That inflexible grip which the service takes upon its units and
fractions of units, had slowly and unconsciously altered the view-point
of The Fifth Kentucky foot. Back there in the stagnant riffle of a life
which for a century had not taken a forward step, their motto had been,
"Let us alone," and every man had been a law to himself; despot over his
own affairs and the affairs of his family. Now, because they obeyed in a
common cause and of their own volition, obedience no longer irked them,
and they had come to think of themselves less as individuals than as
bricks mortared together in a military arch.
The second day after the outbreak of insurrection passed with no greater
excitement than occasional and desultory firing from the front. Night
fell with utter quiet as though both armies were exhausted and ready for
sleep. The stars overhead were bright and close, and the men, sprawling
on the earth, were thinking softened thoughts, or crouching around
campfires in rehearsal of recent events.
Near the spot where Newt Spooner lay stretched on his blanket, a
bearded, gaunt man, with a sprinkling of gray in his beard, was writing
a letter home. It was Uncle Jerry Belmear, whose forge and smithy stood
at the forks of Squabble Creek. The yellow flare from a shaded lantern
fell in sharp high lights on his lean cheekbones and on the cramped
hand, laboriously pushing its pencil. His lips moved, automatically
spelling out the words of difficult composition. Newt was watching him
with the reflection that there was nowhere anyone to whom he himself
could send a thrill of pleasure with a letter. Then, since strange
influences were working in the boy's starved heart, he wondered if,
after all, "Clem's gal" might not be glad to hear from him. Minerva was
"eddicated," and in her head were cogitations which he could never hope
to comprehend. She took medals for "larnin'"--he ground his teeth as he
thought from whose hand she had taken one. He was ignorant and
"pizen-mean." The contrast was obvious. Yet, she had looked at him with
a friendly glance, and had been grateful for his championship.
But these idle thoughts were violently interrupted by a sudden staccato
outburst and the darting of Mauser tongues through the dark. Recumbent
figures came to their feet. Uncle Jerry Belmear rose with the
half-finished letter in his hand, and as he stood up he was struck. Had
the same man been wounded in a charge or lying in his trench, he would
have fallen silently, but that messenger out of the night, coming when
his thoughts were all back in the silent Cumberlands, startled him into
outcry. He wheeled, and from his lips broke a sound that started as an
oath and ended in a weird shriek, heard along the whole battalion
front.
As though they had wanted only that cue, the battalion, hitherto patient
to await orders, sprang to the trenches and began pumping their
Springfields frantically into the night. Buglers were madly blowing
"Cease firing"; officers and sergeants were carrying profanity and
strong language the length of the line, but the panic spirit had to
spend itself before the men heard or obeyed--and realized with chagrin
that stray bullets had upset them.
But that mild disgrace of showing nerves, instead of nerve, must be
lived down, and it served to put the newly made veterans the more on
their mettle.
Almost every day that followed brought its clash with the enemy, and
once or twice the Shirt-tailers came into hand-to-hand struggles, where
it was bayonet and butt, and "fist and skull," and where their barbaric
yell drowned the bugles. They grew accustomed to the thunderous roar
with which the cruisers in the harbor shelled the Insurgent positions in
preparation for their advance, and so day by day, and step by step, the
still parallel lines of the brown men gave back, and those of the
American force hitched forward.
And in these, by no means idle days, the word went abroad among them
that they were only waiting here to be relieved by fresh troops from the
States, and were to be a part of the force designated to push on to the
Insurgent capital.
But the rumor went ahead of the actuality. Sometimes there were days of
quiet and even brief informal truces at certain sections of the front,
when the open rice-fields became a common playground. Then the straw
hats that had heretofore bobbed up only to fire and bob down again,
moved about in the open, and watched the _Americanos_ playing baseball.
Once a band came out from Manila, and, when the heat of the day was
spent, gave a concert in the rice-fields, and at its end, as the
national air swelled out and the troops from home stood at attention and
uncovered, the straw hats across the open fields were also doffed.
Though he did not quite understand why, that incident caused a strange
and new emotion to pulse through the arteries of Private Newton Spooner;
an emotion in no way kin to the "pizen-meanness" for which he was justly
notorious. But the courteous enemy never allowed these pleasant recesses
to endure long, and after a lesson or two in treachery they ended.
At last came the forward movement, the rush into native towns across
their defenses, the pursuit of fleeing insurgents, and the glare in the
sky as the nipa houses went up in flame; and the lying down at night in
bivouac under the stars. In due course followed the end of state-troop
days and the organization of new regiments of United States volunteers.
