NORTH-BOUND
The controversy over the distribution of the fund in Manila for the
death in any form of General Lawton permitted the unholy scheme to
simmer its way into publicity. The United States authorities employed
secret detectives to investigate the matter and if possible to locate
the persons who claimed to be responsible for the act. Marie soon
found herself under surveillance and she quickly left the city.
Making her way north on horse back along the same route she had taken
when on her way to Baler about a year before, she came to the city
of San Miguel where one of the hardest battles of the war had been
fought. The troops engaged in this fight had become so disorganized
that all formation by regiments, companies, etc., had been broken
up. Unfortunately, one of the Americans' dead privates could not be
identified. He was buried where he fell, and a board tombstone was
placed at the head of his grave, on which was carved this lonely word,
"UNKNOWN".
As Marie passed over the old field, she saw this grave and read the
solemn word on its headstone. "Alas!" she muttered, "I wonder if the
same sad fate will some day overtake me."
The body of this "unknown" soldier was exhumed by the government a few
months later and brought back to the United States for burial. Upon
its arrival the following pathetic poem appeared in "Leslie's Weekly";
JUST AN "UNKNOWN"
After the fight was over,
They found him stark and dead,
Where all the bamboo thicket
Was splashed and stained and red.
No name was missed at roll call,
Not one among them knew
The slender, boyish figure
Arrayed in army blue.
Among our fallen soldiers
They brought him o'er the deep,
And with the nation's heroes
They laid him down to sleep.
A starry flag above him,
And on the simple stone
That marked his final bivouac,
The single word, "Unknown."
Perchance a mother watches,
Her eyes with weeping dim,
Or sweetheart waits the postman
In vain for news of him.
While snow of winter freezes,
And April violets thrust
Sweet blossoms through the grasses
Above his nameless dust.
But when the last great trumpet
Shall sound the reveille,
And all the blue battalions
March up from land and sea,
He shall awake to glory--
Who sleeps unknown to fame,
And with Columbia's bravest
Will answer to his name.
Her personal safety demanded that she continue her journey northward,
without delay; also her inclination to rejoin Aguinaldo and his
troops--although his exact whereabouts were unknown--invited her in
this direction.
At San Isidro, from which place Aguinaldo had been driven, she
saw some American soldiers administering the water cure to some
Filipinos in order to make them reveal the whereabouts of their wily
general. Marie was angry. She yearned to shoot, but she was no longer
on the aggressive; she was now a fugitive from justice. At this
place she inspected the old Filipino prison and on its walls found
the names of Gilmore and his party, whom she had helped to capture at
Baler, who had been imprisoned there, and who were still alive when
Aguinaldo was driven from the city of San Isidro by the approach of
the Americans. She determined to take her revenge on them for this
water cure punishment, if she ever found them. But the opportunity
never came. So journeying on toward the northern part of Luzon she had
many experiences, and she came in contact with tribes whom she had
never seen before and whose dialect was foreign to her. Many things
combined to retard her progress. Often she grew very weary and would
have turned back, except for fear.
Following up the valley of the Pampanga river and thence on northward
along the Barat, she passed through the province of Nueva Ecija,
crossed the Caraballo mountains which form its northern boundary,
and then entered the province of Nueva Vizcaya, where she came upon
the head-waters of the Rio Magat river.
In crossing the Caraballo mountains she made her way through a deep
gorge at night. It was now about the middle of February. A full moon
shone at its best. The weather was ideal. Journeying was abnormally
pleasant. Under favorable conditions, during times of peace, the trip
she was taking would have been a delightful outing. Just now things
were different. Small garrisons of American soldiers had crowded
forward and were occupying the largest cities along her route. As yet
she had not gotten beyond them. "A guilty conscience needs no accuser";
everywhere that she went she imagined herself to be under suspicion.
Far up in the Caraballos she came across a little mountain torrent
which leaped down over the mountain side from one rocky ledge to
another at quite regular intervals in a series of waterfalls until it
beat itself into a turbulent spray in the bed of the chasm below. The
laughing moon filtered its beaming rays through the thin sheet of
shimmering water as it danced down its course from precipice to
precipice, and seemingly converted it into a great silvery stair-way
connecting earth with heaven. Marie's heart throbbed with emotion. The
dashing of the falling water on the rocks below in the bed of the canon
made a hollow sound as its echoes reverberated through the gorge above.
A half mile farther up, the valley widened somewhat; and finding here
some grass for her pony to forage on, she stopped for the night. The
flimsy saddle was removed from her horse and converted into a crude
pillow, in true cowboy style. Marie was uneasy. This was the first
night in all her adventures that she had been absolutely alone,
separated from both friends and foes, with no house to shelter her
weary head, with the cloudless canopy of the silent heavens arched
above her, the silvery moonbeams dancing in her face, and with
no voice, save the echoes of her own, to answer back the whispers
of night.
It is often only in such a silent nook as this, with no one present
but God and self, that humanity asserts itself and the tenderest
portions of the human soul become paramount and give rise to
sacred thoughts. Even the savage cannot escape it, for he, too,
feels his responsibility to something outside of self. No doubt the
self-conscious criminal would be the most susceptible to it.
What a night for Marie! Solitude gave rise to fear; fear, to conscious
criminality; a sense of wrong-doing, to grief. Would morning never
come? Every time she fell into a doze her sleep was disturbed by dreams
of the past. Recollections of her dying benefactor in the woods by
the San Mateo river, of Gilmore's comrades bleeding by his side, and
of Lawton in the arms of his aide, filled her soul with remorse and
suggested to her with an unspeakable vividness that in all probability
she would pay the penalty on both sides of the grave. Awakening from
one awful dream, she would, after listening to the stillness of the
night for a time, lapse into another. Again she would suddenly awake
and begin to fumble her rosary and repeat selections from a Catholic
prayer book. Would she dare to turn back? Behind her was certain death;
before her, the possibility of life. She resolved to go on.
The night whiled away. Her pony ate his fill and lay down to
rest. Beaded dew drops collected themselves in close proximity upon
the grasses and foliage about her feet. The cool mountain air from
without and fear from within caused her to shiver a great deal. Day
finally came; Marie rode on.
Following the Magat river she finally reached the city of Bayombong
with a population of 20,000 people. Here she learned from the natives
that Aguinaldo and a loyal remnant of his appointed congress had
passed through the city ahead of her, en route northward.
At Bayombong she was advised to follow down the Magat river for
twenty miles, then to bear to the northeast along the pathway made by
Aguinaldo and his followers in their recent retreat. This she did,
crossing another range of mountains near Fort Del Pilar, which had
been erected by the Filipinos to circumvent as well as to prevent the
progress of the Americans, should they attempt to follow them. On
the farther side of this slope she came upon the headwaters of the
Rio Grande de Cagayan river, which she followed on to the north for
several weeks, enjoying the hospitality of the natives along the
course, until at last she came upon the beautiful city of Ilagan at
the confluence of the Cagayan and Pinacanalan rivers.
It was now late in April. Marie was tired and needed rest. At Ilagan
she was cordially received by the curious natives who were eager to
learn some news concerning the war which was being conducted several
hundred miles further south. Marie grew cheerful. There were no
Americans in the city, and nobody knew of any within the valley. She
felt that at last she had successfully eluded her supposed pursuers and
that she was safe. Ilagan is the capital of Isabella province. It has
a population of approximately 60,000 people. Marie's natural ability,
information gathered in the school of experience, knowledge of the
details of the war, and her willingness to talk (quite a number at
Ilagan could speak Spanish) made of her a sort of responsive idol
for the entire populace.