Chapter VII: Part 7

He turned, smiled, and reaching, took his sword from the wall behind him and, beckoning to me, pointed to the west....

I rushed toward him. The solid door met me, knocking me to my knees on the grass. I arose stunned, but thrilled. My doubts had gone, the spirit of Andrew Jackson pointed me the way. On the grass I knelt for a moment before that hut which is a shrine. _A lamb and a child and the sword of the Lord and of Gideon: I thank thee, Lord; for it takes them all to make a man!_ ... I had not slept but had ridden into town to see the Tennessee troops go by in their last parade.

They came by in battalions, the old battle flag of Jackson at their head, and beside it rode old Hawthorne, sitting his horse as gallantly as when in younger days he rode with Forrest and Morgan.

He saw me, smiled, and saluted.

I watched Braxton Bragg go by at the head of his company, and I saw him look covetously at the beautiful horse I rode.

Following an old custom, a fife and drum corps followed. I heard them coming and my blood leaped fiercely as they marched by, playing "_The Girl I Left Behind Me_."

It was their last call for enlistment, and as they passed I stepped in behind the big drum, throwing my silver dollar into its head.

So I enlisted for the war.

The old drummer smiled and nodded, the crowd cheered--I looked up--Old Hawthorne had ridden back and sat his horse smiling down on me. "God bless you, Jack, Jack!" he cried. "Do you know that I rode back to see you do it? I knew you would do it--'tis the call of the drum--the blood of the men of your tribe who could both pray and fight! Come, you shall be on my staff. Captain Jack Ballington from the home of Old Hickory."

I smiled. "General, you are good to me, too good. But let me prove my own worth, if there is any in me. No soldier was ever made except by merit. Give me a chance to make myself. I am going to the war and I am going with you. But under two conditions: that this horse I am riding goes with us, is yours. This is Eloise's," I added softly, "and I loved her. 'Tis the only horse in Tennessee fit to carry our General. She gave him to me. I give him to you."

He was silent; he understood.

"And the other is that you give me a rifle in the ranks." ...

After I had enlisted I wanted to see the homestead again, the hickories that Eloise and I had loved, and to bid my old grandsire farewell.

He was sitting under his favorite elm tree smoking when I rode up. I did not see who was with him until I had dismounted and stood before him, hat off, holding my horse's reins.

Then I saw that it was Braxton Bragg who was talking excitedly and loudly; and I knew that he had been drinking. He did not speak to me nor see me. The old man did not know me in the gathering darkness.

"I am Jack, Grandfather, Jack Ballington. And I have come to bid you good-by."

"Ah, Jack--Jack--" he repeated--"and you are my grandson--ha-ha. I'd about forgotten it. And you have come to tell me good-by--why I thought you had gone, somewhere--ha-ha."

I heard a short laugh from Braxton Bragg. I saw the sneering smile that was unconcealed in his face. I turned on him with fighting anger, cut to the heart. And then I remembered the first lesson of every soldier is to command himself. Very calmly I said, "I have not gone far, sir; only to Dr. Gottlieb's; but to-morrow I am going to the war. I have enlisted with the First Tennessee, and I felt that it was my duty, sir, to call and tell you good-by."

Instantly he was on his feet, holding to a crutch he now carried.

"Going to the war! Enlisted with the First Tennessee? By God, sir, do you really mean that?"

"I am, sir," I said.

He pulled me to him and clasped me. "Jack, Jack, my boy!"

He turned to Braxton Bragg. "Braxton, now by God, sir, this boy is indeed my grandson; the lost has been found, the prodigal has returned! I knew the old Rutherford blood would redeem him yet!"

He laughed happily, still holding me to him. "Braxton, take him by the hand, for 'by the Eternal,' as Old Hickory would say, he is the same blood kin as you, and I am going to give him the same chance! Hey there, Thomas! Oh, Thomas!" he called to his old body servant. "Bring me a light, and paper and pencil! I'll drop a line to Hawthorne--to put you on his staff as Captain. And my check book, Thomas! By God, sir--Jack--my grandson, Jack, I'll give you a little ready money, only a thousand dollars to see that you go like a soldier and a Rutherford--ha-ha--damn him, I knew he'd do it!"

"I'm going as a private, Grandfather; General Hawthorne has already offered me the rank you suggest--but--"

"You damned mooning fool, you shall not do it!" he cried. "No Rutherford ever went to any war a private. Tut--tut--I'll fix that. You are now my grandson, Jack."

His voice fell. He spoke through tears. "Your mother, Jack--Emily--ay, my boy--I can see her now with her sweet dreamy eyes of poetry, the finely chiseled half sad face of religion, the heart of romance and of sorrow. I loved her best of them all--Jack--and you are her son--my grandson."

"Grandfather," I said, "I thank you, and I shall try to be worthy of you and of my mother and my father who died a gentleman. But I shall ask only for this horse, for our General to ride, and that he shall be near me, for I promised Eloise I would always care for him. She gave him to me," I added.

Instantly Braxton Bragg was on his feet.

