ability and acquirements, but I wish you'd demonstrate them for me by figuring out the stresses and strains of the Santa Symprosa dam, the amount of water it backs up, and the country it controls."

      "That will keep him busy for ten days," Bolles explained to the British Observer, who had insisted upon remaining at Cavalry Headquarters in spite of many invitations from the General, "and by that time I expect doings along this line."

      "But why the dam? I should think you could get all that information — if you have the faintest need for it."

      "Heavens, man, I don't care a blue fig about the dam — it'll keep him from messing with my troops, wont it?"

      "Oh," said the Guards' Major, "I see."

      In the fullness of their own good time the Japanese turned their attention to the growing army in the South, and out in front of Eblee's long line their perfectly ordered divisions began to take positions on a parallel range of hills.

      For five days the forces lay facing each other across the valley of the Santa Symprosa, with no other evidence of either's presence than the helios winking from the crests by day and the rare bar of a search-light's beam against the sky by night.

      Then began a week of scientific sparring. An aeroplane chugged and whirred across the American lines at a thousand feet, one morning at dawn. It drew a sputtering fire from the Japanese hills, and then, swooping toward it from the invaders' signal station, came the first of the blue Odzu monoplanes to be seen in the war. The American had the wings of his pursuer and he began a sweeping reconnaissance of the whole line. Over the center, he ran fairly counter of a vertical battery firing "marking" shells, that left a parabolic wake of stringy, heavy smoke, and finally brought the American to the earth, wheeling and tumbling out of the sky like a wounded sand-hill crane.

      Patrols were wrangling in the valley and finally a force of Japanese cavalry struck Eblee's right flank, driving in Bolles' outposts, where the narrow gorge of the Santa Symprosa cañon debouches on the valley. It was their first real experience with American dragoons. Upon them descended Bolles like an angry deity. He caught them in the open, slashed them with short-range fire and drove them pell-mell to their hills and the cover of their artillery. But they came back, to follow an erratic course down Eblee's front. They were checking the reports of their aeroplanes and patrols. After they disappeared, there was an ominous quiet for two days and then — along the whole left wing of the American army, from the center to the very Mexican line, the Japs opened the ball with their guns.

      They sprayed the trenches with indirect shrapnel fire and hunted the hills for the range. Then they found the American artillery positions and proceeded methodically to pound them. The gunners' work in that battle was a bit of well-turned beauty. One by one, Eblee's field-pieces withdrew from the Yankee chorus, and they did it so plausibly that even the General was not certain that his artillery had not been duly silenced. The ruse worked well, for on the heels of the last salvos, came the premature infantry advance and, over the distant sky-line, the long black columns began to pour. They disintegrated in the V of the valley and came out of the cover of the trees along the stream, in a slender cordon of skirmishers that looked, through the field glasses, like a string of infinitesimal beads on an invisible wire. They were about half-way up the defenders' slope when every gun in the American left wing opened on them. A horizontal sheet of shrapnel and machine-gun fire struck them like a blight. They crumpled but came on, and down to the cover of the trees rushed their reserves.

      The American infantry had just opened fire when a staff-officer brought Eblee Bolles' message, reporting activity in the front of that detached and forgotten position in the hills. The general was quite ready to stand firm in the strength of his prophecy.

      "Mere demonstration on our right," he said, not taking his glasses from his eyes. "Tell Major Bolles that we are in full possession of the details of this attack — and you might add, Caldwell, that he needn't be alarmed."

      Squatting at the far end of the field-buzzer Bolles received this message and swore.

      "I needn't be alarmed — needn't I? As if I couldn't get out of the way of any skip-two-and-carry-a-dozen saddle-colored-serfs-of-the-Orient that have ever shouldered a rifle — I needn't be alarmed. Well when the end of this theoretical, Deutcherized line crumples like a jack-knife, we'll see who needs to be alarmed."

      "You really needn't, you know, Major," ventured the well-crammed Lieutenant. "They have nothing to gain by attacking us in force here and all the German authorities are unanimous —" He got no further.

      "Slow up, Von Moltke. I don't know what the German authorities say about the Santa Symprosa dam, but American common-sense says that it controls this theatre of operations like an electric push-button —" Bolles stopped suddenly as though distracted by something in his own words. The lieutenant thought that "something" was their rather rough jocularity. He smiled faintly, patronizingly.

