to point, from the hut to the trail, from the trail to the trench, then
back again, assuring himself of the perfection of the plan. And Pedro
looked at the Sergeant; as if hypnotised he stepped closer, in long,
feline strides, coming suddenly at far intervals, his whole lithe body
a-quiver. For there, in the eyes of the Sergeant, the caybigan, growing
stronger, clearer, more certain every moment, there it shone, his
Desire, the form and shape at last of his obscure torturing desire. It
was that--that which shone in the eyes of the Sergeant as he
contemplated the perfection of the plot--it was that he longed for,
thirsted for, that which he must have himself, absolutely, to guard and
treasure and cherish. It was there, the torturing want of his entrails,
there, but not his, not his yet.
Back in his hut that night, after hours of obscure battling, he named it
at last. "Magtaca," he said, with heavy finality; "magtaca--admiration."
And then instantly he leaped to the next step.
"For the enemy, magtaca; for the caybigan, alipusta."
He hissed out the last word like an expectoration.
Yes, that was it:--for the enemy, admiration; for him, the friend, the
servitor, the caybigan, contempt.
Pedro slid down to the big net below. And long in the dim light of his
little lamp he oiled and cleaned and polished and caressed.
III
A mysterious enemy began to vex the little detachment of San Juan with
the puerile attacks.
Every night a Mauser bullet came wailing down the Lipa road and passed
over the outpost with a resounding hiss. The first time this occurred,
the lone sentinel, returning the fire, doubled back prudently upon the
guard rushing out to his support. Tense in vigilance the little troops
waited for the attack. But it did not come. At regular intervals a lone
bullet screeched above their heads, and that was all. Finally they
charged along the highway. A few more detached shots met them; then
there was silence.
The following night the same thing took place--the wail of the lone
bullet, the alarm, the pursuit--and nothing.
A new plan was tried. Four men were placed at the outpost with saddled
horses within reach. At the humming approach of the first shot they
leaped into their saddles and thundered down the highway; it stretched
before them, moon-golden between the black thickets, and deserted.
Returning they scouted the brush, the big horses crashing down the thick
vegetation. But there was nothing.
A corps of native beaters was added the next night. They searched the
bush thoroughly on both sides of the road. The shrill katydids dropped
into silence; lizards, snakes, iguanas, loathsome beasts of obscurity
rustled off in panic. But that was all.
Caybigan was called to the rescue. For two days he worked upon the
inhabitants of the pueblo. But for once his wonderful faculty failed
him; he found no trace of the secret enemy.
An ambush was prepared. Ten men at early dawn lay down in the bush near
the spot from which it was calculated the bullets came. All day they lay
there, low, without a whisper, without a movement. But when night came,
it was the other outpost, at the opposite extremity of the pueblo, which
was attacked.
After this last effort the thing was accepted as routine. There was a
childishness, a puerility about it that made the men smile. They grew
rather to like this little excitement, breaking the monotony of long
vigils.
But gradually the affair grew more interesting. The man was learning to
shoot. Each night the leaden missile screeched a little lower, a little
closer. Finally, one night, the guard, when relieved, was found walking
his post with his left arm limp along his side, neatly punctured by one
of the mysterious bullets.
On the same morning, Blount, walking along the main street, was stopped
by old Eustefania.
"Mi capitan," she said, cringing before him, "do you wish to know who
shoots your soldiers at night?"
"Who?" asked the Sergeant curtly.
"Caybigan," she said.
From the depths of their caves her eyes glowed at him, fixed, violent.
And to the Sergeant the answer came as the revelation of something long
and obscurely felt. Caybigan's absence from the night alarms, his
singular failure to track down the sharpshooter, the ridiculous fiasco
of the attempted ambuscade--a thousand and one little links suddenly
clinked shut at the word in a chain of evidence, of certainty.
The Sergeant turned sharp on his heel; his spurs rang on the stone
flagging. In the centre of the plaza Caybigan, in his graceful, elastic
pose, half-confident, half-wild, was bandying with three of the
blue-shirted soldiers. Blount made straight for the group. When near he
began to run, his face convulsed with the rage, half real, half assumed,
which experience had taught him invaluable for such moments. With a
tiger leap he bore upon Pedro, clutched his throat with his great hands,
and threw him to the ground.