Yet, this was more a change in the technical than the real, for while
the Fifth Kentucky ceased to exist and the Shirt-tail battalion was no
more, most of the men who had comprised the command were again together
in the Twenty-sixth Volunteers, and the men from the hills still
followed Major Henry Falkins.
* * * * *
Young Manly Fulton had returned to Louisville with a degree from Harvard
University and an ambition to become a journalist. At the newspaper
office where he was carried exceedingly near the bottom of the pay-roll,
he was classed as a cub whose value no one took seriously save himself.
In the course of time, it entered the mind of young Fulton that a visit
to the schools and "colleges" of the Cumberlands would make a
"feature-story" of general interest. He heard of young people, and older
people, too, who were struggling to shake off the bonds of a century-old
illiteracy, so he confided to his Sunday editor that herein lay, ready
to hand, a subject with genuine "heart-interest." The Sunday editor
laughed, and explained that this story had been often written, but, if
the reporter wished to ring one more change on an old theme, he might
go--at his own expense. So the young man went to Jackson, and from
Jackson, with mule and saddle-bags, to the college on Fist-fight Creek.
As the principal was showing him over the place, a girl passed through
the library, and the "furriner" was presented.
The girl looked unwaveringly into his eyes as the professor smilingly
said, "This is Miss Minerva Rawlins; one of our native-born. We are
rather proud of Miss Rawlins." Manly Fulton looked back at her, and his
clean-cut young face for some reason flushed. He had heard much of the
slatternly women of the hills, women who bore drudgery and children, and
early became hags. Now, he found himself being put at ease by a young
creature who carried herself like a goddess, and whose eyes shielded,
behind a naive reserve, the truant impulse to twinkle into amusement at
his evident confusion.
Later, the head of the faculty suggested:
"If you want to see and appreciate the full contrast between the
school-life and home-life of these people, persuade Miss Rawlins to play
guide for you along Troublesome. To-morrow is Saturday, and she will be
riding home. Why don't you ride with her?"
So, when "Clem's gal" started across the mountains, the young man rode
at her side, listening eagerly to the new point of view that her speech
developed, and marveling at the life he saw about him; a life in which
he seemed to have stepped back a century. It was all wonderful, for
spring had come to the hills and kissed them, and they were smiling with
a smile of blossom and young leaf, and whispering with soft breezes and
the singing of crystal waters.
For a time, her conversation was, "Yes, sir," and, "No, sir"; for,
though at first it had been himself who was embarrassed, it was now she,
and so, until she discovered how boyish and frank he was, she eyed him
with shy and sidelong glances. But, at last, she began to reveal a
flower-like personality which was altogether charming, strangely
blended with a gravely mature point of view. Her language, partly the
hard-conned "proper speaking" of the school, and partly idiom, amused
him with its quaint out-cropping of Elizabethan phrases, which fell in
tripping unconsciousness from her lips.
When near sundown they came to her cabin, he felt the girl's embarrassed
eyes on him as her father invited him "to light an' stay all night." And
at table, though his stomach revolted against the greasy and uninviting
fare, he knew that, as she served him standing, her eyes were fixed upon
him. He caught the high-chinned courage of her unapologetic loyalty,
even to swinish blood, and gamely bolted his food with mock relish.
"God!" thought the boy, as he vainly tried to sleep that night in the
swelter of the over-crowded cabin. "What a life it must be for her! And
yet," he added, "what escape is there?"
The next day, she took him rambling along creek-beds where she had
friends among the early flowers and ferns and budding things and the
feathered and singing things. She was in an unusually light and gay
mood, and chattered until he felt that he was in an enchanted forest,
and through her talk, which was all of birds and blossoms and woodland
mysteries, he caught brief flashes of insight into herself.
"Do you know," he suddenly demanded, looking up from a mossy place where
he was gathering violets, "that you are a rather wonderful sort of
person?"
She stood over him, slender, and simply garbed in a blue calico dress
and a blue calico sun-bonnet. Into her belt she had thrust a cluster of
violets, and her eyes, which were closely akin to their petals, grew
suddenly serious. The corners of her lips drooped in wistfulness.
"Am I?" she questioned gravely. It was the nearest thing to a compliment
that had come her way.
"Yes," he asserted, rising to his feet. "Anywhere else in the world
people would be wild about you, and here whom do you see? You know the
verses, 'full many a flower was born to blush unseen.' Don't be one of
them."