"Eloise never owned him. Why, it's what I have come by for, Grandfather. What you had just promised me I could have when he rode up." He came up to me, catching at the reins. "No sir, you shall never ride him off this place, he is mine."

My grandfather rose and stood between us. "Sit down, Braxton Bragg," he said angrily. "You've been drinking and you've not too much sense when you are sober. Now, I had forgotten--I forget so much of late: come to think of it, it was Eloise's horse, no one else could touch him, and the way that girl could ride him--no--no--if she gave him to Jack he shall have him."

"He has lied," Braxton Bragg cried, pushing the old man angrily aside to shoulder up to me. "He is lying. She didn't give him the horse--"

My fist shut the rest of his words in his mouth. I felt the cut of his teeth where my knuckles struck them as I sent him suddenly full length on the ground.

He tried to rise, drawing his Colt's. But my grandfather struck it from his hand with his crutch, knocking the weapon across the road.

Cursing he tried to rise, but I was on him, my knee on his breast, his two arms pinned to the ground.

"Grandfather," I said, "I don't want to hurt him, but you heard him give me the lie."

"I did," said the old man grimly. "I did, and I waited to see if you would strike. If you had not, I was going to knock you down with my crutch! Mount your horse and go to war, Jack Ballington, my grandson; for by the living God I know now I'll have a fighter in that war worthy the name of Rutherford when this cur turns coward and quits!"

*CHAPTER V.*

*THE FIRST TENNESSEE*

I do not know where you are, Eloise. I do not even know that you are alive; but if you are, I have the promise of Aunt Lucretia that this letter shall go to you; and Aunt Lucretia, you know, does not break her promises.

And if you be dead, Dear Heart, as I do deep in my mind fear, for I have not heard from you, nor Aunt Lucretia since that June day was turned into December in a night--that day when I went to the old familiar, sweet places, to find no longer there her who had made them sweet--why, what matters so much? For the passing of the soul of a dear one, when we see that it is passed, is such a natural thing at last, such a little change to make so great a transition! While they lived and life looked full and wholesome, it all seemed so large, their life and ours. But they go in a night, in a breath's draught. And then we see how small it was: a little finger-width zone across the world of things. A little too much heat, a little too much cold, a tiny vein broken, a severed cord, and it is whiffed out. Even in the fullness of strength and brave life a dash at bars on a great game horse....

Forgive me, dear one, if you be alive to read this; for I would not remind you now of a time you were different. 'Tis God's way, and since He has kept in my heart my love of you, and through your accident showed me your love for me, have we not His two greatest gifts for our very own?

And as to that other world, do you know what instinct tells me it is? That there we will have a hundred senses where we now have but five; and there we shall see the Thought as well as the Thing: every thought, every dream, every hope, every love, these we know not as words but as beautiful beings whom we shall meet face to face. And its only law is Balance, Compensation, Recompense, Poise; the Equation of the Universe. We wonder here why there should be such things as sin and sorrow and injustice. But there we shall know that sin is not sin, but the prism which shows us goodness, that sorrow is not sorrow but the prism of gladness, and that death, as we now know it, is not a stopping, but the prism through which we see another light. Here, on our little earth, with only our five small senses, we see only the prism. There we shall see the rays. It is the difference between the star and its light.

And if we hold the prism of sorrow here, Dear Heart, as I do now, shall I not hold a handful of the joys which stream through it there? For here 'tis a poem written, but there the meaning of it. Here 'tis the sun rising, there the dawn. Here the giving of alms, there the joy of the giving. Here it is the instrument that makes music, there the music. Here 'tis only a picture, there the soul that made it.

And if you be passed, Eloise, if you be passed, even yet will I keep writing to you. For if letters be written with one's heart's blood, I know, in my soul of souls, that our dead will read them. For though I have lived but a little while according to the span of things, and less according to the knowledge of things, yet the little span and the little knowledge have made known to me the greatest of all truths: _that I do not know_: that even with my little knowing I have seen things come to pass which were more wonderful than those which I thought could ever be; that we live on the borderland of a world wonderful, mysterious; that we are clasping hands with eternity, and need only the language that will yet come to spell out the touch for us. And so I shall write to you even though you are dead, write to you, sweetheart, a love letter for your heaven, knowing that not only will you read it, but that I, in the writing, as in all giving, will at last be the one who will get.

It is selfishness in me at last, Eloise, selfishness that I may hold through life and forever this love of you in my heart, now that it has only memory and not your own sweet self to live on. And no greater love and more constant can there be than that which lives on memory. For the living-love, being flesh, must change with the years. But memory-love, being eternal, can never change.

I am at Iloilo; and the gap is great since that long ago June, that June of Tennessee blue grass and roses, and the old home and you, sweetheart.