Pedro went down without a quiver of resistance, and he lay there a white
figure in the gray dust, his arms thrown out in a cross-like attitude of
infinite surrender. His brown eyes looked up into the cold green light
of the Sergeant's with golden luminosity; he smiled gently. "And this
from my caybigan," he said.
"None of your Julius Caesar on me," snarled the Sergeant, who had a
vague acquaintance with the classics. "Your gun; where is it?"
"I have no gun, caybigan."
The Sergeant drew his revolver, and brutally he jammed the handle into
the mouth of the prostrate man with a sharp twist that sent the pointed
stock up against the palate, jerking the lower jaw down in distorted
gap. "Water," he said shortly.
One of the men with whom Pedro had been talking brought a hollow bamboo
full of water. Holding it above the prone figure he tilted it carefully.
A silvery cascade poured down; it struck the distended nostrils in
diamond rebound, streamed into the cavities at each side of the clamped
revolver. Immediately Pedro was clutched by an agonising sensation of
drowning. He gasped, gurgled; his knees, as if automatically, snapped up
to his chin. And the water came down, calmly, steadily, in pretty silver
flow, while he drowned, drowned, drowned.
"Wait a moment," said the Sergeant. The man with the tube gave it a
slight tilt, the flow ceased. Slowly Pedro emerged from the torturing
sensation; an immense weakness dissolved his bones; he trembled.
"Your gun," snarled the Sergeant, shaking him ragefully.
But Pedro, limp, eyes closed, waited for a little strength.
"Your gun," thundered the Sergeant.
And Pedro opened his eyes with a long sigh, like a very sleepy child. "I
have no gun, caybigan," he said, very gently, very wearily.
They began again. The water slid down in silver prettiness, splashed
upon the face in diamond drops; and Pedro drowned. And each time when
they stopped, and he had regained strength, he smiled gently at his
caybigan and said, "I have no gun, caybigan."
After a while fury rose like a red foam into the brains of these men,
mad with ceaseless, ineffectual carnage, with bitter, unavailing toil,
with the sense of their impotence in this eternal war against a vacuum.
They threw themselves upon that limp, resistless body, shell of the
impalpable soul unconquered within. They beat and kicked and choked.
But Pedro, very weak, very tired, very broken, still smiled gently and
said, "I have no gun, caybigan."
Then from this orgy of violence Blount felt himself slowly emerge, white
of face, cold in sweat, staggering as if drunk. He snapped up Pedro
into his arms and laid him in the shade of a giant mango growing out of
the ruins of a crumbled wall near by. An immense discouragement, a
poignant disgust made him tremble as with bodily weariness. Down on one
knee he bent over Pedro. Pedro felt the warm breath like a caress on his
ear. "Caybigan," implored the Sergeant; "caybigan, amigo, friend, tell
us, go on, tell us where you keep that gun, tell it to me, for me, for
my sake."
Pedro opened his eyes, and they smiled, golden, at the Sergeant.
"I have----" he began.
"No, not that, not that," cried the Sergeant, in frenzied fear of
hearing again that answer which maddened him, blurred his brain with red
haze. "Tell me, come, tell me; whisper it, low, right there, in my ear;
come, caybigan."
"If I tell you, then will we be friends?" asked Pedro wistfully.
"Caybigan," said the Sergeant, "we have worked together, eaten together,
hunted together. We are friends. I don't want to hurt you, sure I don't.
Tell me, tell me--and I'll love you like a son--like a little, foolish
son," he added with sudden access of tenderness.
"Well," began Pedro; "the gun, it is----"
But his eyes, fixed upon the Sergeant, froze suddenly as if before an
apparition. The Sergeant was smiling, smiling the smile of yore, the
unconscious smile of contempt, fatal, invincible.
"Go on; go on!" whispered the Sergeant breathlessly.
"I have no gun, caybigan," said Pedro monotonously.
The Sergeant sprang to his feet, livid. "Come on, fellows!" he shouted;
"we'll hang him!"
They got a rope, noosed it about Pedro's neck, threw the loose end over
a projecting branch of the mango and, standing him upon a box, secured
it.
In that position they left him for five minutes, to let Fear seep into
his stubborn heart. Every minute, in cold, tense accents, the Sergeant
asked, "Where is the gun?"
