It was not until summer waned to autumn and autumn passed into winter
that the order came which slipped the leash and brought a day of
departure.
The high-landers wore the appearance of veterans now, as they marched
down to the crowded wharves, loaded with their field-equipment, and went
across the gang-plank to the decks of the transport. The mountain men
were still rough of exterior, though very smooth and soldierly to an eye
that had seen them in their "original sin" of heathenish beginnings.
Lucinda Merton was in San Francisco on the day that the _Indiana_
sailed. She and perhaps Henry Falkins knew why she had crossed the
continent. As the regiment from bluegrass and mountains filed in their
long lines over the side, she stood on the transport deck with the
colonel and one of his majors and looked on. What things the lovers said
that day, in the moments they stole alone, were their own secrets, but
the girl's eyes and lips were smiling, and the eyes of the young major
were full of light when he slipped into his blouse-pocket a small
leather case--and a photograph. It was to smile at him over many
campfires in the islands.
Yet, with a teasing laugh and a certain pride of section, the girl
compared the central Kentuckians with the leaner, harder men of the
hills, and announced:
"Those mountaineers of yours still cry out for the curry-comb, Henry."
It was the colonel who answered her. He, too, was gazing down with a
smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes. The colonel, for all his
Chesterfieldian polish, could judge a horse or man in the raw.
"They're a shaggy herd," he mused quietly, "exceedingly shaggy and
unkempt. My barbarians, I call them, Lucinda. They are men with the bark
on--but men." He paused, and the smile became a contented grin. "If
there's a chance to baptize them, you'll hear of them again."
"For it's Tommy this an' Tommy that, an' 'Tommy 'ow's yer soul?'
But it's 'Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll."
* * * * *
Then came days of blue wastes and sparkling wake; days of lazy lounging
on swinging decks and under awnings, and at night the phosphor-play of
the Pacific and stars that hung low and softly lustrous. Often Private
Newt Spooner surprised himself, as he leaned with his bare fore-arms
resting on the rail, to find that his thoughts, instead of busying
themselves with war or vengeance, were going strangely back to the added
room of the smoky cabin on Troublesome and the girl who sat before the
fire in the long evenings when the wind wailed through the dead timber.
The logs were blazing there on the hearth he had built for her.
* * * * *
One morning the men crowded and jostled at the rail to gaze ahead where
the hunched shoulders of Corregidor Island raised themselves like a
crouching sentinel, at the gate of Manila Bay.
If the men of the Shirt-tail battalion had feared the dull routine of
garrison duty, they were to be pleasantly disappointed. In those late
January days the impending storm which the Honorable Emilio Aguinaldo
was brewing for the invaders of his "republic" hung imminent on the
horizon of the future.
The mountaineers went into quarters in the Binondo district of the city,
but more than two score of them were always on the line of outposts
which lay around Manila, resting its left on the salt marshes by the
sea, and its right on the sea again at the end of a six-mile arc.
The Kentuckians rubbed elbows with a trim and seasoned command of
regulars near the extreme left. To the front beyond the nipa houses and
their palm-fringed gardens, lay unseen the parallel, intrenched lines of
the Insurgents.
As yet there had been no clash, but each dawn brought expectancy.
Private Newt Spooner, carrying his rifle on sentry duty, often glimpsed
their straw hats and brown faces, above the trench embankments, and
glared across the intervening spaces. Occasionally, too, when
regimental officers rode along the front on inspection of outposts, Newt
saw the figure of his major. Then his embryonic hatred for the brown
men, who lay masked at the back of these palms and rice paddies a few
hundred yards away, passed into total eclipse behind a fiercer emotion.
One night when not on outpost duty, Newt lay on his cot in the
company-room of the Binondo barracks. The boy was watching the shadows
that wavered on the whitewashed wall, and his face wore a lowering
scowl. Top-Sergeant Peter Spooner glanced at that scowl, and a faint
frown crossed his own features.
Captain Sparvin of B Company had developed into a fair officer, and in
actual service a wider gulf yawned between the men who held commissions
and those who held warrants than had been the case back in the hills
where the company was born. Yet Sparvin more and more depended on the
Deacon, and more and more left company affairs in his capable hands. The
company's efficiency and deportment were the first sergeant's care.
Charges were preferred or dismissed at Sergeant Spooner's suggestion.