* * * * *

There is little to tell of my leaving; of my quick decision to fight for my country and for you, Eloise. For, cast from my father's house there was nothing left but my country's, and losing the love of my kindred there was only your own great love left me, yours and my country's. For these I am fighting. But at the last--I know you will want to hear it all--at the last our old grandsire seemed strangely touched, and the memory of it has burned my heart, once strangely amid flying Filipino bullets on the firing line, and once amid the thunders of the great thirteen-inch guns from the Monadnoc. And right glad I believe he will be when he learns, that though he called me a fool for refusing a soft place as aide to dear old Hawthorne, and a greater fool because I refused a commission which he himself could have got for me for the asking, and took a musket in the ranks instead, that I have risen from a private to the Captaincy of the crack company of the First Tennessee. So say the Regulars of the Bloody Fourth that we backed to a fight to the death against the Filipino trenches. So says old Hawthorne himself--God's blessing on his old white head!--now commanding our brigade, who led us in with the rebel yell in his throat! And riding Satan, Dear Heart; cannot you see the picture, such a man on such a horse! And you should have seen how Satan loves the firing line and how he hates the smell of a Filipino and his pony!

* * * * *

But this story must be told straight even in a love letter to my unseen love in an unknown land.

When I left home I only took my father's sword and Satan. I took him because of my love of you, and that old Hawthorne, our General, might have a horse to ride into battle that should be worthy of his rider. For if you have ever thought of it, sweetheart, you will know that no great soldier ever owned a mean horse.

I joined a company of the First Tennessee. In the company next to me was Braxton Bragg, commanding it by the influence of our old grandsire.

My first promotion came in San Francisco, where we camped for a month before sailing for Manila, via Honolulu. Our Captain was a Tennessee lawyer who knew little of the game. It was I who drilled the company, my German work stood me in good stead, and we won on dress parade drill. We were the best drilled company of the First Tennessee. Then our Captain resigned to practice law in San Francisco, and I was made First Lieutenant.

We dropped anchor off the city of Manila, November 28. It was an inspiring sight as we sailed into the Bay, to see the sunken Spanish ships, and Dewey's flag ship with Old Glory flying, proclaiming Republican Liberty for the first time to the waters of the great Far East.

Our first fight came early in February. We had lain outside of the walled city on the Lunetta Driveway for nearly three months. We knew that Aguinaldo, with eighty thousand men, armed with guns we had given him, and those of the Spanish, was in our front, feeling his way.

It was nine o'clock Saturday night, February 4th, when the attack began. We heard shots from the enemy, then three in rapid succession from our pickets. It meant help. The men, who had been grumbling for three months for fear they would have to go back home without a scrap, sprang like school boys to a playground. Then the front lit up with a crackle of fire. Our rear was another sheet of it from the fleet in the bay, firing over our heads.

It was a hot fighting front, the First Colorado, Tenth Pennsylvania, Thirteenth Minnesota, Fifty-First Iowa, and First North Dakota standing the brunt. We chafed all night, standing in line down by the beach, away in the rear, the very base of our half-circle battle line. All night we stood hoping that we might go into it before it was over, our blood stirred by the battle and roar in front, and the thunder behind.

At breakfast Sunday morning we still stood in line, expectant, keyed to a fiddle's string, eager. The cook passed our Sunday fare up the line, chicken and hot coffee. How little things stick in excitement! Then we saw a courier come out of the smoke and flame, and old Hawthorne rode Satan to our front.

"Boys," he said quietly, "they have asked us to take the Filipino trenches, and we are going to take them. Attention, regiment! right shoulder arms, fours right, march!"

A Utah battery and the Nebraska boys supported us as we charged over San Juan bridge under fire and across a rice field.

We kept step to the _boom--boom--boom_--of the thirteen-inch shells firing over us from the guns of the Monadnoc. Down the bloody lane we charged, the bullets humming like hornets.

"Listen, boys," said a man in my company, "listen how they hum!"

An old sergeant of the Regulars passed us, going to the rear. He was binding a handkerchief around his arm, from which the blood was squirting. But he laughed and called to us, "Oh, don't worry about those that you hear humming--them you hear won't hurt you!"

Then the trenches grinned in our front, spitting fire. We prepared to charge. Behind us were Regulars, and in the crisis of it all I saw Braxton Bragg. I hate to write this of the blood of a Rutherford. My shame, my sorrow was greater than his. His nerve had simply left him. He had got down from the hissing bullets behind a sandhill. He had quit before his own men. They did not shoot him, they did not have time; they charged with me, backing my own company. It was a quick rush and soon over. The Filipinos left their breakfast of rice in the trenches. But we left some of our bravest there, too.

But battered and tired as we were, the real fight was just on. In sweeping the Filipinos out of their trenches we had hurled them to the left on our own water-works that supplied the city and the army. If these were held by the Filipinos and our supply cut off our fight would be in vain. It is said that twenty thousand of them stood between our water and our line. Luck again was with us. The First Tennessee happened to be nearest to them and it was we who cut through, and only four hundred, a battalion, at that. In a quick bloody charge we took the works. Old Hawthorne and Satan led us as if on dress parade, a target for twenty thousand Filipino rifles, and not a bullet touched them. With cheers we followed the white hair of the old Confederate on his black horse with the north star on his head. We were holding a perilous place, for we were in the rear of the Filipino army, with our backs against the water-tanks, and foes in front and rear. But we held it for two days until help came. And the first battalion and third battalion had equally as good a record when the fighting was over.