Pedro did not answer. He stood there, very still, calling to himself all
the strength left in his miserable racked body, composing himself as for
some great and splendid sacrament. Then, as for the fifth time the
question was asked, his right arm shot up towards the mountains, dark in
the distance.
"Malvar is over there with ten thousand men," he shouted with high,
clear voice. "Viva Malvar; the Americans are sons of curs!"
Somebody kicked the box.
But as, the whole earth lurching beneath him, he plunged into the
Infinite abyss, he took with him a wild, tumultuous, and exquisite joy.
For at his last words of defiance, upon the face of his golden-haired
caybigan he had seen--fluttering uncertain at first like the heralding
colours of the dawn, then glowing clear, certain, resplendent--the
expression he had caught at the lone cuartel in the bosque, the look of
esteem, of admiration, full, unreserved, complete, for which he had
thirsted so agonizingly, and which now at last had come to him, his
beyond the power of Man to take away, at the paltry price of treachery
and torture and death.
X
THE CAPTURE OF PAPA GATO
This is to explain how young Theodore Pinney, after his meteoric debut
in the P. I. constabulary--consisting in nothing less than the capture
of Papa Gato, fierce _bandelero_, who for years had terrorised the
region of the Taal--squatted into a fat civilian job and forsook all
dreams of glory. And it's not at all about young Pinney, but mostly
about his mother, the widow.
"The widow;"--by that short, somewhat ominous and not too respectful
cognomen she was known by all the bureau--the educational, of
course--from superintendent to lowest clerk; and throughout the
archipelago by men departmental and non-departmental. This name, based
on fact, like most things based on fact, was a lying thing. Close your
eyes and say "widow"; the vision is of something subtle, arch and
tantalising--lustrous eyes, comely form (somewhat pudgy), kittenish
ways. But she was long and lean and angular; her bosom was arid and her
tongue triple-forked. "Old-maid" would have expressed her infinitely
better; but there was the fact, the stubborn fact, which manifested
itself with slight provocation by a grim tightening of the thin lips,
and the phrase--proverbial now throughout the P. I.'s--"Mr. Pinney,
well, the less said about him the better. He was a _handsome_ man, but
he was a _wicked_ man"--the "handsome" being pronounced with a rising
inflection, and the antithetic adjective with a drop into tenebrous
basso-profundo.
Of Pinney _pere_ this is all we ever knew, although in departmental
circles he was a subject fertile of delicious speculation. That to be
wicked he had had ample temptation, knowing the widow, we cheerfully
granted; but what chance he ever had had to succumb, knowing the widow,
we could not imagine. Of Pinney _fils_ we knew still less, nothing at
all, in fact, what little there was being the property of the postal
authorities and consisting of records of money orders sent monthly by
the widow to a well known western college town. But of the widow
herself, good Lord, we knew only too much.
For she was a terror and a pest. From the day she placed her number tens
upon Philippine soil the islands knew no peace. The educational
department became a nightmare, and clamour filled all the others. She
had a passion for "little trips"--and her will was adamant and her
tongue a visitation. They all knew her. Her appearance at the Civil
Hospital heralded the disappearance of the resident chief. "Give her
what she wants, anything she wants," he yelled at his clerk, as he
exited. And when she sallied out for fresh conquest she held under her
arm a certificate of ill-health. At the educational bureau the
superintendent saw her coming. Out he sprang, through door or window.
"Give her what she wants," his parting wail floated to the clerk. And
so, with a glance at the medical certificate, and a few timid questions
as a matter of form, he made out Document No. II--sick-leave on full
pay. A few minutes later the major of the army transport service found
the outer world urgently calling, and as he dodged the widow on the
stairway, "My clerk, madam, has orders to give you what you wish," he
murmured, tense with an immense hurry. And the clerk provided; and a few
days later the widow wandered aboard some inter-island transport, made
law to the quartermaster, terrorised the steward, possessed herself of
the best cabin, anchored her chair in the most desirable deck space--and
off she sailed on one of her adorable little voyages. From Aparri to
Bohol, through Vigan, Ilo-Ilo, Cebu, Dumaguete, and Zamboangua, she was
known, her clamour had resounded, for transportation, for commissary
privileges, for bull-carts, cargadores, and military escorts.