When a "non-com" vacancy occurred, the man suggested by Black Pete was
usually selected to fill it. And to the confidence of the officers was
added a sort of idolatry on the part of the enlisted men. It is quite
likely that had B Company been out on detached service, and had Sergeant
Spooner given a command contradictory to his superior, even after these
months of discipline, B Company would have followed the sergeant. Yet
Sergeant Spooner had his problem, and that problem was his kinsman,
Newt. When Newt scowled in that fashion the top-sergeant was troubled
with apprehension. One crazy man in one crazy moment can do things which
cannot be undone. Yet there was no outward ground for complaint or
charges. In the entire outfit was no more efficient soldier than Newt.
None answered more intelligently or with a snappier quickness to
commands; none kept his kit in more perfect order; none was more
soldierly. The problem was intangible in its outward manifestations, but
the sergeant knew that the boy was "bidin' his time."
After "taps" the company-room quieted save for snores and heavy
breathing. But Newt, lying quiet on his cot, still staring at the
shadows on the whitewashed wall, was not asleep, and Sergeant Peter
Spooner was not asleep. The tropic night-quiet had settled over the
empty streets of the city, and the footsteps of occasional pedestrians
only emphasized the deep silence.
Suddenly there came to the ears of the private and the ears of the
sergeant a far-away, but insistent sound, almost a ghost-sound in the
vagueness with which it drifted across the roofs from the north. Yet it
brought them both to their feet, and in an instant both stood together
by the window. Now it was plain enough, and began swelling from a
purring rattle to the crescendo of an approaching wind storm. Somewhere
out there in the far distance was the constant splatter of Mausers like
rain on a tin roof.
Instantly Sergeant Spooner was arousing B Company and turning them out.
From the streets, too, five minutes ago quiet with a cemetery stillness,
came a confusion of shouting and rushing, punctuated by the sounds of
slamming doors and creaking shutters. Presently the clatter of hoofs and
the brazen signals of bugles gave official notice of immediate action.
The men of B Company were dressing with the hurry of firemen, and
Sergeant Spooner said quietly:
"Well, boys, the feud has bust loose."
Then, almost as suddenly as the clamor of the streets rose, it died
again, and the city lay silent once more except for the distant,
unending roar of musketry.
At regimental headquarters officers were gathering, and companies were
falling in under the vigorous exhortation of non-coms. Newt Spooner saw
Major Falkins hurry into the room, through whose open door he could see
Private Watson at a telegraph key. The major was buckling his saber-belt
as he went. About the instrument pressed a cluster of battalion and
company officers, crowding eagerly up for news and orders. In a subtle
fashion the news from within floated out and communicated itself to the
lines of men impatiently shuffling their feet in the streets. The
fighting was all along the north front. That was where the Fifth
Kentucky's outposts were stationed. That growing volume of Mauser
argument, with the duller rumble of the Springfields, probably told of
the Kentuckians holding hard against the pressure. Why did not the line
fall into column and move forward? Why did they stand here waiting when
they were needed there? Then came a rumor from the telegraph key that
only two battalions were to go forward, while the third remained in town
with the reserves.
That report sent a low grumble through the ranks. In the very rattle of
tin-cup on haversack and rifle-butt on cobbles was a note of deep
discontent. Newt could see through the open door the figure of Major
Falkins leaning anxiously over the instrument. Then he saw him turn to
come out with a smile. Brief staccato orders broke from captains and
lieutenants and the Shirt-tailers were swinging down the Calle Lemeri,
with the bluegrass battalion at their backs. The streets gave back
hollow, ghost-like echoes to the rattle of their accouterments and the
quick rhythm of their step. Clearer and noisier to the front rose the
insistent drumming of the fight, and the men from the hills and lowlands
were going at last into action.
About them were dark streets with jalousies that clicked as anxious
house-holders thrust out startled faces. From other streets they heard
kindred sounds telling of other columns, battalions and regiments,
moving in other currents to the support of their own outposts. The long,
swinging step of the mountaineers carried them swiftly. The bluegrass
men had need to lengthen their stride to hold the pace, and from their
ranks came a low hum of frank and eager excitement, but the
high-landers marched in silence.
The First Nebraska had borne the brunt of the initial firing, but from
that point it traveled along the whole insurrecto front as forest flames
run in dry leaves, eating its way along a segment of five miles of
trenches. As the battalions drew nearer and the chorus extended, the
night rocked to the solid bellow of musketry, until individual reports
were swallowed and lost in one deep and composite note.