A week afterwards old Hawthorne came to my tent. He was holding a telegram from the Secretary of War. "Jack," he said, "I am a Major General, and you are the Captain of Braxton Bragg's company. The boys of it wired petitions and elected you. They said you led them twice to victory. They want you to lead them always."

Our hardest fight was at Iloilo last week. We took the city, but once out of the water we had to fight down barricaded walls, hemmed in and shot at from walls and house tops. For two hours we were busier than a bull-terrier in a den of cats. They were the best fighters we struck. They were officered, we learned, by the brave and brainy little Japs.

At the Lapaz sugar mill they tried to cut off some of the Regulars. We were nearest. It was merely our luck. Any other regiment would have cut through the enemy to save their comrades. At Naglocan they made a stand and there we finished them.

* * * * *

That was written a month ago. I will finish and let it all go together, finding you if it can; and if not, well my heart has found yours somewhere, sweetheart; in the writing my thoughts have met, somewhere, yours.

We stay and hold Iloilo, but General Hawthorne with a battalion of our boys went a month ago to Cebu to help out the Twenty-third regiment of Regulars who were hemmed up there in the mountains and fighting for their lives.

Would you like to hear how close I came to death yesterday, and not on the firing line at that? It was a nasty close call I had and the horror of it still twangs on my nerves. It is that, and not knowing what the morrow may bring, that has brought me to the writing of this last love letter should either of us pass into the shadow of things.

On the nearby Island of Mindanao live the savage fanatics, the Moros. These people have been a terror to the Spaniards and are the nightmare of our own men. They are Mohammedans, and the fiercest, most treacherous fighters of all the Philippine Islands. They cannot be civilized, they cannot be conquered, they can only be killed. There is a bloody tradition about them and the Spaniards; how, hemmed up for slaughter, when their warriors have all fallen, the women have been known to rush on the Spanish lines with their babes in their arms, and, as the Spaniards would meet them with their bayonets, hurl their babes onto the steel, blocking both it and the fire behind it, and cut down the soldiers with the deadly _borangs_ of their dead husbands. Then there with their babes on the bayonets they would die.

Of these Moros, there is one the soldier dreads more than the firing line of death, more than the panther that springs at night, or the rattlesnake that strikes in the grass. It is the _Juramentado_.

When one of the Moros is adjudged guilty of thieving, impurity or half a hundred other crimes and sentenced to death he becomes a _Juramentado_. Strange, mystic ceremonies are performed over him by the priest in the black wood of the black night. Cruel tortures are inflicted; his head, face, eyebrows, and mustache are shaved clean, his face painted, his body left half naked.

There is but one atonement for him. He must kill as many Christians as he can before dying himself. Dying in the act he is transplanted to Paradise.

They are great sailors and are liable to run amuck and then float out to distant places, to any place where they can find a Christian. Stealthily they creep into a camp, or town, or church, or wherever there is a gathering. Their keen _borang_ is sheathed between two bamboo reeds; its blade is a razor, its weight that of lead. With a blow they have cut heads clean from shoulders, or split a soldier from neck to hip.

At a word they will turn in a crowd and kill all those around them. The Spaniards tell how five of these fanatics slipped up to a company of their men peacefully, and then in sudden frenzy killed nineteen soldiers before they could shoot them down.

Our orders are strict concerning them: a soldier must never be out of lines without his side arms. And so nameless a danger is in their very name that it is the unwritten law of the camp to courtmartial any soldier who cries out for a joke, _Juramentado_!

I was visiting the camp of the Regulars and as I went through the gate a file passed out for guard mounting. A _Juramentado_ had paddled over from Mindanao, slipped in, and suddenly attacked a soldier of the Eighteenth Regulars, as he was returning on a pony from some duty. The first blow of the _borang_ took off the man's arm at the shoulder. Clapping spurs to his pony he rushed for the main entrance just as I passed out, with the file of soldiers behind me. In an instant the frenzied, howling, painted thing was on us.

I heard the officer in charge cry "fire," and a dozen Krags snarled their smokeless call, sending twelve steel-jacketed bullets into the charging demon whose painted face, and sharp black teeth were grinning like a wolf in my very face, and whose _borang_ was at my throat.

The bugler got him with his Colt's 45. Twelve steel bullets had cut twelve clean pin-point holes through him, and not one had stopped him, not being in the brain.

The Krag is a failure. It shoots too clean and hard to kill quick. That old time Colt 45 saved my life. I saw the dead snarling thing all night. When I waked his black painted teeth grinned in my face. I was never un-nerved before.

And so I am writing you, Dear Heart, for I realize now how near to death I have been, how nearer I may yet be. And maybe another thing makes me write to-night. It is such a story as Clarke, our First Lieutenant, has brought back to me to-night. It has set me to dreaming, and made the camp and men and guns sleeping under the mango trees seem like ghosts from another land. Like ghosts, Dear Heart, for in the dream which is always more real than the real, it is you and Old Tennessee that I see to-night, not slumbering guns under mango trees, nor tropical mountain tops, smoking mistily to the moonlighted skies, nor the palm trees, sentineling the ghostly beach.