One day, though, she decided to settle down.
She caught the superintendent at his desk and asked him for a provincial
post. The superintendent saw his main chance staring him in the face. He
was an intelligent and discreet man, so he did not decide hastily. For a
whole afternoon he pored diligently over a map of the archipelago.
Finally he settled on Taal, in the volcanic region of Luzon. It was just
at the end of the dry season; he calculated that she could just get
there. Then the rains would begin--and the roads were without bottom.
Besides, there was Papa Gato ambuscaded somewhere upon the flanks of the
great volcano surmounting the pueblo. Many things can happen in six
months. The superintendent was not an imaginative man; but that day he
certainly smiled to visions.
So, with a last array of _reclamas_--transportation, carts, provisions,
military escorts--the widow, her worldly goods upon a carabao-drawn
carro, herself in a shaky quilesa, set out toward her Palestine. And the
rains began and shut her off behind their impenetrable curtain.
From her isolation, after a while, news began to filter, vague,
insufficient, broken, like the irritating snatches of a telegraph line
out of order; first the regular official reports, secondly popular
rumour. She had evidently taken hold. The monthly reports showed the
school attendance of Taal rising by leaps and bounds to astonishing
totals. Rumour, however, corrected in some degree the superintendent's
satisfaction. It appeared that this remarkable increase was largely due
to her personal herding of _batas_ with the aid of a big _baston_. Once,
it seemed, she made a regrettable slip, took one of the leading citizens
of the pueblo for a little boy, and, he proving recalcitrant, cracked
his crown with her persuader ere she had discovered her mistake. This
caused some trouble to the central office, but, as the superintendent
remarked to the Secretary of Education, "One cannot make omelettes
without breaking eggs, and he (the leading citizen, evidently) was a bad
one, anyway." Pompously couched recriminations, also, came from the Taal
municipality. It was claimed that she had taken upon herself the
collection of taxes, that she levied thereon five per cent. for school
purposes, that she had deposed the treasurer and had appointed one of
her own, who happened to be her muchacho, so that the books and funds
were securely locked up in her stout camphor-wood chest. But as the town
officials were suspected of sundry peculations, the new system was
regarded as somewhat of an improvement. Besides, at that time she was
absolutely invaluable with a contribution to _The Philippine Teacher_
(the superintendent's special hobby) upon the "Model Nipa Home," an
article embellished with diagrams and elevations and cross-sections. A
few weeks later, it is true, there came from Mr. Rued, a constabulary
second-class inspector, stationed in Taal, a most virulent protest about
the burning of some two hundred shacks that happened to conform only too
distantly with the ideal "Model Nipa Home." Mr. Rued, being a mild man,
thought this method of civic improvement too strenuous. With this, his
chief in Manila thoroughly agreed, and, leaving him full discretion as
to methods, ordered him to take all necessary measures--which command,
mysteriously enough, remained forever without answer.
It was just about this time that Papa Gato, living in idyllic ease in
his impenetrable bosques up the sides of the Taal, began to feel that
vague but imperious self-dissatisfaction which is the peculiar appanage
of us unfortunate humans--the inward command to work. The Mexican pesos
of his last raid were becoming deplorably few, his store of palay was
low, and the contributions of the villagers spoke of failing memories.
It was time for another raid.
But this time, with his more earthy preoccupations there mingled
blue-hazed dreams. Gato, in spite of a real practical genius, often
proven by the ingenuity of his methods of extracting from recalcitrants
information as to the whereabouts of their hidden wealth, Papa Gato was
sentimental. Even before the revolution, whose impassioned call had led
him into a mode of life from which he had never been able to free
himself, even when a humble cochero in Manila, he had been a dreamer.
And now, Pope spiritually--this for the benefit of the rural population,
but treated by his own camp followers with large, American-imported
winks--king administratively, Marescal de Campo militarily, this
deplorable trait was still with him. The life of an outlaw, even in the
Philippines, has its disadvantages. Gato's particular disadvantage,
which he now set himself to nullify, was this: he had never seen an
American woman. He had never seen one of those golden-haired _maestras_,
which the American nation (with that inconsistency which prompts them to
shoot--alternately and with equal firmness, precision, and
dispatch--lead and book learning into his people) sends to far pueblos
like angelic visitations. But there was one in Taal. He had heard that
she was wonderful (it speaks eloquently of his sentimentalism that he
had never sought to find out in what she was wonderful; his imagination
immediately made her so in the mode that he would have her so--stately,
golden-haired and seraphic). So it was that Taal was chosen as the field
of his next exploit.
