courtesy, they started toward Bago, the whole population of the barrio
watching them disappear through the trees. They soon struck the road and
swung upon it. The sun, still low, dealt gently with the new arrival,
and the country was beautiful. To their left the flashing-green
rice-fields sloped toward the sea, and the shimmering waters showed here
and there through the curtain of palms. To their right the high sugar
cane, serried and plumed, throbbing mysteriously with small animal life,
walled the view. They were somewhat dilapidated. The Maestro was
barefooted and hatless, and his once-white suit hung lamentably upon his
frame; the girl's hair had come loose and fell like a golden cataract
down her back; but their hearts were purring with ineffable joy and
everything was good. Hand in hand they strode along like children,
stopping here and there to pick a flower and gaze into each other's
eyes, while Jack raced madly, now in front, now behind them.
After a while a horseman came into view down the golden ribbon of road,
riding toward them. As he neared he showed as a white-jacketed
cork-helmeted Caucasian upon a diminutive native pony. The Maestro was
gazing intently at the approaching figure. Suddenly he stopped short,
his mouth open in astonishment.
"Well, I'll be danged," he exclaimed, "if it isn't the sky-pilot!"
"The sky-pilot?" asked the girl, astonished by this strange
demonstration.
"Sure," corroborated the Maestro; "that's Huston, the missionary."
"The missionary!" ejaculated the young lady. She turned toward the
Maestro; the Maestro turned toward her, and their eyes met. A slight
blush rose to her cheeks.
"What luck!" cried the Maestro fervently. "Here, you sit down there," he
said, pointing to a little mound by the side of the road. And not
waiting to see if his invitation had been accepted, he rushed ahead
toward the horseman.
The little pony was pulled up short, and the girl, sitting down with her
eyes rigidly ahead, caught snatches of an animated conversation. Finally
the missionary dismounted and the two men came toward her.
"Are you willing?" asked the missionary, as he stood, hat off, before
her after the introduction. He was a young man, clean-shaven, very
different from her preconceived idea of his kind, and there was a little
gleam of fun in his blue eyes.
"Well----" she hesitated and looked intently at the tip of her foot,
peeping beyond the bottom of her skirt. A cricket in the cane burst out
in a shrill laugh. She raised her head and plunged her eyes steadily
into those of the amused inquisitioner.
"I'm always willing to do what Lad wishes," she said, placing her hand
upon the Maestro's shoulder.
They moved beneath the shade of a bamboo thicket, and the missionary,
standing before the boy and the girl, the bridle of his pony passed
around his arm, read words out of a little book that he had taken from
his saddlebag.
But before he had gone very far, the Maestro began to fumble at his
jacket. With some difficulty he drew from some inward recess a little
buckskin bag, and when the missionary, hesitating, stopped in the
middle of a passage, the Maestro nodded his head encouragingly. "Go on;
it's all right," he said, and he passed something that glittered upon
the ring-finger of the girl.
"Whom God hath united let no man part," said the missionary. He closed
his book, stepped forward, and kissed the girl on the forehead.
"That was well done," said the Maestro. And he also kissed the girl, but
not on the forehead.
They stood together for a while, speaking in absent-minded tones, the
missionary of his missions, the Maestro of his schools, and then the
Maestro and the girl started on again toward Bago. But Huston did not
mount right away. He stood looking at them as they walked along the
road, side by side, as they were to be through life, the dog frisking
gleefully at their heels. They came to a turn in the highway and with a
sudden joyous skip they vanished behind the cane, hand in hand like
children.
Huston rose slowly into his saddle. "Come on, little horse," he said
kindly; "come on; we're not in this."
IX
CAYBIGAN
When Sergeant Blount's detachment marched into San Juan, and in the
centre of the plaza grounded arms with a crash that ran along the stone
flagging in vibrating menace, the little pueblo cowered in a
completeness of fear and abject surrender never reached before. Like
lizards a few brown beings here and there slid out of sight; and the big
blue-shirted men, grouped there beneath the white sunlight, found
themselves as in a vacuum of heat and silence. But they had an uneasy
sensation of eyes, eyes timorous and hostile, shifting and malevolent,
from behind closed shutters and torn nipa walls peering upon them in
tremulous distrust. In her stall at the head of the street, Eustefania,
hundred-year-old, wrinkled, black, toothless, was hastily gathering up
her store--two mangoes, a cluster of bananas, a dozen rice cakes, five
twine-wrapped cheroots--into her panuelo with trembling hands. And Pedro
Lasco, crouching upon the stone steps of the church, a cigarette between
his fingers, found his simple and complex soul filled with a new and
inexplicable tumult.