Clarke has filled my thoughts to overflowing to-night. So I have left him and the sleeping camp. And I lie alone on the beach looking across the ocean toward home.

He told of a girl in Cebu, where our main hospital is, one of the Red Cross nurses from the States. She came over a month ago. Clarke has talked of her till I can see only you. If I did not know you were ill I'd swear it could be only you, peerless, bravest, gamest, most beautiful woman that ever was. She is a trained nurse, but she rode with old Hawthorne, rode Satan, too, to the relief of the Twenty-third Regulars.

Who could have done what she did but you and Satan, clear a ten-foot fissure of a yawning volcanic abyss, outfooting the Filipino ponies when they thought they had cut her off? And her shooting! Again I saw the brown stubble of Tennessee wheatfields, the blue hills circling the sky line, the flush and whir and the crack of the sweet little twenty gauge! If you are not dead or in the hospital it was you--the only one in all the world--there can be no other!

But I shall not see her, for we leave for the States in the fall. They are sending other boys to relieve us, others who want to serve their country.

I shall go home then to my work. I shall take up the life I left, the life of labor and of love, of love, Dear Heart, love of all loves, love of a Memory. And now good-night and for my pen, good-by, Eloise! ...

*CHAPTER VI*

*THE BATTLE IN THE BACAUE MOUNTAINS*

I wrote you last from Iloilo, but no word has come back to me. And toward the late fall, our term of service having expired, and so many others crowding for a chance to serve, we were mustered out and ordered home. The big transport Indiana stood by for our home-taking.

It was good news for the boys, but sad for me. They were going home to wife or sweetheart, but I had no home.

There is one great thing about war, the steel it puts into the heart to stand things, to die smiling and unafraid, to take life as a battle, and fight it out on the firing line. There are many living, but few on the firing line of life. They think they are soldiers, but they are sutlers.

In a short time we sighted Cebu. Our General, Hawthorne, and a battalion of us were there, as I wrote you before, sent to help out the Regulars. We were ordered to pick up this battalion; it completed what was left of the First Tennessee, for some would sleep forever under far-off Pacific skies.

Cebu is a little city on the island of the same name in the center tier of the Archipelago. Bitter and desperate are the inhabitants and savage in the extreme, and to take the place has cost us a hard battle; and to hold it almost cost the life of the Twenty-third, for they had been cut off in the mountains and all but lost when Hawthorne came to their aid, three months before.

It is a long narrow island with a backbone of volcanic mountains, in the recesses of which live a race of savage fighters who do not quibble to rush, half naked, and with bolos and spears, upon lines of steel and Gatlings.

Their mountain fastnesses are all but impregnable. The volcanic mountains run sheer up straight and the level plateaus yawn with the most dangerous and sudden chasms.

Here were the forts and fortifications of the savage Insurgents, and here they had again threatened portions of the Sixth, Nineteenth and Twenty-third Regulars under General Snyder.

It was night when we heard it; we had anchored and prepared to take General Hawthorne and our boys on the homeward journey.

Then like a bolt came the news: portions of the Nineteenth Regulars were surrounded and cut off in the mountains by ten thousand yellow savages. They were doomed.

And Hawthorne and his battalion, instead of being on the beach to embark for home, had already gone back to the mountains to fight.

I drew up our men in line of dress parade on the Indiana's decks. "Men," I said, "we have been mustered out! We are no longer soldiers but citizens of the Republic, homeward bound, with all it means to every man of you who has done his duty as you all have. No man of you may be ordered to go one step from this transport's deck till you reach your own land. But news has come that the enemy has attacked and cut off our comrades. Our General and a small battalion have already gone to their aid. I ask no man to follow me. I am going, and every man who would go with me take two steps forward."

The First Tennessee to a man moved two steps forward on the deck.

At daybreak we were off for the mountains eight miles away. All forenoon we marched under the hot sun, passed mango trees and squalid huts over ashes of dead volcanoes. We established headquarters on Elpado Mountain across the Labanyon Valley. Along the low mountains in our front ran the forts of the Filipinos, a rude fringe to the crest of the hills.

A detachment of the Sixth and Nineteenth Regulars had been over-daring. They had got in behind the enemy, and being a new regiment sent to relieve us, they had not known the true situation. They were surrounded in front and rear. It was for us to cut through to them.

They are peculiar little mountains. Volcanic in origin they have been shaken by earthquakes until often their sides are precipices; on top there are narrow plateaus, and along their whole length bristle the savage fortifications.

There we found old Hawthorne waiting for us. He knew we would come!

At his word we began the ascent. It was a hand over hand climb, from rock to rock, from scrub to scrub, with a spear or a bolo at any time from above or behind any rock. And at unlooked for intervals would come avalanches of rock and volcanic stones, rolled down by the savages above.

It was five hundred feet up, but it took us all the afternoon to reach the first plateau, and half the night to derrick our cannon up with rope and pulley. The tired men had had no sleep for eighteen hours and at daylight they must fight. We camped within three hundred and fifty yards of their fortifications, with all lights out. We made the assault at daylight.