"How am I going to help it?" she asked him simply. He did not respond,
because he was asking himself the same question. But, when that only
visitor from the outside world had ridden away, the place seemed rather
empty and desolate to the girl, and she sat alone in the spring woods
while some voice insistently queried, "How can you help yourself?" She
would marry no man who was ashamed of her people, even if such a man
should come to woo her, and no man whom she would care to marry could
well escape being ashamed of her people. Only one man had she ever known
who seemed to feel for her a sort of reverence; to look up to her as
superior to himself. That man had been very rough and wolfish in his
championship--and that man had been a felon!
If some man might come who felt that way, and yet who had a living and
enlightened soul; if such a man should say, "I love you--"
"Clem's gal" bent forward and pressed her fingers against her temples.
"Oh, God!" she whispered.
* * * * *
Long ago Malolas had been taken, and the armies of Emilio Aguinaldo were
giving back. Soon was to come the second and longer phase of the
insurrection: that of the guerilla days. But as yet there were still
occasions of battle.
The enemy lay one day with his trench-tops commanding a steep river-bank
and a deep, swiftly-flowing current of tawny water, adding defense to
his front. Half-way across this stream the broken abutments and twisted
girders of a dynamited railroad bridge showed his preparations for
attack. Yet both river and trenches must be crossed, and the 26th
Volunteers had come, among others, to do it. A small mortar was merrily
tossing shells across the way, but they fell on roofs devised of the
rails from the uptorn track, and fell for the most part harmless. One
small section of the earth-works was unroofed, and from it the mortar
had driven the Insurgents. That troubled the enemy only because it was
the one loop-holed portion of the defenses and consequently more
healthful for riflemen.
A few strong swimmers might carry a rope across, thought Major Falkins,
and attach its loose end to the bamboo stakes which went up at the very
edge of the trench-embankments, provided they could live long enough.
Killing is quicker work than swimming in a strong current. But, if three
started and one arrived, his fellows could follow in the few leaky
barges that were available. These barges could cross, if at all, only by
rope-ferry. The current set its veto on any use of oars. For such
character of work a "suicide squad" is asked to nominate itself, and
among those who responded was Corporal Newton Spooner, formerly Private
Newton Spooner of the Shirt-tailers, and before that, No. 813 at
Frankfort.
As the boy stripped off his khaki and stood naked behind a screening
tangle of riverside growth, several machine-guns and the musketry of the
regiment were preparing to give him at least a noisy end.
Major Falkins stood by, coaching the three swimmers as a trainer coaches
his jockey when the saddling bugle sounds in the paddock.
"Watch the rope," commanded the major briefly. "Swim in single file, and
not too close together." He turned to Newt, who happened to be standing
nearest him.
"It's going to be mean work, Spooner," he said in a low voice; "I hate
to order it."
Corporal Spooner saluted, but his eyes narrowed and glittered with a
light venomously serpent-like.
"I reckon," he said in a guardedly low voice, which only the major
heard, "you'd like to see me peg out, wouldn't you? But I ain't goin' to
do it. I'm goin' to live long enough to finish a job I've got to attend
to yet. I reckon you know what it is."
Then he slipped without a splash into the water, for he was to lead the
little procession. The major raised his hand in signal, and the
spattering roar became a solid thunder. Rapid-fire guns, mortar and
Krags played on the earth-works. Every Shirt-tailer was sighting as
though for a sharp-shooter's medal--carefully, deliberately. A scathe of
lead raked the trench tops, under which every brown head went down and
stayed cautiously invisible. With strong, sure strokes the three naked
men shot out into the stream and past its center--seemingly unobserved.
It began to look as though they would gain the other side unseen by the
enemy. But suddenly, from the loop-holed section, came spiteful little
squirts of fire. Against that fire only the mortar could cope--and the
mortar had turned its attention elsewhere. Tiny geysers kicked
themselves up where the Mauser bullets struck and skipped on the water.
The roar from the Shirt-tailers rose in louder indignation, and the crew
serving the mortar was feverishly refinding the range. A few more
strokes, and the three men fighting the current would be safe in the lee
of the steep bank--but the little geysers were multiplying. The third
man suddenly turned his face backward over his shoulder, and shook his
head. He raised a hand as one who waves farewell at a railroad station,
and went down. Corporal Spooner and the other man were reaching out to
grasp the projecting roots that fringed the opposite shore, but, as the
second man crawled up on the bank, there appeared on his naked flesh a
constantly spreading splotch of crimson. Corporal Spooner paused to drag
him under cover, then proceeded to tie the rope and--safe, because of
his very proximity--sat down, panting, to wait.