For from the man standing there at the head of the little troop there
radiated Mastery. Pedro, in his blind, dark way, tried to analyse the
impression, to find how this particular being differed from other tall,
gaunt, brutal Americans that he had met in the past, before whom he
had quailed physically, but never morally; but immediately he was
submerged in that feeling he so hated--of confusion, blackness,
bewilderment--which invariably seized him whenever he, man of a
primitive race, sought to penetrate his own soul, obscure with
complications beyond his power to read. This alone he could tell:--that
this man, among his six-footers, towered by half a head, that his
shoulders were broad, that his hair was golden like that of the Santa
Madre seen once, long ago, in the cathedral at Lipa. Later, by patience
of eye and obstinacy of contemplation he discovered other facts:--that
the campaign hat of the Sergeant was wider-brimmed and more rakishly set
than those of his fellow; that his belt hung down loose along the right
thigh, to the weight of a huge, silver-mounted six-shooter which was not
the regulation Colt's; that, when he walked, his feet tinkled with long,
rotary spurs, and that a red bandana, knotted negligently about the
neck, flamed up the blue and khaki with splendour.
The men stood at ease in the centre of the plaza. The Sergeant took
from his breast pocket a cake of tobacco, bit off a piece with a slight
swagger, then looked about him carefully. His eyes met those of Pedro.
"Alica, caybigan--come here, friend!" he shouted with cavalier
amicability.
"Caybigan--friend!" The obscure emotions in Pedro's breast surged
suddenly into something almost definite, something big and soft that was
sweet and compelled. Slowly he came down the steps in feline grace of
movement and stood gravely before the big man, one foot slightly in
front of the other, his right hand upon his pliable waist. The Sergeant
looked down upon him, pulling at his blonde mustache. He smiled. The
smile passed over Pedro in a shadow of indefinite discomfort;
unconsciously he stiffened up, a little defiant.
"You take us to the best house here, caybigan," said the Sergeant.
The smile had gone, and that other sensation, of sweetness and good
will, again possessed Pedro. "Opo," he answered simply.
And this was the beginning of the bond. Pedro showed the Sergeant the
house best suited for cuartel, the natural spot for a horse-corral, the
watering place at the river. That night, after he had been dismissed and
had eaten his rice and fish, Pedro squatted long upon the bamboo floor
of his little hut, pondering in his rudimentary way over the day's
events. It was a poor hut, small, astonishingly bare; for Pedro's wealth
was below, beneath the high, post-elevated floor. There, laid crosswise
upon sustaining poles, were his hunting spears, harpoons, and paddles;
keel-up upon the ground his banca, long, sharp-prowed, reptilian, and,
hanging from post to post in heavy folds, ensilvered with fish-scales,
his great dragnet. But his mind was not upon his riches; what he tried
to read within him was dark and shifting; this only he could draw
plainly from it:--a passionate desire to serve that big, golden-haired
man with the jingling spurs, the red bandana, the rakish sombrero, to
serve, blindly, unquestioning, like a dog, with fatigue of body, and
outpouring of sweat, and tongue-licking of boots. But even this feeling
was not clear like a simple flame; athwart it there leaped a
contradictory shadow. The smile; it was the smile. Pedro tried to
consider it squarely, but that bewilderment which possessed him always
when he attempted to read his soul, complicated with complications of
which he had not the key, seized him with acute distress; and with an
impatient gesture he brushed away the obsession, as he would a fly
buzzing importunately before his eyes. He lingered long upon the clearer
impulse, the idea of service, of devotion. "Caybigan," he murmured
softly; "caybigan"--and in the balmy silence of the night the drawled
syllables hung long with lingering sweetness.