      "Oh, that's all right, Major. I don't mind a little chaffing."

      Bolles heard this remark no more than he noticed the good-natured sarcasm of Major Barwell-Carruthers, of the Guards:

      "You don't seem to have much influence with your general, Bolles."

      Forty miles away, the General was beaming with elation. For the infantry fire of the defenders had completed the work of the guns. From where Eblee stood he could see below him a few squat figures, staggering like drunken men in a yellow fog. But the fog was the heavy, saffron smoke of exploding shells and the dust and earth kicked up from the hillside by the withering fire of his own rifles and guns. It lay along the valley as far as he could see. In its cover the broken Japanese line had hesitated a moment — only a moment; after that, it went scuttling down the hill in chaotic rout. Already news of an American victory was being blocked out before cheering crowds on a thousand bulletin boards throughout the states. It was the first reversal of humiliation and utter gloom in the six months' war, and it produced an hysterical enthusiasm that peace-time words cannot suggest. Stores and offices were not closed. They were deserted with open doors, and the streets were filled with mobs of joy-crazed people.

      Eblee was certain of what to expect now. The enemy's attack had developed exactly as he had deduced it. They were trying to force him from the railroad and destroy him in the hills. He knew that the assault would be repeated and he began drawing fresh troops from his center and even from the far-off right flank.

      "Bolles — at the Santa Symprosa dam — two regiments of cavalry —" the chief of staff read, from his list of available reserves.

      "Oh, cavalry has no bid to this party," Eblee ordered, "leave 'em there. If we get that badly stalled we can send for 'em."

      All that night troops from the center and right were stumbling in through the darkness to be assigned to positions by sleepy staff-officers who had been in the saddle for hours on end. With the dawn came the opening guns of the renewed attack. In retrospect, there was something unusual about that attack that, in the elation of its repulse, Eblee cannot be blamed for overlooking, any more than he blamed himself, when Bolles' second message came growling over the field-buzzer:

      "Force of Japanese of all arms marching up the gorge of the Santa Symprosa cañon. Conservative estimate — forty thousand men. Reports indicate that it is the Second Japanese Field Army — Field Marshal Tsushima. You might add for me to the General, Caldwell, in a purely unofficial way, that I, personally, am not in the least alarmed, though I am sure that the Right of the Line is completely enveloped and the last position for American troops is rendered untenable. We may be able to put up a bluff and hold 'em for an hour — they're ten miles away — say four hours in all. I'm waiting orders."

      It is difficult to make clear enough the significance of Tsushima's flanking movement in the Battle of Santa Symprosa. The frontal attack on Eblee's left wing had been a colossal feint, to allow the approach, on an unprotected portion of the American position, of an overwhelming force, which (once it had reached the dam), by its mere presence decided the battle more completely than any amount of firing and death could ever decide it. Eblee was not only checkmated, he was rendered helpless, boxed, tied and tagged for transportation. He knew it before his aide had half-finished the stammered message. To his credit be it said that his first thought was of the waiting, cheer-hoarse Americans, whom he had deceived by his early confident messages of victory. Eblee was not a strong man; he was only a superficially brilliant one and he had been completely cozened. He sat limply down upon a rock and his flushed, tired face dropped to his knees and folded arms. The chief of staff assumed control.

      Out at the dam, Bolles' two regiments were standing "to horse" in columns of masses, eagerly watching the little group of waiting officers about the box of the field-buzzer on the ground. Bolles was fully as bitter in his rage and disappointment as Eblee could possibly have been, but he was a different stamp of man. He could even reply to the chaffing of the British attaché.

      Major Barwell-Carruthers had had much to suffer in his weeks with Bolles. A camp-intimacy that allowed it had sprung up between them, and the distinctively American Bolles had lost no opportunity and overlooked no racial peculiarity, in that time. The South-Sea generic term of "lime-juicer" had been shortened to mere "lime," and not one time honored quip had been forgotten.

      Major Carruthers' day had come, and he was making gentle use of it. "You've got to give it to the little beggars, Bolles. Right up to your back-door — and your outposts all asleep — I say, old fay-low, it's rough. You'd better show 'em your heels — their infantry will catch you."