With his usual courteous foresight, he sent into the town an
announcement of his intention to capture the treasury and the _maestra_.
This was his regular mode of procedure, and not so fatuous as it may
appear. It had the double effect of warning his friends--he had many in
all places--and of paralysing his enemies. This time, however, he was
surprised with an official answer from the municipal council, sitting in
executive session. This answer was three varas long and redundant with
rhetoric; but reduced to plain and precise English it might well be set
down thus:
"For God's sake, take her away, and you can have the money, too."
This alacrity seemed to him highly suspicious, so, with strategic
cunning, he decided to hold camp with his main force, and to send off
his brigadier-general, Gomez, with a force of two lieutenant-generals,
five colonels, ten majors, twenty captains, and a few lieutenants for
the more facile work in Taal.
II
Thus it was that, soon after, the good people of Taal were aroused at
sun-up by a ragged burst of musketry, a hullaballoo of yells and beating
tom-toms, and the crackling of burning nipa. They were prepared for such
a contingency, however; and when, after this little preliminary
demonstration, Gomez's disreputables burst along the main street, they
met a reception that halted them in uneasy distrust.
For out of all the houses, humble _balay_ or grand _casa_, the populace
was pouring holiday-decked, faces shining with welcome--man, woman, and
child, tao and distinguido, all ranks, all sexes, all ages. White linen,
shimmering jusis, diaphanous pinas united in fiesta colouring. Peace and
rejoicing, a mild, ecstatic expectation, reigned upon all the faces; the
ninos and ninas especially were full of a goatlike hilarity and tumbled
on the green amid the tulisanes, upsetting majors and colonels
indiscriminately. And--could it be--was he blind?--no, it was true,
indubitably true; before Gomez's eyes, in front of the Casa Popular and
spanning the main street, a graceful bamboo arch of triumph rose against
the pink dawn. And across the top, in six-foot letters of bejuca, was
the following inscription:
TO THE LIBERATOR OF THE PUEBLO--THE INHABITANTS OF GRATEFUL TAAL.
But out of the Casa Popular the municipal band was emerging in joyful
blare, and Gomez had just time to compose himself into the pose of his
new role before he was greeted by the presidente, dressed in church-day
black, his head covered with the derby of ceremony. After a short
exchange of courtesies, the band wheeled, the presidente placed himself
at its head, Gomez at the head of his own troops, and presidente, band,
tulisanes, and populace started down the street. "To the maestra!"
shouted the presidente, with a heroic gesture. "To the maestra!" echoed
Gomez. "To the maestra!" roared the tulisanes. "To the maestra!" yelled
the populace, squeaked the women, piped the ninos and ninas. And
pell-mell they flowed beneath the arch.
Before the original Model Nipa Home the band halted and with an ominous
snort came to silence. A hush fell over the assembled multitude. One of
the shutters of the Model Home slid back; a lean, yellow arm, at the end
of which dangled a steaming coffeepot, pushed out of the opening.
Suddenly the coffeepot parabolaed through the air and landed upon the
presidente's ceremonial derby.
"Caramba!" roared that official, suffocated and scalded; and he beat a
hasty retreat into the hoi-polloi. The mysterious arm mysteriously
disappeared. Forming a cordon of lieutenants about the Model Home, Gomez
and three of his colonels mounted the stairs and beat down the light
bamboo door.
But behind the door stood the formidable widow. Long and gaunt, in her
morning wrapper, her be-frilled nightcap askew upon her head, her horn
spectacles trembling with indignation at the end of her aquiline nose,
she confronted them, a figure of righteous fury. Behind her was a
well-constructed pyramid of utensils, from which she drew with
promptness and discernment. In a jiffy the nearest colonel was helmeted
down to the chin with a big iron kettle, the second was sneezing to
death under a stream of tabasco sauce, while Gomez himself was
retreating beneath the tom-tom din of an empty coal-oil can, plied with
vigorous repetition upon his cranium.