Early the next morning he was about the cuartel, and when the Sergeant
emerged, splendid in the rising sun, he was standing before him, alert
of body, grave of eyes. "Hello, caybigan," shouted the Sergeant gaily;
"going to help me, eh?" He pulled at his golden moustache; he smiled. A
vague discomfort possessed Pedro; unconsciously he drew back one step in
deer-like movement. But as the smile disappeared and the Sergeant stood
there, pensive with the day's plans, the impulse to serve this being, to
toil, suffer for him, again swelled within his heart in choking longing.
They were together all that day. Pedro took the Sergeant over the whole
pueblo, pointed out the natural points of defense, of vulnerability,
showed him where the outposts should be placed, took him to the ford,
circled wide about the huddle of huts, discovering all the hidden trails
radiating out to the plains, the hills, toward the lairs of the
Insurrectos.
"Good-night, caybigan," said the Sergeant as they parted that evening.
"Paalan, caybigan," answered Pedro.
All day he had longed to slip that word "caybigan," and now he stood
still a moment, tremulous like a wild thing, noting the effect. But the
Sergeant seemed to accept. He turned on his heel with a gesture of the
hand and tinkled into the cuartel, while Pedro sped to his hut, his
heart in tumult. There he squatted long in the anguish of obscure
analysis. It was the smile again, that almost imperceptible twitch of
the corners of the mouth which the Sergeant had always as he looked down
upon Pedro. Pedro tried to picture it there, in the darkness; but it
eluded him mockingly, vivid before him for the time of a spark, then
gone before he could pounce upon it, seize it in interpretation. It was
a torturing game.
That day was only the first passed in a service that as time went on,
grew increasingly closer, more exacting from the one, more sacrificing
from the other. It was in the midst of the Bell campaign. Dragging the
country like a net, there marched ceaselessly large bodies of men.
Behind them nipa roared; black volutes of smoke rose heavily to the sky,
broke against the turquoise lid and, rebounding, filled the air with
acrid haze. At night the horizon glowed as with phosphorescence; great,
scorched trees threw their thousand arms in hysterical gesture to a
lurid heaven. The country took on a bleached, tortured, convulsive
aspect. The rivers ran pink with the blood of slaughtered cattle. And
night and day, along the highways, the awed populations passed, women
with babies astride their hips, upon their heads panuelos knotted about
a few handfuls of rice; men limp-armed, empty-handed; barefooted they
pattered along the roads in thousands, toward the reconcentration camps,
noiseless, speechless, stupefied, sullen-eyed and half mad. But up in
the hills grim Malvar, starving, still hung on; though some of his men
began to trickle down, famished, enfevered, without volition, sucked
down by the void of desolation made about them.
And the great cry, reiterated incessantly from headquarters, a-thrill in
men's mouths, on telegraph and telephone, was a ceaseless "Get the guns;
get the guns; get the guns!" And the soldiery, wild with powder, fire,
and carnage; that great cry ringing in their enfevered brains like a
hallucination, "got guns" by deeds which, in their rare, cooler moments,
came back to them as incredible nightmares. It was in this work that
Sergeant Blount, athirst for praise and splendour of fame, threw himself
with his ferocious energy and that Pedro proved the invaluable helpmate.
He had been a great hunter; he could track like an Apache; and to this
he united a singular faculty for obtaining information among his people.
To the two caybigans the slightest starting point sufficed--a rumour,
for instance, that a man with a gun had passed a certain place at a
certain time. Instantly they had saddled and were off, and from the
spot Pedro trailed like a hound, leaping from sign to sign. Often the
trail led into the bosom of the hills and regretfully they had to stop
before the probability of disappearing into an insurrecto stronghold.
But often also the trail, circling, doubled back to one of the few
pueblos, such as San Juan, kept here and there like oases in the desert
of desolation, as baits, as constant, hypnotising promise of ease, of
rest, of plenty to the outlaws starving, desperate, in the hills. And
then Pedro's more subtle faculty came to the fore. He questioned,
threatened, cajoled, bluffed, pleaded, leaped from induction to
induction, till he had settled upon the man, the treacherous "amigo" in
league with the enemy. Sometimes even there Pedro's persuasive powers
were enough; more often Blount then began to act--and there were scenes
better left undescribed. So, little by little, the cuartel filled with a
strange captured arsenal, and Blount's soul with satisfaction. Sometimes
it was a Mauser, oiled, polished, pretty as a toy; more often a rusty
Remington or German needle-gun; but also there were pathetic
makeshifts--a piece of water-pipe tied to a rough-hewn block of wood,
loaded by the muzzle and set off by the hot butt of a cigarette.