The Shirt-tail battalion at last left the ordered streets behind and
began its journey through the sparser-peopled environs. They hurried
through villa-adorned suburbs, passing old Spanish mansions. Now
overhead they heard the whine of the Mauser bullets. These messengers
went by with a spiteful song like a whispered shriek: they purred and
whistled like a strangling human throat: they brought to the ear a
ripping noise like the violent tearing of silk. They rattled nastily as
they struck corrugated-iron roofs, and popped when they found billets in
the walls of nipa houses.
A strange silence sat upon the marching column, or a silence which would
have been strange, with less taciturn men, and they went as though they
were going to mill with grain to be ground. As they were reinforcing
outposts, no advance guard felt its way at the front. The colonel, major
of the second battalion, and part of the staff, all mounted on
Philippine ponies, rode a few paces ahead of the column. The way now
led through scattered houses and straggling gardens, where ragged
palm-fronds waved to the sea-breeze. From some of the windows came wails
of fright as immured house-holders heard the popping of bullets against
their frail habitations.
Suddenly, above the din of rifle-fire, rose a deep boom, followed by a
rumble like the rail-song of a distant express. Two seconds later came a
loud swish, and two or three of the frail nipa shacks to the left and
rear collapsed as though a ten-pin ball had struck houses of cards. The
column was under artillery fire, and should by all military theories
deploy into open formation, instead of offering a compact target. But
ahead lay an _estero_, or slough, which must be crossed on a bridge.
Beyond that were open fields with rice-dykes and cane--a place of
comparative security not yet attained.
At the order "double-quick" ringing from the bugles, the column leaped
eagerly forward to a clattering trot, but before they reached the bridge
two more of the loud-throated roars gave warning, and two more of the
solid shot plowed past, to demolish other houses perilously near by.
Henry Falkins looked back to see how his men were standing this initial
test, and smiled, well satisfied.
Then the bridge was reached and crossed, and the command was spreading
fan-like into open order. Now the bullets were not only giving voice
overhead, but kicking up the dirt near at hand.
Out there in the darkness, now only a little way distant, lay the sixty
or seventy men of the regimental outpost, who had been sustaining the
onslaught from the trenches for an hour or more. One could mark their
positions from the spitting tongues of their rifles, and as the two
battalions deployed, creeping up, in open order, to reinforce and
relieve them, they fell back nonchalantly, wiping the sweat out of their
eyes, powder-grimed, and making brief comments to their fellows;
comments perhaps mingled with such sense of patronage as men coming out
of their baptism of fire may have for those just going in. Then, with
business-like quiet, the battalions worked forward and lay down in the
trenches, which had merely been a guard-line for weeks.
"Falkins," said Colonel Burford, as the two went along the regiment's
length, "there's no use wasting ammunition shooting at a sky line. Those
fellows over there are barely sticking their scalp locks over the
trenches. They are merely peppering the night."
The major nodded, then with a grin suggested:
"Colonel, those boys have been under their first strain. They'll rest
easier if they can shoot a few volleys--and it won't burn much powder."
So, the two battalions, as a matter of indulgence, were permitted to
contribute a salute of challenge, and then, as the bugler sounded "cease
firing," they were ordered to dispose themselves as well as they could
in the trenches and behind the rice-dykes, and rest until morning.
Thus they spent their first night in the field with the unending, but
comparatively harmless, roar from the north as a clangorous lullaby, and
the tropic starlight in their faces, and the breeze which whispered
gently across the salt marshes from the sea fanning their foreheads.
When the dawn broke with tropical suddenness like the ringing up of a
quick curtain, the theater of last night's drama stood revealed. With
daylight came a slackening of the night-long Insurgent thunder, which
slowly dropped away to desultory firing, and then to complete quiet. Off
to the left of the line, where the Kentuckians had lain, stretched the
broken wastes of the salt marshes, with here and there in the distance
blue glimpses of the sea. But directly ahead, where all night the
trenches had been barking and vomiting, the landscape was naked of
visible life. The rice-fields went off for a short distance, broken only
by their dykes, and farther away rose a dense screen of bamboo and
woodland, a solid mass of green, from which waved a ragged top of
shredded palms.
As the men crouched over their hard-tack and coffee, they were thinking
of the day's work, which they hoped would include passing beyond that
screen and those trenches.