      "Don't you worry about their infantry, Lime; they haven't got the Santa Symprosa dam — yet, you know."

      "There's no use holdin' 'em, I'd say — even if you could. The General couldn't possibly get enough troops here to do any good, in ten hours' time. The refreshin' audacity of 'em though! Marchin' up a cañon that way. They wouldn't have done that if they hadn't known you Yankees were asleep. Too risky and gives you too good a chance to pot 'em. As it was, it screened the movement from the aeroplanes and the like. Oh, you've got to give it to 'em."

      Some thought of his own was filling Bolles with heightening and helpless anger.

      "If I could only reach the artillery ammunition column," he fumed, half-aloud, "I'd fix 'em yet."

      "Artillery column? You'd better get to the rear and try to escape the general capture. You'll look fit after you've lived on the fish and rice diet of a prison camp for a year. Why are you waitin'?"

      "I'm waiting to see how much time the general wants."

      "He'll get the time Japanese infantry needs to march nine miles — it's precious little."

      Bolles started to reply when the man at the receiver interrupted.

      "Message comin' over, sir," he said. Bolles took the receiver.

      "Yes," he called, "Bolles — Santa Symprosa dam."

      "The general's orders are that you withdraw toward the center. Other advices confirm the report that our right flank is completely turned. Destroy all supplies. The general also says that you should have obtained information of this movement long before you did. He holds you responsible. We're completely done for."

      Bolles' face became crimson with anger. He mumbled something into the mouth-piece.

      "What's that?" came clearly over the wire. "Didn't you get the message?"

      "Didn't get a word of it," growled Bolles. "Something the matter with the line." And he reached out where the black thread of the buzzer lay along the ground, grasped it in a strong hand, and before ten witnesses deliberately jerked it asunder.

      "Now, Lime," he bantered as he got to his feet, "I'll bet you a month's pay against your Whippy saddle that I hold the Japs in the cañon until — until — until the General gets away."

      There was one idea dominant in the mind of Eblee's chief-of-staff. That was, to get as many men as his limited time would let him aboard the trains that lay waiting in black and puffing ranks on the newly built switches of the main base, and away toward the safety of the states. He kept a brave show of force on the front where three successive Japanese attacks had been repulsed on the preceding days, but back at the base, where the night was lighted to a ghastly day by the flames of the fires that were forever saving great hillocks of supplies from Japanese capture, and the shrieking of locomotive whistles drowned all sound, and the confusion of hurrying men made passage perilous, regiment after regiment was being loaded on anything that ran on wheels. He had hoped for ten hours, and when that time had dragged by, and a second relay of freight cars came rumbling out of the desert, he stopped long enough to say to the General:

      "It's not as bad as we thought, sir. Five brigades of the First Field Army have been entrained. New cars are here and there aren't any more reports from Bolles."

      "It's bad enough," groaned Eblee. "Think of Washington — think of the States! After we'd reported a victory, too. Oh, I don't want to go back — I don't want to go back —"

      Looming like a specter in the red glare, a staff-officer galloped straight for temporary headquarters and began calling the general's name.

      "Here —" said Eblee wearily, "here — I suppose it's all over now."

      The boy threw himself from his horse and stood panting and trying to speak. A group of disconsolate correspondents looked up from the brims of their pulled-down hats, and finally rose and drew closer. No one interfered with them.

      "Message — from Major Bolles — sir," gasped the aide. "He presents Mar—shal Tsushima's un—conditional surrender — Fifty thousand men — sir — colors and guns — for God's sake — get troops there — general, it's a — bluff — and it may bust — any moment —"

      The Japanese advance, marching up the floor of Santa Symprosa cañon, heard firing on the plateau above them and on both flanks. Their service of information had been perfect, and the firing disturbed no one. They knew that they could reach the Santa Symprosa dam before any considerable force could cut them off. They had placed flank guards in advance of their columns on both sides of the cañon's walls — guards with strength enough to brush Bolles' little force aside without so much as stopping. Field Marshal Tsushima glanced smilingly up at the cliffs that rose a sheer five hundred feet on either side of his massed columns, but he did no more.

      Ten minutes later an aide signaled down from above. An officer stopped to take the message, but the staff did not draw rein. Then the man galloped up and turned in his report.