So Pedro rode, slept, ate, toiled with the Sergeant, and by the whole
pueblo, soldier and native, he was called "Caybigan"; by all except
Eustefania, crouching day after day like a mahogany sculpture upon the
latticed floor of her little tienda. The old woman was jealous. One day
when the soldiers, in wild hilarity, had seized upon her basket of
embryo ducks cooked in the shell and were hurling them at each others'
heads, Blount had interfered. And now, whenever he passed, splendid,
along the street, the old woman, like a statue coming to life, descended
tremulously from her pedestal and, running in front of him, bowed low
and tried to kiss his hand.
And yet in this service, in this renunciation, Pedro did not find the
complete satisfaction that he craved. A heavy uneasiness was with him
always, in rest or work, in peace or peril; a dull irritation, an
obscure anguish that he could not fathom, but which each day became more
oppressive, more insistent. It was the smile of his caybigan. At night
he faced the distress of mental analysis, hour after hour, contemplating
fixedly that smile. In its presence a strange weakness, a subtle
debility, possessed him; to resist this he dwelt upon his past
achievements. He had been a great hunter of hill and water. At the deer
runs he was always leading _ginete_, galloped madly after the tremulous
game, hour after hour, over mountain, down precipice, till he had worn
it down, rode flank to flank with it and, seizing the moment, plunged
his long lance into the throbbing spot behind the shoulder. And once
when a _caiman_ had snatched his goat off the bank of the river, he had
plunged into the black pool; seeking the saurian into the oozy depths
where sullenly it lay like a rock upon its prey, he had twined about it
his big net and, springing back to the surface, with his friends had
triumphantly dragged it out to earth. Loud had been sung his praises
during the fiesta that followed, while the viscous thief, corralled with
bamboo poles, both eyes gouged out, died slowly beneath the sun, upon
the baking strand. Yes, he was a big man; even his caybigan, with hair
of gold and tinkling spurs, could he have done better? But before the
smile, malign there in the dark, all this, all these deeds, this valour
seemed bleached of colour and meaning. A heavy discouragement weighed
upon him.
One night, at last, he came to a conclusion. And it expressed itself in
one word, short and electric.
"Patay!" he said; "patay--kill!"
He would kill the smile.
He climbed down the bamboo ladder and, beneath the floor, went directly
to the big net, hanging from post to post. From one of the flaccid folds
he drew an object. In three leaps he was up again, and in the faint
light of his little tin lamp, for a while he acted like a child with a
doll. He crouched down, the thing upon his knee, spoke to it with
tender accent, stroked it with long, gentle caress. But it was not a
doll; it was a gun, a dainty Mauser carbine. It was oiled and polished,
and beautiful, but he spent two hours over it, cleaning, oiling,
snapping the delicate machinery. Then, with a sigh of satisfaction, he
went down again and laid the precious toy among the secretive folds of
the net.
The following evening, as in the moonlight the Sergeant rode out to
inspect the outposts, a shot rang near and a bullet wailed overhead.
Pedro, through the bush screening him, saw the great horse shy and rear,
saw the Sergeant's graceful, almost lazy recover. Then man and beast
stood still, black, statuesque in the sheen of moon, the horse with ears
cocked forward, trembling beneath the compelling reining hand, the man
erect and proud on the high-pommelled saddle. There was a silence long
as infinity. The horse champed resoundingly at the heavy Mexican bit.
Pedro panted. Slowly the Sergeant turned his head, from the thicket to
the right, to the golden ribbon of road ahead, then smoothly, in
imperceptible movement, to the left. His eyes were upon Pedro; they
seemed to pierce the screen of brush to halt penetratingly upon the
assassin. And upon the face, clear in the moonlight, appeared the smile.
A sense of immense helplessness whelmed Pedro; he crouched lower; his
hands, flaccid, dropped their hold upon the gun which sank softly in
the high cogon. There was a long, throbbing silence. Then the tinkle of
spur rang out in silvery note. With an elastic bound the horse leaped
forward, immediately to be checked by the powerful guiding hand; and
slowly they moved down the moonlit road, horse and man, huge, black,
granite-hewn--unconquerable.
