movement fighting far from home. The Constitutionalist Army divisions now utilized trains rather than cavalry to move men and war materiel, including their horses, as well as soldaderas. The change in technology enabled the movement of combatants, women and children, with horses and male soldiers inside box cars, with women and children on top of them. This created a situation similar to that of the Federal Army, where allowing soldiers to have their wives, sweethearts, and possibly their children with them, soldiers' morale was better and the armies could retain their combatants. In the region where Villa's División del Norte operated, the railway network was more dense, allowing for greater numbers of women to be part of the enterprise. The women and children utilized all possible space available to them, including on the cow-catchers at the front of locomotives. In the region where Constitutionalist general Álvaro Obregón operated in Sonora, the network was less dense, there was more use of just cavalry, and fewer women and children. When the revolutionary factions split after the ouster of Huerta in 1914 and Obregón defeated his former comrade-in-arms Villa at the Battle of Celaya, Villa's forces were much reduced and were again on horseback. This smaller, more mobile Villista force no longer included female camp followers, and rape increased. A reported Villa atrocity with corrobaration was his killing of a soldadera supporting Villa's former First Chief, Venustiano Carranza, political head of the Constitutionalist faction. In December 1916, a Carrancista woman begged Villa for her husband's life; when informed he was already dead, the new widow called Villa a murderer and worse. Villa shot her dead. Villistas worried that other Carrancista soldaderas would denounce the death when their army returned, they urged Villa to kill the 90 Carrancista soldaderas. Villa's secretary was repelled at the scene slaughter, with the women's bodies piled upon one another, and a two-year-old laughing on his mother's body. Elena Poniatowska gives a slightly different account. The story is that there was a shot fired from a group of women, towards Villa. None of the women, whether they actually knew or not, gave up a culprit. Villa then ordered his men to kill every single woman in the group. Everyone, including children, was killed. Villa's troops were then told to loot the bodies for valuables. During their search they found a baby still alive. Villa told them that their orders