Our guns knocked their forts down around their ears and when we charged they went over the other ridge to the last line of what was left of the forts.

At the bloodiest angle of it when I came back to report to the General our burying squad was already busy:

"This," said a tough old sergeant to me as he pointed to their dead piled up, "is a cordwood of good Filipinos."

Such are the genialities of war.

Our fiercest fighting was before us. Hand over hand and holding to trees we went up to the next fort in an avalanche of stones, arrows, bolos, and spears.

We fought from rock to rock. Often a Krag or a Colt would speak straight up, and a dead Filipino would come vaulting down to our feet.

Again came the derricking of guns. Then we went through a deep aisle where only one man could rush in at a time, with Filipino sharp-shooters above us. But our last fight cut them from our front and we reached the Regulars. They had held their place and escaped death only because they had lain for two days in an old fissure with empty shells beside it and canteens as dry as the old volcano. But weak as they were they charged with us after the Filipinos, scattering them like mountain goats over the hills.

There was a tropic moon that tropic night. The Mango trees circled the farther mountain sides and the bamboos stood in groups in the valley below. The kingly palms towered high over all. The weird tropic night sounds were borne to us on the breeze. The tired battle line of my brave boys lolled by camp fires in one long line of sentinel light with the last wrecked forts of the beaten enemy at their backs. The field guns, rapid of fire, poked their long blue noses out into the night. "Still smellin' for the varmints loike blood houns for nagurs," said Moriarty, our fighting Irishman, and the wit of the regiment.

Then he would walk over and pet the blue steel beauties, for they were his. Moriarty it was who had brought them over mountain side and _crevasses_ where no man dreamed they could go.

"An' it's aisy it is," he would laugh and say when I praised him to his face. "It's aisy, Cap'n; I've done nothin' but pet 'em, an' so they jus' foller me loike dogs."

Half a mile out a line of pickets faced the way the beaten enemy had fled. Our fighting was over. Cebu's island would no longer be troubled with Insurgents. And the next day would be the Indiana and home!

Our General had thrown off his sword belt and come over to my camp, and together we had smoked and talked of home and the war, of everything but you, sweetheart. But when he left he smiled and said a puzzling thing to me. "I've a surprise for you to-morrow, at Cebu, Jack, that will knock the war and even the homegoing out of your head."

Then he twisted his gray mustache and smiled delightedly. Had the old man, as we all loved to call him, received word of another promotion for me, I wondered. For myself I wanted no more war. I wanted only you, Eloise, somewhere, somehow, living; or the memory of you amid my own Tennessee trees.

"General," I said, "there are worthier men here than I for any promotion you may have. I will go back to my land and my work; but if you could arrange for Moriarty here--" I added, pointing to the game little Irishman.

"Oh, Pat's fixed already," he answered. "He has brought these guns over hills, through fissures, and the walls of hell. He'll be First Lieutenant in the regular army as soon as I can wire this day's work to the President. But you, Jack,--"

I pressed his hand. "General, dear General, believe me, I want nothing more, nothing but a chance to work and make a home in Tennessee."

I was serious almost to that old gripping in the throat. But he laughed and pressed my hand.

"To-morrow, Jack, to-morrow! You are tired now; I want you to sleep. You have earned your reward this day, my boy, and it shall be yours to-morrow, a promotion that you will love."

I followed him to his own tent door. A black horse stood haltered near by, saddled as he had been for two days and nights.

I took the General's whistle, the one I had used to train Satan to my call in the old days, and which on the firing line the General himself used in calls for his aides and orderlies. I blew softly the three blasts I had taught him to know in the forest. He had not seen me for months. He did not know I was there; but his head went up quickly with the old devil fire in his eyes. The next minute he had thrown his great weight back on the halter, snapping it.

His head was on my shoulder, and he was whinnying.

The General laughed. "It beats the world, Jack, that horse's love for you. Take him to your own tent to-night, he'll rage like a hyena around here all night, now that he knows you are here."

It was true. But tethered at my own camp he was quiet. The confusion had been so great and my men were so scattered that when I came back I ordered Moriarty to call the roll before taps. He came back quickly with word that Ross and Billings of our company were absent. I was surprised. Investigation among the men, tired and half asleep, showed that they had not stopped when we took the last fort, but had been swept on with a squad of the Regulars after the flying Filipinos, carried away with the excitement of it.

I went quickly to the bivouac of the Regulars. They remembered the two men, but thought they had returned, as they went off toward the right of the little village Colena, two miles in our front and through which the enemy had fled.

"If they aren't here now," said an old sergeant, "no use to look for 'em again; when we come back through that village, there wasn't a sound, not a kid, nor a chicken, nor a coon, nor a dog; and when you don't hear nothin' in a Filipino village, when you go through, look out for hell when you come back."

I looked at my watch. It had been full three hours since the Regulars had returned.

"I am going after them," I said, turning to go.