But Pedro, sneaking back, low behind the thicket, pressed both hands to
his breast as if to hold there the germ of an idea he felt within; and
with feverish haste hiding his gun, he crouched down at his accustomed
place to face it. It was a dolorous process. The thing sparked, flamed,
wavered, went out completely, sparked anew. He contemplated it fixedly,
encouraged it, fanned it; and finally for a moment it blazed, vivid,
calm, unforgettable.
"Alipusta!" he shouted triumphantly; "alipusta--contempt!" "Alipusta,"
he repeated slowly, contemplatively, the triumph of discovery sinking
into the ashes of realisation. Yes, that was it; it was contempt, that
smile, the smile of his caybigan; contempt, thorough, tranquil,
absolute.
II
During the following days, Pedro worked with renewed frenzy. There was
some rumour of the presence of an Insurrecto camp near the pueblo
somewhere. Pedro went about the taos, cajoled, threatened, flattered,
begged, cross-questioned, menaced in the full exercise of his singular
gift, progressing from rumour to probability, from probability to
certainty, and then he searched the country like a hound, along
subterranean trails, springing from trace to trace, hour after hour
closer. But all the time he shot sly side glances at his big caybigan,
in ambush for the smile, the smile of contempt which, as he worked more
and more feverishly, nearer and nearer success, came to the Sergeant's
lips with growing frequency, with less and less restraint, with
increasing insolence. And at his heart a desire gnawed, a black, obscure
desire for something, something--he could not tell what--something he
could not determine, but which now was indispensable to him, without
which he could not live; something that tasted like water to his thirst,
but was not water. He wished no more to kill; the new longing
overwhelmed the other more primitive impulse. It was something bigger,
grander, more magnificent; it tore at his bowels, a want, vague,
unnamable, but of corrosive violence. On the third day they located the
camp; travelling sinuously along a trace of trail they saw at last,
through the bamboo thicket, the pointed roof of the Insurrecto
cuartel--a nipa hut in the centre of a clearing. They stopped a moment
in consultation; then Pedro slid smoothly through the cogon toward the
camp. Half-an-hour later he was back, sprang up suddenly as from the
earth at the feet of the Sergeant.
"Tacbo--gone," he said.
The Sergeant was accustomed to such disappointments. Tilting back his
wide-brimmed sombrero in philosophical gesture, he followed Pedro toward
the clearing. But as they broke out of the thicket he gripped his
guide's arm with iron fingers and with a bound threw himself back into
cover. For before the hut human figures sprawled in feigned sleep, their
guns stacked behind them, and at the windows shadowy forms lurked. "What
the devil----" he began fiercely.
"Tacbo," reiterated Pedro; "manica--dolls," he added shortly.
The Sergeant understood, and with a swaggering clink of spurs stepped
out again. It was as Pedro had said. The recumbent figures upon the
ground were dummies of grass and cloth; the stacked guns were rough
wooden counterfeits. They climbed the bamboo ladder into the house. More
of the grotesque shapes were there, legs divergent and back-jointed; two
leaned at the window, their hollow bellies bent at right angles over the
sill, in solemn, peering attitudes. In the breeze their loose white
camisas moved softly in undulating shivers; their big straw hats
flapped like wings of bats. Hanging from the central rafter was a lamp,
smouldering in yellow spark and sooty smoke; and against the harsh
downpour of clear sunlight outside this little, soiled flame gave to the
whole crew of contorted bodies an aspect of death, of carnage, of decay.
The Sergeant caught himself sniffing the air. "Let's get out of this,"
he said.
They climbed down the rude stairs again, and instinct, more than Pedro's
guidance, took the Sergeant to the right, some fifty yards into the
bush--and there it was, the trench:--parallel to the trail, broad, deep,
and all littered with signs of recent occupancy.
The Sergeant stood still, looking at the hut, at the trench, at the
trail. He twirled his moustache pensively; muttered exclamations came to
his lips.
It was a pretty arrangement. A detachment, coming along the trail behind
the guides and bursting out into this clearing, with its lure of men
recumbent upon the ground, of stacked arms, of vague forms at the
windows, shadowed forth by the lamplight behind, would immediately
charge in attempted surprise. Then from the brush to the right, the
trench's enfilading murder--it was pretty indeed.