      The General began reading it, marching, but before he was half through it he raised his hand for "halt." There was more signaling and at last, that signaling became frantic. The firing had ceased and the whole Japanese army was receiving word to stand fast. There was a ripple of excitement that became a questioning murmur. For Field Marshal Tsushima, after more wig-wagging and many exclamations, dismounted and made a scrambling, painful way up a zigzag trail to the top of the cañon, to a consultation with an American major, who had given good and sufficient reasons for not coming down.

      Marshal Tsushima was met by officers of the right flank guard and conducted to a large flat rock on which were spread maps, tracings and blue prints of the Santa Symprosa dam. A white flag of truce was leaning against a tree, and an officer in American khaki was languidly explaining something to an interpreter, who was excitedly retailing it to a pushing, craning circle of Japanese officers.

      "You can see for yourself, sir," Bolles drawled, when the gist of his previous talk had been retailed to the general, "the dam is three hundred feet high and half-a-mile long. Here are the figures on the water it backs up," and he proffered a closely-covered sheet, sprinkled with Greek symbols and footed by an underscored result, in which the word "gals" tailed off a row of figures that covered the bottom of it from edge to edge. "Here is a contoured map of the cañon, showing the 'fall' we get. You see — the gorge narrows again, below here, about opposite where your supply-trains are now. Labor could have been saved by building the dam there, but it wouldn't have given the tremendous 'head' of water we need here, for power. Now, sir, we have the whole Symprosa dam fairly honey-combed with Rack-a-Rock. Here is an elevation of the front face — we weren't taking any chances, you perceive. There are about three tons of explosive — more or less." The last sheet was a wide blue print on which had been traced with red ink the current lines of an electric detonator that ramified to power charges indicated on the wall of the dam. "As I started to say, sir, you can see from this that fourteen minutes after I give the signal to the look-out, standing over there on the peak of Conduit Point, all the ground that your army now occupies will be covered with a torrential flood of fifty feet of water. A few of your men might escape — but it's extremely doubtful." Bolles hesitated a little and stammered becomingly.

      "You will understand, sir," he went on, "that when the time came for me to act, I found myself unable to take the responsibility for such an unprecedented destruction of human life, without giving you some opportunity of avoiding it."

      There was bickering and there was bluster, and many requests for armistices, and time to consult superiors — deprecations of unheard of methods of warfare, and diplomacy, and references to the precepts of the Geneva Convention. Bolles had not played twenty years of poker for nothing. He made one great concession when he allowed a detail of Japanese officers to be conducted to the dam. One sight of it was enough.

      At a black box of a friction detonator a young officer was waiting with his hand on the plunger, intently watching a sergeant who stood on the opposite wall, a red flag held horizontally and well away from his body. From the base of this box a cable of black cords lay fifty yards across the ground to the cañon wall and there ramified into many strands that ran to different points across the curving face of the dam. A sentinel kept the investigators at a respectful distance. A troop of dismounted men heightened the effect from the shelter of every rock and tree, prepared for and safe from any terrific explosion that might occur.

      The stupendous audacity of "Bolles' Bluff" may be bruited down the ages, but history holds no moment of more acute suspense than the one Bolles suffered while the Japanese staff was jargoning its report to its general. What they were saying was:

      "Sir, there is an officer standing over the dam who holds in the crook of his finger the life of every man in the gorge."

      What Bolles' rather vulgar imagination feared they were saying was:

      "Sir, the cables are cavalry lariats, blackened with harness dressing, the charges are mud-daubs on the wall, the detonator — if all the rest were real — is, on its face, inadequate, and this man has the American Doctor Cook kicked into a corner and begging for mercy as the teller of historic and colossal lies."

      But it was not until the last Japanese prisoner had toiled up the incline that leads out of the Symprosa cañon, and the last wagon of the captured supply train had gone creaking into park, that even Eblee was informed of the details of the surrender of Tsushima. And that was when Major Barwell Carruthers, Military Observer for the British Army, handed to the General a splotchily stained and (at close range) palpably counterfeit electric detonator.

      "Allow me to present you, sir," he begged, "as a suggested pedestal for Major Bolles' statue in your Hall of Fame, one empty, but forever glorified, hard-tack box."

      And beyond the desert, a nation, not yet fully enlightened, was aflame with joy.