"Ballington," it was the swarthy old Captain, of the Nineteenth who spoke, "you'd be a fool to risk it." He pointed silently to a faint glow across the valley on the side of the mountain beyond. I had thought it was a rising star. "Yonder," he said, "see that other one on the mountain top, that's the signal fire of the little yellow hyenas, that means guerrilla bands in them mountains, they go in packs like wolves, and the night is their time. They know every foot of the mountain, every gorge, valley and _crevasse_. Why, two men lost over there ain't got no more show than a pair of fool goats in a jungle. Why, if them little hyenas couldn't see 'em, which they can--for they see better by night than by day--they can smell 'em, like all jungle breeds."

"Boy," he said again, looking at me kindly and smiling an apology for the title which we both bore, "I wouldn't let you go. I'd go to old Hawthorne and have you arrested first. You Tennessee fellows," he said, laying his big rough hand on my shoulder, "have done the whitest thing ever done in this war. It ain't often we old Regulars that never go home and have to serve 'till the last taps, takes much notice of you volunteer fellows that fights awhile for fun and quits when the time is up; but when you biled out of that transport and came over them mountains an' cut through to us, you done a thing that'll warm the cockles of our boys till the last tattoo and the taps. Now I ain't goin' to let you go out there in no such fool thing. I'm an old soldier, I fought with Miles and Cook on the plains, and I tell you now, Sitting Bull and his Sioux were lambs to them little mountain savages. You go back now," he said kindly, taking my hand in his own, "go back and go to sleep. You are a boy yet, though you proved you are full grown to-day, my lad, and ain't even got up a beard. Of course you have got a sweetheart waiting in Tennessee. Go back to her, and the next year send old Brawley of the Nineteenth a picture of her and the kid. He ain't never had no time to marry, it's been fighting all his life with him from hell to breakfast."

I smiled, saluted, and went back to camp.

Moriarty was waiting for me, and, when Moriarty does not smile, I know what to expect.

"Cap'n," he said, "it's not Moriarty that can sleep peaceful the night till we find them, dead or alive."

"And I, too, if you please, Cap'n," said Davis, my corporal, who had been listening.

"There is no need for a call then, men," I said, "we three will go down to the village, we will doubtless find them near it. A Krag for rapid firing and two Colts each," I added, "and plenty of shells. Don't let the other men know; we'll be back by midnight."

As we slipped out of the lines of camp I saw a thing that touched me. Moriarty had stopped at the long, slim, blue-barreled rapid fire and for a moment, lingering over it, one arm around it, he laid his cheek against its lips. It was Moriarty's farewell kiss to the only bride he had ever known.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE JURAMENTADOS*

There was a mistiness among the mango trees as we went out into the moonlight. It was a mist from the ocean, but it made an uncanny milkiness in the air, which seemed to cling to the long dew-damp leaves of the tropic trees as we descended into the Labanyon Valley; and that queer uncanniness stayed with me. I could not throw it off.

At the picket line I left a note to be carried back with the relief. It was to my First Lieutenant, explaining my absence and stating that, if I were not back by daylight, he was to assume the command. And if, before daylight, he heard any continual rapid fire, he was to send the company to the sound of it, for it would mean that we needed help.

The picket would be relieved at midnight. I asked him not to awaken Lieutenant Clarke until then.

"Captain," said the picket, touching his cap, "excuse me, but if you weren't here I'd arrest Moriarty and Davis and send them back into camp. 'Tis a fool thing they are doing."

"But what about our comrades out there, cut off, doubtless, and surrounded by these savages?"

"Then why not take a company?" he asked respectfully.

"They'd be butchered," said Moriarty. "It's the three of us slippin' around an' nosin' in that can save 'em if we find 'em. And with these rifles and six Colts we'll be all of a company for arrows and bolos."

"Look," said the sentinel, "do you see that?" He pointed to a dim red star, glowing just above the mountain top. "That's a signal fire--and that, and that. Captain," he pleaded earnestly, "go back and let the boys all go with you. It's a fool thing, but if you will go--now listen--when I hear you shoot, if shooting is on, I am going to fire and waken the camp; the boys will want to come to your relief."

Moriarty laughed. "Now don't let your old gun go off too suddent loike. We'll be back without firin' a shot!"

But I, Eloise, as I went down into that valley, became for a moment all but a weakling when I thought of you! We went quietly out into the moonlight, slipping along from the shadow of one great mango to another. Sometimes these trees made a continuous shadow--so thick they were--and our going was easy. But when we emerged into a moonlit space we stooped and crawled through the high grass, for we were an easy target for their sharpshooters on the peaks above.

We were fully a mile from camp before we crossed a _crevasse_, about twelve feet wide, spanned by a culvert or small bridge. I remember noticing the little bridge and thinking that if it should be burnt by the enemy in our rear, we would never be likely to get back into our camp again.

There was a Filipino village which lay off to the left in a mountain gorge, and, scouting carefully around the side of the mountain, we approached it over the last one-hundred yards, crawling through the grass and under mango and cocoanut trees up to within fifty yards. It lay before us, a dozen shacks on bamboo cane shocked with the coarse straw of the rice stalk. The usual squalor and emptiness was around, but there was not a sound, not a living thing. Moriarty nudged me. "There's hell in there somewhere, Cap'n," he whispered, "it looks too peaceful loike."

It was a Filipino cur that gave us the first clue. They are a half wild breed but little beyond the wild things from which they came. As we lay in the grass listening, this dog which had come back for some morsel he knew of, smelt us, and, barking, bolted down a wooded path to the right. We saw him clearly as he ran up a hillside and over into a gorge beyond.

"There's where we'll find the family," said Moriarty. "We'll cut around and go into the rear."

It took us a good hour to do it, crawling through bamboo and cane, under mango and desert palm, through the tall grasses, and over _crevasses_. Often we lay quiet in them, resting.

It was a weird and unexpected sight that we saw. Before us lay a little cup in the mountain gorge, a natural amphitheater, framed by a small grove of palms and cocoanuts. Savage figures were going through queer rites.

We stopped, puzzled. "That isn't the village people," whispered Davis. "There are no women or children there, they are headmen and warriors, and that is some ceremony they are performing."

We crawled up within fifty yards, and then I wished I had not come, for Moriarty gripped me quickly, and pointing to two naked men bound and laid out on the ground, whispered, "Ross and Billings!"

"We're too late, Captain, they've been killed and now they are fixing to mutilate them, cut off their heads and cut out their hearts and fill their stomachs with stones."

I nodded. It was the savage's way of mutilating all our dead.

We recognized the fighting men easily. There were dozens of them, squatted in a circle, armed with _bolos_, _borangs_, and _spears_. But in the center stood a strange figure in a long black robe, his parted hair hanging down his back. Around him stood six men, fierce savages, with shaved heads, and half naked bodies.

"_Juramentado!_" I whispered. "That's a Mohammedan priest in the center and he is making _Juramentado_ of the six--look!"

I heard both Davis and Moriarty slip the bolts of their Krags. To say _Juramentado_ to any soldier was like crying wolf to a shepherd and his flock.

We lay still, seeing the mystic savage rite no white man ever saw before. We could hear the words of the priest which, spoken in a mixed Moro-Spanish, we easily interpreted. The six we soon learned were Moros from Mindanao and had sailed over to sacrifice themselves to our army.

It was indeed a weird rite he went through, and strange words he used:--how, if each killed his Christian before dying, it meant first heaven and an _houri_; and if two Christians a second heaven and two _houri_, up to the seventh heaven and a harem if they died within our lines with seven of our dead each to his credit.

"And now behead them," he ordered, pointing to the two American soldiers, "and anoint your bodies with their blood!"

Instantly we saw our error in supposing our friends were dead, for when the bound soldiers saw two of the _Juramentados_ seize their _borangs_, each made a violent effort to break his bonds.

"That priest is mine," said Moriarty, "I've always loved 'em."

We fired together. The priest, two _Juramentados_, and five warriors lay dead or dying. The others were instantly an awakened den of wolves.

I flinch, Eloise, in writing you this, for it brings the tears even now as I write. Its ending was in blood and the passing of two I loved as only one man learns to love another who has backed him to death in the last ditch. They rushed us quickly, for their leaders were _Juramentados_ and they never retreat, but like a wounded jungle lion charge instantly the men who have wounded them. They were ten to one against us, and fast and furious was their rush, but, though it was only a short distance, we bunched, and shoulder to back shingled the ground with their dead, stopping many of them, who died at our very feet. The others swarmed upon us, led by howling _Juramentados_, until even now I awake at night with their twanging hyena howl in my ears. Our Colts crackled fiercely for an instant in their faces. Then Davis fell and I would have followed him had not Moriarty, shooting quick and shouldering between us, blown out the brute's brains with the last shell in his revolver....

I was dazed, bloody, and knocked down into the fissure at our backs by the glancing _borang_ blow of the last of the _Juramentados_.... When I came fully to myself I crawled for protection under an outcropping rock, and none too soon, for the fanatic above hurled a spear the next instant that quivered in the spot I had just left.

And, emboldened by the frenzied _Juramentado_, and seeking my blood, I saw other heads, peering from over the fissure side and around boulder and rock.

I was protected for a time under the boulder. I was faint, and hearing running water I drank.

* * * * *

I prayed that I might not faint again. The wound on my head was a clean cut. "If only I do not faint again," I kept saying while I bathed my wound, and, packing my cap with my handkerchief, pulled it tight over my temples to shut off the blood.

Then I became calm and indifferent. I marvel even now to think how undreading of death I was, feeling that I was so soon to die; undreading, for in all the queerness of my head and the dizziness and throbbing and the bitterness of the knowledge of the unequal fight, I thought always of you and of Andrew Jackson, who when shot by Dickinson, clinched his teeth on a bullet to keep from biting his tongue, clinched, stood, and killed his man! ...

Down in that death hole with savages above me waiting for a chance to brain me or bolo me to death, I heard--I'll swear I heard Aunt Lucretia say, "_Would Andrew Jackson faint or fight here, Jack?_"